As rich-poor gap widens in U.S., class mobility stalls

[sabra]

<<SNIP>>
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05133/504149.stm

As rich-poor gap widens in U.S., class mobility stalls
First in a Series
Friday, May 13, 2005

By David Wessel, The Wall Street Journal


The notion that the U.S is a special place where any child can grow up to be president, a meritocracy where smarts and ambition matter more than parenthood and class, dates to Benjamin Franklin. The 15th child of a candle-and-soap maker, Franklin started out as a penniless printer's apprentice and rose to wealth so great that he retired to a life of politics and diplomacy at age 42.

The promise that a child born in poverty isn't trapped there remains a staple of America's self-portrait. President Bush, though a riches-to-riches story himself, revels in the humble origins of some in his cabinet. He says his attorney general "grew up in a two-bedroom house," the son of "migrant workers who never finished elementary school." He notes that his Cuban-born commerce secretary's first job for Kellogg Corp. was driving a truck; his last was chief executive.

But the reality of mobility in America is more complicated than the myth. As the gap between rich and poor has widened since 1970, the odds that a child born in poverty will climb to wealth -- or a rich child will fall into the middle class -- remain stuck. Despite the spread of affirmative action, the expansion of community colleges and the other social change designed to give people of all classes a shot at success, Americans are no more or less likely to rise above, or fall below, their parents' economic class than they were 35 years ago.

Although Americans still think of their land as a place of exceptional opportunity -- in contrast to class-bound Europe -- the evidence suggests otherwise. And scholars have, over the past decade, come to see America as a less mobile society than they once believed.

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[lonestarnot]

1. And there are those who would say there is no class war in Amerika!

[leftyclimber]

2. Europe already figured out that feudalism doesn't work.

The whole time I was reading that piece I kept thinking of my mom, who, the other day, said "The whole time I was growing up I was taught that if you worked hard you could make something better of yourself. I was lied to."

[LiberallyInclined]

3. hmmmm....what to do, what to do...

I Know! Let's get rid of the ESTATE Tax.

[JDPriestly]

5. The Leave No Paris Hilton Behind Tax

you mean.

[carnie_sf]

4. As Warren Buffet said

if there's a class war in this country, my class is clearly winning.

[TahitiNut]

6. The myth says that slavery is OK as long as ...

... a slave has some slim chance to be adopted into the plantation owner's family. Stated another way, we're buying into the notion that it's OK to totally impoverish 50% of the people, as long as 2% of the "bottom 90%" get a chance to become wealthy (i.e. profiting from the labor of others). It should be noted that no measure of merit or value is assessed -- we have no idea whether the mechanisms of class mobility, to whatever degree it exists, are at all beneficial to the entire society. It could merely be through sports and entertainment ... or even marriage. It may have absolutely nothing to do with "hard work." Indeed, one might question whether wealth established on the basis of profiting from the labor of others would even allow the "cash cow worker" to stop working. Does it make any sense whatsoever to let your cash cow join the ranks of teat-suckers??

[Dover]

8. When was the last time you saw a socialist-run corporation?

It is the corporate model of capitalism that shapes this country's ideological, economic and soon its governmental bodies. Call it the capitalist pyramid (with fascist leanings when unregulated).
And there is no room for socialism (classlessness) in the capitalist corporate model structure. They are not democratic either. They require hierarchy, and there is no real mechanism for input at the decision-making level by "the people".

In modern socialist theory, it is in the pursuit of the goal of creating a classless society that has a responsible people and a sympathetic government that would form the backbone of an ideal welfare state.

Truth be told, socialism IS, in a manner of speaking, part of the corporate model. It works in reverse in this country. The corporations are the recipients of welfare......paid for by the People.

[CatholicEdHead]

19. These days "socialism = communism"

still in the shadow of the Cold War. ANY type of group working together is "socialist" which then equals "communist". That brings back USSR propaganda images.

It is all "me me me = capitalism" and nothing else. He who dies with the most toys wins. Screw everyone else.

[leftofthedial]

7. Class War is the ONLY political struggle in Murka

it drives everything else

[killbotfactory]

9. just like the good ol' days

now we just need some rich asshole republican say "americans need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work harder"

[sadiesworld]

10. Rich asshole republican?

Hell, I see DUers deliver variations on the "bootstrap" line daily.

