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12/30 http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560 America less and less meritocratic. Social mobility declining. \_ In the forseeable future the Senate, Congress, and the Presidency will be controlled by an elite few whose wealth and power will slowly subvert the democracy until one day there will be a crisis of sorts requiring the invocation of dictatorial powers. This will lead finally to the formal creation of Imperial America, and through its ruling elite it will subvert all nations as either subservient allies or will brutally controlled through the military. We will have a complete professional merchant army, and we will employ the armies of other nations as merchant armies also. Then we will have established the Pax Americana on Earth, before we start exploiting other planets. The Pax Americana will result in an eventual stagnation of Earth, until the succession of the Imperial Presidency becomes unstable and aliens from other worlds begin to incur on the outskirts of the multiplanetary empire. \_ You obviously have a poor sense of U.S. history when back then senate seats were bought and even fewer people controlled all the money. Who bailed the USG out in 1895,1907? \_ Welcome to the ownership society. \_ And to think the motd questioned my support for John "son of a meeeel worker" Edwards \_ Could you please elaborate on your point? Are you saying we should have supported Edwards in the primary out of some sort of class loyalty even if we thought he was an inferior candidate on the basis of his position on the issues and his (lack of) experience? Would you have voted for Dick Cheney for the same reason? I'm picking on you because I loathe Edwards. \_ no duh, the wealthy ones inherit via land or business monopoly while keeping the lower class down. Take my landlord for example. His dad (now 60) owned 17 super-mega apartment complexes in Westwood, all within 2 miles of UCLA, and quite a few properties and land outside as well. His dad just recently retired and now he inherits 8 apartments. And when he retires, he will hand his properties to his children, so on so forth. Basically the rich people have made it and don't have to do much to maintain what they have while the poor will always get screwed. That is the basis of capitalism. Fuck everyone else, it's every man for himself. \_ Which would be fine if the field had started level, but it's a rock-throwing contest, and they were born on top of all of the rocks. \_ You are pathetic. Here you have a man who spent his entire life accumulating wealth. You act as a jealous little worm who wants to impose your version social justice via the government at the point of a gun. Moreover, how sad that your definition of success is how much money or power one has; though I suppose for leftist atheists in the end thats all there really is. \_ I'm not the above poster, and I'm no socialist, but when it comes to slumlords, I'm in favor of the death penalty administered by individuals outside of the government. I don't give a shit about whether it makes a better society or not. I have a list of landlords that have fucked me over, and if civil soceity starts to break down enough that risks become tolerable, they're all dead men. Fuck the landlords. \_ You talk big, but I bet you wouldn't be able to kill a man when the time came. -- ilyas \_ Ilya, you're challenging some random twerp on the motd to drop trou on whether they can kill or not. And yet they say irony is dead Post-9/11. \_ I am fined one credit for the violation of the motd morality statute. *boggle* People who talk about killing and violence, like our friend aaron, are a long standing pet peeve of mine. -- ilyas \_ Ah, Ilya, you must learn that these are simple farmers, the clay of the new West. You know. Morons. \_ What? MorMons? \_ To paraphrase Leon Trotsky once again, "Every man is allowed to be stupid on occasion, but Comrade Ilyas abuses the privilege." \_ Studies have shown that there is great class mobility in the USA. Within about 3 generations great wealth is lost and great wealth can be gained. As an example, I know a very wealthy widow with several kids. When she dies she will split the fortune among them. None of them are doing well at all (in spite of 1 or 2 went to Cal) and need her just to get by. I am sure they won't grow the fortune. Then they will split their share amongst their kids and her accumulated wealth will become merely middle class. It is common for rich kids to blow their entire inheritance. Another example is someone I know who inherited $200K and used that as an opportunity to just not work until it was gone. Some kids take a fortune and grow it (Rockefeller), of course, but some buy a $500K boat and sail the Caribbean getting drunk and laid until they are bankrupt (another person I met). \- The Economist and others have repeatedly ack-ed social mobility is higher in the US than much of Western Europe (the chief criticize). The point of this article is, "this is now changing for the worse." e.g. repeal of inheritance tax. \_ Cf. David Brin's comments on such: http://xent.com/FoRK-archive/oct00/0281.html \_ hmm, this post is really quite stupid, which is surprising because brin's political writings on his website are interesting. (e.g. http://www.davidbrin.com/realculturewar1.html \_ Two questions: 1: What is this thing with science fiction authors thinking they have something to say politically? 