Letter to the editor of the New Yorker, RE: "Relatively Deprived: How Poor Is Poor?"
Sir or Madam,
I could not help but wonder over a logical inconsistency in the article "Relativley Deprived" published in the April 3rd issue of your magazine. Mr. Cassidy proposes revising the poverty line upward to reflect the disutility poor families experience when they reflect on the many people who have been born or risen to a better economic level than their own, and yet he does not even discuss the assumably valid contrapositive to this argument: that we ought to revise the poverty level downward to reflect the utility derived by the middle and upper classes over having bested their poverty-stricken neighbors. It would not be valid to revise the poverty level upward to reflect "relative deprivation" unless you also adjusted downward for "relative opulence."
-J____ K____
the article
I could not help but wonder over a logical inconsistency in the article "Relativley Deprived" published in the April 3rd issue of your magazine. Mr. Cassidy proposes revising the poverty line upward to reflect the disutility poor families experience when they reflect on the many people who have been born or risen to a better economic level than their own, and yet he does not even discuss the assumably valid contrapositive to this argument: that we ought to revise the poverty level downward to reflect the utility derived by the middle and upper classes over having bested their poverty-stricken neighbors. It would not be valid to revise the poverty level upward to reflect "relative deprivation" unless you also adjusted downward for "relative opulence."
-J____ K____
the article