I did not attend the Noam Chomsky talk, but I read the report from Deborah Bloom about it (ODE, April 21). Chomsky was quoted as saying that before the Reagan administration, “The lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile.”
I thought this was a fairly inaccurate statement on the part of Chomsky, because, although income inequality was much less before the time of Ronald Reagan than it is today, I do not see how anyone could say that the bottom quintile did about as well as the highest quintile. It seems like a misleading statement. There was still plenty of income inequality before Reagan, although not nearly as much as there is today. When I pointed this out to a friend who did attend the talk, he said Chomsky never said such a thing. So either my friend dozed off at the moment Chomsky uttered this statement, or your reporter did not accurately report this part of the talk, and I am curious to know which it is.
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