2: Why do we bother listening? -tom \_ tom, this is one of the stupidest things I've seen you say, and that is saying something. \_ For the same reason we listen to you, tom: on the off chance that something interesting will escape from your frothing drivel. \_ thank you, anonymous coward. -tom \_ You're welcome, alleged tom. \_ Did you even read the article in question? The point is that there used to be quite a bit of social mobility in the US and that is less and less true with every passing year. Things like free or extremely cheap secondary education are gone, making it very hard for the poor to move up anymore. |
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| www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560 E-mail this Meritocracy in America Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend Dec 29th 2004 | WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition Corbis Corbis Whatever happened to the belief that any American could get to the top? THE United States likes to think of itself as the very embodiment of meri tocracy: a country where people are judged on their individual abilities rather than their family connections. The original colonies were settle d by refugees from a Europe in which the restrictions on social mobility were woven into the fabric of the state, and the American revolution wa s partly a revolt against feudalism. From the outset, Americans believed that equality of opportunity gave them an edge over the Old World, free ing them from debilitating snobberies and at the same time enabling ever yone to benefit from the abilities of the entire population. The Founding Fath ers did not admit women or blacks to their meritocratic republic. The co untry's elites have repeatedly flirted with the aristocratic principle, whether among the brahmins of Boston or, more flagrantly, the rural ruli ng class in the South. Yet America has repeatedly succeeded in living up to its best self, and today most Americans believe that their country s till does a reasonable job of providing opportunities for everybody, inc luding blacks and women. In Europe, majorities of people in every countr y except Britain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia believe that forces be yond their personal control determine their success. A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocr atic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to lev els not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Alge rs are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the chil dren of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of th e social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society. The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in inequality in Ame rica. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, argues tha t between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the lowest fift h (the bottom 20% of earners) grew by 64%, while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70%. The family income of the top 1% grew by 184% and that of the top 01% or 001% grew even faster. Back in 1979 the ave rage income of the top 1% was 133 times that of the bottom 20%; by 2000 the income of the top 1% had risen to 189 times that of the bottom fifth . Not since pre-Depression days has the top 1% taken such a big wha ck. More dynastic than dynamic Most Americans see nothing wrong with inequality of income so long as it comes with plenty of social mobility: it is simply the price paid for a dynamic economy. But the new rise in inequality does not seem to have co me with a commensurate rise in mobility. The most vivid evidence of social sclerosis comes from politics. A countr y where every child is supposed to be able to dream of becoming presiden t is beginning to produce a self-perpetuating political elite. George Bu sh is the son of a president, the grandson of a senator, and the sprig o f America's business aristocracy. John Kerry, thanks to a rich wife, is the richest man in a Senate full of plutocrats. He is also a Boston brah min, educated at St Paul's, a posh private school, and Yalewhere, like the Bushes, he belonged to the ultra-select Skull and Bones society. Mr Kerry's predecessor as the Democrats' presidential nominee, Al Gore, w as the son of a senator. Mr Gore, too, was educated at a posh private sc hool, St Albans, and then at Harvard. And Mr Kerry's main challenger fro m the left of his party? Howard Brush Dean was the product of the same b lue-blooded world of private schools and unchanging middle names as Mr B ush (one of Mr Bush's grandmothers was even a bridesmaid to one of Mr De an's). Mr Dean grew up in the Hamptons