Connections between the arguments of Wolff and Currie

Okay- I’ve been writing and reading all day.  It is late and I am tired.  So we’ll see how coherent this post turns out to be…

Richard Wolff and Elliot Currie both deal with different specific issues that are caused by practically the same exact thing. 

Currie discusses drug abuse in the United States and how some believe that this crisis was detached from a social context.  In other words, many falsely believe that drug abuse is an individual problem- the individual person who uses drugs must be immoral, irrational, or unintelligent.  In actuality, Currie argues, drug problems in the US are due to a larger systematic structure in society that has changed over time and widened the gap between the deprived and the wealthy.  He calls it the “strategy of inequality” which has reshaped American society and culture since the 1970s.  First, job opportunities have declined greatly since the seventies because more and more employers began looking for workers who are educated.  Blue collar jobs were suddenly disappearing and low-wage jobs were on the rise.  For example, between 1979 and 1987, more than four out of five new jobs for men in the American economy paid poverty-level wages or below.  This causes workers to work harder, earn less pay, and struggle more to provide for themselves and their families.  Ultimately, this relates to drugs because social and economic deprivation and “a sense of exclusion from the ‘good life’ breed drug abuse”- and yet America has chosen policies that cause the depravity.

Wolff deals with the overall economic crisis of the United States.  He also talks about the economic changes in the 1970s and points out that wages have not risen since that decade- but profits have risen enormously.  As a result, people worked more to make more money and also borrowed money from the big companies.  However, this creates another problem and widening of the gap between the deprived and the wealthy because the workers have to pay back these loans with high interests.  These policies of the 1970s have completely changed the American economy and have consequently caused the economic recession America entered at the turn of the century.

Rather than attributing drug abuse and economic recession to individual problems as many Americans do, Wolff and Currie point out that it is a policy problem- a systematic problem that began in the 1970s- that has contributed greatly to these issues we face today.