I have said this to so-called progressives until I am out of breath. Class and economic inequality is the most pervasive and dangerous form of inequality facing us today in the rich world. We dwell on forms of inequality that are broadly ostracised and largely eliminated, while the elephant in the room is economic inequality that our business and political leaders endorse as enthusiastically as Confederate leaders embraced slavery.
Many people today believe that the poor deserve their lot in life, just as people would have said about African-Americans a century ago. Presidential candidates and senators say it openly and without rebuke. Both houses of Congress are controlled by people who talk euphemistically of the super-rich (who increasingly derive their wealth from inheritance not ingenuity) as "job creators". Meanwhile anywhere from a quarter to a third of our population is languishing with no jobs or shitty jobs, poor health, broken families and is always one parking ticket away from financial ruin.
This is the greatest challenge of our generation. We have to fix this.
Having lived in the US and three different European countries, I now live in what is supposedly one of the poorest European countries, Bulgaria.
Apart from the few third world countries I had visited, I had never seen real poverty until I went to the US. I had expected the US to be like Western Europe with bigger cars and more fast food, but I found infrastructure such as roads, airports, bridges, railroads that were seemingly left unrepaired for decades, public institutions like schools or government agencies were in worse shape than in the better Eastern European countries. They even had power outs not unlike the Eastern European ones. And just about everywhere we drove, even in wealthy areas such as Orange County or Manhattan, one wrong turn would take us to neighborhoods where we literally felt unsafe.
A few months ago I visited the poorest regions of Bulgaria, which happen to be (one of) the poorest region(s) of the entire European Union, Severozapaden Region, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severozapaden_Planning_Region. It's just South of the Danube, in the North western part of Bulgaria. And yes, it is poor, barely any businesses, and young people are moving out of there to find a future elsewhere. But a regular lower middle class suburb in America feels vastly more hopeless, rundown and outright dangerous.
I love the US and the US is a great place to be wealthy and I still believe your chances of making it really big are better in the US than in Europe as a whole. But Europe provides for a better life right now, not only for the poor, but also for most of us regular folks with no or little wealth and with lower or upper middle class income.
You said many people today believe that the poor deserve their lot in life. I think the people who believe that are ignorant or indifferent or both.
However, an ugly bit about the poor that no one wants to confront is culture. What is to be done about the culture of the poor that locks them in poverty? I don't think throwing more money and resources at the poor helps -unless- it is somehow coupled with culture change.
Wasting money/health on cigarette smoking and booze and drugs, credit debt and payday loans and living paycheck to paycheck, dropping out of school, lotto, endless streams of chaotic drama-filled relationships and unprotected sex and babies outside of marriage, junk food and fast food and drinking pop instead of water at every meal... These things to me aren't -only- an education problem, they're -also- a culture problem.
It's judgey for a well-to-do guy like me to talk this way, sorry in advance. I just find this culture thing very depressing because I don't feel there is much that can be done. It's very tempting for me to pick a single group to blame, like the banksters (especially re: payday loans) for being the secret hand in causing all this. But in my heart, I know the culture of the poor just really sucks in America, and there's a lot of wasted human potential. Nothing is being done to change that culture based on what I see on the boobtube.
If you ask me, the victimhood status we confer upon the poor only serves to lock them in their place. The greater society could do well by shaming bad behavior and try to steer poor culture people onto better paths.
30% of Forbes 400 billionaires inherited their wealth, 70% did not. What exactly are you using to claim that the super rich derive their wealth from inheritances?
Total agreement. But curious, you've had to explain this to progressives until you're out of breath? The progressives in where I live are the only ones talking about this, and the (so-called) conservatives are the ones able to deftly brush the subject aside. Trippy.
In these situations I like to ask: what other countries have solved this problem, and how? Are there any? If not, why not? Is it solvable? I never assume that every problem has a solution, and I definitely never assume that every problem has a government solution.
