The Working Class White-Collar Blues

Matt Welch | January 21, 2005

This Colby Cosh post, about the weirdness of being a non-lefty columnist from humble origins, should rightly have descended into self-parody, but instead struck me as poignant. Excerpt:

[B]ecoming a political writer has had the perverse effect of radicalizing me, emotionally, about class matters. I followed what now seems like a pretty singular path into this job; the enormous majority of my colleagues, on all points of the political spectrum, seem to have backgrounds that can safely be described as affluent. There are exceptions, but very few. And while I wouldn't quite say as a rule that the most strident protectors of the working class were raised the furthest from it--well, golly, it sometimes seems that way. I don't know if I can describe, as someone who once lived in a trailer park, how it makes me feel to hear Naomi Klein (parents: doctor, filmmaker) or Avi Lewis (no genealogical comment necessary) or Linda McQuaig (parents were, as I recall, some sort of doctorate-wielding consultants) mash the W word and the C word together in that self-satisfied way of theirs. [...]

Leftist writers raised in affluent circumstances--as I think even they would admit, in honest moments--suffer from heroic self-image as an occupational disease. And perhaps this is equally true of the conservatives as well. But when you come from the actual working class--when your father is someone who actually helps assemble buildings, as opposed to designing them--you can never, as a professional intellectual, shake the suspicion that you are going to get caught and sent back to learn a proper living.

Whole thing here.

Comments

|1.21.05 @ 1:38PM|#

Those liberal elitist journalists who make Colby feel insecure should learn a less from Christopher Buckley and Jonah Goldberg, who are so careful to never accuse their ideological opponents of being out of touch with "ordinary Americans who work for a living in the flyover states," and who would certainly never claim to speak on behalf of people who they don't actually have much experience with.

This isn't a liberal problem, it's an American problem - with so little genuine opportunity for mobility into the upper class, virtually all well known journalists (and pretty much all well known or wealthy people, other than athletes) come from upper middle class or higher backgrounds. The people you read arguing from the left on behalf of the working class are most likely wealthy, and come from wealth. Well, the people you read arguing from the right on behalf of working people are most likely wealthy, and come from wealth, as well.

|1.21.05 @ 1:42PM|#

This isn't a liberal problem, it's an American problem - with so little genuine opportunity for mobility into the upper class,

Care to back that up with anything resembling fact?

|1.21.05 @ 1:45PM|#

My favorite line from that Colby Cosh Column:

..."And it actually may be that journalists are skeptical about the meritocratic nature of a free market precisely because they know, on some level, that their own business isn't very meritocratic, even though it enjoys a privileged position of constitutional unregulatedness...."

|1.21.05 @ 1:46PM|#

Seriously, Goiter? You've never seen any of the studies comparing people's income with the parents' income? The % of millionaires whose parents weren't in the top 1% of income earners is single digits. Ditto with the % of people in poverty whose parents were middle class or above.

But keep flogging the land of opportunity shtick - all it takes is one good anecdote to cement faith in a fervently desired myth.

|1.21.05 @ 1:52PM|#

Slightly off topic....

I think that the political view that a person subscribes to is much the same as the language he speaks or the God he worships. It is ingrained at any early age and is the "default" position of his mind.

That might help explain why folks of modest means and indifferent prospects often champion tax cuts from which they won't directly benefit. And, no, I'm not suggesting that tax cuts on the upper tax brackets are bad in and of themselves, I'm using it as an example of the kind of seeming disconnect between what a person's socio-economic status is and what their politics are.

I came to believe myself a liberal at a young age and while, intellectually, I am embracing the mainstream progressive ideology less and less, I can't help but be drawn back to my liberal roots.
Just like when my phone rings at 3 in the morning, I start to pray, knowing all the while that I don't believe there is a god.

Just my 2 cents for it's worth.

|1.21.05 @ 1:52PM|#

Is that a "no"?

|1.21.05 @ 1:54PM|#

joe's right. In general, wealth begets wealth and poverty begets poverty. The nice thing is that this is not a hard and fast rule, and once in a while, someone with creativity and sense enough to pull himself from poverty can succeed. Conversely, occasionally there are wealthy people stupid enough (or unfortunate enough) to lose their wealth.

|1.21.05 @ 1:58PM|#

TPG: I second that. Those in the journalism industry who come from affluent backgrounds are not exactly representative of affluent folks in general, nor does their affluency in any way prove that there is little "genuine opportunity for mobility into the upper class".

"But when you come from the actual working class--when your father is someone who actually helps assemble buildings, as opposed to designing them--you can never, as a professional intellectual, shake the suspicion that you are going to get caught and sent back to learn a proper living"

First off, I've got news for Mr. Cosh: designing buildings does not always make one more wealthy than building them. I know plenty of builders who make a greta living. Meanwhile, I, as an architect, am not nearly as well-off as that sentence would suppose. Subsequently, my father does quite well renovating kitchens. This is a silly dichotomy he's trying to create out of thin air. Secondly, there really is no "architect vs. carpenter" parallel in the "professional intellectual" occupation, whatever that term really means. So I'm not sure where this insecurity and worry over getting "caught" comes from. I come from a humble background myself. No, I didn't quite live in a trailer park, but my parents never owned a house until I was out of high school. I worked my way through high school & college, made my own money, and I'm still paying off loans today. But...as a "professional", I never feel that sort of insecurity that Colby talks of. I never have a fear of being "caught". Perhaps it was the education and training that I worked so hard for?

So, then, perhaps his worries have nothing to do with some sort of class warfare, and everything to do with the fleeting, unsubstantial nature of the "professional intellectual" industry.

|1.21.05 @ 2:03PM|#

Evan, I think a key difference is that architecture as a profession is populated by a much smaller contingent of spoiled rich kids than journalism. Someone in Cosh's position is a lot more likely to be surrounded by actual rich snobs, who learned to make "scrubs" feel unwelcome at their daddies' knee, than someone in your profession.

|1.21.05 @ 2:06PM|#

I spent the first decade of my life living in, quite literally, a tar paper shack. The small building is long gone, but I visit the small village every year. I rose above my poverty as did some of my friends. Others have not. They sit in the same squalid hovels where their parents lived years before. Joe would have us believe poverty is a destiny only altered by the great paternal hand of government. Joe, I doubt, has ever been poor. I believe poverty, in a free and affluent country like America, is an individual choice. Wave after wave of immigrants come into America and work from the lowest of classes to own businesses, raise families and become firmly entrenched in the middle and upper classes.

The reason you don't hear poor people arguing, Joe: They are busy trying to become rich people.

|1.21.05 @ 2:06PM|#

Sour grapes?

Isn't there a long standing tradition of people of means working on behalf of the downtrodden?

I mean, if you are fortunate to have the opportunity to attend fine universities, become learned and knowledgeable, aren't you morally responsible for returning something back to the community that made your position possible, and especially to improving the lot of those who've not had the fine opportunities?

Am I my brother's keeper?

Or is the idea of a moral obligation to help those less fortunate just a descent in to self parody?

|1.21.05 @ 2:10PM|#

"You've never seen any of the studies comparing people's income with the parents' income? The % of millionaires whose parents weren't in the top 1% of income earners is single digits. Ditto with the % of people in poverty whose parents were middle class or above."

