One of my favorite definitions of our class structure is that the children of the members of the upper class will not be allowed to fail. Paul Krugman appears to be surprised that the upper crust continue to prosper when we won’t allow them to fail:
A few days ago, The Times published a report on a society that is being undermined by extreme inequality. This society claims to reward the best and brightest regardless of family background. In practice, however, the children of the wealthy benefit from opportunities and connections unavailable to children of the middle and working classes. And it was clear from the article that the gap between the society’s meritocratic ideology and its increasingly oligarchic reality is having a deeply demoralizing effect.
The report illustrated in a nutshell why extreme inequality is destructive, why claims ring hollow that inequality of outcomes doesn’t matter as long as there is equality of opportunity. If the rich are so much richer than the rest that they live in a different social and material universe, that fact in itself makes nonsense of any notion of equal opportunity.
He continues with what seems to me to be a non sequitur but which ties in with my earlier post this morning about education, Bill Blasio’s proposal for universal pre-kindergarten education in New York City. The evidence of efficacy for that is mixed but here’s a good defense.
In the final analysis, so long as we won’t allow those at the top of the heap to fail and won’t (or can’t) ensure that those of us in the lower orders will succeed, anything we do to promote egalitarianism is moot. And that, indeed, is the history of the last six years. Regardless of manifest failures of governance, the big banks have not been allowed to fail and those responsible for the bad governance, up to and including criminal malfeasance, remain in charge. Their confederates both in business and in government won’t allow them to fail.
Not so sure its that stylized. Michael is a talented and successful author. Look at his background. Top 1% today.
I’m just a farm boy from Indiana. Top 1% today.
Don’t really know other commenters backgrounds well enough to comment.
I know lots of Ivy Leaguers who didn’t do much. On the flip side, it is true that if you go to Harvard, “inquiries will be made on your behalf.”
“I’m just a farm boy from Indiana. Top 1% today.”
Thought your father was a doctor? Anyway, it always surprises me that people are surprised by these articles. The system has always been rigged in favor of the wealthy and near wealthy. I think it is a bit more organized now, so it is easier for the near wealthy to join the club. The problem is that we are concentrating more and more of our capital, including human capital, into the hands of fewer people. We are drawing from a more narrow base. Once ensconced, it is difficult to be dislodged from privilege.
Steve
steve
Its an old line I use with business owners.
My story much sadder. See, I am just a caveman. I don’t know how these tubes I type into work or what “ensconced” means, but what steve says frightens and confuses me, so someone get me another Dewars and water, pronto.
What I meant to say was that what kids do today in kindergarten is what kids used to do thirty years ago in first grade. There very likely are benefits to institutionalization in terms of learning expected behavior, impulse control, etc. . ., before education becomes the complete focus.
(One of the arguments in the defense though I found unpersuasive. That higher income households tend to send their children to pre-k more than lower income households, just reflects that the higher income households tend to be two-income households and they are making decisions with a lot of different concerns in mind)
So…what was Krugman’s position on the bank bail outs again?
Steve V
His position, like most of his……….was confused.
What has kept Americans accepting of significant inequality was the mythos that anyone who works hard enough can ascend through the social orders, but over the last six years that belief has been blown apart. I have the opportunity to interact with a lot of young people and almost to a one they have very little hope for their futures. Even graduating with STEM degrees they cannot find paid work in their fields, only unpaid internships; we seem to have institutionalized indentured servitude as a prerequisite for beginning one’s career, if of course you’re lucky enough to know someone who knows someone who is looking for an intern. Even in this superior social connections move children of the wealthy and influential ahead of their peers.
That’s something I’ve been writing about for some time, off and on. The complaint that we don’t have enough science, technology, engineering, and mathematics grads is belied by the increases in length and number of post docs over the years.
It took electrical engineers until 2006 before there were as many of them employed in engineering jobs as there had been in 2000. As I’ve been warning for decades, for many engineering fields there is no future in the United States. Production engineering and design engineering are joined at the hip. When production moves overseas, so does production engineering. Design engineering inevitably follows.
My story much sadder. See, I am just a caveman.
Nicely done.