> Both houses of Congress are controlled by people who talk euphemistically of the super-rich (who increasingly derive their wealth from inheritance not ingenuity) as "job creators".
I disagree. I hear too much talk about solving gaps and creating jobs, and not single shred of sympathy for the simple rich.
We need to stop thinking its our problems to solve these so-called "societal injustices". It's not my problem. I'm trying to improve myself!
People should mind their own business and try to improve their own situations. If they're in no / shitty jobs, poor health / broken families, they need to figure it out like everyone else! We can't play God and it for them.
It just enable this entitlement attitude of your piousness and their own of what they deserve.
> "We like to boast of America as a land of opportunity, and historically there is truth to that"
I keep hearing this, but where is the evidence? Was there any objective research done to figure out whether at any point there was really some sort of magnificent economic mobility in the U.S.? There's lots of anecdotal evidence, sure -- stories of people who immigrated here with nothing and made it big, movies, novels, etc... but how do we know we're not just hearing about the exceptions, and that in the vast majority of cases, which do not capture people's imaginations, the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich?
One aspect is that well into the 19th century, perhaps even in the early 20th century, people in the US could participate in the massive land grab in the west. Basically, whenever the social framework got too bad, people could leave and at least go farm somewhere, giving them a living standard not too much below, and perhaps even higher, than that in larger cities.
The land grab is over now, but attitudes take some time to catch up.
This is particular interesting in comparison to Europe, where land grabs of this style have not happened in the last 1000 years or so. When the social framework got too bad, some people might have left to the Americas, but the people who stayed fought to solve those social problems.
I suspect that this is a large part of what drives the difference in perception of welfare spending between Europe and the US. It is also compatible with attitudes slowly shifting in the US to be more European.
Germany, for example, had officially recognized nobility till 1919. There were official classes and you could not become military officer or government bureaucrat if you was not born in the right family. First German experiment with democracy and equality under law was after WWI and failed spectacularly.
America, with democracy and no nobility laws was rightfully called land of opportunity compared to that.
Trends in economic mobility are difficult to prove because mobility itself is a long-term phenomenon. But for example, college tuition has increased dramatically, and a college education is one of the main ways to attain upward mobility.[1] Poor people are not able to enter profitable jobs (e.g. medicine, management, programming) because it requires training they cannot obtain, so they are instead stuck in e.g. minimum-wage retail work.
Economic inequality is easier to measure, and definitely correlates with (lack of) mobility.[2] Higher inequality means that there is a greater divide between the poor and the rich, so that it is more difficult to become rich if you are poor. Here, the statistics are clear: essentially all measures of inequality are increasing in the United States.[3]
America in the 1940s was mostly middle class: blue-collar jobs provided a livable wage, and income inequality was much lower.[4] In the past 50 years, middle-class wages have barely increased,[5] while college graduates[6] and CEOs earn much more.
Since Castro's communist regime came to power in Cuba, Cubans have been fleeing the island for freedom and opportunity in the US. With the exception of a minority that was lucky enough to have foreign bank accounts and land-holdings, they all came to the US with nothing. At the airport in Havana, the Cuban army emptied your wallet and purse, took all of your jewelry, and left you with essentially the clothes on your back. Fast forward to today and the 2 million Cubans in the US are the wealthiest hispanic immigrant group, and American-born descendants of Cuban immigrants are actually wealthier than non-hispanics whites (what most people call "white people"). There's no other place in the world where such a feat would be possible.
The evidence is in the scores of millions who came to America with nothing and rose into the middle class and beyond. If this was exceptional, you wouldn't see mile upon mile of suburban homes, cars jamming the roads, etc.
Aside: I met Rick Goff when I was in high school. My dad lived in Yamhill and was friends with him. One day we drove out to his place, turning off the gravel road toward a barn. Stepping inside the barn was a surreal experience. There, out in the middle of nowhere, in a fucking barn, was a freshly painted 1950's Rolls Royce. It was beautiful.
