The birth of a new american aristocracy?

[Chose]

I came across this article in the Atlantic and thought it was interesting, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/. It's quite long but here are some quotes for this discussion, highlighting who "the 9.9 percent" are, what advantages they have, and how hard it is to move in and out of this group:

So what kind of characters are we, the 9.9 percent? We are mostly not like those flamboyant political manipulators from the 0.1 percent. We’re a well-behaved, flannel-suited crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists, mid-level investment bankers, M.B.A.s with opaque job titles, and assorted other professionals—the kind of people you might invite to dinner. In fact, we’re so self-effacing, we deny our own existence. We keep insisting that we’re “middle class.”

Imagine yourself on the socioeconomic ladder with one end of a rubber band around your ankle and the other around your parents’ rung. The strength of the rubber determines how hard it is for you to escape the rung on which you were born. If your parents are high on the ladder, the band will pull you up should you fall; if they are low, it will drag you down when you start to rise. Economists represent this concept with a number they call “intergenerational earnings elasticity,” or IGE, which measures how much of a child’s deviation from average income can be accounted for by the parents’ income. An IGE of zero means that there’s no relationship at all between parents’ income and that of their offspring. An IGE of one says that the destiny of a child is to end up right where she came into the world.

According to Miles Corak, an economics professor at the City University of New York, half a century ago IGE in America was less than 0.3. Today, it is about 0.5. In America, the game is half over once you’ve selected your parents. IGE is now higher here than in almost every other developed economy. On this measure of economic mobility, the United States is more like Chile or Argentina than Japan or Germany.

The story becomes even more disconcerting when you see just where on the ladder the tightest rubber bands are located. Canada, for example, has an IGE of about half that of the U.S. Yet from the middle rungs of the two countries’ income ladders, offspring move up or down through the nearby deciles at the same respectable pace. The difference is in what happens at the extremes. In the United States, it’s the children of the bottom decile and, above all, the top decile—the 9.9 percent—who settle down nearest to their starting point. Here in the land of opportunity, the taller the tree, the closer the apple falls.

The sociological data are not remotely ambiguous on any aspect of this growing divide. We 9.9 percenters live in safer neighborhoods, go to better schools, have shorter commutes, receive higher-quality health care, and, when circumstances require, serve time in better prisons. We also have more friends—the kind of friends who will introduce us to new clients or line up great internships for our kids.

These special forms of wealth offer the further advantages that they are both harder to emulate and safer to brag about than high income alone. Our class walks around in the jeans and T‑shirts inherited from our supposedly humble beginnings. We prefer to signal our status by talking about our organically nourished bodies, the awe-inspiring feats of our offspring, and the ecological correctness of our neighborhoods. We have figured out how to launder our money through higher virtues.

Do you agree "the 9.9 percent" is a legitimate class? If so, how much of the wealth imbalance should be blamed on them? How should people in this group fight "for opportunities for other people’s children" and alleviate the wealth imbalance... or is it just a matter of the federal government taxing them more and more?

 

[metalhead]

These are the people that have sway over local politics, that do things like keep lower income housing away from desirable locations that hurts the social and economic mobility of people lower than them on the economic ladder.

 

[civvver]

College is too expensive basically. You either go into massive debt and can't ever recover or your parents pay for you, which is what these 9.9% people do. Other opportunities matter like knowing people for internship opportunities and such but the biggest separator is education.

And we've lost most of the good paying blue collar jobs you could get without college as well. But that's due in large to globalization so really we have to push our workforce upwards.

 

[rah]

There are still quite a few of those good paying blue collar jobs in the trades. Trade school is a better investment for many.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, but that's where all the yucky people who are too stupid to be ashamed are.

 

[civvver]

There are still quite a few of those good paying blue collar jobs in the trades. Trade school is a better investment for many.

Yeah that is a very good alternative but trade schools aren't emphasized at all, at least not from my experience. It was always what colleges are you applying to, and those who weren't likely to go it was what family business can you get into? You only got into a trade if like your uncle or friend's dad ran a roofing company or something. I never once heard a guidance counselor recommend an hvac school or something.

I think technical degrees are going to start to erode into more trade type of schools actually because you don't need semesters of liberal arts to write code or solve it issues, just some specific courses. That would drop the cost of college a lot.