You're confused about the definition of "opportunity". Opportunity means that you have a chance to do something. But you're acting as if end result statistics are the true measure of the opportunity. Just because a baseball player has a season batting average of 0.325 doesn't mean that he didn't have the opportunity to bat 1.000, does it?

"Equal opportunity", in the context of a just society, means that the process is fair. But you're trying to say that misfortune is the same as injustice. This is simply untrue.

For a more succinct and spot-on discussion regarding injustice vs. misfortune, see this Catallarchy post.

The good part...

By �cosmic justice� Sowell means the relief of all misfortune. It is the broadest concept of justice going. The narrowest (and, in Sowell�s view, correct) concept of justice is the traditional one�justice defined according to the fairness of the process. If the process is unbiased and if all parties abide by the agreed-on rules, then justice prevails�

"Nor does traditional justice require, even when no error mars the process, that the result is one that would satisfy a benevolent omniscient designer. The fact that something in my background beyond my personal control � poor musical genes, absence of childhood piano lessons, whatever � prevented me from becoming the concert pianist that I would ideally like to be is not an injustice.

"The understandable human emotion to help the less fortunate has led to a confusion of language in which �injustice� is becoming synonymous with misfortune. (Calling something an �injustice��unlike calling some thing a �misfortune��suggests that remedial action is appropriate.) This confusion would be merely annoying if it did not breed support for public policies that exacerbate rather than ameliorate problems."

Joe, your statistics do not prove the absence of opportunity, or an inherent unfairness of process.

|1.21.05 @ 2:11PM|#

Jose, I totally disagree with your characterization of poverty and poor people as choice.

Many of the poor I've known were victims of fetal alchohol syndrom, drug addicts, alchoholics, or of rather low I.Q., bordering on mental retardation.

However, many were not.

But to suggest poverty in general is a choice is just plain bullshit.

|1.21.05 @ 2:13PM|#

Very well put, Evan.

|1.21.05 @ 2:15PM|#

"Joe would have us believe poverty is a destiny only altered by the great paternal hand of government."

Nice great big straw man you got there. It's got the exaggeration, the absurd extension of the logic, the emotionally loaded code words, the whole shebang.

I guess since you and some number of your friends got wealthier, than it really isn't any easier for people from wealthy backgrounds to achieve positions of prominence.

Does eating popcorn for lunch because your food ran out two days before payday count as poor, Jose? Am I allowed to comment on the subject now?

Everyone's trying to become rich, but most don't succeed. The number of peopel who end up in a socio-economic class significantly different from the one they were born into is pretty small.

Who would choose to live in poverty?

|1.21.05 @ 2:19PM|#

I guess my point above being that I admire people who come from wealth but work on behalf of the less fortunate.

Because if my daddy were rich I'd probably spend my winters in Jackson Hole skiing every day, and smoking bong hits and sitting in a hot tub every night.

|1.21.05 @ 2:19PM|#

Everyone's trying to become rich, but most don't succeed. The number of peopel who end up in a socio-economic class significantly different from the one they were born into is pretty small.

That still speaks nothing to the question of opportunity.

|1.21.05 @ 2:20PM|#

"Nice great big straw man you got there. It's got the exaggeration, the absurd extension of the logic, the emotionally loaded code words, the whole shebang." ...

Does eating popcorn for lunch because your food ran out two days before payday count as poor, Jose? Am I allowed to comment on the subject now?

I think you spelled "joe" wrong again.

|1.21.05 @ 2:23PM|#

"Does eating popcorn for lunch because your food ran out two days before payday count as poor, Jose? Am I allowed to comment on the subject now?"

And thus begins the inevitable "I've been poorer than you, hence my arguments carry more weight" pissing match.

:)

|1.21.05 @ 2:23PM|#

Word games, Evan. A technical possibility however remote can be defined as an "opportunity," but that is not what is meant by the term when people talk about there being the opportunity for advancement. By your definition, if the Mega Millions was the only way someone could ever become rich, every American would have "the opportunity" to become rich, because each and every one of them could find enough change for a quickpick once in their lives, and hey, there's always a chance, right?

"If the process is unbiased" That's a pretty big if you got there. If the process was unbiased, we'd see a lot more social mobility. "...and if all parties abide by the agreed-on rules..." That's another big if - you think kids in shitty schools, in shitty homes, in shitty neighborhoods have agreed to the rule that some kids are going to get a leg up over them? You think kids from rich families don't get strings pulled for them that violate the "rules" of meritocracy?

|1.21.05 @ 2:24PM|#

Joe,as a first generation son of sub working class irish parents i can tell you that I and many of my ilk have suceeded quite nicely in this country.the big money has eluded me but i and many of my childhood friends have made it to the top 1% of earners and it wasn't really all that difficult

|1.21.05 @ 2:24PM|#

"Actually, here's what I think the problem is: unwillingness to accept that equal OPPORTUNITY doesn't mean equal RESULTS..." Jennifer

|1.21.05 @ 2:25PM|#

Does eating popcorn for lunch because your food ran out two days before payday count as poor, Jose?

That would depend on your context, don't you think? Is "poor" an absolute definition, or is it relative to your economic environment. I have no doubt that there are people in this world who would envy you that popcorn.

|1.21.05 @ 2:25PM|#

Why do we insist on comparing people of today to determine winners and losers? Isn't the poorest person living in the U.S. today living longer, healthier, and with a higher standard of living than middle class people of 50 years ago? Just because the poor aren't necessarily gaining on the rich in the rat race doesn't mean that they aren't advancing as the rest of American society advances.

|1.21.05 @ 2:27PM|#

I think the truth in the whole "Land of opportunity" vs "Lack of social mobility" lies somewhere between the two arguments. In the end, we often view this debate through the lens of our own (or our families own) experience. In my families case, we were a not very well off working class family with my parents being married (and having kids) early and dad working away a lot. We got gradually better off over time, but it took a lot of effort to "move up". These days my parents are very well off but it was almost completely through hard work and sometimes taking jobs that they really didn't want to do or living in places that weren't that great. The big thing we had on our side, other than the desire to improve our lot, was a good understanding of the value of a dollar. Squirreling away a little bit each year turns into quite a bit over a significant enough period of time. I think folks sometimes discount the motivation of the "self made man/woman". I equal numbers of folks who started off with nothing and have made a good life for themselves, as well as those have been given great opportunities and pissed it all away. I guess my point is (do I have a point?) that teaching people how to be more financially self reliant (and therefore in control of their own destiny) would be among the best gifts to give. I know it certainly helped me.

|1.21.05 @ 2:27PM|#

I was unaware that North Korea was the only alternative to the capitalist libertoid model.

The greatest period of wealth creation and upward mobility in human history occurred between FDR's first term, and Richard Nixon's last.

Unless you want to count what's going on in China right now.

As you said, you can't spin facts.

|1.21.05 @ 2:29PM|#

"Who would choose to live in poverty?"

We all know the real value of anectdotal evidence, but:

I know a lot of people who live in poverty. They choose to do so, because they have other priorities.