and on New York's Park Avenue. The most remarkable feature of the continuing power of America's elitean d its growing grip on the political systemis how little comment it arou ses. Britain would be in high dudgeon if its party leaders all came from Eton and Harrow. Perhaps one reason why the rise of caste politics rais es so little comment is that something similar is happening throughout A merican society. Everywhere you look in modern Americain the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusettsyou see elites maste ring the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap wi dening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture a nd the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs. It's sticky out there All this may sound a bit impressionistic. But more and more evidence from social scientists suggests that American society is much stickier tha n most Americans assume. Some researchers claim that social mobility is actually declining. A classic social survey in 1978 found that 23% of ad ult men who had been born in the bottom fifth of the population (as rank ed by social and economic status) had made it into the top fifth. Earl W ysong of Indiana University and two colleagues recently decided to updat e the study. They compared the incomes of 2,749 father-and-son pairs fro m 1979 to 1998 and found that few sons had moved up the class ladder. Ne arly 70% of the sons in 1998 had remained either at the same level or we re doing worse than their fathers in 1979. The biggest increase in mobil ity had been at the top of society, with affluent sons moving upwards mo re often than their fathers had. They found that only 10% of the adult m en born in the bottom quarter had made it to the top quarter. The Economic Policy Institute also argues that social mobility has declin ed since the 1970s. In the 1990s 36% of those who started in the second- poorest 20% stayed put, compared with 28% in the 1970s and 32% in the 19 80s. In the 1970s 12% of the population moved from the bottom fifth to e ither the fourth or the top fifth. In the 1980s and 1990s the figures sh rank to below 11% for both decades. The figure for those who stayed in t he top fifth increased slightly but steadily over the three decades, rei nforcing the sense of diminished social mobility. Corbis Corbis Liz, meet the royals Not all social scientists accept the conclusion that mobility is declinin g Gary Solon, of the University of Michigan, argues that there is no ev idence of any change in social-mobility rates, down or up. But, at the l east, most people agree that the dramatic increase in income inequality over the past two decades has not been accompanied by an equally dramati c increase in social mobility. Take the study carried out by Thomas Hertz, an economist at American Univ ersity in Washington, DC, who studied a representative sample of 6,273 A merican families (both black and white) over 32 years or two generations . He found that 42% of those born into the poorest fifth ended up where they startedat the bottom. Another 24% moved up slightly to the next-to -bottom group. Upward mobility was par ticularly low for black families. On the other hand, 37% of those born i nto the top fifth remained there, whereas barely 7% of those born into t he top 20% ended up in the bottom fifth. A person born into the top fift h is over five times as likely to end up at the top as a person born int o the bottom fifth. Jonathan Fisher and David Johnson, two economists at the Bureau of Labour Statistics, looked at inequality and social mobility using measures of both income and consumption. They found that mobility slightly decrease d in the 1990s. In 1984-90, 56% and 54% of households changed their ran kings in terms of income and consumption respectively. Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston analysed family inco mes over three decades. They found that 40% of families re... |
| xent.com/FoRK-archive/oct00/0281.html this by David Brin" <<< snaffled from slashdot >>> AN ELECTION-SEASON EPISTLE ABOUT PYRAMIDS, DIAMONDS, INHERITANCE TAXES AN D A CLOSE ELECTION THAT SOMEHOW HAS EVERYBODY BORED STIFF Hello all. Here's hoping that autumn 2000 finds you well as we continue o ur transition into a new century. The complete lack of any voices proclaiming that December 31, 2000 is the _real turn of the century? I haven't heard a single call to celebrate this formal milestone -- even as a simple excuse to have another party! You'd expect at least for some Society of Nit-Pickers & Pedants to do so.. Anyway, whenever it's time to bid adieu to the Summer Olympics and prepar e for Halloween, you can be sure that we in the USA are also approaching another bizarre ritual - our quadrennial presidential elections. As usual, there is the politics you see on the surface... Issues that are reall y driving the deep agenda of one party or the other. And it bothers me enough to provoke spending a n evening to pen this letter, offering a comment or two, in case some of yo u are interested. Also, nobody is particula rly scared of the choices being offered. True, almost everyone agrees that Al Gore has about twice the IQ of Georg e W Bush, more experience and a much better idea what's going on. Some call h im "overqualified the same way Spock was, to be captain of the Enterprise, a nd therefore unromantic, a rather unpalatable choice for those preferring th e zing of human fallibility in their leaders. As they did under Ronald Reagan, these gray eminences will handle most decisions with utter seriousness. To a large degree (at least compared to past empires) it will leave us pretty much alone. Clearly I care, and wish to influence your vot e, speaking openly, as one citizen to another. