Is there a growing "American underclass," and who's in it?

Great Debates
41

Some good points dude and featherlou. One comment of dude’s struck me particularly:

*I think its a natural state that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer and its only intervention by the state that can halt this. *

What interests me about this is that judging from your posts, you don’t seem particularly leftist or “socialistic” and you certainly don’t hate the rich, yet you agree that the “natural” state of things is not particularly good for the poor and that government action is required to correct it. I think that a lot of people in the UK and Europe, as well as most economists, would tend to agree with that (and it makes sense to me).

But here in the US, I think we have a very common popular perception that’s more optimistic: namely, lots of people feel that the “natural state” is for everybody to get richer, and if the poor get poorer, it must be either because of their own irresponsibility and moral turpitude or because Big Government is screwing everything up. We seem to have a very strong bias in favor of a sort of “market populism” which holds that the natural action of capitalism is always the best thing for everybody. It’s pretty rare in this country to find someone seriously criticizing the negative effects of market actions, even in a mild and reasonable way.

America voted for Bush ( see tax cuts ).

Um, maybe; we’re still trying to figure that one out. :slight_smile:

*Either the poor are not voting OR they are voting for the wrong party OR more people care less. *

All of the above, IMHO. Only about 1/3 of the eligible voters with an income of $10,000 or less vote, whereas over 2/3 of those with an income above $50,000 do. Simultaneously, the conservatives have done a good job of presenting themselves as the party of “family values”, meaning that they retain the allegiance of many people who have strong feelings about various social issues like opposing abortion or gay rights or flag-burning, or supporting school prayer. I think that these issues are often used to distract non-rich conservative voters from the question of what’s really in their own best economic interest. Also, the widespread perception that the situation of most poor people is their own fault makes worrying about the rights of the poor seem almost immorally foolish to many people.

*I think a deeper question here is why didn’t the democrats help the poor more and how has america ended up with 2 ( mainly ) right wing parties. *

Good question, and related to featherlou’s remarks. The consensus seems to be that the “New Democrats” started swinging to the right in the 1980’s, in the hopes of attracting centrist swing voters, while assuming they could still hold on to their basic support on the left. When voters from that basic support bloc just stopped voting, they had to swing still further to the right to try to acquire more of the center to make up for it, and so it went on.

42

Dude makes a good question on why Americans voted into office, even though the inequality seems to growing. A Finnish politician had a nice theory on the phenomenon. He speculated that in the meritocratic society of today, where the best and the brightest get ahead in life, the poor will no longer have anyone to stand up for them. A culture of indifference will develop - the poor will be exploited but they won’t stand up for themselves because so many of those with exceptional ability have become wealthy themselves. It’s an interesting idea, even more so because the process would be very hard to change.

As somewhat of an aside, I’ve noticed a peculiar tendency in some right-leaning people, especially Americans or those who have lived there for longer periods, to glorify wealth. The idea of the wealthy deserving their comfort gets so far that it makes people advocate policies that damage themselves. This kind of behaviour actually scares me a bit. I have this picture in my head of a poor man taking from his meagre living to make a rich man more comfortable, talking about fairness when asked why he’s doing it.

43

That should be “voted a right-winger into office”.

44

Well that explains it.

Oddly enough we have a similiar situation here and even had at one point the poor voting for a right wing party due to the extremes of the left wing one.

The idea ( perhaps not total reality ) of new labour is that you have right wing economics BUT socialist welfare policies.

Labour champion the market and business, they say ‘go out and make lots of money !’ so we can give some away !

Your right, i do think goverment should move the money around for a fairer society, besides anything else, it means you live in a nicer country.

What is the point of having lots of tax breaks if you have to live behind high fences and are scared of going anywhere ?

In the end its quality of life that counts not wealth.

45

Quote from Kimstu: "… We seem to have a very strong bias in favor of a sort of “market populism” which holds that the natural action of capitalism is always the best thing for everybody. It’s pretty rare in this country to find someone seriously criticizing the negative effects of market actions, even in a mild and reasonable way…"

Quote from dude: "…Labour champion the market and business, they say ‘go out and make lots of money !’ so we can give some away !.."

The negative effects of market actions (by this I am assuming you mean consumerism and market driven economies )
and capitalism only seems to be questioned by a few people who run the risk of being labelled fanatics or nuts. Big
business, big money, and the government (the unholy trinity of consumerism) are not interested in having people thinking
for themselves, and making decisions about their consumerism based on their own lives, lifestyles, and needs, rather
than their envious wants. Most of the reason we have to buy “bigger, better, faster, more” is so that companies can make
more money, not just stay in business. There is no consideration given to “sustainable growth”; the only god that is
worshipped in business is “more profit”. Why do they need more profit? So the Board of Directors can make more
money. How much money does a Director need? More.

