# American Dream & American Class **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 15, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947 "2005-05-15T17:37:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Arwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/51bf81/32.png) [@Arwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwin)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/1 "2005-05-15T17:37:55Z")
I’ve argued it earlier, that equal opportunities in the U.S. aren’t what they seem, and that the increasing divide between rich and poor is, in fact, a problem; so I was interested to read that [nytimes.com](http://nytimes.com) is doing a three-week special on the subject: [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?pagewanted=1](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?pagewanted=1) (free registration required) Here’s an excerpt: > [@nytimes.com article](#): > > One surprising finding about mobility is that it is not higher in the United States than in Britain or France. It is lower here than in Canada and some Scandinavian countries but not as low as in developing countries like Brazil, where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but frozen in place. > > Those comparisons may seem hard to believe. Britain and France had hereditary nobilities; Britain still has a queen. The founding document of the United States proclaims all men to be created equal. The American economy has also grown more quickly than Europe’s in recent decades, leaving an impression of boundless opportunity. > > But the United States differs from Europe in ways that can gum up the mobility machine. Because income inequality is greater here, there is a wider disparity between what rich and poor parents can invest in their children. Perhaps as a result, a child’s economic background is a better predictor of school performance in the United States than in Denmark, the Netherlands or France, one recent study found. > > “Being born in the elite in the U.S. gives you a constellation of privileges that very few people in the world have ever experienced,” Professor Levine said. “Being born poor in the U.S. gives you disadvantages unlike anything in Western Europe and Japan and Canada.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/2 "2005-05-15T17:46:46Z")
_Is_ there an increasing divide? Wealth in the U.s. runs along a continuum, doesn’t it? I can imagine the middle of the curve (i.e. the middle class) rising and falling, but I’ve been hearing about this increasing divide for years and it’s starting to sound like the killer bees that we were warned about in 1980, and 1984, and 1988, and 1991, and 1994, and 1997… ---
**Author:** ![RandomLetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8edcca/32.png) [@RandomLetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandomLetters)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/3 "2005-05-15T17:54:32Z")
And what’s the impact of large scale immigration on this - it could be that large amounts of poor immigrants that the US has received in the last couple decades are masking the effects of the native born middle class getting richer? ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/4 "2005-05-15T19:05:17Z")
> [@nytimes.com article](#): > > The founding document of the United States proclaims all men to be created equal. I’m sorry, I have to nitpick this. Only because I think it’s pertinent to this conversation on American Class. There is a huge difference when interpreting this statement with “…all men to be created equal”, and “…all men _ **are** _ created equal”, as it was originally quoted in the Declaration of Independence. The former is ambiguous, in that a reader could interpret this to mean that the wealth should be taken from the rich, and given to the poor, to make them “equal”. Or maybe I’m overreacting. ---
**Author:** ![Arwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/51bf81/32.png) [@Arwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwin)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/5 "2005-05-16T10:07:11Z")
So, as the article already suggests, denial reigns supreme then … ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/6 "2005-05-16T10:17:48Z")
Not having read the article, I would imagine that it makes similar points to [this one](http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560) in The Economist. If the American Dream is that anybody from any level can get to the top, then it lags behind most of the industrialised democratic world in this respect. Social mobility in the US is such that the occasional bubble rises, but the drink is largely left _unstirred_. A “property rights _uber alles_” approach is how a democracy edges towards _pluto_cracy. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/7 "2005-05-16T13:48:59Z")
If anything, I suspect that increased education woud help with this. However, it’s rather early to panic. We don’t really know how this compares to most of US history. It might be normal, or a temporary aberration high or low. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/8 "2005-05-16T14:04:52Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > _Is_ there an increasing divide? Well… When the NY Times and The Economist agree, I think we can safely say “yes.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/9 "2005-05-16T14:08:13Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > If anything, I suspect that increased education woud help with this. For the divide between the middle class and the upper class, then I’m not convinced that education is the answer–both groups already _are_ well educated. ---