Sometimes I agree with those priorities; my game-designer friend lives in poverty because she designs games for a living, and there isn't a lot of money in it. She has a PhD and comes from a well-off background.

Sometimes I do not agree with those priorities; several of my acquaintances have chosen to live in poverty so they can afford more weed, and work at jobs that pay minimum wage because they're jobs you can do while stoned, and pay enough to buy more weed.

I do find myself basically agreeing with Joe, though. While equality of opportunity is the ideal (in fact, the only reasonable) egalitarianism, it does not exist. The road to wealth is much, much steeper for the poor. A large part of that is failure to seize offered opportunities; I had a friend in high school who was damned smart, but who decided to drop out and work as an auto mechanic. But it's hard for me to fault those who fail to seize opportunities; that same friend was beaten by his father for making the honor roll, as his father didn't want any 'damn nerds' in the family.

And, well, the personal anectdote is always best: I don't have a degree higher than a B.A. because of systematic sabotage by a college adviser who (secretly) loathed me. There's no real path for me to get a PhD in history now, through very little fault of my own. (Not that a PhD in history is The Big Bucks, but it's certainly a thwarted ambition.)

(and to head off this possible avenue of criticism: I spent over a year making the choice between paying the rent and buying groceries, my near-minimum-wage salary the only income for a 2-person household. I lived off dry ramen for most of that time.)

|1.21.05 @ 2:29PM|#

UFP is right. Most of those living near the poverty line in the U.S. would probably be considered "middle class" in countries with tighly-controlled economic systems.

To be "rich" is an abstract goal. I think most people would be satisfied with eliminating their debt and owning their own home. Is there such a think as being too rich? I don't know; ask Paris Hilton.

|1.21.05 @ 2:30PM|#

UFP is right. Most of those living near the poverty line in the U.S. would probably be considered "middle class" in countries with tighly-controlled economic systems.

To be "rich" is an abstract goal with undefinable boundaries. I think most people would be satisfied with simply eliminating their debt and owning their own home. Besides, is there such a thing as being too rich? I don't know; ask Paris Hilton.

|1.21.05 @ 2:31PM|#

Cedarburg at January 21, 2005 02:23 PM
"And thus begins the inevitable "I've been poorer than you, hence my arguments carry more weight" pissing match."
i was soooooo po, that on christmas if i did'nt wake up with a boner, i did'nt have anything to play with. "get er done"

|1.21.05 @ 2:31PM|#

Seriously, Goiter? You've never seen any of the studies comparing people's income with the parents' income? The % of millionaires whose parents weren't in the top 1% of income earners is single digits. Ditto with the % of people in poverty whose parents were middle class or above.


http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/el97-07.html

Again, facts, Joe, not your daily rant about the evils of men and the good of "the man".

|1.21.05 @ 2:31PM|#

east flatbush, if there was perfect equality of opportunity, there would be zero correlation between people's starting point and where they end up. In other words, assuming that Irish immigrants from East Flatbush are just as inherently capable as the population as a whole, they would be just as likely to end up in the upper economic classes as, say, people from the Bush clan.

How's that going?

It's good that some can make it out - I never claimed that there was zero economic mobility - but the anecdotes don't prove that there aren't thumbs on the scale.

|1.21.05 @ 2:33PM|#

Evan,

TPG: I second that. Those in the journalism industry who come from affluent backgrounds are not exactly representative of affluent folks in general, nor does their affluency in any way prove that there is little "genuine opportunity for mobility into the upper class".

For every person that moves down in class, 11 people move up.

I'm surrounded on a daily basis in business and personal life by people that have moved up.

|1.21.05 @ 2:34PM|#

I think I can clarify what Joe was originally trying to say (correct me if I'm wrong). Joe isn't neccessarily suggesting that opportunities don't exist for everyone, and that the economic structure PROHIBITS people from success; I think he's just bitterly (and correctly) suggesting that it usually helps your chances to succeed a lot if you have a ton of money to begin with. And he also (rightly) seems to be suggesting that opportunties are frequently harder for people to realize when you are raised in a poor environment around complacent, ignorant poor people. It's a trend. It is. You can't possibly refute the fact that a typical person cites their parents and/or upbringing as an influence on their decisions, rich or poor.

|1.21.05 @ 2:34PM|#

the land of opportunity shtick

So you're bitching because the success rate on class mobility isn't high enough for you?

Have another anecdote. My mother is a medical transcriptionist, my dad works in the kitchen at a towny bar, and neither has a college degree. I paid my own cash down for all but my freshman year of college. Now, on my own I earn more than twice what they make combined.

Myth, my ass. It takes work, and if you're not willing to do it, then suffer in poverty. If you're looking for the person who holds the lion's share of blame, wipe the white powder off that little mirror and stare into it.

architecture as a profession is populated by a much smaller contingent of spoiled rich kids than journalism.

Architecture is also cerebral in a way that journalism can never be. It likely attracts the lazy sons and daughters of rich people who just want their useless children out of the mansion. They head to Harvard or Yale, whose names and grade inflations create additional opportunities for success that the schools themselves could never merit. Along the way they get caught up in one pursuit or another, applying a mediocre intellect (which for many of them is burying the needle) in order to keep the job and eventually get the trust fund mommy and daddy left for them. Then before you know it, you've got Slate.

idea of a moral obligation

The idea of a moral obligation that does not arise from your own evaluation of compassion vs. competition is parody. You have no moral obligation of any kind -- you choose whether or not to help someone.

|1.21.05 @ 2:35PM|#

If not for all of those people moving up, no one would be listening to wine snobs :)

|1.21.05 @ 2:40PM|#

The number of peopel who end up in a socio-economic class significantly different from the one they were born into is pretty small.

Have any proof?

http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/el97-07.html

For every 1 person that moves down a class, 11 people move up.

|1.21.05 @ 2:43PM|#

rst, poor people work harder and longer, on average, than rich people. Pretending luck had nothing to do with your success, that you're just a better person than those who didn't move as much as you did, doesn't make it so. Though it may helf allay the survivors' guilt. "There but for the grace of God go I" is a tough idea to swallow; it's no wonder so many people want to push it away.

But I guess Colby is wrong, the majority of people who get the big opportunities don't come from wealthy backgrounds, and people from sub-middle class homes aren't minorities in well funded, prestigious workplaces.

|1.21.05 @ 2:45PM|#

Um, TPG, that statistic proves that upward mobility is more common than downward mobility; it doesn't demonstrate anything about how common either is.

|1.21.05 @ 2:47PM|#

Um, TPG, that statistic proves that upward mobility is more common than downward mobility; it doesn't demonstrate anything about how common either is.


I knew you wouldn't read the study.

No time to learn you've got capitalist windmills to charge!

|1.21.05 @ 2:47PM|#

I think this thread has stalled. joe is right on his last point, 100% absolutely. However, joe is 100% wrong with:

"But keep flogging the land of opportunity shtick - all it takes is one good anecdote to cement faith in a fervently desired myth."

