and macropolitics by which an ethos of deep pluralism is
promoted is also that by which the political drives to reduce
economic inequality can be fostered.
I have outlined elsewhere programs to reduce economic
inequality that are compatible with deep, multidimensional
pluralism. They focus first and foremost on the public
infrastructure of consumption in the domains of health care,
transportation, public security, education, housing, and
retirement. The policies themselves make it possible for more
citizens to make ends meet by rendering the dominant forms of
consumption subsidized by the state more inclusive in character.
They move from expensive state subsidy of exclusive goods, in
which the extension of exclusive goods to more and more people
increases the unit costs and intensifies strains on the
environment, to extensive subsidies of inclusive goods. The
state, for instance, currently subsidizes medical care
extensively; but it supports a mode of care that is high-tech in
character, curative rather than preventative in emphasis, drug
centered in treatment, controlled by private insurance
companies, and dependent upon the private fees of physicians. A
change in the state supported infrastructure of medical care
could shift each of these priorities. The effect would be to
make medical care available to more people at cheaper unit
costs. And the large state expenditures to cover the adverse
Convention