Friedman, a direita e a desigualdade

Se a actual crise servir para uma só coisa, espero que seja o permitir-nos repensar alguns dogmas que por aí andavam feitos verdades absolutas... Quem sabe se agora a direita não se colocará algumas questões sobre os seus credos, um pouco à moda do que aconteceu à esquerda depois da queda do muro. Só lhe faria bem. Aliás, faria bem a todo o mundo.
Acho que todos têm a ganhar ao ler este artigo do Paul Krugman sobre o Milton Friedman, e sobre como uma teoria económica bem pensada à partida se transformou num credo cada vez mais distanciado da realidade, num instrumento discursivo da direita que serviu - e ainda serve - para legitimar o desmantelamento do Estado social.

Aqui vai um excerto, o artigo completo encontra-se na New York Review of Books.

"From 1947 to 1976, Milton Friedman was a voice crying in the wilderness, his ideas ignored by policymakers. But the economy, for all the inefficiencies he decried, delivered dramatic improvements in the standard of living of most Americans: median real income more than doubled. By contrast, the period since 1976 has been one of increasing acceptance of Friedman's ideas; although there remained plenty of government intervention for him to complain about, there was no question that free-market policies became much more widespread. Yet gains in living standards have been far less robust than they were during the previous period: median real income was only about 23 percent higher in 2005 than in 1976.

Part of the reason the second postwar generation didn't do as well as the first was a slower overall rate of economic growth—a fact that may come as a surprise to those who assume that the trend toward free markets has yielded big economic dividends. But another important reason for the lag in most families' living standards was a spectacular increase in economic inequality: during the first postwar generation income growth was broadly spread across the population, but since the late 1970s median income, the income of the typical family, has risen only about a third as fast as average income, which includes the soaring incomes of a small minority at the top."

Será preciso lembrar que em Portugal as discrepâncias (de salário, de acesso à saúde e à educação, de tratamento pelas próprias instituições e empresas do Estado) entre ricos e pobres estão entre as maiores da UE?