Again, just because most people stay in the station to which they are born, doesn't mean that it's the system, or the man, or whatever keeping them down. Most people who truly apply themselves succeed in moving upward, and maybe it's unfair that some people are born to that which others can only dream of having, but life's a bitch.

|1.21.05 @ 2:48PM|#

The spread from nothing to the top 1% of asset holders in the US is positively vast. Just following the mathematics of investment, it makes sense that moving from the lowest to the highest in one lifetime is a relative rarity. How about low to middle? Middle to high? The more you can capitalize on assets invested over time rather than counting on current labor income to be the sole source of increasing wealth, the easier it is to become wealthy.

Many of the most visible billionaires we know of did not start out in the top 1%. That is not to say that they were all eating dirt, but a very great many came from middle class backgrounds. Buffett, Gates, Allen, Balmer, Bezos, and on and on were middle class.

Moving from the lowest levels to the highest levels is just a function of time. Moving to middle class isn't all that hard.

|1.21.05 @ 2:51PM|#

"You have no moral obligation of any kind -- you choose whether or not to help someone."

Exactly.

All the talk of equality of opportunity vs equality of outcomes doesn't start the argument at square one.

Square one is do people have a "right" to an "equal opportunity" to begin with?

All the rights ennumerated in the Constitution are negative rights. That is they spell out that govt cannot do something TO you without due process. There is nothing in there about anyone having a right to require govt (or anyone else) to do anything FOR them.

That would be an affirmative right. And there is no such thing as an affirmative right.

|1.21.05 @ 2:53PM|#

Colby said: "Leftist writers raised in affluent circumstances--as I think even they would admit, in honest moments--suffer from heroic self-image as an occupational disease."

Well, of course, it stands to reason that this "heroic self-image" would be found among leftist writers because it would, in fact, tend to be accurate. People who care deeply about others will naturally be more likely to commit selfless, heroic acts and strive to make a real difference in others' lives. These same people would also tend to be attracted to the left half of the political spectrum, which espouses compassion and caring for others as national policy.

Therefore, in general, heroic people are left-liberals, and vice versa.

(I just wanted to say this in jest before anybody else says it in utter seriousness.)

|1.21.05 @ 2:54PM|#

Pretending luck had nothing to do with your success, that you're just a better person than those who didn't move as much as you did, doesn't make it so.

What a cop-out. Luck -- or the lack thereof -- is as pathetic of an excuse for success as it is for failure. There is no luck; there is only opportunity and either the presence of mind to seize it, or the ignorance and/or indolence in letting it pass by.

I never said I was a better person, I said I worked. And I didn't say I worked harder or longer. I worked more efficiently, making progress instead of just making paychecks.

|1.21.05 @ 2:54PM|#

SPD wrote about the economy -

It's a zero-sum game

No it's not, for various reasons. The first and most obviuos is wealth can be created.

|1.21.05 @ 2:54PM|#

">Evan, I think a key difference is that >architecture as a profession is populated by a >much smaller contingent of spoiled rich kids >than journalism. Someone in Cosh's position is a >lot more likely to be surrounded by actual rich >snobs, who learned to make "scrubs" feel >unwelcome at their daddies' knee, than someone >in your profession." - Joe

I don't think that either profession prefers a certain economic background, but the sentiment is on the right track, in that certain careers facilitate a particular inner-circle social strata. For example: science and math, while they have their politics, their colleague-politics generally revolve more around theory clashes - opinionated differences on the best way to do something objectively correctly. Whereas career journalism, by nature, is not well-defined and is best characterized by opinion, sometimes based upon shaky facts...so when mediocre journalists/columnists clash on their biased personal opinions/outlooks, it would be more likely for someone in their less-pertinent career to play a socioeconomic power card when competing with one another. I.e., if they can't objectively compete with one another based on an objective standard of what is good journalism/editorialism, they can revert to 'well, i'm still better than you b/c i have more money, nyah, nyah'.
If that is still not the case, then maybe the author just has a self-esteem problem, resentful of the fact that he actually has to earn his wealth, even if his colleagues may not really be doing anything to make him feel beneath them. I know people like that, too. It's called a chip on the shoulder.

|1.21.05 @ 3:05PM|#

Pretending luck had nothing to do with your success, that you're just a better person than those who didn't move as much as you did, doesn't make it so

Wait a minute. Joe is Richard Gephardt?

Those of us that busted our asses to get where we are just won life's lottery, eh Joe?

Had nothing to do with decision-making, hard work, and willpower?

|1.21.05 @ 3:07PM|#

SPD -- Wealth is, in fact, not a zero-sum game. If it was, we'd still be fight each other over the same rock tools and animal hides crafted thousands of years ago.

|1.21.05 @ 3:08PM|#

Just to add some more texture to the economic opportunity/mobility debate:

REASON once (or more than once) ran an article debunking the idea that "the rich got richer and the poor got poorer" during the 1980s, a statement based on a widening range between the highest and lowest incomes. It included this bit:

"To see the fortunes of actual people we have to track actual people. A 1992 study by the U.S. Department of Treasury, based on 14,351 income tax returns filed from 1979 through 1988, showed that 86 percent of those in the bottom income quintile in 1979 had managed to raise their incomes by enough to move to a higher quintile; 20.7 percent of those in the bottom moved to the second quintile, 25.0 to the middle, 25.3 to the next-to-highest income quintile, and 14.7 percent moved all the way up to the top quintile. More moved from the bottom all the way to the top than stayed in the bottom." {bold emph. added)

Now, a great big caveat: Much of this effect of increasing income over the period studied is due to the simple fact that people tend to earn higher incomes as they get older. This study tracked change in individual income by taxpayers, not household income. Still, it shows you're less likely to start at the bottom and stay there than you are to start at the bottom and get all the way to the top. (Although you have to ask the question, are you more likely to move all the way to the top if your daddy is a millionaire?)

Source of quote above: http://reason.com/9512/COXfeat.shtml

Lots more if you use the REASON site's search function for the word "quintile."

|1.21.05 @ 3:16PM|#

"Those of us that busted our asses to get where we are just won life's lottery, eh Joe?

Had nothing to do with decision-making, hard work, and willpower?"

TPG, I've heard those same sentiments expressed by quite a few leftists.

I think it is part of the process by which they rationalize in their own mind the justification for their desire to control and spend other people's money to redistiribute it according to their wishes.

The desire to grab somebody else's dough goes down a lot better if you can convince yourself that they just lucked into it and therefore it doesn't REALLY belong to them.

|1.21.05 @ 3:19PM|#

"There is no luck"

take a moment to think about all the accidents of environment and genetics which resulted in your mother and father mating. then think about the situations which had to come about in order for their parents to mate. and so on.

if that's not luck, i don't know what the fuck is. considering how many of my direct ancestors were veterans in shooting wars (and had the misfortune to live next to the english while being irish), it's amazing i'm here at all.

that doesn't weaken or strengthen anyone's political arguments, i think - it's merely a statement of wonder at the intersection and collapse of various potentialities.

|1.21.05 @ 3:21PM|#

"...eating popcorn for lunch..."