 

[warpus]

Yep, socioeconomic mobility is not very good in the U.S. and it's getting worse.

It's not great here in Canada, but from what I remember reading it's better

Unfortunately for as long as $$$ and corporations rule your country, this isn't going to improve

 

[Hygro]

I always liked the name “the aspirational 14%”

 

[Narz]

I don't get the point. Are we supposed to be jealous of them? Feel bad if we are one?

I see alot of these "some people have it better than others" articles... like "yeah, what's your point?"

Also, "aristocracy" is a weird word choice. Semi-rich people are not aristocracy.

 

[dutchfire]

In the Netherlands, schools in poor neighbourhoods receive more funding. In the US...

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Trade school is sort of an option, but it's getting mentioned a lot here without the mention of costs. Yes, it's cheaper than a 4 year degree. But when I looked into it last year trade school would have still cost me 40 thousand dollars to graduate from.

 

[rah]

Was it a trump trade school?

The point is that it's still cheaper and there is a demand for many of the skilled trades, unlike the demand for Liberal Arts graduates.

 

[metalhead]

A lot of people aren't cut out for a career in the skilled trades.

I don't get the point. Are we supposed to be jealous of them? Feel bad if we are one?

I see alot of these "some people have it better than others" articles... like "yeah, what's your point?"

The point is that the upper-middle class is hoarding all of the opportunity in America. We would all be better off if that stopped happening.

 

[luiz]

Trade school is sort of an option, but it's getting mentioned a lot here without the mention of costs. Yes, it's cheaper than a 4 year degree. But when I looked into it last year trade school would have still cost me 40 thousand dollars to graduate from.

But at least if you get a loan to go to a trade school, you'll be able to pay it back. If you take a loan to go to a crappy college or to get a degree for which there aren't many job opportunities, odds are you'll be in trouble.

---

At the end of the day no model is perfect and never will everyone be pleased. The German educational model gets a lot of praise - and I agree it deserves praise - but people forget how brutal and exclusionary it can be. Which is a price they pay and it works very well for them. But I'm not sure Americans would like it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The point is that the upper-middle class is hoarding all of the opportunity in America. We would all be better off if that stopped happening.

Still not really answering luiz's question, and it's not trivial to make viable/enforceable polity that can accomplish a vague outcome like "some arbitrary stratification of people stops "hoarding opportunity"", where "opportunity" is itself vaguely defined.

 

[metalhead]

Still not really answering luiz's question, and it's not trivial to make viable/enforceable polity that can accomplish a vague outcome like "some arbitrary stratification of people stops "hoarding opportunity"", where "opportunity" is itself vaguely defined.

Ok, start here if you want concrete examples of what I'm talking about.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Was it a trump trade school?

The point is that it's still cheaper and there is a demand for many of the skilled trades, unlike the demand for Liberal Arts graduates.

Nah (about it being Trump lol). The average for trade school is like 35k so it wasn't far off. It's more than, say, a two year degree at a community college, and while the pay is theoretically better, there's also potentially a lot of licensing and continuing education fees depending on the trade. There's also not a lot of ready info on them. I can quickly google and find all kinds of local "trade schools" with "Medical" or "Beauty" in the name with 2 star reviews on Google. But if I want to find a seemingly well reputed school it's a hike. And at that point, I'm better off seeing what trades my local community college offers, since they usually have many on hand, and it's a lot closer.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ok, start here if you want concrete examples of what I'm talking about.

Still not answering the question, and an arbitrary opinion piece doesn't address what I said either.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think the top 10% don't understand their luck. But that's not where the wealth imbalance is.

 

[metalhead]

Still not answering the question, and an arbitrary opinion piece doesn't address what I said either.

The piece explains quite clearly how people atop the economic ladder systematically exclude people of more modest means from opportunities for them or their children to improve their lives. They do this by imposing costs for improvement that can only be reasonably afforded by those who are already in the top 20% or so in terms of income and/or wealth.

I thought you were asking for clarification regarding who is doing the "hoarding," and what exactly is meant by "opportunity." The piece I linked to spells that out and gives examples. You can disagree with it, but I'm not sure what you're asking about, if not an explanation of the "who and what" is involved in hoarding opportunity in America.