“Ah,” but you say, “If the businesses make more profit, that means they will hire more people and contribute more to the
economy.”

Unfortunately, this is not exactly true, because business has discovered that one of the easiest ways to make profit is to
reduce expenses like salaries and benefits, and work your existing employees even harder instead of hiring more
people. And the gov’t is very interested in making the big businesses happy, so they give them tax breaks, cut them some
slack on environmental controls, etc.

“Well, if people aren’t striving for things, and businesses aren’t growing and getting bigger, then the human race will
become stagnant and start regressing.”

Very debatable. I believe that sustainable growth is what every industry, employer, government, and private citizen should
be trying to attain; sustainable growth doesn’t mean stop growing and experimenting and creating new things, but doing
so in a mature and responsible way. I also believe that sustainable growth is very difficult to achieve, and will take a lot of
effort and thought to make it happen and keep it balanced. I also believe that most people (and the unholy triumvirate,
especially) are not interested in making hard, thoughtful efforts that will benefit everyone in the long run.

Okay, the truth is out. I’m a nut and a fanatic about capitalism/consumerism.

46

(Jeez louise, sorry about the formatting. It looked fine in preview!!)

47

If only Marx had said ’ lets tax the rich and help the poor’ instead of ‘lets take control of it all’.

I have no problem with free markets.

I also have no problem with wealth distribution, to be honest I think you Americans have become so scared of being called a commie or socialist your scared to say ‘wouldn’t it be nice to share a little ?’.

Its all about priorities, I remember when Bush senior said ’ this shall not stand’ about the gulf, i don’t see bush junior getting out of his limo in washington, walking over to some homeless people and saying ‘this shall not stand’.

What happened to war on want ?

Instead of countries trying to compete over being the most powerfull or rich perhaps they should compete on being the best place to live ( i think canada came number 1 according to a un survey ).

48

Yes

Unfortunately I’m in it.

49

Well who should get ahead if not the best and brightest? The stupidest and laziest?

Poor people are not a “class” like in India where once you are born into it, you can’t get out. If you are born a poor genius with drive and ambition, most likely you can figure out a way to work up to at lest the middle class.

Poor people are just the segment of our society without any money. An most of them are that way for a reason. MNost of them are either unmarketable, unskilled, uneducated, and/or unmotivated. I’m sure saying this makes me a horrible person, but its true.

Why shouldn’t someone who invested time, money and effort to go to college, get an MBA and bust his/her ass to become a director of a company earn $100,000 a year? Especially when compared to some guy who dropped out of high school to become a house painter or roofer. You can train anyone to do that in a day.

Where is it written that everyone has the right to live in a $400,000 home on 4 acres, drive an $70,000 SUV, and wear a pile of clothes from J. Crew?

50

357
I don’t think anyone has anything against making money by hard work, or being smart.

I once told the owner of a local buisness who had made it big time that I guess I had it all wrong. I always thought that if you work hard you will get paid more money.
His buisness was making millions at the time. He paid his salesmen very well but the crews that did the work were paid peanuts. Many of the jobs were never even looked at by the salesmen. But guess who caught hell if something went wrong.

The problem is in my opinion the middle men. Too many getting paid too much for doing little or nothing.

Also experience means nothing today.Employers don’t care if you have done a job similar to the one they have advertised.

51

Another thought

You seem to think that receiving an MBA is working hard. Granted I don’t have one but if you want to see hard work I’ll show you hard work.

52

I’m surprised at the amount of sheer resentment this thread has given vent to. It seems to me that (to go with what justwannano said) that people who work hard and have earned what they have are not the resented ones. The people who seem to be hated the most are those who don’t seem to work any harder than anyone else, yet make gobs of money and flaunt it through conspicuous consumerism.

Over the last few years, I have become convinced that the single greatest problem America faces today is greed. Remember Gordon Gekko saying "Greed is good. Greed works in Wall Street? Well, a lot of real people agreed with that sentiment both then and now. It’s not just that some people aren’t dong as well as others; it’s that some people are doing a whole lot* better than the rest. People have pontificated on a million different reasons for this, but it doesn’t really matter what caused this state of affairs as it does what we are going to do about it. After all, things were much, much more inequitable in the late 1900’s. Then, a few thousand people controlled the vast majority of the wealth in the United States, while average workers were exploited and lived in poverty and misery.
It may not be pretty to think about for some, but the saving grace of the blue-collar worker in the U.S. was organized labor. Unions that went on strike, and stayed on strike until management caved, were what finally got honest wages for the average man. (Plus some government intervention; I’m oversimplifying, I know) Unless someone has a better idea, I can think of no better solution for todays exploited classes than to do two things: 1-Get a good education. It’s been made a lot harder in recent years to pay for, but it can still be done. 2- Unionize. I never thought a quasi-Republican like myself would say it, but I have come to really believe it. Unionization is the one force that management fears. It’s lot tougher to jerk a union around than it is individuals. The power that every individual person has must be concentrated, and unions offer the only proven mechanism to do this.

