David Korten Quotes
But we can also take the radical view that the test of an economy has to do with the extent to which it is providing everybody with a decent means of living.
Korten, David C. The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. Kumarian Press, 1999.
At the time of this quotation, the nation had gone through more than 3 decades of enormous increase in prosperity for the wealthy, and modest gains for the highly skilled, technically trained workers. However, correcting for inflation, average salaries did not increase at all. The middle class was particularly hard hit. Only 20 percent of the population benefitted from the growth at all; however, the 1 percent had rarely prospered more. Kenworthy’s principle did not apply for this period of American history.
She improved the economy considerably but was stuck in a socialized economic ideology that inhibited major private sector growth, without which it is impossible to eliminate poverty and with which excessive greed can also produce poverty.
Many of the very rich agreed with Lind on this point. So did many Americans with good jobs. However there were very few Americans who did not have good jobs who agreed with this point of view. In most industrialized countries ,most workers spend one-hired of their entire adult lives working. If we do not count sleeping time, it is more like half. It is hard to believe for most people that a person could have a good life when half of his/her waking hours are spend in a not very good situation. Many of Lind’s critics observed that this was the Classic Christian theological view until recent times that every person should accept his station and be happy in at as that is what God ordained.
He was concerned that if steps were taken to protect the environment and they slowed or shrank economic growth, the burden would fall disproportionately on the poor.
The “War on Poverty” had an intellectual precursor.
David C. Korten (born 1937) is an American author, former professor of the Harvard Business School, political activist, prominent critic of corporate globalization, and "by training and inclination a student of psychology and behavioral systems". His best-known publication is When Corporations Rule the World (1995 and 2001). In 2011, he was named an Utne Reader visionary.
