There's a lot in this article.
There's a lot in this article. For one thing, it's long, but it has a lot to say and some real points that are worth considering.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
It's a pretty good article, I thought. It is long, but a lot of food for thought.
ReplyDeleteDamn straight.
ReplyDeleteThere's so many of us among the Darkfriends who were lucky enough to make the vault into the ranks of the aristocracy from below - in many cases, way below. We've all run into people from our new social strata who have no fucking clue what life is like for the majority down below, because they've never lived or experienced it the way we did. And noted the way that profound blindness, poisons their entire world view.
To this day I routinely run into physician colleagues and classmates who seriously don't think making $120K-150K a year puts them in a financial elite. Compared to one's patients, who are lucky to make one quarter as much? Fuck yes we are an elite. Just because they/we know plenty of folks who earn more, doesn't not make us privileged, because privileged as fuck we are. As the article above spells out so clearly. I mean, if we feel stressed trying to raise a family on a "mere" $150K a year, imagine what the vast majority of our patients feel?
How does one teach that idea?
I read a fairly good rebuttle to this that I think Dave Roberts linked to. But, uh, I can't really find it right now. The general thrust being: yes, class divisions remain real, but the structural problem really is with the super-wealthy.
ReplyDeleteMike Bruce Did you mean [1]?
ReplyDeleteI don't think Weissman's points are wrong per se - but I don't think they're mutually exclusive to the thrust of Stewart's.
Yes, as Weissman points out in detail, the 10% is very different from the 1% who is very different than the 0.1% in very meaningful and important ways. The scale of influence and the proportion of economic benefit scales exponentially as you go up each rung of the ladder. Hell, if you wanted to take that point to its conclusion, even the 0.1% are very different - dwarfed - by the men at the absolute pinnacle. I mean, the 0.1%ers do have awesome power, but they don't have whole political parties at their beck and call the way the 0.001% - the Adelsons, Mercers, Koch brothers et al. - do.
To go back to the aristocracy example, mere lords are not the same as Counts, who are not the same as Dukes, who are not the same as Kings. A mere lord is almost insignificant, relatively speaking, compared to a King or even a Duke, in wealth, power, or agency.
But compared to the peasantry? That's what Stewart I think wants us to reflect on.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
slate.com - Forget What the Atlantic Is Telling You. The 1 Percent Are Still the Problem.
Also, Weissman's argument that social mobility has remained static - rather than declining - is definitely arguable. Carr and Wiemers (2016) for example, suggest otherwise [1] - that it may be getting subtly more likely for everyone to fall behind than get ahead: except for, you guessed it, the top 10%.
ReplyDeleteNow, Carr and Wiemer's analysis is subject to all kinds of important caveats, as all work like theirs, do. For example, if we took Weissman's (good) points to heart, I would bet if we subdivided Carr and Wiemer's data into 5 or 1% percentiles, we'd see the benefit to the top 10% even more concentrated among the top 1%.
But the point is, as different as the 1% is from the rest of the 10% and the bottom 90%, I think Stewart is right to recognize that there is a epochal difference again between the top 10% and everyone down below. Or at least "the 10%" as a proxy for the small fraction of Americans who can reliably count on affording housing, quality health care, and quality education long enough to have the option of raising a child from birth to college graduation with all those advantages. Versus everyone else.
[1] equitablegrowth.org - New analysis shows it is more difficult for workers to move up the income ladder | Equitable Growth