Class in America and the American Dream (last revised Feb. 6, 2018 7:35pm)
Copyright?2017-2018. All rights reserved.
DRAFT
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Class in America and the American Dream
Ronald David Greenberg
Is your view of America, and the American Dream, similar to that found in the media?
See, e.g., David Brooks, How We Are Ruining America, N.Y. TIMES (July 11, 2017) (emphasis added), a version of this op-ed appears in print on July 11, 2017, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: How We Are Ruining America (https://www.nytimes.com/…/…/how-we-are-ruining-america.html):
Over the past generation, members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status. They have also become devastatingly good at making sure the children of other classes have limited chances to join their ranks.
. . . .
As life has gotten worse for the rest in the middle class, upper-middle- class parents have become fanatical about making sure their children never sink back to those levels, and of course there’s nothing wrong in devoting yourself to your own progeny.
. . . .
We in the educated class have created barriers to mobility that are more devastating for being invisible. The rest of America can’t name them, can’t understand them. They just know they’re there.
Since when have these social classes arisen in America? Is David Brooks' speaking of social classes in America? Does the “We” to whom he refers include the vast majority of Americans? Who are these "other classes"? Where are these "barriers"? What "privileged status" exists?
Brooks uses the term "class" several other times in the article. Why not, instead, refer to the different "components" or "segments" or "groups" or "areas" of our society as, e.g., income segments, social groups, or interest areas (or other like terms) eschewing the term “class” altogether. The use of terms such as "components" or "segments" or "groups" or "areas" would be neutral regarding, e.g., income or social standing and would be more in keeping with the egalitarian history of America that "All men [and women] are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence and the founding of our nation. The Declaration of Independence, https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/.
The American Revolution was fought for, among other reasons, an objection to English class distinctions. Equal opportunity in America would not seem to be encouraged with the use of the term "class" in the media or anywhere else in America.
Brooks' characterization of "class" may well be correct, however, at least insofar as he is not alone in the use of the term its being used by other writers as well. See, e.g., Dwight Garner, On the Touchy Subject of Class in America, NY TIMES (July 27, 2017), a version of this article appears in print on July 28 2017, on Page C13 of the New York edition with the headline: "We Have Castes Too" (reviewing PAUL FUSSELL, CLASS: A GUIDE THROUGH THE AMERICAN STATUS SYSTEM (2017) (emphasis added), https://www.nytimes.com/…/paul-fussell-class-in-america.htm…:
One of his fundamental points is how rigid, though invisible, America’s caste system is. “We’re pretty well stuck for life,” he writes, “in the class we’re raised in.”
More depressing is his sense of how difficult it is for classes to genuinely combine. Speaking about two people, one who regularly uses double negatives, and one who doesn’t, he writes: “The two can respect each other, but they can never be pals. They belong to different classes, and if they attempt to mix, they will inevitably regard each other as quaint and not quite human.” I don’t fully agree with that observation, but to dismiss it entirely would be folly.
See also, e.g., HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS (May 16, 2017) (reviewing JOAN C. WILLIAMS, WHITE WORKING CLASS: OVERCOMING CLASS CLUELESSNESS IN AMERICA (2017)) (emphasis added), https://www.amazon.com/White-Working-Class-Ove…/…/1633693783:
Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness.
See also, e.g., Lucinda Rosenfeld, Notes on the Upper Muddle, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 7, 2017) (emphasis added), https://www.nytimes.com/…/privilege-middle-class-family-chi
[T]he most privileged segment of society does not use the public schools at all, a fact I learned as a teenager and then all over again when a good 50 percent of my parent-friends in the city began enrolling their children in private schools where, thanks to exorbitant tuition costs and selection processes built in part on pre-existing connections, the children of the well-off are guaranteed to interact almost exclusively with other members of the lucky in birth. (Even those who receive financial aid, as my family once did, tend to pay in the thousands, an impossibility for most families.)
Not that reproducing one’s social access and class advantage is an oft-stated goal by those who send their children to such places. Instead, one tends to hear about the “small class sizes” or “amazing theater program.” But these perks constitute only half the equation. The other half goes unmentioned. For if there’s one taboo subject left in the United States, it may be the existence of a class system as closed and inflexible as the one my husband left across the Atlantic.
See also, e.g., Richard V. Reeves, The dangerous separation of the American upper middle class, BROOKINGS (Sept. 3, 2015) (emphasis added), https://www.brookings.edu/…/the-dangerous-separation-of-th…/:
In the long run, an even bigger threat might be posed by the perpetuation of upper middle class status over the generations. There is intergenerational ‘stickiness’ at the bottom of the income distribution; but there is at least as much at the other end, and some evidence that the U.S. shows particularly low rates of downward mobility from the top. When status becomes more strongly inherited, inequality hardens into stratification, open societies start to close up, and class distinctions sharpen.
See also, e.g., Nancy Isenberg, Five myths about class in America, WASHINGTON POST (July 1, 2016) (emphasis added), https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/244ddb44-3e20-11e6-a66f-aa…:
Myth No. 1 The working class is white and male.
. . . .
Myth No. 2 Most Americans don’t notice class differences.
. . . .
Myth No. 3 Class mobility is uniquely American.
. . . .
Myth No. 4 With talent and hard work, you can rise above your class.
. . . .
Myth No. 5 Class oppression isn’t as signi?cant as racial oppression.
