Paul Krugman (The Nation): The Death of Horatio Alger

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Posted online Thursday December 18

The Death of Horatio Alger
By Paul Krugman

The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago.
The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.
And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of "class warfare."
Let's talk first about the facts on income distribution. Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and '40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management--all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
Now they're back.

Read more.

[tkulesa]

1. Damned scary article

But unfortunately, it's not anything we didn't already know. This is just one level of confirmation.

[0007]

5. Perhaps this goes to show that most people are not happy,

and have realized that it isn't about money.
Our society is geared for those that are successful and our society hasn't much time for those that have lost the spirit of competition. Competition appears to be the driving force of capitalism.
Perhaps when creativeness is surpressed by competitiveness, the ability to find happiness is lost and we have a society looking for whatever it can find in drugs for that temporary happiness or relief from unhappiness of which most suffer?

[The Zanti Regent]

2. Paul the K Strikes Again!

Love it "Leftist rag" Business Week--PRICELESS!

[cosmicdot]

3. corporatism and its good ol'boy bureaucracy

'fitting the mold' isn't exactly shattering glass ceilings

[salin]

4. everyone should read this and pass this article on.

Doesn't say much we don't instinctively know - but puts meat to it in a way that some who are just beginning to look around and think... "how in the heck are we going to sustain ourselves if the only new businesses coming in are low wage service jobs?" It puts the whole thing back into perspective in terms of how our current public policy is accelerating this process.

[The Magistrate]

6. A Small Point, My Friend

Most imagine Horatio Alger's tales depict young, poor fellows who rise by hard work and diligence. That is not the case. The typical plot involves a young, poor fellow whom fate places in position to perform some heroic service for a wealthy man, saving his child from being run over by a street car, or some such, and who is then as a reward taken under the magnate's wing and conducted into the world of wealth. Perhaps we may be reaching toward a rebirth of such a plot line, where service to the rich becomes the one conceivable means of advancement....

[Jack Rabbit]

7. This is quite true

One of my leftwing college professors asserted (rightly, IMHO) that while Alger was attempting to advance the myth that hard work, perseverance and adherence to a stern moral code would lead one from rags to riches in America, he was in fact telling a different story: that an American success story hinged on dumb luck.

Nevertheless, most people associate Alger's moral with the idea that America is a place where the poor can become rich. As Krugman points out, that's never really been as easy as Alger made it sound.

On the other hand, real life rags-to-riches stories were made possible by the fact that America had a more fluid class structure. Krugman is telling us that this is something that is disappearing with the middle class. Even if a poor person did not become chairman of the board, he had the opportunity to better himself to the extent that he might own his own home in an America that had a large middle class. For most Americans, there will be little opportunity in the new order. The future idea of success may be working up to management at a local fast food outlet.

[tom_paine]

8. Kick for Krugman!

:kick: :kick:

Great insights. And if it seems as if the Busheviks are looking to cut every avenue of upward mobility at the knees, to make a cliche, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck."

But of course the Busheviks are doing nothing the Caesers didn't do 2000 years ago. Ita ll comes down to who's Rome you want to save, the Elite Rome of the Busheviks (how insidious and Orwellian that these consummate elitists have painted their egalitarian enemies to be as elitist Busheviks) or the Rome of the Mob (that's us and all the rest of the Imperial Fodder Units).

[chiburb]

9. A Must Read....n/t

.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. Once again Krugman hits the nail on the head.

Bush's policies do everything to assure that those that have wealth keep it while those that don't have a difficult time being upwardly mobile.

[DemoVet]

11. A strong democracy requires a large, prosperous, secure middle class,

something I think FDR understood when he was developing the New Deal. I can't understand why any sane policy would include destroying the middle class just to hold on to power. What kind of third world country does this administration want to create?

[Demeter]

12. Why, His Own Little Country

With Bush branded on all our hides, of course!

And it will be a damned little country, it's been shrinking steadily for three years now.