**Author:** ![Renob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8c91f0/32.png) [@Renob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renob)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/10 "2005-05-17T14:01:49Z")
An assumption that seems to be underlying this article is that everyone _wants_ to move up the economic ladder but that many people are somehow prevented from doing so: > [@](#): > > 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. Sorry, I don’t buy it. As the article points out, we live in a society where if you work hard (and work smart) you can succeed. Many people simply don’t do this. They prefer to live on welfare or don’t go to school to improve their skills. Nothing is preventing them from finding a job or going to school, they simply choose not to do so. It’s not as if it’s more difficult to move up, it’s just that there are quite a few people who refuse to do so. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/11 "2005-05-17T14:40:05Z")
> [@Renob](#): > > As the article points out, we live in a society where if you work hard (and work smart) you can succeed. Replace “can” with “increase your chances to” and I’ll agree. I will not agree that everyone who works hard can succeed. I don’t even know exactly what “working smart” would be, so I can’t address that. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/12 "2005-05-17T14:47:42Z")
Just from my own observations, it seems that there really are 3 classes in the US. 1. The poor, who usually through lack of education or opportunity, and/or bad choices generally work hourly jobs and have very little in the way of assets. Retail clerks, food servers, etc… are generally in this class. 2. The middle class. Generally educated, although hourly/non-hourly isn’t as much of an indicator here- people like surveyor crew members, tradespeople, unionized factory workers, teachers, IT people, financial analysts, etc… all fall in here. These people have moderate income (up to $200,000/yr, I’d say) and moderate assets (own a house, cars, sometimes securities, real-estate and other investments). 3. The rich. These folks generally speaking make a significant amount of money and also have significant assets, primarily in the way of financial assets or real-estate. These are the people whose bank accounts are more for keeping score instead of being a repository for money. I don’t believe that the poor have such insurmountable obstacles to becoming middle class- I’ve seen and heard of it happening too many times to believe otherwise. A person from the most humble beginnings can get a job paying $15/hr if he tries. That’s $31200/yr. Lower middle class, but still middle class. It’ll probably pay benefits too. However, making that middle-class -\> rich jump is tough. You either have to start out with extraordinarily good connections in a field known for paying well and get some financial help from your family, or you have to be extraordinarily successful in running and growing your own business. That’s where the real gap seems to be- making that jump from well-to-do yuppie to truly rich. Granted, there’s another education-related gap in the middle class, where you have college-educated people vs. non-college educated people. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/13 "2005-05-17T15:30:01Z")
I don’t agree that increased mobility is always a good thing. It’s spoken about as if more is better, period. What is ignored is that for each person going up, someone needs to go down. It sure sounds great to say that 50% of the bottom quintile moves up to the 4th, but it sounds less great to say that 50% of the 4th quintile drops down to the 5th. No matter how hard you work, 20% of the populace will be in the bottom 5th, I don’t think it is inherently better to have that fifth come from other quintiles. There is a level of mobility that allows people who work hard and are creative to improve their situation without having people all over the scale dropping like flies to make room. I’m not convinced that the US fails to reach this level. What matters is if the poor get opportunity to improve their lifestyle, not whether they can bump up a class and bump someone else down. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/14 "2005-05-17T15:54:57Z")
What makes you think it’s a zero-sum game? There’s no reason to believe that with the ongoing generation of wealth (note: generation, not redistribution) that people can’t rise in socio-economic status without a corresponding drop from someone else. In other words, just because someone becomes middle class, it doesn’t follow that someone else had to become poor for it to happen. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/15 "2005-05-17T15:56:15Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > We don’t really know how this compares to most of US history. It might be normal, or a temporary aberration high or low. The very way you frame that questions reflects an unstated and indefensible assumption of “American exceptionalism.” The important comparison here is not to U.S. history but to the rest of the contemporary industrialized world – because the latter, not the former, shows us what kind of society we could achieve if we tried with the tools now in existence. _The United States of Europe,_ by T.R. Reid ([http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594200335/qid=1116344363/sr=8-1/ref=pd\_csp\_1/103-4806280-7139840?v=glance&s=books&n=507846](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594200335/qid=1116344363/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-4806280-7139840?