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE Well, for one thing, I utterly reject the silly platitude going around th at says the republican and democratic parties are just the same. On the left, some males swallow this romantic twaddle and go running off to Ralph Nader, seeing him as a Don Quixote-type, ignoring his programmatic vagueness, his oversimplifying demonization of markets and his many questionable personality traits. Maybe because they are more practical, knowing that the n ext president will appoint at least three Supreme Court justices. I've seen quite a few buttons saying "It's the Supreme Court, Stupid." That issue, alone, should eliminate any thought of voting Republican this year. It has to do with a blat ant attempt at social engineering that none of us should like or put up with. An effort to fundamentally alter a social contract that has done very well b y America and the West for several generations. A SOCIAL CONTRACT THAT WORKS Look at the difference between European and American societies. Both have changed considerably since World War II by becoming much less pyramidal a nd more "diamondlike". Throughout history, almost every civilization had a social structure shaped like a pyramid, with a few at the top lording it over uneducated masses below. And it was in the best inter est of those on top to make sure those masses stayed down. In sharp contrast, our contemporary social pattern is diamond-shaped. For the first time, the well off actually outnumber the poor, at least inside our national borders. The educated outnumber the uneducated, and those wh o see themselves as somewhat empowered make up a majority. For the first ti me, most people merely envy the rich and do not hate them, because each of us can daydream taking our own turn in the pointy upper half. It's called "social mobility" and it never happened before - at least not on this scale. Above all, we feel that society's elites are somewhat accountable - or at least they are limited in the degree that they can use their elevated position to wreak capricious and direct harm on us, unlike the impunity t hat cloaked aristocracies in pyramidal cultures of the past. It's like peering into a strange and desperately lopsided world -- the world that a ll our ancestors toiled in, friends. T he social engineering that occurred since WWII -- through marvels like the G I Bill, the explosion of literacy and expanded state universities, etc. And unlike other revolutions, it happened without much violence or bitterness. This revolution benefited those below without tearing down th ose above. it's incomplete, by a large margin, but it's also quite unprecedented. Our diamond-shaped social structure, with its implication that any of us may succeed next year, promotes a vibrant, can-do spirit that makes vigorous use of tools like mutual criticism and accountability. And note this symptom of health -- America has seen a burgeoning in the number of millionaires, but the vast majority of them made their own fortunes in the marketplace, through competitive delivery of goods and services. Hey, that's what capitalism is supposed to be for, right? We can (and should) argue all day about how to help the poor. But at least their brightest sons and daughters already have a much better chance than the peasant kids did in the past. Every year, some of the best (or luckiest) make it all the way to the top. And countless sons of the rich find themselves having to earn it all over again. Studies show that few of them seek to learn useful occupations or do anything dynamic with their fortunes. They do work hard at politics, striving to keep property and inheritance taxes low, while sticking the p oor with high sales taxes. This way, they will be able to pass on their money , titles and life-style as entitlements to their lordly kids without impediment or inconvenience. I have every intention of getting into the upper brackets myself. And I plan to be sure that my children get some advantages from my success. But that's a far cry from entitling them to billions from goods and services they never did a thing to produce or provide to anyone. My success does n ot entitle them to a position in life that safeguards them from competition. I lived in the UK when Margaret Thatcher succeeded in ramming through a bill ending all property taxes. The chief beneficiaries were 1,000 landed families who no longer