NationStates Jolt Archive

NOTE: Many Americans have believed that the US was building the first truly "classless society." I have never thought this was possible. This first article in an excellent series by the New York Times tends to bear out my doubts. For those of you interested in class, economic equality, social issues, etc., this should be a very interesting series. I highly recommend it!


Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?)

By JANNY SCOTT and DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: May 15, 2005

There was a time when Americans thought they understood class. The upper crust vacationed in Europe and worshiped an Episcopal God. The middle class drove Ford Fairlanes, settled the San Fernando Valley and enlisted as company men. The working class belonged to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., voted Democratic and did not take cruises to the Caribbean.

ABOUT THIS SERIES
This is the first in a series of articles examining the role of social class in America today. A team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class - defined as a combination of income, education, wealth and occupation - influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity.

Monday: Class Is a Matter of Life and Death

Where Do You Fit In?
Enter your income, education, wealth and occupation. Also, a closer look at income mobility, public opinion and the intersection of income and education.

Today, the country has gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness. Americans of all sorts are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents. Social diversity has erased many of the old markers. It has become harder to read people's status in the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the votes they cast, the god they worship, the color of their skin. The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared.

But class is still a powerful force in American life. Over the past three decades, it has come to play a greater, not lesser, role in important ways. At a time when education matters more than ever, success in school remains linked tightly to class. At a time when the country is increasingly integrated racially, the rich are isolating themselves more and more. At a time of extraordinary advances in medicine, class differences in health and lifespan are wide and appear to be widening.

And new research on mobility, the movement of families up and down the economic ladder, shows there is far less of it than economists once thought and less than most people believe. [Click here for more information on income mobility.] In fact, mobility, which once buoyed the working lives of Americans as it rose in the decades after World War II, has lately flattened out or possibly even declined, many researchers say.

Mobility is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. It is supposed to take the sting out of the widening gulf between the have-mores and the have-nots. There are poor and rich in the United States, of course, the argument goes; but as long as one can become the other, as long as there is something close to equality of opportunity, the differences between them do not add up to class barriers.

Over the next three weeks, The Times will publish a series of articles on class in America, a dimension of the national experience that tends to go unexamined, if acknowledged at all. With class now seeming more elusive than ever, the articles take stock of its influence in the lives of individuals: a lawyer who rose out of an impoverished Kentucky hollow; an unemployed metal worker in Spokane, Wash., regretting his decision to skip college; a multimillionaire in Nantucket, Mass., musing over the cachet of his 200-foot yacht.

The series does not purport to be all-inclusive or the last word on class. It offers no nifty formulas for pigeonholing people or decoding folkways and manners. Instead, it represents an inquiry into class as Americans encounter it: indistinct, ambiguous, the half-seen hand that upon closer examination holds some Americans down while giving others a boost.

The trends are broad and seemingly contradictory: the blurring of the landscape of class and the simultaneous hardening of certain class lines; the rise in standards of living while most people remain moored in their relative places.

Even as mobility seems to have stagnated, the ranks of the elite are opening. Today, anyone may have a shot at becoming a United States Supreme Court justice or a C.E.O., and there are more and more self-made billionaires. Only 37 members of last year's Forbes 400, a list of the richest Americans, inherited their wealth, down from almost 200 in the mid-1980's.

So it appears that while it is easier for a few high achievers to scale the summits of wealth, for many others it has become harder to move up from one economic class to another. Americans are arguably more likely than they were 30 years ago to end up in the class into which they were born.

A paradox lies at the heart of this new American meritocracy. Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege, in which parents to the manner born handed down the manor to their children. But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children then succeed, their success is seen as earned.

[ This is page one of five! ] Read the entire article here (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?).

NOTE: Here's an interactive page where you can figure out where you fall in the American class system.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_01.html

NOTE: Find out where your education and income fit to place you in a "class."

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_02.html

NOTE: Here's how the US compares with Great Britian, France, Canada and Denmark as to income mobility:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_03.html

The after-tax income of the top 1 percent of American households jumped 139 percent, to more than $700,000, from 1979 to 2001, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which adjusted its numbers to account for inflation. The income of the middle fifth rose by just 17 percent, to $43,700, and the income of the poorest fifth rose only 9 percent.

Clearly, a degree from a four-year college makes even more difference than it once did. More people are getting those degrees than did a generation ago, but class still plays a big role in determining who does or does not. At 250 of the most selective colleges in the country, the proportion of students from upper-income families has grown, not shrunk.