I don't know if he's a good example of the economic class divide, though. I understand Kristof's larger point and that he's writing from his own life experiences, but I think Goff's situation is more demonstrative of the rural-urban economic divide than a class divide.
He had a skill that people were willing to pay him for, but he chose to restore cars out in the country, in his barn. I can't speak for Goff's life choices, but during my summers in Yamhill and having relatives that lived in rural areas, I met a lot of people who would rather eke out a meagre existence in the countryside than move to where the jobs are. Part of economic mobility is just plain mobility.
Rick acknowledged that he had made bad choices. He
drank, took drugs and was arrested about 30 times. But
he also found the strength to give up alcohol when he
felt he was turning into his father. What distinguished
Rick wasn’t primarily bad choices, but intelligence,
hard work and lack of opportunity.
If you were arrested 30 times, I'm going to guess that bad choices are, in fact, one of the primary distinguishing characteristics of your life. There are a lot of poor people with backgrounds ranging from unexceptional to tragic who haven't been arrested once.
This doesn't invalidate Kristof's larger point, of course, but it does mean he's not very good at picking reasonable, actionable examples. Short of taking away Rick's free will, Clockwork Orange-style, there may not be much we could have done for him. I disagree that Rick's life story invalidates the "American Dream," or even calls it into question.
My wife was listening to Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," a book written in 1936 aimed at sales and business people. One thing that struck me was a chapter where he talks about empathizing with people. He gives the example of Al Capone. If we had been born with Al Cappne's body and mind and his circumstances, we would have been him. Therefore, people deserve very little credit for what they've accomplished and conversely very little discredit for what they've not. He ends the section with the saying "there but for the grace of God go I."
It's interesting because the intended audience of the book was not social progressives. It seems like a concept that wouldn't have been controversial at the time. It rings very differently in today's culture, where we like to talk about choices more than circumstances.
It's very hard to get even not particularly wealthy middle class people to see this. People have very aggressive in debates with me about how hard they worked and how they should be allowed to pass their advantages on to their kids. There's also an oft repeated trope about how it's about values and character, which isn't entirely false, but besides the point.
It seems to be a basic human bias; we think everything positive that happens to us is due to our own merit, and everything bad is due to circumstance. In a country like the US, where I'm guessing people don't really mingle, you end up getting some very bitter people who either think they are being pulled down by the rabble or they are being held down by the aristocrats.
> It seems to be a basic human bias; we think everything positive that happens to us is due to our own merit
not all, but if one decides to move for work and opportunities, giving up close family, many friends, various safety nets that they bring (financial, personal etc.), start from 0, working hard relentlessly and then is successful (whatever that means), then coming back and listening some envious BS talk about privileged/lucky/whatever by people who eat junk food not because they have to, sit their evenings in front of TV consistently, never ever considered learning something in their (massive) free time etc. They started on +- same level, have same internet as me.
Do you really blame anybody successful? I don't. I want to give back, and I am doing that. But not to random Joe, but to my dearest - family and friends. If everybody does that, the very few truly unlucky remaining can be dealt generously with state social systems.
This is what made US so famous and strong in past - that your success won't be averaged with those that don't break a sweat, your success will be yours. And more you work on it, bigger it might be. Remove this incentive, and many very bright people will steer their energy elsewhere, and humanity gains less.
This sort of attitude just shows how great the disconnect is between the haves and the have-nots. Many of these individuals who lack privilege may not even have proper internet access, or the literacy skills required to harness the internet even if they did. Deep-seated social ills cannot simply be solved by ubiquitous internet access and ever cheaper consumer electronics.
Indeed, recent studies on MOOCs have shown that the majority of their users are (surprise, surprise) young, white males with college degrees and a privileged background. One could even make the argument that MOOCs are actually exacerbating inequality, rather than reducing it.
