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Despite growing income inequality, American national mythology tells us we can get rich if we just work hard enough. The problem with this myth is that the empirical evidence does not support it. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. These are permanent changes.
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The Horatio Alger stories were never…well, rarely…about the protagonist getting rich, but lifting himself out of poverty and into an existence where he could provide for his family and live a working to middle class life.
Unfortunately, even that is no longer possible in America
And in most of the Horatio Alger stories, the protagonist doesn’t actually lift HIMSELF out of poverty. He is recognized as being worthy by some rich guy who bestows upon him a reward.
Here’s your future.
Today that reward would be an unpaid internship.
Today that reward would be an unpaid internship.
That, or a job at a right-wing website writing endless variations on “I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, why can’t they?”
I could do with a job like that – once you’ve prepared a couple of dozen paragraphs, use a random number generator to pump out your weekly columns, cash the cheques, and find a real job on the side.
Technological improvements in birth control and DNA testing have really cut down on “long lost scion of wealthy family” incidents.
Of course, the GOP is working to fix this problem. Sometimes by personal effort (cf. Mike Pence)
Which comes off as quite creepy when you take into account the fact that Alger, early in his career, was kicked out of the ministry for “unnatural familiarity with boys”…
Right, because he was an industrious young man and worthy of bestowing a boon upon
It never really was, except maybe from 1945-1975.
Following are three excellent videos that discuss income/wealth inequality in America. In the last two videos, Nick Hanauer, billionair venture capitalist, makes, inter alia, the following observations:
“An ordinary consumer is more of a job creator than a capitalist like me. . . . Anyone who has ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a course of last resort for capitalists. It’s what we do if, and only if, rising consumer demand requires it.”
“We are in a death spiral of falling demand as all of the money in the economy accumulates in the hands of a tiny minority of people.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=&v=QPKKQnijnsM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIhOXCgSunc
http://current.com/shows/viewpoint/videos/venture-capitalist-nick-hanauer-warns-of-a-death-spiral-of-falling-demand/
Oy, nothing is permanent. These are challenges we should work to fix, not immutable laws we should accept as our fate.
Right. They are permanent in the sense that those who have risen have stayed on top. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Pitchforks! Tumbrels!!
Where is madame DeFarge when we need her?
Now you’re knitpicking.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité! Guillotines!
You realise that didn’t do them any good, right? 2 years radical republicanism; 4 years centrist retrenchment; 16 years military dictatorship, then the monarchy came back…
At this point, that would be an improvement over the current trajectory.
Right, you need the Germans to beat your ass at Sedan to create a real government.
But keep out of Paris first.
“…16 years military dictatorship…”
While “Every Soldat carries a Marshal’s Baton in his knapsack” was a fairy tale, there really was social mobility in the 1st Empire
“You realise that didn’t do them any good, right?”
I don’t want Jamie Diamond’s head in a basket because it would fix things
I want it because it would give me pleasure
The Frenchmen who stormed the Bastille were about 5′ tall and weighed about 100 pounds. They led a life of habitual starvation. Things were bad afterward, but never that bad again.
I’m sure the Poverty is Permanent theory finds favor with those who want to scrap Head Start. Doesn’t do any good! And hey, what about job training programs? Nah, that’s just a waste of money, those people will always be poor. Scholarships for low income students? Please. Better just feed ‘em enough so they can enter the military.
Yeah.
On behalf of all the people who are poor or have been poor, please take your blithe summary of the fate of millions of human beings and spend the weekend fucking yourself with it.
The problem is that the myth of social mobility causes a sizable number of Americans to vote against their own interests. If people believe that being stuck in a low-paid job is their own fault, or that their kids are likely to be better off if only they study hard and behave in school, then they will be less likely to work for the structural political changes we need. Europeans are more realistic about the insufficiency of social mobility as an excuse for inequality, despite the fact that social mobility is actually now higher in the EU than in the US.
That has bugger all to do with what I said, the thesis that Poverty is Permanent, and further isn’t supported by the results of the latest presidential election, but do enjoy your false sense that your economic level includes a certain amount of enlightenment!
I think its erroneous to think that if more Americans did not believe in the myth of social mobility than their would be less voting against their own interests. The reaction might be more antipathy and fatalism than positive work for change.