[Romulus]

11. class mobility pretty much died with the estate tax

And other Bush tax schemes.

With the wealth now being assured by law to pass from one generation to another of the same family, it cannot be put back into the economy for redistribution according to the succeeding generation's "meritocracy."

[struggle4progress]

12. "Up yours, America!" -- A message from The Ownership Society. eom

[the_spectator]

13. Is part of this the natural result of good things?

Over the 60s, 70s and 80s, society became a lot more just and a lot more meritocratic than in the past. Up until that point, American society was even more restrictive than it is now. For example, good colleges had quotas for Jews that kept their numbers low. The top rungs of things like the legal profession, banking, Wall Street, etc, were pretty much dominated by Social Register, WASP Ascendency, white-shoe types (like Poppy Bush.) That changed after 1960 or so.

And thats how the "smart kids" no matter what they were, Jewish, Italian, etc. got in. If you had the grades, and the SAT scores, and the ambition, and the capacity for hard work (and little sleep) you could get into the "best" schools and then rise beyond that through the best businesses.

American society is far more meritocratic than it ever used to be. It's no accident that there is no such thing as "bankers hours" any more for the top-flight banking types, for example.

And now those proper victors of meritocracy have their own children. They are more likely than the average person (though unlikely to match exactly up to their parents' level, viz the normal curve) to be more intelligent, more hard-working, more independent of the need for sleep - and to succeed themselves when they have a chance. It used to be when the well-connected WASPs ran the show that the privileged were just that - the privileged: maybe more formally "educated" than the rest of us, maybe more worldly and stylish, but not necessarily any more built for success than any of the rest of us. That's no longer true.

Plus, of course, the first generation or two of meritocrats have learned at least one lesson - educational acheivement is the key to the world, and they beat it into their own kids. We may complain about the current level of education of the average American, about the dumbing-down of society, which is true, but in the enclaves of the meritocrats - in Scarsdale, etc - kids are going to schools with heavier back-packs than ever, doing more homework than ever, reading more (required) books than ever, preparing for the SAT more seriously than ever, etc. -- that's got to contribute to this worrying class-calcification also.

[stickdog]

17. Yes, social Darwinism and corporate socialism are completely "natural."

President Chimpy is all the proof we need to be assured that all is right with our perfect meritocracy.

Seriously, the article didn't say things were as bad as they were during slavery. What it said was that nothing has improved in the last 35 years. So unless you think America from Nixon to Ford to Reagan to Bush I & II has been some sort of Utopian meritocracy, I have to wonder what part of left field you are coming from.

For example, do you think Microsoft is the "proper victor" of the software world based on their superior operating systems?

[lovuian]

14. A depression happens when 90% of the country's wealth is own by

a few...

and thats what we have going on here...

A depression is looming!!!

[magellan]

15. I just saw (Clinton's) Sec Labor Robert Reich talking about this on UCTV

Reich was at UC Berkeley last month discussing this very subject. He uses a few charts and a great sense of humor to explain globalization (you'll love the bit about his "Freedom hips", lol), why class mobility is mostly a dream now, and the two possible outcomes: "snap back", like we saw in the early 1900s, when the progressive movement flared across the country and brought us things like the 40-hour work week and time and a half overtime pay; or "snap break", outright class war.

At the end of his talk, without naming names, Reich speaks of corrupt demagogues who flourish in these economic conditions. Their control relies on using divisive tactics to pit the bottom of the heap against each other, and anyone else they throw into the mix ("The Jews...The French...." -- I wanted to add "The Liberals...."), which keeps us distracted and also from uniting for change.

Watch it online using RealPlayer: How Unequal Can America Get Before We Snap? HIGHLY recommended viewing!!