You could probably have bought enough tortillas and beans for a week with what you paid for your popcorn for lunch. So, no, you've never been poor, you just made a bad choice with your lunch money.

|1.21.05 @ 3:21PM|#

Perhaps I missed it, but there's no mention here of different preferences and aptitudes between individuals. The kitchen renovator has greater assests than the junior architect, but both can live healthfully. The renovator gets to see the physical product of a day's labor while the architect relies upon another to bring ideas into form. Neither is poor, nor rich, by arbitrary quintile standards. Yet both may be happy.

The whole idea of class mobility displays a historical bias toward some ranking of castes. There are extremes of wealth and poverty that show perpetuation, yet between extremes it seems a matter of choice and tradeoff, opportunity against aptitude. I chose less money to have more free time. Does that make me lower class?

Look deeper into that extreme tail of wealth, too. How many today are newcomers (Gates, Brin) and how many old-line rich have seen their fortunes diluted through generations of heirs? Perhaps the rich rarely get poor, but the club of wealth is growing ever larger.

|1.21.05 @ 3:31PM|#

Evan wrote, "Perhaps you would be happy if the government levelled the playing field for every child in the country?" You know, the tendency of posters on this site to deny facts based on the possibly policy outcomes if they are recognized is probably the biggest intellectual weakness I've come across among libertarians. It doesn't matter if admitting that there is this much poverty or that much temperature rise in Alaska might encourage somebody to adopt a certain political stance - the facts are the facts, and you need to let the chips fall where they may.

TPG, I don't deny that hard work, decision making, and willpower influence one's socio-economic position. I deny that they are the ONLY things that influence that position. In particular, I believe that the extra opportunities showered on people from the right families, and denied to people from the wrong ones, are also involved; at to the extent that they are, the system is unjust. Oh, and my eyebrows are perfectly visible, thank you very much.

|1.21.05 @ 3:31PM|#

Now, a great big caveat: Much of this effect of increasing income over the period studied is due to the simple fact that people tend to earn higher incomes as they get older. This study tracked change in individual income by taxpayers, not household income

So the left expects everyone to move up classes when they're 18? ;)

|1.21.05 @ 3:36PM|#

I think it is part of the process by which they rationalize in their own mind the justification for their desire to control and spend other people's money to redistiribute it according to their wishes.

The desire to grab somebody else's dough goes down a lot better if you can convince yourself that they just lucked into it and therefore it doesn't REALLY belong to them.

Rational to an irrational mind, I guess.

|1.21.05 @ 3:41PM|#

Fletch, a bag of unpopped kernels is about the cheapest thing in the Supermarket. You think I was shelling out for fancy rich folk microwave popcorn?

Dynamist, when I talk about different economic classes, I'm not referring to people who choose to make $40k instead of $70k because they like the lower paying job. I'm talking about people who do not have the choice.

Most people living in slums don't have $70k job offers dangling in front of them.

|1.21.05 @ 3:44PM|#

You know, the tendency of posters on this site to deny facts based on the possibly policy outcomes if they are recognized is probably the biggest intellectual weakness I've come across among libertarians. It doesn't matter if admitting that there is this much poverty or that much temperature rise in Alaska might encourage somebody to adopt a certain political stance - the facts are the facts, and you need to let the chips fall where they may.

Huh? This criticism would be more aptly directed at you, Joe. Yes, the "facts are facts", but when you use resultant statistics to try and prove the absence of opportunity, you have not just taken the facts and analyzed them, you have attempted to extrapolate them into a theory that I believe does not hold water, at least when it's based on said extrapolation.

I have no problem accepting facts. I never denied that the statistics you linked to were incorrect, or that they didn't exist, did I? What I do have a problem with is when people attempt to twist those facts into meanings and declarations that simply do not logically compute.

If you had posted those links to statistics, then said "these show that there's a low likelihood of a trailer-park baby becoming a millionaire", I would not have argued with you. Your mistake came when you attempted to transmute those plain facts into proof about "opportunity". I asserted that the logic didn't follow, and what do you do? You claim that I, along with many others on this site, "deny facts" if they might result in policy outcomes. No, wrong, bzzzzzzt, sorry, no dice. I never denied any facts, I simply said that the facts did not prove or disprove the existence of "opportunity". I would hope that you could tell the difference between denying facts and disagreeing about what those facts mean.

|1.21.05 @ 4:16PM|#

It has become clearer: The rich are seen to be screwing the poor, keeping them down. That helps explain why so many care about the membership of "The 400 Families" rather than helping the poor accumulate the ability to be worth $70K/year, if they so choose.

I wonder at what level will the "poorest" have become suffciently wealthy that we no longer have to develop arguments to debase the rich? In comparison to the rich, the poor will always be poor. There's no solution to the problem of language and perception. If, instead, we examine why the poor are not worth much to anybody, we might figure out how to keep them from starving.

Which brings me back to Georgist theory: The poor starve because the state grants landholders a monopoly on rent. Which means, in the broadest sense, I agree with joe, that the system is skewed to benefit existing wealth (landholders). Piecemeal redistributionism doesn't seem to address the underlying problem.

|1.21.05 @ 4:29PM|#

For the record, I don't believe that increasing wealth at the highest levels necessarily has a causal relationship to increasing poverty. Sometimes the poor get poorer as the rich get richer; somtimes they get richer as well.

But let's make sure we're distinguishing between two distinct issues; the existence of different economic classes, and mobility among those classes.

|1.21.05 @ 4:32PM|#

Stevo wrote:

People who care deeply about others will naturally be more likely to commit selfless, heroic acts and strive to make a real difference in others' lives.

The only place where I disagree with this is when the person doing the heroic act strives to remind people of those acts. That exposes the action as selfish rather than selfless - the motivation is the heroism rather than the help. This selfishness is usually masked with words like "morality" and "duty" and "obligation".

And I think this is inevitable in political writing and political activism, thus (I think) Colby's suspicion of "getting caught". To be heroic to no one is selfish, to conceive of being heroic to people you'll never meet is also selfish.

|1.21.05 @ 4:34PM|#

all the accidents of environment and genetics

It is your selection effect that paints these events as accidents, rather than the result of a series of iterative, "failed" (in the sense of what would come later) processes to come before.

Luck prematurely "cuts off" evaluation of the system, stubbing a long chain of event vectors with multiple actors into a single event with no other cause than Fortune, Hallow-ed Be Thy Name. Why the sudden superstition?

Matt|1.21.05 @ 4:38PM|#

Joe- what's your definition of a successful and just system? One in which equality of opportunity is total, and nobody can use accumulated wealth to better his circumstances unless that wealth is offset by some prior difficulties? How do you know when you've reached that? It sounds like Harrison Bergeron to me.

|1.21.05 @ 4:40PM|#

"People who care deeply about others will naturally be more likely to commit selfless, heroic acts and strive to make a real difference in others' lives."

Of course lefty columnists writing articles advocating government grab other people's money to provide a benefit to somebody they want to "make a difference" for doesn't really rate as a "selfless, heroic act" in the first place.

Matt|1.21.05 @ 4:41PM|#

"Of course lefty columnists writing articles advocating government grab other people's money to provide a benefit to somebody they want to "make a difference" for doesn't really rate as a "selfless, heroic act" in the first place."