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)), an account of the economic and political rise of the European Union, devotes a chapter to “The European Social Model.” This chapter, like the social model itself, does not focus on “social mobility” in the sense of the poor rising to the top, but then I’ve always understood the “American Dream” to be one of basic material comfort for everyone, not extreme wealth – and the Europeans understand that at least some of the conditions for that can more equitably be provided by or through the state than the market. Europeans pay a sales tax or VAT ranging from 17.5% in the UK to 25% in Denmark and Sweden. This pays for their welfare state, including free or subsidized medical care and **higher** education. > [@](#): > > But if the burden is spread fairly equally, the benefits of public welfare programs in Europe are also distributed with a fairly even hand. To Americans, it is simply a matter of common sense that rich families get better medical care and education than the poor; the rich can afford the doctors at the fancy clinics and the tutors to get their kids into Harvard. But this piece of common sense does not apply in most of Europe. The corporate executive in the back seat of the limo, her chauffeur up front, and the guy who pumps the gas for them all go to the same doctor and the same hospitals and send their children to the same (largely free) universities. It’s not that the truly rich are resented, or hated, in Europe. People who have made billions in business – people like Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the budget-airline wizard from Cyprus . . . , or Britain’s Richard Branson, or Austria’s Dietrich Mateschitz . . . – are treated like heroes in their native countries. But no European would agree that a Stelios or a Mateschitz should get better health care or education just because they’re rich. > > This zeal for spreading the wealth fairly equally is reflected most dramatically in poverty rates. European nations certainly do have families living below the established poverty line (according to the definition preferred by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “poverty” means a family income at least 50 percent below the mean personal income in the nation as a whole). But they have a lot fewer poor families than the United States does. In America, about 20 percent of adults are living in poverty at any given time. In France, the comparable figure is 7.5 percent; it is 7.6 percent for Germany and 6.5 percent in Italy. Britain, with a somewhat leaner benefit system than its continental neighbors, has about 14.6 percent of adults in poverty. > [@Renob](#): > > As the article points out, we live in a society where if you work hard (and work smart) you can succeed. Many people simply don’t do this. They prefer to live on welfare or don’t go to school to improve their skills. You seem to assume the existence of public assistance is partly to blame for this. **Quite the contrary.** See above. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/16 "2005-05-17T16:14:27Z")
**bump** , it is a zero-sum game. There is always going to be a bottom quintile. If you are going to move people from the 5th quintile into the 4th, others are going to have to fill the 5th (quintiles assume an even distribution among 5 sections). Soceity can, however, improve the overall conditions of the 4th and 5th quintiles relative to their current positions, without necessarily moving people from one quintile to another. So your assertion that a move from lower-middle to upper-middle doesn’t mean someone else has to move to lower-middle to fill the gap is true. The lines, however, over time, will be redrawn. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/17 "2005-05-17T16:51:19Z")
bump, you are absolutely right that reality is not a zero sum game, but the way mobility is measured is zero sum. Break incomes out into fifths, then see who is in which fifth. If one person goes from 5 to 4 and nobody goes from 4 to 5, then they are not even fifths anymore. They’ll take the guy at the bottom of 4 and move him down to 5, even if he didn’t get any worse off. The suggestion is that since there are fewer people going from 5 to 4 that our poor have less chance to improve their lives by going “up” in economic status. It does not mention that the guy in 4 does have to move down to 5 and does not admit that this drop is as much a failure as having people stay where they are. Note how the discussion centers around the poor going up, and seems to dance around the idea of the not-poor going down. It also does not allow that being in the bottom fifth now may not be as bad as it was for their parent’s generation, so the poor may actually be better off even if they’re not in the 4th group. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/18 "2005-05-17T17:56:11Z")
> [@Renob](#): > > An assumption that seems to be underlying this article is that everyone _wants_ to move up the economic ladder but that many people are somehow prevented from doing so: > > Sorry, I don’t buy it. As the article points out, we live in a society where if you work hard (and work smart) you can succeed. Many people simply don’t do this. They prefer to live on welfare or don’t go to school to improve their skills. Nothing is preventing them from finding a job or going to school, they simply choose not to do so. It’s not as if it’s more difficult to move up, it’s just that there are quite a few people who refuse to do so. If that was the case, wouldn’t you expect western europe with it’s generous welfare system to be less socially mobile than the US? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/19 "2005-05-17T18:04:22Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > If that was the case, wouldn’t you expect western europe with it’s generous welfare system to be less socially mobile than the US? And there is actually more social mobility in France and Denmark (and Canada) than in the U.S. [http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515\_CLASS\_GRAPHIC/index\_03.html](http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_03.html) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dream-american-class/303947/20 "2005-05-17T19:37:55Z")
> [@Metacom](#): > > Well… > > When the NY Times and The Economist agree, I think we can safely say “yes.” 😃 Heh, well, I hope my skepticism is understandable, since the only times we ever seem to hear about the middle class these days are in dire warnings about its shrinkage, as though the middle class had spent the last few decades in a cold swimming pool. And I disagree that this skepticism equals “denial”.