[Hidden Stillness]

16. All the Work of Generations, Destroyed

Now, finally, their plan is really starting to come together and we are getting the true results of some 25 years of law and regulation changes, think tanks and their reports, redistricting, tax shifts and new fees, and censorship and re-namimg of it all--they are taking away from us every part of our culture, our lives, our legal rights, and our ability to do anything about any of it. Democrats had better start fighting for our lives on these issues and educating people on what is being done and why it is so threatening--education, not "framing"!--or we will soon have no time left, and it will become impossible; the sun will have set. You think it is hard now to get an unfiltered message out over the corporate media... I was recently censored on this website, by the way, for clearly making the case that we as a Party need to get off of phony, trivial non-issues like "gay marriage" and start dealing with the increasing, and increasingly hopeless, poverty spreading in this country. The post was not vulgar or attacking, but very carefully thought-out, and explained. It even went over well at first with replies, then suddenly, one of the "in-crowd" made a bizarre remark that I was "dismissive and disrespectful," where I was no such thing, and I feared, and knew, that I was being set up, and sure enough, censored; where messages containing vulgar slander against women, Christians, etc. etc., are still there, not to mention against John Kerry.

If official Democrats do not start rediscovering the world beyond the rich and corporate, then democracy itself will be lost, because it only came from us--fighting Republicans every step of the way. "Poor" does not mean $40,000 a year; millions of people in this country live on less than $10,000 a year, and no one can survive on that. You do not get job promotions in most workplaces anymore; upper levels of front-office or management are now brought in from another "class strata" of their corporation, and never promoted from within the store, factory, or etc. anymore. You cannot rise on merit now. Of course, this has been the case for some years now, and I remember reading about the inability to rise beyond the next-highest-niche-to-you, during the bastard Reagan's '80s, and the turned-out-to-be-the-same DLC '90s.

We should be hammering away at this as a moral issue and an accusation against the entire Republican operation (and that includes the clumsy operative "the spectator," #13, here on this thread, claiming it is "good" and that rich people are "smarter," even though the study itself admits there is no such connection). What kind of rich people, with all of their resources and time on their hands, and all the good they could have done and things they could have helped, would instead devote all of their money, efforts, understanding of how systems work, and coordinating with others to achieve an end, work for a generation now to attack and dismantle all legal rights and protections--even all soveriegn existence--of people who are not their group--the excessively rich, connected oligarchy? We were always disadvantaged as regards these people, and so needed laws; now, we are powerless and hopeless, cannot possibly win, and now cannot even improve our lives. They will burn in Hell someday for this living sin they have done, but for now, we burn in a hell on this Earth, all so needlessly created by greedy, stupid, egomaniacal rich people.

I would like to think (Robert Reich quote, reply #15) that people now crushed by all this wage-reduction, price-gouging, and killing of government programs that used to help, will one day explode and rebel. I wish that would happen, but I don't believe it will--it never does. People who are so oppressed, working, worrying all the time, falling further and further behind, never able to pay off debts, shut out of their own country's political system and not listened to, cannot get away from their lives of drudgery and threats hanging over their heads--they have no time, no hope. The only thing that will happen is that they will be even further crushed and beaten down, and fall further behind. Those with means, and time to stick with a fighting effort like this, need to fight again on their behalf. We need another New Deal (which is why the devil is attacking Roosevelt now).

The article itself (link at top) was actually not very good--it never referred to women, to the real changes of type of employment or loss of unions etc., and the rosy "1700s-1800s were great" was strange--but the issue remains. If this is not addressed and solved by Democrats--and "We should frame things, like Republicans" will not do it, rich people--then we really will become, as is happening, a nation of rich capitalists and poor servants, and anything they want to do, is the only thing that will ever happen.

[ckramer]

18. But you can't find a country where

zero % down you can buy a $5000,000 house.

Hehe. I just heard that ad in the radio today.

See, who said we have millions of homeless people in this country? Probably these are the people who did not know where the bank is.

[Deja Q]

20. Yup, wealth and politics go hand and hand. No wonder both are disliked.

One begets the other which in turn begets the first.

America has always been class-bound; we like to say we're not.

We're a nation of liars.

If you won the lottery and try to do what the rich man does at a rich folks' do, you won't. Be accepted so readily.

[lakeguy]

21. awww come on, poor people are LAZY. W said so! We could all be

rich if we REALLY wanted to.

[Zorra]

22. And now they are going to make 12 million undocumented workers

US citizens.

Might as well polarize the wealth a little more while there at it.

[osaMABUSh]

23. Please, define what is rich

Is it making $100k in middle America (not NYC, DC, Boston, etc.) but 100K Pittsburgh, Des Moines, Boise, etc.? And maybe another 75K in investments and spouse's income.

I would consider a family of five making $50K to be on the 'poor' side another family of five making $150K to be 'rich'