I assume 1. Get educated refers to the internet and the rise of things like Khan Academy but 25% of americans don't have any internet (that includes mobile) at home.
(I didn't down vote you and I do agree with the points somewhat)
1. It's still extremely expensive to get a degree or post-secondary education of some sort. Student loans are the only realistic option for many people.
Still related to the first point, proper education is more important than just education. Many people are still trying to go after what they "love" instead of the supply and demand of the marketplace.
2. It's never been easier to have an opportunity to start a business. Succeeding is still challenging.
4. Largely inaccessible to the low income class and a group of the middle class. You need excess money to invest, which increasingly people don't have.
While it's true that many of these things are easier to start, there are still significant problems that have to be overcome. Many of these have deeper issues.
On point 1, that depends if the college itself is accredited or of good standing such that employers won't scrutinize it.
On point 2, that depends on the state you're in and what goods/services are in demand. If you're in Louisiana and want to be a florist because there's demand for them, good luck (they have a licensing scheme for florists).
On point 3, this is only true if you have access to the Internet in a reliable manner.
On point 4, this can only work if you have enough money. Having five hundred bucks saved up as part of your yearly savings isn't going to move much even in risky investments (if a brokerage is willing to take such little money for their accounts).
This was also true when i took Economics of Inequality at university in 1997. Western Euro countries and Canada were ahead of America back then. From an outsider's perspective, if you're gonna make it rich, do it in the USA to make it crazy rich, but you're going to have a hard time making it from the bottom 10th to the top 10th.
I'd be interested in the stats in the other direction - how low of a chance of someone born in the upper quintile ending up in the lower quintile. The u.s. seems to be disproportionally high in mediocre people being at the top, being there through famil money.
Basically britain's upper class twits satirized by Monty Python.
[+] [-] eigenvector|10 years ago|reply
Many people today believe that the poor deserve their lot in life, just as people would have said about African-Americans a century ago. Presidential candidates and senators say it openly and without rebuke. Both houses of Congress are controlled by people who talk euphemistically of the super-rich (who increasingly derive their wealth from inheritance not ingenuity) as "job creators". Meanwhile anywhere from a quarter to a third of our population is languishing with no jobs or shitty jobs, poor health, broken families and is always one parking ticket away from financial ruin.
This is the greatest challenge of our generation. We have to fix this.
[+] [-] flexie|10 years ago|reply
Apart from the few third world countries I had visited, I had never seen real poverty until I went to the US. I had expected the US to be like Western Europe with bigger cars and more fast food, but I found infrastructure such as roads, airports, bridges, railroads that were seemingly left unrepaired for decades, public institutions like schools or government agencies were in worse shape than in the better Eastern European countries. They even had power outs not unlike the Eastern European ones. And just about everywhere we drove, even in wealthy areas such as Orange County or Manhattan, one wrong turn would take us to neighborhoods where we literally felt unsafe.
A few months ago I visited the poorest regions of Bulgaria, which happen to be (one of) the poorest region(s) of the entire European Union, Severozapaden Region, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severozapaden_Planning_Region. It's just South of the Danube, in the North western part of Bulgaria. And yes, it is poor, barely any businesses, and young people are moving out of there to find a future elsewhere. But a regular lower middle class suburb in America feels vastly more hopeless, rundown and outright dangerous.
I love the US and the US is a great place to be wealthy and I still believe your chances of making it really big are better in the US than in Europe as a whole. But Europe provides for a better life right now, not only for the poor, but also for most of us regular folks with no or little wealth and with lower or upper middle class income.
[+] [-] EdSharkey|10 years ago|reply
However, an ugly bit about the poor that no one wants to confront is culture. What is to be done about the culture of the poor that locks them in poverty? I don't think throwing more money and resources at the poor helps -unless- it is somehow coupled with culture change.
