I wrote recently about the people who like to complain that America is being hollowed out, that we’re becoming a two-tiered society of haves and have nots, an hourglass economy where the rich get all the gains and the poor stand in place or fall further behind.
Here’s a slightly older example of the genre from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which is celebrating its 100th birthday:
"All over the world two classes were forming," wrote Sinclair in "The
Jungle." "The capitalist class, with its enormous fortunes, and the
proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen chains."
There is nothing new under the sun.
The quote is from a nice piece in today’s WSJ ($) by John Miller. According to Miller, Sinclair wanted The Jungle to spur a revolution, not meat inspections. Ah, the law of unintended consequences.
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Perception is reality. Then why does our society appear to be bipolar. The answer in my opinion is that the distribution of income is Chi-square (similar to normal curve except no one earns negative amounts). The peak is around say $30K (lower than median)- leading to the perception that there are lots of people making 'below average' and it is the truth that 50% of our population is below the median. The other most visible section of the population is the rich, even though they are few.
So you have two highly visible sets of people- rich and poor. The middle is invisible- leading to perception that there is no middle.
Only Honda, Toyota, Apple, A&F, etc. care to acknowledge the 'boring' middle.
I can beat that: The two-tiered society of Morlocks and Eloi in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" first appeared in print in 1895.
isn't this ignoring that in the u.s. (I'm assuming that's where you're speaking about) has a widening economic and education gap? while I agree it's an age old issue, it's been solved many times and by different means. To just assume something will come along and fix things seems a little naive.
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"So you have two highly visible sets of people- rich and poor. The middle is invisible- leading to perception that there is no middle."
Chaman, where do you live? You cannot be referring to the U.S. society I live in. Almost everyone in my world is middle-class. I come in contact with thousands of people each week: at the office building where I work; in my middle-class suburb; at shopping malls; at the airport. I never see poor people. Even the Mexicans who buy discarded clothes at rummage sales have driven to those sales in shiny new pickup trucks. The Spanish-speaking laborers who build homes for my brother live in larger apartments and drive far better cars than our middle-class parents had 50 years ago or than we had 35 years ago.
The few poor people I see in North Texas are most likely victims of an entitlement culture that robbed them of their self-worth. The opportunity to escape poverty is all around them. But they have succumbed the liberal lie that they cannot make it on their own, that they must have government help. That liberal lie is the source of their poverty.
"isn't this ignoring that in the u.s. (I'm assuming that's where you're speaking about) has a widening economic and education gap?"
Do you have any evidence for this rather bold assertion, perhaps beginning with a definition of what such a thing might mean?
John Dewey,
Just curious – by North Texas do you mean Wichita Falls or Dallas, because there is a world of difference between the two.
I live and work in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I'm sure you are correct: there is a world of difference between Wichita Falls and Dallas. But I don't think anyone in either city could claim that the middle class is invisible, which is the point Chaman had made. The middle class dominates the U.S. economy today, just as it has done for all of my 55 years living in it.
You don't have to look far to get statistics about the haves and have nots. The 1930's economy tended to bring the two sides closer together, unfortunately by reducing the wealth of the haves. Markets tend to rebalance when there is a need and the statistics are starting to resemble those of the 1920's. Is a repeat coming? No, we're too smart now. It's different this time.
I suspect Sinclair wrote 'The Jungle' to sell books not spur a revolution.
Any Sinclair scholars out there know what he was thinking at the time?
My guess about the hourglass. Visibility – flaunting of extreme wealth is no longer considered in bad taste, TV and Magazine coverage far beyond any previous time.
Life span – a successful person may now accumulate for sixty or more years. Thirty was a good run in 1900. The poorest, saving little, live longer as well but get no richer.
Sophisticated financial advice. One must be rather determined in order to make a small fortune from a large one today. Or pay large estate taxes.
Concentration. I believe the wealthy have fewer children to divide their estates today.
Implicit in the argument of the "Hollow Middle" crowd lies the notion that the problem is that the haves have too much. The remedy they propose is usually some redistribution scheme which punishes the evil haves for producing too much and rewards the naturally virtuous have nots for producing too little. I think that they also imply that we somehow have a bas society for allowing the haves to get away with having so much. I might be constructing a straw-man but I think that this is what these people mean.
I would say that the problem lies not with the havs but with the have nots. Since–in the absence of overly destructive taxation or destructive war–economic action always yields positive sums, shouldn't we blame the have nots for not having? In terms of producing the wealth which enables good lives, the haves are producing as much or more of their fair share while the have nots are failing to pull their weight. The problem is some people not having, it therefore makes no sense for the focus to be on the people who are not a problem; the haves.
Perhaps if there were not so many perverse incentives to be a have not; welfare, self-righteous liberals mounting misguided crusades in your honor, etc there wouldn't be so many have nots. Economic status is largely (not entirely) a product of the choices we make. The only way the "middle" will fill out is when there ceases to be a sector of the population that systematically chooses to underproduce.
Radical:
I'm surprised at your lack of clarity and common sense.
If you've got haves and have-nots and redistributionists as well, what the hell else would there be for redistributionists to do except redistribute? And naturally, since the have-nots haven't got anything with which to occupy the redistributionists'
efforts, the haves are the only candidates
left for their redistributing attentions.
Looks to me like it all works out perfectly.
Of course, any redistributionist worthy of the calling knows that you can't overdo things. Give the have-nots too much–wouldn't do at all. Best to take a piece for yourself rather than risk upsetting the have-nots' status and your own job security.
You're straight on this now, right?
Gene,
You're right, thank you. How could I have missed it.
It looks as though the redistributionists are the ones in the middle. In that case the middle can't hollow out soon enough.
Gene & Radical:
You two are a stitch. Just my $.04 (Increased for inflation):
We need to permit the Redistributionistas to be able to not only take from the successful, but to berate them in public, mock their work ethic and rise to great political power on that line of logic…. ooooops, already got that don't we.
Sorry….my bad.
Poor people have it made. They don't pay hardly any income tax! And those pricks in Africa with their big swollen bellies, I bet they don't pay any tax AT ALL! Maaaan, that's the LIFE!