That's what the commenter above was joking about...

|1.21.05 @ 4:45PM|#

Matt, a perfectly just system would be one in which the only differences in people's opportunity are their innate abilities. This is well shy of "Harrison Bergeron," in which the differences in innate ability are subject to levelling.

Gil, if I advocate for raising my own taxes for the purpose of benefitting others, isn't that selfless?

|1.21.05 @ 4:46PM|#

I agree with joe, that the system is skewed to benefit existing wealth (landholders). Piecemeal redistributionism doesn't seem to address the underlying problem.

Is that a problem though? The system is skewed to benefit existing wealth because of the mathematics of the underlying process, in the same way that gravity is skewed to benefit larger objects. Does this indicate some kind of conscious size discrimination on the part of the universe? To me it reinforces the simple notion that the relationship between 10% of 10,000,000, 10% of 1,000,000, and 10% of 10,000 is logarithmic, not linear.

Wealth is what it is because others do not have it. The energy of the system comes from that difference; reduce the difference and you stall out the system.

Joe seems to measure benefit by the number of zeros that follow it. The benefits of a capitalist system in a macroeconomic scale cannot be quantified in such a way, nor would anyone who can count to a thousand with three fingers propose such a thing.

Matt|1.21.05 @ 4:49PM|#

And here I was thinking this was also a joke...

I agree with joe, that the system is skewed to benefit existing wealth (landholders). Piecemeal redistributionism doesn't seem to address the underlying problem.

...and that the commenter was about to bring the kulaks into the argument.

|1.21.05 @ 4:51PM|#

I advocate for raising my own taxes for the purpose of benefitting others, isn't that selfless?

Only if you needed the money.

a perfectly just system would be one in which the only differences in people's opportunity are their innate abilities.

And how would you propose to measure those abilities?

|1.21.05 @ 4:56PM|#

Joe -- You don't have to advocate raising your taxes, just bust out the checkbook and write a check to the government of your choosing if you feel it will benefit others.

|1.21.05 @ 4:57PM|#

I wouldn't measure their abilities. For all the hysteria here, all I'd propose is getting rid of systems that provide unfair advantage, like legacy admissions and disparate educational spending, and improving the circumstances that limit the opportunity of people in poorer communities.

It's clear that a lot of you have your knives sharpened for radical levellers. Well, it ain't me babe.

Matt|1.21.05 @ 4:57PM|#

"a perfectly just system would be one in which the only differences in people's opportunity are their innate abilities."

Wow. That's insane when you put it that way.

To give the benefit of the doubt, I wasn't asking about a perfectly just system. What I meant was, how would you (in the actual world, using available metrics) recognize a system that was good enough?

|1.21.05 @ 4:59PM|#

"Gil, if I advocate for raising my own taxes for the purpose of benefitting others, isn't that selfless?"

Only if you're advocating raising just YOUR taxes and not anyone else's.

Of course you could then accomplish the same thing by privately and quietly giving your money to the charity of your choice.

But then that wouldn't allow you (i.e leftists and Democrats in general) to go around thumping your chests about how caring and compassionate you are on somebody else's dime.

Matt|1.21.05 @ 4:59PM|#

OK- you answered as I was writing.

|1.21.05 @ 5:06PM|#

joe, your proposal is vague enough to be a political platform. If you do not measure the abilities, you have no way of determining whether it is those abilities that account for the position an individual finds themself in at any given moment.

Is welfare not an unfair advantage? Money for nothing doesn't ring with "fairness".

|1.21.05 @ 5:10PM|#

Hot dog, I just love it when I meet someone online who claims to be so dirt poor and downtrodden that he's fill in the blank (in this case, eating popcorn for lunch) -- yet miraculously enough, can afford a computer and broadband connection. Praise the Lard, it's a Christmas miracle.

|1.21.05 @ 5:23PM|#

Working class people become upwardly mobile all the time. I am one of them. My father was a high school dropout who joined the Marine Corps and wound up as a mid level manager for AT&T. I am now a lawyer and make much more money than my father did at my age and infinitely more than either of my grandfathers did. The working class, however, do not as a rule get ahead by joining the chattering class. The chattering class whether it is working at a think tank, a university, or as a political reporter, do not make a lot of money in salery. They also get to their positions by going to the elite colleges. To be middle-class and go to even a middlebrow college like I did, letalone an elite college requires the acquisition of a crushing amount of debt. In short, the middle class can't afford the life of lower paid leisure afforded to a college professor or a reporter. That is why so few of them end up in these professions. The Thomas Franks and Jonah Goldbergs of the world get to graduate from elite schools with no student loan debt and can afford to make a nice living pontificating about things that they actually know little or nothing about (most egregously in Frank's case). The rest of us have to make the trains run on time and earn a living.

|1.21.05 @ 5:28PM|#

Zero, much as I hate to do it, I'm going to have to defend Joe on that one.

He didn't say he was dirt poor and downtrodden NOW. He said that all he had to eat was popcorn at one point in his life. He never said he was in that circumstance today.

|1.21.05 @ 5:31PM|#

Just because the guy owns a comuter and has an internet connection, doesn't mean he is not poor. You would be shocked at what people own, even when they don't have a pot to piss in. Anyone who thinks that just because you are poor means that you can't have a computer, has never really been around poor people very much.

|1.21.05 @ 5:34PM|#

all I'd propose is getting rid of systems that provide unfair advantage, like legacy admissions and disparate educational spending,

This is where I begin to suspect the motives. Legacy admissions are hardly a "system" so much as they are a favor - a favor I might add that usually creates additional opportunities for the less fortunate. A Legacy admission is usually granted because of the increased certainty of a charitable donation in the future, or as a favor of a donation in the past. Those donations usually go to improved facilities and scholarship programs. For every one shlub who got in on a legacy/donation pass, three others got an improvement of some kind because of the donation.

The "I'm more selfless than you" game makes no sense.

|1.21.05 @ 5:35PM|#

"Just because the guy owns a comuter and has an internet connection, doesn't mean he is not poor. You would be shocked at what people own, even when they don't have a pot to piss in. Anyone who thinks that just because you are poor means that you can't have a computer, has never really been around poor people very much."

Which illustrates the point that there may be qualities inherent in chronically poor people that prevent them from figuring out how to get the good things in life. That quote suggests, as mentioned before, that people have choices. I've seen a lot of poor/middle class people who take tons of vacations or own a phat stereo system, but they don't own their own home....

|1.21.05 @ 5:48PM|#

Economic "equality" and freedom are two ideals that can never be simultaneously reconciled.

If you allow utopian freedom, freedom to decide to achieve, build and own then there will always be "inequality" because individuals have wide ranges of desires and motivation.

If you decide to take steps to reduce "inequality" you are now on the path to reducing freedom. Where will you stop? Reasonable people will always argue that "more" can be done to increase "fairness". Once you accept the legality of some coercive infringement (as we have today) for more economic equality all that is left is the argument as to the degree of freedom the government will be allowed to take away.

Joe should read Forbes. Each year the 400 richest people change quite substantially. Many (like the old Hunt Brothers) blow it entirely quite routinely. Much as people like Joe like to believe the rich never change, keeping wealth beyond a generation or two is actually quite a trick.

|1.21.05 @ 5:51PM|#

What I can't follow is the use of "just" and "unfair". I can't see a connection between justice and rich parents being able to buy better educations, for example. To me, this is like saying that every time a wealthy person goes to the store and buys expensive goods, something unjust or unfair has occurred.