Family structure, too, differs increasingly along class lines. The educated and affluent are more likely than others to have their children while married. They have fewer children and have them later, when their earning power is high. On average, according to one study, college-educated women have their first child at 30, up from 25 in the early 1970's. The average age among women who have never gone to college has stayed at about 22.

The benefits of the new meritocracy do come at a price. It once seemed that people worked hard and got rich in order to relax, but a new class marker in upper-income families is having at least one parent who works extremely long hours (and often boasts about it). In 1973, one study found, the highest-paid tenth of the country worked fewer hours than the bottom tenth. Today, those at the top work more.

Oh, for crying out loud! This is important stuff! So many posters on here raise hell about "class" and "economic equality" and yet they won't even comment on this???

Gimmie a break! :p

Wow, a quintuple post!

Wow, a quintuple post!

I've never seen anything like it!

Is that healthy in his age? ;)

Sorry Eutrusca, I couldn't resist, feel free to "flame" back.

I, for one, know that I'm overeducated, underfunded and underpractised to ever be anything "better" than middle class. Too bad.

Well, as long as I can buy a MOPAR sometime in my life. :/

Oh, for crying out loud! This is important stuff! So many posters on here raise hell about "class" and "economic equality" and yet they won't even comment on this???

Gimmie a break! :p

I don't think anyone dares. We from outside the States don't know enough about the subject, and within the States conservatives are either too unconditionally supportive of the rightness of their system to admit it does have classes or won't utter the word "class" for fear of its deterministic implications, and liberals dare not highlight the class system because they don't want to admit that, ultimately, it cannot be dissolved while capitalism prevails.

This is but the mainstream, of course. The very-rights freely admit the class system, generally calling it just or such, and the very-lefts shout about how socialism would dissolve it if only they tried.

Interesting, very interesting. I am very suprised to find out where I stand.

Me? I'll admit there's some sort of class system. People sort themselves into different groups naturally, by profession, by interest, hobbies, favorite foods, why not by economic status? I see no implication in the fact that there are economic classes besides the fact that people are naturally quite assortative. I see no reason for antagonism in the existence of classes, as each group benefits each other in varying different ways.

The decreasing mobility is a concern, but there might be reasons for that we haven't quite yet explored, perhaps as people get wealthier as a society, then the amount of wealth needed to shift class increases. Perhaps a physical example would be to take a ruler and a rubber band. You draw marks on the rubber band, and as you stretch it out, the marks become farther apart, and the further apart they become, more effort must be expended to cross each line?

Interesting post. It certainly is of interest to an anarcho-communist like me.

Economic class is fine and dandy and all...

But there's the issue of political aristocracy, which is much more of an issue.

Given the fact that political aristocracy and economic aristocracy seem to be fundamentally linked to each other, I'd say that one is no more or less important than the other, and if you ARE talking about one, you're talking about the other.

Of course, I totally believe there's a class society in this country. My father is horribly class-conscious and he almost refuses to be seen with people he deems to be 'below' him.

The Times is wrong in this case. The problem isn't that social mobility is impossible or difficult. It's that so many don't attempt it all!

It's true. The reason that schools in poor areas fail while schools in rich ones succeed is not a funding issue; often, more funding is given to the poor areas. However, it's a matter of parenthood. Rich parents tend to have their kids do well, poor ones do not. Many poor kids don't learn in school, don't attempt to succeed. Why? Because their role models are not lawyers, doctors, etc. Their role model is the "gangsta."

The Times is wrong in this case. The problem isn't that social mobility is impossible or difficult. It's that so many don't attempt it all!

It's true. The reason that schools in poor areas fail while schools in rich ones succeed is not a funding issue; often, more funding is given to the poor areas. However, it's a matter of parenthood. Rich parents tend to have their kids do well, poor ones do not. Many poor kids don't learn in school, don't attempt to succeed. Why? Because their role models are not lawyers, doctors, etc. Their role model is the "gangsta."

I really think there is a link between income and educational opportunities, though. I went to a poor high school and the most prevalent reason for poor parenting is the fact that the parents are at work, so they were never able to spend any amount of time pointing their kids on any kind of positive path. If rich parents can't be at home for whatever reason, they stick their kids in a million extracurriculars as mine did me or make sure they're being looked after one way or the other.

VERY interesting. Eutrusca, I'll be back when I have some time. In the meantime, TAG!