had to worry about actually earning some money to keep their grand estates. oh, and many castles and manor houses stopped having open house days, since they no longer had to earn tourist dollars to pay the rates! Oh boy, now the art collections could go back to being "for our ey es only!" And the underlying agenda of turning that diamond into a pyramid once again. Delaying the payoff of our grandchildren's public debt for a decade, he'l l use most of the budget surplus to achieve such wonders as completely repealing the inheritance tax. WHAT THE INHERITANCE TAX DOES Now there's a funny thing about the inheritance tax - it's effects are vastly greater than they seem at first sight. At the surface, it doesn't look like the government's biggest source of revenue. In fact, its chief effect over the years has been encouraging super-rich folks to create charitable foundations, in order to keep their money away from the IRS! Get this -- in the USA, charitable giving by the rich is MORE THAN TEN TI MES as high as it is in Europe! Studies credit most of this difference to the inheritance tax, spurring the wealthy to use their money to buy fame and gratitude, rather than let Uncle Sam decide how it will be spent. But there's a kind of beauty to it, leaving the super-rich free to choose WHICH charitable use their money wi ll go to. That's a lot of pleasure and power to have while doing a lot of go od. And the pleasure goes to the people who got rich by actually providing go ods and services, not their spoiled kids. ") Care to guess what'll happen to charitable giving if GWB gets his way? We are entering a period when some estimate that fifteen trillion dollars will shift hands between generations. For those in the middle class, this may be the only sizable dollop of cash they'll ever see, since most of th eir current savings are tied up in their homes... But about a third of that fifteen trillion dollars i s set to flow to a few thousand people who never produced a thing to earn i t ... |
| www.davidbrin.com/realculturewar1.html This will be -- I hope -- the last of three layered essays about the 2004 election & aftermath. As you'll see, what interests me -- both as a citizen and as a "noted futurist" -- is the success of Modern Civiliza tion. Part One submits that our future success may call for abandoning use less 20th Century political clichs. an opinionated world > the real culture war The Real Culture War an article by David Brin, PhD Copyright 2004. Part One: Defining the Battleground It's not about "left-vs-right" or "morality" or any other 20th Century cl ich. The issue is Modernity and how to deal with a new century of change. A Flood of Post-Election Opinions After the most divisive, draining and intensely-fought presidential campa ign that any of us can remember, postmortem analyses have flowed from ev ery pundit. Still, a few po st-election conclusions seem widely accepted. After the 2000 election, George W Bush's poli tical strategist said -- "There are four million missing evangelicals out there. blue-state division grows more illuminating when th e vote is broken down county-by-county. This happened before, cyclically, in the Great Awakenings of the early 1700s and 1800s, the Know Nothings, the Temperance Movement, Depression-era spirituality etc. Disputes are couched in terms of good-us and evil-them, rather than differences of opinion about pragmatic government policy. Many in this movement openly anchor their values and politics upon an expectation that the world will soon end, according to an apocalyptic script in the Book of Revelations. The Transparent Society - (nonfiction) - won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. "Ideological clichs only distract from the real struggle between two way s of perceiving time - romantic nostalgia vs. To so me, the future seems daunting, limited, and perilous, requiring steady l eadership from above. Others see it as a frontier of opportunity where f ree citizens can thrive, both individually and together. "It boils down to whether you believe children can and should be better t han their parents." Not between "liberal or conservative" or "left-vs-right ." Disputation & accountability ---------------------------- * In fairness, many of Karl Rove's faith-based activists claim they did not start a culture war, but are retaliating for past insults. dig the very hole it was just buried in, by supporting radicals who deliberately offended middle class families whenever possible? By endlessly berating people with guilt and never using praise? By upping the "tolerance" ante insatiably, while sneering at folks who simply want a little tradition and decorum? A surprising number of liberal thinkers seem at last willing to consider this possibility -- that extremist indignation junkies of the left may be just as dangerous to the Modern Enlightenment as those who screech damnation from the right. Cosmopolitan culture- centers from Europe to Asia took unusual interest in this election. The more "western" the country, the more heavily both press and public opinion