Wasting money/health on cigarette smoking and booze and drugs, credit debt and payday loans and living paycheck to paycheck, dropping out of school, lotto, endless streams of chaotic drama-filled relationships and unprotected sex and babies outside of marriage, junk food and fast food and drinking pop instead of water at every meal... These things to me aren't -only- an education problem, they're -also- a culture problem.
It's judgey for a well-to-do guy like me to talk this way, sorry in advance. I just find this culture thing very depressing because I don't feel there is much that can be done. It's very tempting for me to pick a single group to blame, like the banksters (especially re: payday loans) for being the secret hand in causing all this. But in my heart, I know the culture of the poor just really sucks in America, and there's a lot of wasted human potential. Nothing is being done to change that culture based on what I see on the boobtube.
If you ask me, the victimhood status we confer upon the poor only serves to lock them in their place. The greater society could do well by shaming bad behavior and try to steer poor culture people onto better paths.
[+] [-] lfjmfkekdk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plurinshael|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clamprecht|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gohrt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon3_|10 years ago|reply
I disagree. I hear too much talk about solving gaps and creating jobs, and not single shred of sympathy for the simple rich.
We need to stop thinking its our problems to solve these so-called "societal injustices". It's not my problem. I'm trying to improve myself!
People should mind their own business and try to improve their own situations. If they're in no / shitty jobs, poor health / broken families, they need to figure it out like everyone else! We can't play God and it for them.
It just enable this entitlement attitude of your piousness and their own of what they deserve.
[+] [-] anindyabd|10 years ago|reply
I keep hearing this, but where is the evidence? Was there any objective research done to figure out whether at any point there was really some sort of magnificent economic mobility in the U.S.? There's lots of anecdotal evidence, sure -- stories of people who immigrated here with nothing and made it big, movies, novels, etc... but how do we know we're not just hearing about the exceptions, and that in the vast majority of cases, which do not capture people's imaginations, the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich?
[+] [-] nhaehnle|10 years ago|reply
The land grab is over now, but attitudes take some time to catch up.
This is particular interesting in comparison to Europe, where land grabs of this style have not happened in the last 1000 years or so. When the social framework got too bad, some people might have left to the Americas, but the people who stayed fought to solve those social problems.
I suspect that this is a large part of what drives the difference in perception of welfare spending between Europe and the US. It is also compatible with attitudes slowly shifting in the US to be more European.
[+] [-] watwut|10 years ago|reply
America, with democracy and no nobility laws was rightfully called land of opportunity compared to that.
[+] [-] allenz|10 years ago|reply
Economic inequality is easier to measure, and definitely correlates with (lack of) mobility.[2] Higher inequality means that there is a greater divide between the poor and the rich, so that it is more difficult to become rich if you are poor. Here, the statistics are clear: essentially all measures of inequality are increasing in the United States.[3]
America in the 1940s was mostly middle class: blue-collar jobs provided a livable wage, and income inequality was much lower.[4] In the past 50 years, middle-class wages have barely increased,[5] while college graduates[6] and CEOs earn much more.
[1] http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/06/13-facts-h...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...
[3] http://www.newyorker.com/rational-irrationality/american-ine...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...
[5] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor...
[6] http://www.census.gov/library/infographics/sci_eng_majors.ht...
[+] [-] wildmusings|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|10 years ago|reply
I don't know if he's a good example of the economic class divide, though. I understand Kristof's larger point and that he's writing from his own life experiences, but I think Goff's situation is more demonstrative of the rural-urban economic divide than a class divide.
He had a skill that people were willing to pay him for, but he chose to restore cars out in the country, in his barn. I can't speak for Goff's life choices, but during my summers in Yamhill and having relatives that lived in rural areas, I met a lot of people who would rather eke out a meagre existence in the countryside than move to where the jobs are. Part of economic mobility is just plain mobility.
