Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.RUTGERS.EDU
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!josh
From: josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: The Great Society
Message-ID: <3541@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 18:36:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3541
Posted: Thu Sep  5 18:36:08 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 05:52:35 EDT
References: <145@gargoyle.UUCP> <28200052@inmet.UUCP> <259@pedsgd.UUCP>
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 24

In article <259@pedsgd.UUCP> bob@pedsgd.UUCP (Robert A. Weiler) writes:
> 'The Making of the President - 1972' pg 189.:
>	 Median Negro family income had risen by 50 percent...
>	... And *young* black families ( those under thirty-five )
>	were now averaging $8,900 a year, or 91 percent of white
>	income in the same age group. ...
>
>... If Mr Murray
>is arguing otherwise, either he or Mr White have made an error,
>and you'll have to choose who you believe. 
>Bob Weiler.

As usual, the actual situation is (was) more complex than Usenet
cheapthought allows for.  White's figures, and others usually
used to show the "success" of the Great Society, are perfectly
compatible with Murray's, and as far as I know, all of them are
literally factual.  What White (and Weiler) do is show the 
optimistic aggregates that resulted from the righ getting richer,
and ignore that the poor were getting poorer.  Murray makes a 
point of showing that the top two fifths of blacks did very 
well from the Great Society, but that it put a cap on the bottom
fifth, whom it locked permanently into poverty.

--JoSH