polls express doubt or opposition toward US policies. From Paris to Beijing, meetings aimed at "restoring a multipolar world" have intensified. George Will, all the way to Pat Buchanan and Robert A George. Their essays, opposing "an ill-defined war on terror" "unprecedented expansion of executive power," all stop short of an open break with the neoconservatives. Nor will they be able to make a break, till the illusion of a Grand Old Conservative Alliance is shattered. pork barrel spending, erosion of civil liberties, rampant cronyism, and political intimidation of the US Intelligence Community and Military Officer Corps. None of the observations that I just offered can be made to fit the most pervasive, misleading and mind-numbing political metaphor of all time -- the left-right political axis. That purported "political map" has always trivialized complex issues, mas king a myriad inconsistencies, contradictions and details. It also defie d decades of scientific evidence for how complex human brains, personali ties and societies really are. Yet, we cling to an obsolete oversimplifi cation (see the "Obsolete Oversimplification" sidebar) that has proved e ffective at just one thing -- enforcing alliance between people who disa gree deeply over things that really matter. Someone who shar es your immediate political campaign, while disagreeing with you utterly over long-term goals? Or someone who shares your deep agenda for a bett er world, but disagrees over immediate tactics? Most people -- when it is posed that way -- choose the latter. But how can we work together when we disagree over the very nature of the universe and of the future? Or over the very possibility -- the desirab ility -- of human improvability? Suppose you perceive -- through evidence and scientific consensus -- that the universe is about 13 billion years old, containing a trillion-trill ion stars, some of which may be visited by your descendants: People who (you hope) will be greater, better, wiser than ourselves. You look forwa rd to incremental steps in that direction, whether fostered by social be nevolence or fecund competitive markets. Perhaps those descendants -- while carefully overcoming challenges -- wil l even find important work to do, worthy of their ever-rising stature in a vast and ongoing universe. Then do you really want to put civilization's decision-making process in the hands of people who believe that native tribes had a better vision o f the cosmos than modern science? Yet that is what some of our finest intellectuals do eac h day, from Jared Diamond and Kim Stanley Robinson to William F Buckley and George Will. Oh, they grouse about some of the maniacs who are now running their parties. Then they close ranks, rationalizing that you ult imately have to ally yourself with fellow members of the right or the le ft. But this election has shown, at last, that America just is not divided th at way. Rather, we seem divided between those who feel alienated toward -- or ent husiastic for -- a 21st Century filled with change. Fearful of a Changing World It would be too easy to make my point about future-haters by citing funda mentalist preachers. You can find them any time of day by channel-surfin g Listen as they wistfully yearn for a better, pastoral, more moral yes teryear-that-never-was, while sermonizing about a coming apocalypse. Every time a Gaia-worshipper or Wicc an or neo-tribalist claims that ancient peoples knew and behaved vastly better than modern folk, he or she is preaching from a deeply disturbing and offensive premise -- that all those ancient people failed to raise their children better than they were. Decent people of every generation struggle for human improvement -- more knowledge, better kids. The best of our ancestors strove hard to help ma ke us a bit more strong and knowing. But romantic mystics -- whether "ri ght-wing" or "left wing" -- see history as a long slide from some past g olden age. Underneath all tha t hyper-tolerance posturing, there lies hatred of the very notion of pro gress. So let's choose an example from the intellectual uber-elite. Someone precious to the clade of Unive rsity of Chicago alumae who supped their neo-Platonism from the rich spr ing of Leo Strauss, and now aim to become philosopher kings. cerebral neocons who today control an actively imperial Pax Ameri cana have a special fondness for Francis Fukuyama, Bernard L Schwartz P rofessor of International Political Economy at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. The End of History and the Last Man (1992) tr iumphally viewed the collapse of communism as likely to be the final sti rring event worthy of major chronicling by historians. From that point o n, we would see liberal democracy bloom as the sole path for human socie ties, without significant competition or incident. Our Posthuman Futu re: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002), he condemns a w ide range of biological science as disruptive and even immoral. People c annot, according to Fukayama, be trusted to make good decisions about t... |