Maybe if we all work at it, the playing field can be made truly level, so that everyone who puts out the same amount of work makes the same amount of money.

53

Guh! Preview preview preview…

And I meant the late 1800’s, not 1900’s.

54

Poor = lazy / stupid ?mmm

But… that’s a different thread, nature versus nurture and all
that. Genes ARE important BUT so is a loving family, good schools etc.
When the race starts we aren’t all at the same place…

Some people do move up the ladder and some go down as well (natural selection is blind to class) BUT its probably easier to move down than up.

To summarise the thread so far.

Is there an underclass?
Yes

Why?
Lack of policy from government to address the issue of wealth distribution.

Why lack of policy?
Poor don’t vote so no votes in it and the non poor prefer tax cuts.

What about ‘the moral imperative’ of leaders?
They have none.

mmm, the new deal ‘we are moving to the suburbs, screw you !’

55

Msmith537, why such a need to create strawmen?
The bit you quoted was simple speculation on the effects a societal system has on the poor. There were no value judgments included at all.
I’m really getting tired of knee-jerk reactions like yours, so please read my posts more carefully before replying in the future.

It’s fairly obvious that you can’t keep down those with ability, and that’s part of the reason why the process I described would be difficult to stop.

56

Quote Dude

Why lack of policy?
Poor don’t vote so no votes in it and the non poor prefer tax cuts.
So why don’t the poor vote?

As I see it there was no politician that ran that had any perception of the problems of the poor.

Lets take a look at the two presidential frontrunners.
Both are 2nd generation politicians.
That at least partially removes them from the needs of the poor. There aren’t many poor that have access to policy makers, therefore no voice.

Neither man has been in need of anything in his life,except perhaps recognician, often a “need” of the affluent.

I believe that it was GW that wanted churches to take more of a role in the care of the poor. That was an option before the Civil Liberties Union. There has to be some contact between the Gov and churches to make that option work.

Many of the poor are proud people and wouldn’t ask for help anyway.

57

An MBA is not “work”. An MBA teaches you how business works.

I will now give some of my knowledge to you for free:

Your value as an employee is not based on how “hard you work”. It’s based on end results. If a manager can pay someone else less money to get the same results, you’re gone. There are no A’s for effort.

Director’s and CEOs make a lot of money because they are the boss. They make decisions that can effect 10, 100, or even 100,000 workers. Regardless of what you think of “how hard they work”, it is a job that takes a great deal of skill and talent. Skilled and talented people cost money.

People don’t really become rich by “doing what they love” unless other people also love what that person is doing (and want to pay them for it).

and finally

Anyone can dig a ditch. Not everyone can direct 50,000 ditch diggers to build the Panama Canal. Thats why engineers get paid more than ditch diggers.
What’s my point? Society place more value on some skills and abilities than on others. Because of that there will always be “rich” and “poor” people. The secret is to find out what rich people do and then go study how you can do it.

58

Yes, its true the politicians are from cushy backgrounds and that is probably a major part of the problem.

The poor need social justice, not pity.

As for some skills being worth more than others, thats true, thats market economics.

The point really is that most of us, deep down, feel it would be a better world if the poor were better off and its better to take from the rich than take from the middle class to pay for it !

59

357
Partially true

I’ll bet you’ve never dug a ditch in your life.
It does not take much skill???
Your right if you are not very good at it.
It takes strength and endurance.
You know ,like a football player.
FYI Most of the earth in the panama canal was moved by machine.No skill Huh.
Also there were assuredly more technicians on the job than engineers.
If the canal was left to the engineers it would only be lines on paper.
Did you see the special on the canal on Discovery a month or so ago??

I suppose there are a few independent CEOs that make all the decisions themselves like your description says but I’ll bet that there are more that rely on information from others. You know like those technicians.And the technicians rely on the others that do the work.

Your CEO and Engineer are only small cogs that get paid a lot.

60

One factor that hasn’t really been touched on yet in this discussion, and it pertains to msmith’s statement here: poor people aren’t necessarily any or all of the things stated here. A number of poor people are average in almost every way, but weren’t born with the advantage of having a leg up from birth.

It is easier to get from having $1000 to having $1000 000 than it is to get from $0 to $1000. You have to have money to make money, and if you start life off without money, it is a very difficult thing to get more. Life’s equations seem to be balanced that way. Most people are average at most things, and starting off well behind other people with more advantages isn’t making getting ahead any easier for most. Having those advantages supplied by an outside party might make the playing field a little more level for people who are born without, rather than with.