The Missing Fifth

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=david%20brooks&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Tue, May 10, 2011 at 9:21 AM
Subject: re: The Missing Fifth
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
   David Brooks' dread of the welfare state cannot be rooted in his
data. As he cites " the United States has a smaller share of prime age
men in the work force than any other G-7 nation". That is to say that
getting a larger fraction of adult males to work correlates with those
countries who have more socialist institutions, rather than fewer. I
can't prove that the deficiencies in our Social Safety Net cause our
disproportionate unemployment, but I can cite the correlation. To cite
the correlation and then claim that it proves the opposite requires a
special sort of madness.
Barry Levine