It’s not really that complex. It’s ‘vote White’ in the South and the white people’s party is the Republicans. I’m not even picking on the South, since if northern states had as many black people they would also Vote White.
Europeans aren’t intrinsically more realistic. They tend to have a broader acceptable political spectrum because they aren’t as nearly culturally isolated.
Shakezuela: do you disagree with the statement that poverty and wealth are mostly hereditary? Do you disagree with the data in the link and/or their interpretation?
From Klein’s post: and “The earners at the bottom are stuck at the bottom, and their lifetime earnings are about as low as one would think.”
I think I’ve made it sufficiently clear that I disagree with it. I also disagree with the flippant throwing up of hands over economic disparity that you only see from the comfortable. “We have concluded these people are fucked. Dear me. Time for a limited edition locally crafted beer.”
You didn’t specify if you disagree with the data (but then you should provide some better ones) or with the interpretation; and what other interpretation you would find more convincing.
Oh yawn. I’m reacting to Loomis’ post, I decline to ferret out contradictory data. (Why?) If this causes you an attack du vapors please hit the nearest fainting couch.
You are confusing the descriptive with the prescriptive.
We have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
This was how I read it. I don’t think he was trying to say the poor are always with us. I think he was just pointing out that the current bestpredictor of how well any given person will do in life is who their parents are,which means that there is not a lot of social mobility, and this is not good.
If you really think that summarizes my arguments of the hundreds of posts I’ve written on these issues, I think you should go back and read them again.
If memory serves, I’ve disagreed with you before over your willingness to summarize the misfortune of others with the shake of the head and weary little sigh.
Unless it was someone else here. I’m not the best at remembering who wrote what and can’t claim to be adept at telling a Loomis from a Campos or a SEX.
Actually I think it must have been you (unless more than one writer here is in the habit of issuing non-responses). For instance, here I take you to task for the content of this post. You reply with the frankly ridiculous and arrogant claim that I should be familiar enough with your body of work to know what you are or are not on about this time. Um. Wow.
I don’t know. Maybe you just can’t get it. And if that’s the case … Well congrats, because it means you’re living far enough from the edge that you can’t see why your attitude gives offense.
I think “these changes are permanent” means “these changes won’t simply go away when the Great Recession ends” rather than “fuck the poors; they are doomed anyway.” Unless Loomis is now Evil Loomis, with a Hipster Goatee, in which case all bets are off.
From my recollection, the rigidity of the class system in US (compare e.g. to Europe) was already apparent before the latest recession: or I am mis- remembering?
It has been increasingly so for the past 30 years.
From my recollection, mobility took a big hit 1973-1981, and got steadily worse, except for a brief moment in the late 90s. As I recall, as soon as wages at the bottom improved noticeably, Greenspan started worrying about inflation, and began raising interest rates.
Silent film goatee actually. Whenever you see a guy with a goatee in a silent film, watch out because he’s pure evil!
Silent Film Goatees are merely Retro Hipster Goatees.
[Polite cough]
Or, from the actual link:
Literally the second paragraph of the linked article.
“Literally the second paragraph of the linked article.”
Aren’t you really asking too much here?
Does that mean that Farley now wears a weird gold vest?
I think that the point here is not that nothing can be done about it, but rather that this is a structural shift and not a temporary distortion. As Loomis and others have said, we can chnage this, but we have to attack the structure itself.
With things like high taxes on high incomes, high estate taxes, etc.
And heads on pikes. Don’t forget the heads on pikes! (Lampposts are optional, but earn extra credit.)
You can’t hang people from lampposts since they moved from gas to electricity. Wrong design. The rope went over the cast iron prong that the lamplighter leaned his ladder on, but that’s not there these days. I regard this as a conspiracy by the monopolists who supply the public utilities to save their own skins.
Actually, in the real eighteenth century, the streetlamps were winched up & down to be lit [oil-lamps]. So you could hang someone using the lamp mechanism itself…
+1
I was taken with the trebuchet idea someone floated a few days go. See how long that gated community seems a safe haven once a few human missiles land in the rose bushes.
It’s going to have to be pikes, probably home-made.
Pitchforks, you’re SOL. Ames/Tru Value closed its West Virginia pitchfork plant in 2005, ending an agricultural-tool manufacturing tradition (Ames plows) that goes back as far as the Republic.
Or the common ownership and control of the means of production.
They don’t need your permission….they are already in the Hamptons fucking all of us