It also occurrs to me that if we want to talk about justice in this context (I don't think it makes sense, but okay), we have to ask about the justice of deferring spending on myself so that my children can have an easier time of it, only to have someone tell me that such a choice is un fair. Fairness is what, taking my deferred spending and spreading it among the community? Fair to whom?

I don't know what I would call those things that joe seeks to enhance through his policy suggestions, but I don't agree that justice and fairness would be good names for them.

|1.21.05 @ 6:19PM|#

"Anyone who thinks that just because you are poor means that you can't have a computer, has never really been around poor people very much."

Actually, I grew up in a trailer and lived on welfare as a kid. And I was poor in school, and lived in a poor neighborhood for the first 2/3 of my life. I've been laid off before and survived hard times. If anything, I've been around poor people too much, because I get tired of hearing their drama and their sh*t. I've been a front-row witness, over and over, to many of their dumbass decisions (particularly the ones in my own family), and it's made my ideological pendulum swing perhaps even too far away from them.

But I'm not poor now, because I worked me happy ass off in school. And when I was laid off, I made finding a new job a full-time job, and it worked. It worked for everyone who was laid off along with me, too.

I think there should be a safety net for some: the elderly, the developmentally or physically disabled, the mentally ill. But if you're able to sit at a computer and yabbut your way around a comment board all day long, you're of sound mind and able body enough to take responsibility for the choices you've made that guarantee you a meal of nothing but popcorn. Owning stuff, like a computer, is a personal choice.

We used to have a program at one office I worked at where we'd hire developmentally disabled people to help in the mailroom. Obviously, none of them were all that bright, but they were all determined, hard workers with good attitudes. You don't need a 170 IQ to have opportunities here. You just have to be willing to work.

I agree, most poor people do work very hard. I read "Nickel and Dimed," and I certainly didn't think Ehrenreich was lying about her research. But those jobs she experimented with -- cleaning, waitressing, Wal-Mart clerking -- are generally high turnover. People who show up for work on time and do reliable work generally move on to something else after a period of say, six months to a year. With the "lifers," what you unfortunately see is (1) people with poor work habits (theft, dishonestly, chronic absence or lateness, crappy work quality) or (2) people who live beyond their means (having a bunch of kids, buying crap they can't afford).

If you've been slaving away as a double-shift janitor for five years, and you're not retarded, sorry, but I just gotta wonder WTF's wrong with you. If you've been in this country for ten years and still can't put together a coherent sentence in English, you're not getting a lot of sympathy from me, them's the breaks.

|1.21.05 @ 6:24PM|#

"it is your selection effect that paints these events as accidents, rather than the result of a series of iterative, "failed" (in the sense of what would come later) processes to come before."

some of which are the product of fortune, not conscious choice. sometimes you trip and miss getting hit by the bus that was going to hit you. etc.

i'm not saying that every development is the creation of stupid chance. hardly. however...much of what we are swings on a tremendous collection of often stupid chances...especially in the days before things like germ theory and basic sanitation, or good antibiotics...i.e. most of human history.

"Luck prematurely "cuts off" evaluation of the system, stubbing a long chain of event vectors with multiple actors into a single event with no other cause than Fortune, Hallow-ed Be Thy Name. Why the sudden superstition?"

it's not a single event. it's a multitude so populous that it's hard to even begin to conceptualize, especially since i suck so much at spacial reasoning and the like. it's not superstition, or at least i don't see it as such, and its certainly not divine. sort of like the orthodox view of karma as a blind machine rather than it's current western useage as another word for sin and comeuppance. it's purely mechanistic.

what we are is a combination of our luck, our skill, our choices and our failures + all the luck, choices, successes and failures of our ancestors + the combined actions of everyone else who has ever lived or died.

but to say that luck didn't play a role or doesn't exist is ignoring how much hinges on the toss of the dime, sometimes...

|1.21.05 @ 6:51PM|#

The average annual income in the United States was about $37,000 in 2002.

http://www.bls.gov/cew/state2002.txt

I don't see it mentioned, but I believe that's before taxes--gross income, that is.

"But when you come from the actual working class--when your father is someone who actually helps assemble buildings, as opposed to designing them--you can never, as a professional intellectual, shake the suspicion that you are going to get caught and sent back to learn a proper living."

There are a lot of people in this country who cling to the misconception that they and their parents were poor.

So you lived in a trailer when you were a kid--guess what? That's typical in more rural areas where low cost rental housing is more expensive to build relatively speaking. (Infrastructure costs are relatively fixed, you know.)

The homeownership rate for people under the age of 35 is around 40%. How old were your parents when you lived in a trailer?

http://www.danter.com/STATISTICS/homeown.htm

There's no doubt that people who write for a living tend to be better educated than the general population, and there's no doubt that people who are better educated than the general population tend to come from more economically advantaged demographics. Do you know what percentage of the people in the United States have college degrees?

As of the 2000 census, 15.5% of Americans held a Bachelor's degree.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2002-06-05-education-census.htm

So, you're telling me that your income is under $40,000 a year, your parents didn't own the home you were born in and you don't have a degree--congratulations!

...You're average.

P.S. Don't watch so much television.

|1.21.05 @ 7:26PM|#

So now it's Stevo Quintile?

|1.21.05 @ 7:38PM|#

Only every fifth day, Ken.

|1.21.05 @ 7:48PM|#

In the other corner we have the Right (capitalist) - Saudi Arabia.
&
I think most knowledgeable people would identify Saudi Arabia as a pre-capitalist FEUDAL hellhole.

I don't think you can describe Saudi, or most of the Middle East, as a very capitalist society. I recall REASON once ran an article arguing that the problem with the Middle East is that private property rights are so insecure.

"The Mother of All Rights" is listed as being in the April 1994 issue here -- http://reason.com/9404/april94.shtml -- but unfortunately the article itself has not been Webbed.

(I hope the REASON staff are impressed that I can so often recall, off the top of my head, reading germane articles in the print version of REASON from 10 freaking years ago.)

|1.21.05 @ 7:57PM|#

Ken,

Don't tell SPD, which, as far as I can tell, stands for Zero Sum Game (sp?).

anon|1.21.05 @ 8:07PM|#

Success -- if equated with wealth--, is finite. There is only so much to go around. Whether you're born into it, earn it, or win the lottery to get it, the wealth you accrue is wealth that someone else will not. It's a zero-sum game.


henry hazlitt

economics in one lesson

|1.21.05 @ 8:15PM|#

Joe,
I rarely agree with you, but I want to thank you for your contribution to this thread. It's amazing how much resistence you've encountered to your rather simple and self-evident ideas. Oh well.

|1.21.05 @ 8:21PM|#

Anon,

You know less than nothing about economics. It is not a zero sum game. You gain wealth by producing more of it. It it was a zero sum game, we would be no wealthier overall now than at any other time in history, which of course is not true.

|1.21.05 @ 8:30PM|#

"Success -- if equated with wealth--, is finite."

