Paul Krugman: America’s Unlevel Field

[patrice]

7. It serves some to say that the field is level, so the benefits & problems are due to individual

virtue or flaws. Success is fully deserved as is failure, as though individual differences and chance are meaningless.

Solving problems will never succeed if we continue to punish "the color blind" for not being able to "mix paint" correctly. Though those who are "color blind" might learn to do so mechanically, their personal identification with the phenomena cannot be held value-less, especially when there is a NEED for creativity.

This doesn't mean that personal choice and responsibility have nothing to do with why people suffer, just that though they can be necessary conditions in what happens in life, they aren't sufficient to cause and effect, so what choices/responsibilities are perceived is very much a matter of the who/what/where/when/why/how that result in individual identification.