|
It was Keith who posed the original link to the
NYTimes, Karen, not me. What I found about article is that it contains an
almost dizzying amount of verbiage about class and mobility among classes
without giving us a clear idea of what class is. It suggests it can be a
variety of things, in some places Presbyterian, in others Baptist. It also
suggests that movement between classes is possible to the extent of being almost
commonplace - get the right education and then the right job and you can move
up. All of this is well and good, and probably true to an extent, but what
it detracts from is that the concept of class must most basically hinge on
income. This is dealt with, but not really very well. To be in a
higher class than another person must mean you have more income than that
person. What the article does not really convey well enough is a
sense of is the distribution of income and hence the level of inequality
encountered in the US. The following chart shows the distribution of
household income for the US in 2002.
 The chart shows that in 2002 the top,
or most affluent, fifth of US households had 49.7 percent of total income, while
the bottom fifth had only 3.5 percent. Thus, the top fifth of all households had
14.3 times more income than the bottom fifth, and the top fifth had
approximately as much income as all other households combined. People in a
lower quintile can have as many cellphones or be as Episcopalian or Republican
or whatever as people in a higher quintile, but the most significant marker
of what they can or can't do and who they can or can't associate
with is how much money the have in comparison with the people in the
quintiles above or below them. (I'm merely using the chart to illustrate a
point. It's from "Two Americas: One Rich, One Poor? Understanding Income
Inequality in the United States", by Robert Rector
and Rea Hederman, Jr. found at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1791.cfm)
The article mentions that a study
conducted by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that fewer families moved
from one quintile of the income ladder (upward surely) to another during the
1980's than during the 1970's and that still fewer moved in the 90's than in the
80's. A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also found that mobility
declined from the 80's to the 90's. This may be significant because it
indicates that the class structure is solidifying after having opened up in the
decades following WWII.
The article also
mentions cultural myth making that has reinforced perceptions of mobility -
e.g. TV programs like American Idol and The Apprentice.
While "Faith in mobility, after all, has been consciously woven into the national self-image", it looks as though upward inter-class mobility is going to become less and less of a reality in coming years, while downward mobility is becoming an increasing probability. Ed |
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