I agree--absolutely!

"There is only so much to go around. Whether you're born into it, earn it, or win the lottery to get it, the wealth you accrue is wealth that someone else will not. It's a zero-sum game."

I read this stuff, and I'm always tempted to just ignore it because all the arguments are so tired. But, if you don't call it out for what it is--who will? I mean, we all agree that the future of freedom depends on the vigilance of its defenders, right?

...and that comment is sheer horse feces! A zero-sum game! Are you kidding?

Wealth creation is a zero sum game? I make my living makin' money for other people, and they're makin' me rich! A zero sum game! The bank can't wait to finance my next loan! If I left some of my equity partners out of my next deal--they'd be furious!

I don't know what kind of magazines or newspapers or books you've been reading, but you should stop reading whatever it is that you've been reading, and read something written by someone who disagrees with you instead.

P.S. You'll never get back the time you spent listening to whomever told you that wealth creation is a zero sum game.

|1.21.05 @ 8:38PM|#

I think Joe and others are upset that under our oppressive, dog eat dog system, 20 percent of the population will always be in the bottom quintile of income no matter what they do! Why can't you all see that we need a law to change that.

|1.21.05 @ 8:50PM|#

"To be "rich" is an abstract goal. I think most people would be satisfied with eliminating their debt and owning their own home. Is there such a think as being too rich? I don't know; ask Paris Hilton."

You describe the very essence of wealth--in concrete terms--and then call it abstract?

anon|1.21.05 @ 10:07PM|#

you know less than nothing about the book.i didnt make my post clear,as well

i was quoting spd's comment at 2:26 and telling him to read the book bc thats one of the fallacies hazlitt debunks.

anon|1.21.05 @ 10:10PM|#

next time i'll use quotes and shit

|1.21.05 @ 11:41PM|#

I think joe has been making some cogent points, but I couldn't let this comment from joe slip away:

if there was perfect equality of opportunity, there would be zero correlation between people's starting point and where they end up.

No, that's a perfecly random distribution, not perfect equality of opportunity. If you a) credit free will, and b) make the reasonable assumption that many people will "go with what they know", even a system of perfectly equal opportunity will not generate zero correlation between where they start and where they end.

Also, in a system of perfect opportunity (which I do not argue exists), you could assume that most people would choose something as good as they had or better, so there would still be a bias toward the upper echelons, and a non-zero correlation between where you start and where you end up.

In theory, a perfect opportunity system could have the same result as a system of perfect stratification: if everyone were to choose to stay in their own strata, despite the opportunity afforded to them, it would be identical.

That being said, such an outcome is not bloody likely.

A better way to express a system of perfect equality of opportunity is that everyone can get to the level of their capacity and desire. That is by definition nearly impossible to measure quantitatively.

|1.22.05 @ 3:22AM|#

Good point Sandy, even perfect equality of opportunity would not guarantee perfect equality of results because people often stick with what they know. It would only illustrate perfect randomness. By the way is there any country in the world that has such perfect randomness? I doubt it - but please educate me here.

Why would anyone choose to stay in poverty? Because out of habit people choose a *lot of things* that suck. It's like the phenomena of children who are sexually abused tending to end up in bad relationships. It's not *destiny* but it certainly is a tendency. So the correlation between starting and ending social classes is probably partly psychology and partly lack of economic opportunities. I don't have stats but I'd hazard I guess that there is also a fairly strong relationship between say parents age of marriage and perhaps even when they had children and that of their descendants. Does this mean that that too is ALL the fault of the "evil system"?

Equality of opportunity in many of it's connotations is perhaps a totally useless concept (as opposed to the aim of trying to do *some* good which is sometimes fairly concrete and achievable - but which will never be perfect). Debates about equality of opportunity usually become philosophical exercises and such perfect equality wouldn't exist in utopia (and you just know there would be someone bitching about it in said fictional utopia :)). The strongest single influence on most people is their parents and the second strongest is often their peers (and a person often grows up with peers from the same economic class). This is something no government can work around entirely (thank goodness!!). It's biological human nature for people to learn from the elders they grow up around. At most one can try to expose kids to other views but it often doesn't stick.

|1.23.05 @ 3:06AM|#

About U.S. millionaires:

* Only 19 percent receive any income or wealth of any kind from a trust fund or an estate.

* Fewer than 20 percent inherited 10 percent or more of their wealth.

* More than half never received as much as $1 in inheritance.

* Fewer than 25 percent ever received "an act of kindness" of $10,000 or more from their parents, grandparents, or other relatives.

* Ninety-one percent never received, as a gift, as much as $1 of the ownership of a family business.

* Nearly half never received any college tuition from their parents or other relatives.

* Fewer than 10 percent believe they will ever receive an inheritance in the future.

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of American's Wealthy
By THOMAS J. STANLEY, Ph.D and WILLIAM D. DANKO, Ph.D

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html

Mind, it is nowhere near as hard to accumulate $1m in net worth today than it was back in the days of $20.00 = 1 troy oz. Au, but if one wants to argue with a different threshold of "wealthy" it would help to note that more accurately.

Kevin
(may have a negative net worth, actually)

|1.24.05 @ 12:55AM|#

I'm still wondering about the poverty calculus here. Does living on popcorn for two days mean you're more poor than if you live on potatoes for a month?

That's me, the potato man. 20 lbs of rejects for $2.99. Mushroom gravy & big cheap bags of frozen vegetables on the side, throw in some eggs now and then -- you too can survive on a $20 a week food budget.

Never thought I was poor, just struggling a little.

|1.24.05 @ 3:07AM|#

On the subject of eating cheap:

Learning how to run an economical kitchen used to be an American tradition. Our schools even gave courses in it: home economics. That sort of thing has gone quite out of favor, though it might still exist as "life skills" training. Those of us with that pesky XY chromosome pair may not have had much exposure to it, back in the day.

After decades of "batching it" I've become adept at the common budget stretchers - spuds, rice, noodles. Those who work with "the poor" sometimes point out that one reason why you see so many overweight low income folks is that they load up their diet on cheap starches. Those whose poverty leads to living in substandard housing might have a problem boiling a pot of taters, as their sleeping room may not have kitchen privileges or a refrigerator. Not having a pot to...cook...in can be a nuisance.

During my "starving student" days I often ate quite well, though. Living 4 or 5 fellows to a flat or house, we could buy enough when pooling our resources to take advantage of the savings one gets from buying in volume, and while each of us had a modicum of kitchen tools, taken together we had more than enough for any task. Giant woks of stir-fry fresh veggies (w/ or w/o meat) over rice made for a good dinner, at about $1-3 per serving, excluding drinks. (1980's prices.) Chopping and cooking all that stuff even occasionally impressed the girls. :)

The moral of the story is that even poor people have property that makes their life more liveable, such as pans and cutlery.

N.B. Last night's cheap feast featured fresh turkey drumsticks, marinated, seasoned, and broiled on the grill. Cheaper than a boneless chicken breast, more flavorful, they make a nice change of pace. I think they went for about $1.10 per lb. I spent more on two pint bottles of microbrew than on the main course. (Life's too short to drink cheap beer.)

Kevin