[+] [-] CamperBob2|10 years ago|reply
This doesn't invalidate Kristof's larger point, of course, but it does mean he's not very good at picking reasonable, actionable examples. Short of taking away Rick's free will, Clockwork Orange-style, there may not be much we could have done for him. I disagree that Rick's life story invalidates the "American Dream," or even calls it into question.
[+] [-] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
It's interesting because the intended audience of the book was not social progressives. It seems like a concept that wouldn't have been controversial at the time. It rings very differently in today's culture, where we like to talk about choices more than circumstances.
[+] [-] gozo|10 years ago|reply
http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_ph...
[+] [-] lordnacho|10 years ago|reply
It seems to be a basic human bias; we think everything positive that happens to us is due to our own merit, and everything bad is due to circumstance. In a country like the US, where I'm guessing people don't really mingle, you end up getting some very bitter people who either think they are being pulled down by the rabble or they are being held down by the aristocrats.
[+] [-] saiya-jin|10 years ago|reply
not all, but if one decides to move for work and opportunities, giving up close family, many friends, various safety nets that they bring (financial, personal etc.), start from 0, working hard relentlessly and then is successful (whatever that means), then coming back and listening some envious BS talk about privileged/lucky/whatever by people who eat junk food not because they have to, sit their evenings in front of TV consistently, never ever considered learning something in their (massive) free time etc. They started on +- same level, have same internet as me.
Do you really blame anybody successful? I don't. I want to give back, and I am doing that. But not to random Joe, but to my dearest - family and friends. If everybody does that, the very few truly unlucky remaining can be dealt generously with state social systems.
This is what made US so famous and strong in past - that your success won't be averaged with those that don't break a sweat, your success will be yours. And more you work on it, bigger it might be. Remove this incentive, and many very bright people will steer their energy elsewhere, and humanity gains less.
[+] [-] WalterBright|10 years ago|reply
1. get educated 2. start a business 3. access the global marketplace 4. invest
[+] [-] w1ntermute|10 years ago|reply
Indeed, recent studies on MOOCs have shown that the majority of their users are (surprise, surprise) young, white males with college degrees and a privileged background. One could even make the argument that MOOCs are actually exacerbating inequality, rather than reducing it.
[+] [-] HaloZero|10 years ago|reply
http://www.census.gov/history/pdf/2013computeruse.pdf
[+] [-] TheHydroImpulse|10 years ago|reply
1. It's still extremely expensive to get a degree or post-secondary education of some sort. Student loans are the only realistic option for many people.
Still related to the first point, proper education is more important than just education. Many people are still trying to go after what they "love" instead of the supply and demand of the marketplace.
2. It's never been easier to have an opportunity to start a business. Succeeding is still challenging.
4. Largely inaccessible to the low income class and a group of the middle class. You need excess money to invest, which increasingly people don't have.
While it's true that many of these things are easier to start, there are still significant problems that have to be overcome. Many of these have deeper issues.
[+] [-] norea-armozel|10 years ago|reply
On point 2, that depends on the state you're in and what goods/services are in demand. If you're in Louisiana and want to be a florist because there's demand for them, good luck (they have a licensing scheme for florists).
On point 3, this is only true if you have access to the Internet in a reliable manner.
On point 4, this can only work if you have enough money. Having five hundred bucks saved up as part of your yearly savings isn't going to move much even in risky investments (if a brokerage is willing to take such little money for their accounts).
[+] [-] WalterBright|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lumberjack|10 years ago|reply
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/a-dose-of-financial-reality/
[+] [-] elchief|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joeri|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] known|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raceyT|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comrade1|10 years ago|reply
Basically britain's upper class twits satirized by Monty Python.
[+] [-] dlg|10 years ago|reply
(Also, a shorter note from the center-right AEI https://www.aei.org/publication/tracking-the-same-households...)
[+] [-] itistoday2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aoyagi|10 years ago|reply
As for the article itself, I thought it's common knowledge that in most civilized world, social mobility is decreasing and income gap is increasing.