I don’t know if this is a diary or not. If not, I apologize. But I felt it was important to say, and to hear what others are thinking. Disclosure: I teach economics at a major university in the Midwest.
Bob Herbert’s brilliant column is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so. Unfortunately what is NOT getting attention is the other half of the story: Why nothing he writes will matter, and why there is (to respond to the last question in teacherken’s excellent diary) nothing to be done about it as long as we believe in class "mobility" in this country.
In 8 bullet points, below.
• In this country we (especially young people, college-age) believe in class mobility. This is why our popular culture is filled with the trash that it is (i.e. television shows such as "How’d You Get So Rich?")
• An overwhelming majority of young people believes (or fantasizes) that someday they can become, or will become, or may become rich. I know this from surveying my students (hundreds in each semester; I teach in big lecture halls). Many are not rich now, but truly believe they will be...someday.
• As a result, income inequality—whether it is across households or across business owners v. workers—is simply not seen as a problem.
• To be specific, based on in-class surveys, the majority of college-aged persons I teach see nothing problematic with 1% of the households owning 33% of the wealth in the country because they honestly believe they will each be in that hallowed 1% someday.
• This is, of course, reinforced post-graduation through corporate incentive alignment programs, profit-sharing, 401Ks v. pensions, etc., all of which contribute to the underlying belief that an employee’s well-being is tied to a corporation’s well-being (i.e. profits).
• Consequently, there is huge reluctance among these young people to fault a system (or change a system) that they honestly believe—through popular culture and indoctrination—could work to their benefit someday.
• As a result, that most innocent of beliefs—that through hard-work and self-betterment a person can reap the benefits of his or her own efforts—creates an illusion (we might even go so far as to call it a delusion) that we should not seek to redistribute income, and that the disparity that Herbert addresses is simply the result of some people "working harder" than others.
• And although this only reflects my experience with college-aged persons, it’s also a fact of human nature that dreams die hard, and people hold on to hope for years and years, even when common sense tells us otherwise.
So, do we think anything will ever happen to change this? It’s horribly sad to think that the way to get people to wake up is to squelch optimism. But I just don’t know. Thoughts?