he mere fact that one person has something or is entitled tosomething—taken simply by itself—is no reason at all foranother person to want the same thing or to think himselfentitled to it.

Every person should be accorded the rights, therespect, the consideration, and the concern to which he isentitled by virtue of what he is and of what he has done. Theextent of his entitlement to them does not depend uponwhether or not other people are entitled to them as well.^

If a person has enough resources to provide for thesatisfaction of his needs and his interests, his resources areentirely adequate;

what is it genuinely important thathe take into account?

es

Surely what is of genuine moral concern is notformal but substantive. It is whether people have good lives,and not how their lives compare with the lives of others

appeals in behalf of equality oftenhave very considerable emotional power

Having less is compatible, after all, with having quite abit;

And yet, is it really indisputable that such discrepancies mustalways be so awful?

Wheneverit is morally important to strive for equality, it is always becausedoing so will promote some other value rather than becauseequality itself is morally desirable.

In short, cheap labor has been paralleled by the evolution of agrowing number of parcels of cheap building stock and land

he decline in applicants for the factory jobsin the region may be a direct result of a "de-skilling perception" of theregional work force-especially among the younger workers of the Buf-falo area.

he rate of black unemployment isstill significantly higher than that among whites,

Pay as a measure of the region's gender division of labor is almost asimbalanced as the income comparison between blacks and whites. In1980, the earning gap between men and women in Buffalo was signifi-cant,

For example, whites still earn substantiallymore than blacks in the Buffalo area.

the auto industrycertainly drives what is left of its manufacturing base.

During the decade of the 1980s, the re-gional economy declined severely in the first years. When it began torecover in the middle years, it did so at a rate still far below that of thenational economy.7I At the same time, service sector activities are stillnot substantially competitive enough to drive long-term regional eco-nomic restructuring. In fact, if there is a new economic structure repre-senting a "breaking down and building up again, [a] deconstruction andattempted reconstitution' 72 of the industrial base, then it is one wherethe once vaunted manufacturing base of Buffalo has been "reconstituted"as a fragile, dependent and marginally competitive outback of the na-tion's volatile service industries.

The main technological reason for this changewas the introduction of the railroad

sense of the temporal and spatial uneven development of capital-ism, and the ways in which capitalism's contradiction is produced andmanaged."

Rather, for most of the last de-cades, the region represented a prime example of how a region can be-come a victim of economic restructuring rather than a beneficiary

that would pay for autom

iability.

driving.