CDZ How the Other Fifth Lives

[Fishlore]

For years now, people have been talking about the insulated world of the top 1 percent of Americans, but the top 20 percent of the income distribution is also steadily separating itself — by geography and by education as well as by income.

This self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/o...-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

 

[320 Years of History]

For years now, people have been talking about the insulated world of the top 1 percent of Americans, but the top 20 percent of the income distribution is also steadily separating itself — by geography and by education as well as by income.

This self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/o...-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

What point are you aiming to make by highlighting that article?

I think the author missed a salient point: "upper middle" is still middle and not upper. For as pleasant as an upper middle class existence is, or is for folks who live within their means as upper middle earners/possessors of wealth, it is not so cushy as that of upper income lifestyles, not by a long shot.

If one reads this forum, one'd surmise that there is great disdain folks who were not "to the manor born" and who therefore followed what has long been the road to realizing the American Dream.

1. Go to school, study hard and do well (finish in the top 10% to 20%).
2. Go to college, study hard and do well (finish in the top 10% to 20%). Here one has two basic choices: (1) pursue a field that has a well defined path to a career, or (2) pursue a course of study that doesn't but perform in the top 5% so as to set one's self apart from the hoi polloi in the competition for the best jobs.
3. Begin to work, be a consistently high performer, and grow one's career in order to earn a good wage.
4. Enjoy the American Dream. Enjoy the fruits of having laid a foundation for actually achieving the American Dream.

That is precisely what folks in the upper middle class have done forever; it's precisely what they've taught their children to do, and, surprise surprise, it works as advertized. Now, editorialists like Mr. Edsall discuss their having done so as though there's something wrong with upper middle class citizens having believed the promise, executed on it, and subsequently found the promise was genuine. Really?

Mr. Edsall writes, "The trends at the top and the bottom ... fracture the United States more and more into a class and race hierarchy." Class hierarchy? When has there ever not been a class hierarchy? Never by my reading of history. Quite frankly, as long as some people earn and amass more wealth than others, there will always be an economic hierarchy. As goes the race hierarchy, the U.S. is working on that, and to be sure it could do a better job of it, but that too is ebbing, albeit too slowly. That said, what I see among my peers is a divide on social justice issues but fairly uniform attitudes on economic ones.

No surprise there as ours is a "money matters" nation. In spite of having observed that outright racism likely exists in our society, it seems far less prevalent among the upper middle and upper income segments of our society than it does at lower economic levels. I attribute the dichotomy to folks in the top 20% seeing minority peers and not viewing them as any more or less of a threat to their own prosperity than they consider their same-race peers to be. People in the upper 20th wealth/income bracket aren't on the public dole and they don't want to be. Why would they? They've figured out how to avail themselves of the bounty the country has to offer.

Contrast the modality implemented by the top 20% with that of the remaining 80%. Look back as far as high school. What sort of lives do the kids who were in the top 10% of your class live? Step forward to college and answer the same question. Ditto re: graduate school. I'll wager that the majority of them are doing fine, even if they want to be doing better. Might there be some exceptions? Of course; there undoubtedly will be. But they are just that, exceptions. The short of it is that if one performs in the mid-range, one cannot expect more than what that performance level portends. That's far from failure, and it is a form of success, but it's also going to land one far from great success.

Mr. Edsall also writes of the "lack of leverage" among the members of the 80%. Did the man not get the email? The U.S. has a capitalist economy. That means that one must create one's levers, not expect them to be given as birthright. The only folks who have any justifiable reason for not being able to do just that are folks who've been denied a level playing field on which they had the opportunity to exploit their strengths to the same extent as everyone else. Like it or not, it all comes down to the choices one makes, and those one's parents make on one's behalf, early in life. Again, however, no surprise there; nobody ever said it wouldn't be that way.

 

[jwoodie]

This self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.

1. Finish school.
2. Don't have children unless you are married.
3. Stay married.
4. Don't do drugs.
5. Don't commit crimes.

LOL, is that what you mean by "self-segregation?"