See also, e.g., Vivian Yee, Affirmative Action Policies Evolve, Achieving Their Own Diversity, N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 5, 2017) (emphasis added), a version of this article appeared in print edition on Aug. 6, 2017 entitled “Colleges Seek Diversity Ideal, but Pick Different Paths to It, https://www.nytimes.com/…/affirmative-action-justice-depart… (noting “socioeconomic diversity as a way of indirectly creating racial diversity,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who has pushed for class-based admissions to replace race-based admissions"). See, e.g., Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter, Class-based Affirmative Action Works, N.Y. TIMES (updated April 27, 2014, 7:01 PM)(emphasis added), https://www.nytimes.com/…/class-based-affirmative-action-wo… (“Class-based admissions and recruitment strategies can be effective tools for guaranteeing both racial and socioeconomic diversity on campus.”).
But what of the American Dream and equality of opportunity? See, e.g., Robert J. Shiller, The Transformation of the ‘American Dream’: It once meant mutual respect, equality of opportunity, and freedom, not material success, N.Y. TIMES. (Aug. 4, 2017) (emphasis added), https://www.nytimes.com/…/the-transformation-of-the-america:
The American Dream is back.” President Trump made that claim in a speech in January.
. . . .
"Mr. Trump and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, have suggested it involves owning a beautiful home and a roaring business, but it wasn’t always so. Instead, in the 1930s, it meant freedom, mutual respect and equality of opportunity. It had more to do with morality than material success.
. . . .
Mr. Carson has explicitly said that homeownership is a central part of the Dream. In a speech at the National Housing Conference on June 9, he said, “I worry that millennials may become a lost generation for homeownership, excluded from the American Dream.”
But that wasn’t what the American Dream entailed when the writer James Truslow Adams popularized it in 1931, in his book “The Epic of America.”
Mr. Adams emphasized ideals rather than material goods, a “ dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” And he clarified: “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and recognized by others for what they are.”
. . . .
. . . . Ever since humans began making stone tools and pottery, they have needed a place to store them, he says, and the potential for intense feelings about our homes has evolved.
But the last decade has shown that with a little encouragement, many can easily become excessively lustful about homeownership and wealth, to the detriment of our economy and society.
That’s the wrong way to go. Instead, we need to bring back the American Dream of a just society, where everyone has an opportunity to reach “the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”
Noteworthy is that nowhere in the Shiller passage does the term “class” appear. Perhaps most noteworthy is that the title of his article emphasizes the American Dream and equality of opportunity, along with freedom, not material success . Shiller admonishes that “many can easily become excessively lustful about homeownership and wealth, to the detriment of our economy and society.” He concludes with the strong affirmation that “we need to bring back the American Dream of a just society” – an America where “everyone” has an opportunity to attain “the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”
See also, e.g., Marcus Ryu, Why Corporate Tax Cuts Won’t Create Jobs. N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 9, 2017), a version of this op-ed appears in print on October 9, 2017, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Tax Cuts Won’t Create Jobs, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/opinion/corporate-tax-cuts-entrepreneur.html:
I am an entrepreneur and a businessman, but I am also a citizen. I believe tax cuts that deepen our already severe inequality in income and wealth are not in the long-term interests of any citizens, not even the very wealthy. Extreme inequality is corroding our civil society, poisoning our politics, and undermining our effectiveness as a nation. This is an extremely hard problem to solve, but when you’re in a deep ditch, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Do these views of America, the American Dream, and inequality, constitute an accurate portrayal of the views of a majority of Americans?
What are Adam Smith's views on inequality of taxation? See, e.g., ADAM SMITH, THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (Random House (Modern Library Edition 1965)) (SMITH, WEALTH OF NATIONS) at 777 (Book V, Chapter II, Part II, paragraph 25) (emphasis added):
I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expence of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expence of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation. Every tax, it must be observed once for all, which falls finally upon one only of the three sorts of revenue above mentioned, is necessarily unequal in so far as it does not affect the other two. In the following examination of different taxes I shall seldom take much further notice of this sort of inequality, but shall, in most cases, confine my observations to that inequality which is occasioned by a particular tax falling unequally even upon that particular sort of private revenue which is affected by it.
Smith refers to various taxes, such as taxes on rent, on profit, on wages, among others. On rent , he posited that
[t]he inequality with which a tax of this kind might fall upon the owners of different ground-rents would arise altogether from the accidental inequality of this division. But the inequality with which it might fall upon the inhabitants of different houses would arise not only from this, but from another cause. The proportion of the expence of house-rent to the whole expence of living is different in the different degrees of fortune. It is perhaps highest in the highest degree, and it diminishes gradually through the inferior degrees, so as in general to be lowest in the lowest degree. The necessaries of life occasion the great expence of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expence of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
SMITH, WEALTH OF NATIONS at 793-794 (Book V, Chapter II, Part II, ?71) (emphasis added).
Of the Expence of Defence
The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force. But the expence both of preparing this military force in time of peace, and of employing it in time of war, is very different in the different states of society, in the different periods of improvement.
SMITH, WEALTH OF NATIONS at 653 (Book V, Chapter I, Part I, ?1)
See also, Ronald David Greenberg, Class, Economic Inequality, and American Dream? Adam Smith: progressive income tax (Dec. 3, 2016 (last revised Aug. 6, 2017)), https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/class-ronald-david-greenberg/.