December 19, 2003

The Death of Horatio Alger

Paul Krugman has a column in The Nation saying basically, that in modern America, it's getting close to impossible to climb up the socioeconomic ladder.

Definitely stick around for Page 2 of the column, where Krugman explains the ideal recipe for a stratified, caste-ridden society. And guess what? We're there!

Thomas Piketty, whose work with [Emmanuel] Saez has transformed our understanding of income distribution, warns that current policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete."

Sound familiar? Can a VH-1 "I Love the 1790s" be that far off?

Comments

Before WWII, we had a much more class-stratified society. It wasn't uncommon for people with genius-level IQs, who worked hard and did well in high school, to never go to college (indeed, to not even graudate from high school). The GI Bill and then general prosperity made the country much closer to a meritocracy in the 1950s-1970s.

To that extent (i.e., largely), young and middle-aged poor people in this country (at least those born here), are now more likely to be poor for reasons other than that there parents were poor, because their parents being poor generally reflects some broader failure or bad choices (drinking too much, dropping out of HS, single-parenthood) or limited potential (e.g., low IQ).

Dysfunctional behaviour and IQ are correlated between parents and their children, whether genetically or environmentally.

We should not be surprised that mobility is decreasing, because the categories of people are now changing, and poor, highly intelligent, industrious children are considerably rarer now than 50 years ago.

Unless you believe that the 1960s and 1970s were not more meritocratic than the 1920s (which is refuted by the very statistics we're talking about) or that a child's potential has zero statistical correlation with that of his parents, you should expect measures of mobility to decrease, even if the culture and economy are now equally supportive of economic mobility (i.e., even if a given poor, intelligent, industrious young adult can advance now as much as was the case a generation or two ago).

Posted by: David Pittelli at December 21, 2003 10:32 PM

I don't know what the answer is. Obviously, not every kid in America has some latent untapped genius potential in him/her. But also, it's clear we're in a society that looks for quick fixes and overnight success; to vault from poor to rich and famous these days seems to be based largely on lucky genetics (think LeBron James) or some lightning bolt of being in the right place at the right time.

The dour gloomy cynic in me fears that hard work isn't rewarded anymore (why promote someone who's put in 70+ hours/week, and actually has first-hand experience, into management, when you can hire someone with a glossy MBA and a nice tie?), and that creativity and ingenuity aren't rewarded anymore (where will the next generation's brilliant artists and novelists come from, since their life's probably been spent zonked out on PlayStation and/or Ritalin?).

Add another bit of evidence into my "hell-in-a-handbasket" theory of Western Civilization.

Posted by: michael at December 23, 2003 01:58 AM

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