Welcome to the de facto economic caste system in the US

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Those who lament the rise in inequality are often dismissed as economically naïve. They are faulted for forgetting that this is a country where, in the words of one scornful commentator, “people simply do not remain in the same top and bottom income categories over time.”

In fact, many people do. The U.S. is not only more unequal than it was (and more unequal than other countries), but less economically mobile than many have assumed. Recent estimates of inter-generational mobility are sharply lower than the consensus of two decades ago. Some researchers see evidence that mobility itself has declined, because of a proliferation of dead-end jobs and a labor market sharply divided between those who possess, and those who lack, a four-year college degree. That all-important credential, in turn, appears to have become less accessible to the children of parents who are neither wealthy nor well-educated themselves.

The immigrant success story is another economic legend that may be due for reexamination. The gulf between immigrant and native-born incomes is roughly three times wider today than it was a century ago, according to the Harvard University sociologist Christopher Jencks.

To speak with alarm about the gulf between rich and poor (or between rich and middle; or middle and upper-middle) is to invite the charge of fomenting “class warfare.” Indeed, the question of inequality has rarely stirred much passion in America except in periods of deep discontent, and it has usually been framed as a problem of “haves” and “have-nots” or (in recent years also) “have lesses.”

These laments arise out of feelings about justice, suffering, and mutual obligation that are as old as humanity, and deserve respect rather than scorn. It is only by making a religion of the “free market” that anyone could possibly construct a reasonable-seeming justification for American-style differences in earning-power between, say, a janitor and an investment banker. But the poor are not the only victims of inequality, and the damage is not to be measured solely in material terms.

[Warpy]

1. Horatio Alger is dead.

www.cepr.net/seminars/powerpoints/2005_10_27.ppt

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. What happened to Horatio?

Greater inequality and limited bargaining power of workers taking more of a long-term toll on particular workers and their families.

Dismantling of social welfare state limits access to institutions that foster mobility—education, housing, health care, adequate child care, protective labor law.


Thanks for that. Rather revealing.

[amdezurik]

3. working as intended...

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. I think you are right