Nick Kristof has a thought-provoking column in today's New York Times, whose title I have used for this posting.
Kristof begins by quoting Marco Rubio's words about America being "“We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and of people who will make it.” He acknowledges enough truth in those words to inspire the fathers of both Rubio and himself to come to this country, then writes
Yet I fear that by 2015 we’ve become the socially rigid society our forebears fled, replicating the barriers and class gaps that drove them away. That’s what the presidential candidates should be debating.
Here as an aside I think it fair to say that at least Bernie Sanders has in part addressed that issue, but Kristof is right that we have heard nothing from the Republican side about the growing inequality and class rigidity in the US.
The column is chock-full of statistics, as one can note in this paragraph (and I am not providing the hot-links - you can go to the original for those):
A child born in the bottom quintile of incomes in the United States has only a 4 percent chance of rising to the top quintile, according to a Pew study. A separate (somewhat dated) study found that in Britain, such a boy has about a 12 percent chance.
Kristof uses the story of an old friend from his small-town home of Yamhill, Oregon to set up his commentary. It is worth reading. He transitions to that by quoting Alan Krueger of Princeton that a child in a family of the bottom tenth of income rising to the top tenth
is about the same as the chance that a dad who is 5 feet 6 inches tall having a son who grows up to be over 6 feet 1 inch tall,” Krueger observed in a speech. “It happens, but not often.”
Kristof refers to that comparison several times.
There are several paragraphs that very much got my attention, and upon which I will comment below the fold, if you would care to follow me there.
Please note that I am not a fan of test scores, in large part because they are for the most part reflective of the family circumstances of the testee. Kristof quotes Sean Riorand as noting that whereas before the test-score gap was more often one of race, today it is twice as likely the result of economic class. Here I have to comment that we have seen an increase of people of color into the middle class, but still too many are left behind, as is also the cas for whites of working-class background in some inner city neighborhoods and many rural communities.
This paragraph caught my attention:
Consider that 77 percent of adults in the top 25 percent of incomes earn a B.A. by age 24. Only 9 percent of those in the bottom 25 percent do so.
I acknowledge that I fall outside that statistic. I came from an upper middle class family with two parents who had three ivy league degrees and most of a fourth between them, yet I did not graduate from college until shortly before my 27th birthday. Yet I was able to do that kind of intellectual and personal wandering in part because I had if I needed the economic safety net from my family, immediate and extended. I think of the research of some like Mike Rose of UCLA who has written cogently of those from working-class backgrounds (as was he) in their attempts to get a higher education and the struggles they must overcome. Which is why it is a real tragedy to look at the ever increasing cost of even community colleges and public universities, the cutting back of things like Pell Grants, and the obscene debt burden from which the financial sector profits of student debt. I have written before of the increasing number of students I have taught who forgo the opportunity for elite colleges, attending state universities or even living at home for two years of community college, or entering the military for educational benefits, precisely to avoid that crushing debt burden. The cost of higher education serves as a further barrier to overcoming the class barriers that therefore becoming increasingly rigid in our nation.
I think of the three weeks I just spent teaching gifted 13-14 year olds Macroeconomics. The cost of the program is over $3,000, and while there are some scholarships available, of my 16 students a disproportionate number were from better off families, some attending elite schools like National Cathedral and Sidwell Friends, and not on scholarships.
There is one paragraph that is a pointed answer to those like Mitt Romney (named), Ted Nugent and Neal Boortz who complain about those receiving entitlements aimed at the less well off as part of our ever decreasing social safety net:
Sure, entitlements are a legitimate issue for debate. But if you’re troubled by publicly subsidized meals, what about the $12 billion in annual tax subsidies for corporate meals and entertainment? And if you want to see a real scam, how about those zillionaires who claim huge tax deductions for donating art to their own nonprofit museums, which aren’t even open to people dropping by?
To those who complain that they came from limited circumstances and succeeded, why can't others, Kristof reverts to the image from Alan Krueger and writes that such folks are
like the N.B.A. centers with short parents.
There is a paragraph which which I do take some issue. Kristof begins it by talking about a poverty that is about more than money, then writes
The best metrics of child poverty aren’t monetary, but rather how often a child is read to or hugged. Or, conversely, how often a child is beaten, how often the home descends into alcohol-fueled fistfights, whether there is lead poisoning, whether ear infections go untreated. That’s a poverty that is far harder to escape.
I fear that there are valid class issues that are conflated with issues that cross class. Beatings, alcoholism, lack of access to medical care except in emergencies are issues that occur across class boundaries. I have seen all in my 19 years of teaching. Not being read to MAY be a class issue if the parents themselves cannot read. Yes,unmitigated lead paint is still an issue, one I saw when I taught on East Capitol Street in Washington DC.
But hugs are offered across class and economic bounds, and the lack of them is also similarly spread: here I note that neither of my parents was a hugger, and that was not all THAT unusual among my classmates, as I found out at our 50th high school reunion.
I do believe that, despite what I have just criticized, the closing of Kristof's column is on point, and thus offer thoe words:
So let’s just drop the social Darwinism. Success is not a sign of virtue. It’s mostly a sign that your grandparents did well.
Meanwhile, more children in America live in poverty now (22 percent at last count) than at the start of the financial crisis in 2008 (18 percent). They grow up not in a “land of opportunity,” but in the kind of socially rigid hierarchies that our ancestors fled, the kind of society in which your outcome is largely determined by your beginning.
Now, that’s what the presidential candidates should be discussing.
Indeed.
One man who once ran for president did offer relevant words, which I have shared here before, and which are for me an appropriate way to conclude. Hubert Humphrey said
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
By the standard of those words America's "exceptionalism" is not to be admired, and we have much work to do.
To repeat the final sentence from Kristof, Now, that’s what the presidential candidates should be discussing.
Peace?