Lack of Hope in America: The High Costs of Being Poor in a Rich Land
(Dan here…I found Yves intro more appealing than the research…)
Yves here. While this article gives a very good high-level summary about how inequality is becoming institutionalized in American and the costs to those who see themselves as having lost the most, I wonder about the emphasis on hope as a remedy. Perhaps this is such a strong cultural bias in the US that there’s no escaping it as a motivator for most people. But I take to heart the interpretation of the Pandora’s Box myth that Hope being at the bottom of the box of all the evils she let loose was not a show of mercy by the gods, but simply a torment in disguise.
It’s not hard to imagine that the psychological damage done by loss of mobility and the relative status decline of lower-middle class individuals, particularly in rural areas, is made worse by media. Not only does TV show how the better-off half lives, TV and the movies regularly depict characters living in better circumstances than the incomes that go with their jobs would allow. One reason is that it’s almost impossible to shoot a scene in anything smaller than a pretty big room, so Americans (outside those meant to be upper class) in movies and TV look better housed than they generally would be in their real lives. And of course they all have great teeth.
Lack of Hope in America: The High Costs of Being Poor in a Rich Land is worth a quick read but I agree it is only a conversation starter for this blog. However, how our expectations are set and what we ascribe to ourselves and others is telling.
A little John Adams plus an interpretation. I have a whole paper on this.
“The poor man’s conscience is clear . . . he does not feel guilty and has no reason to . . . yet, he is ashamed. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles unheeded.
In the midst of a crowd; at a church; in the market . . . he is in as much obscurity as he would be in a garret or a cellar.
He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is not seen . . . To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.” John Adams
For the poor white man in the 19th century, poverty added the injury of being socially invisible when compared to a man of wealth or prominence. Society not acknowledging their presence created a class of insignificance effectively shamed into oblivion as a class not worthy of notice. Adams did not speak of the black man and Slavery took it one step further creating a stigma worst than that of poverty and more shame inducing. Slaves were economic chattel to be disposed of at the discretion of their owners without observance of their being at a separate class lower than that of the poorest white man. While not as overt in the 20th century, the distinction of black slave versus poor white man has kept the class system alive and well in the US in the development of a discriminatory informal caste system. This distraction of a class level lower than the poorest of the white has kept them from concentrating on the disproportionate, and growing, distribution of wealth and income in the US. For the lower class, an allowed luxury, a place in the hierarchy and a sure form of self esteem insurance.
“Hope” or measures thereof are but symptoms of causes. Until there is reason to address the causes, the symptoms remain or get worse.
Not coincidentally, the maps shown in the Yves article are very illuminating in relation to causes. If reason to address the causes depends on voters attitudes and if the maps are also an indication of voters attitudes then its pretty clear that the U.S. is trapped in a death spiral. Hope will not bring us out of it.
The U.S. general public keeps saying it doesn’t want a racist based class society, but it doesn’t vote that way. So either a major change in our political system must occur, or a serious enough problem must develop to change attitudes.
As far as the latter is concerned, the Civil War wasn’t serious enough, the Great Depression wasn’t serious enough, and the recent Great Recession just exacerbated things more.
Our political system hasn’t change though…. so from an empirical view of the solutions it looks to me like the political system is what has to change. I’m not sure how an entrenched system can change itself. In that sense perhaps then it can’t so IF that’s the case the political system will only change by externalities.
The system either get’s fixed or it persists and we continue down the primrose path as before, sinking deeper into a racist class based system..
Comment section gets covered by ad
I cannot make that happen Matthew ??
“Not only does TV show how the better-off half lives, TV and the movies regularly depict characters living in better circumstances than the incomes that go with their jobs would allow.”
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Just watched the first Superman movie again last night, and liked it. But it was funny – and Roger Ebert mentioned this in his review – that Lois Lane lived in a penthouse apartment with an enormous terrace. Sure, she’s a star reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper, but I don’t think she’s living there. But not as scenic having Superman swoop in through a window on the 5th floor, so penthouse it is.
Let me put a question are the 1950s the appropriate period to compare to today. How about the 1920s Take one of my late uncles born in 1911 and entering the job market in 1930 or so, with an 8th grade education: What opportunities did he have but another generation of farming which had rapidly falling employment as tractors became common. Or to go back a bit further, consider my grandparents married in 1910 who were farmers (she raised the chickens for eggs, while he did field work with 2 horse power tools (pulled by real horses)) what hope did they have for a better life? Or to go back 100 years consider Abe Lincoln growing up dirt poor on a farm not far from where my Grandparents farmed in IN. Lincoln had a will to improve himself.
The 1950s are the period where the only full power economy in the world was the US as most other developed countries were recovering from war damage.
I would like to see comparative studies of inequality in the 1920s the 1900s and 1880s (avoiding the 1893 depression, WWI etc)
Hollywood isn’t known as The Dream Factory for nothing. It’s said that movies helped people get through tough times, the Depression, WWII, etc.
From caveman days, we have used stories to help us make sense of our lives and times, teach cultural mores, and inspire ourselves. And yes, we used them to create ‘us vs them’ sagas, but those were against other tribes and nations, not usually within our own tribe.
The rise of marketing is even more insidious, IMO, because it adds the element of ‘have to have it – have to have it NOW’, in order to make that aspirational story come true.
TV has allowed advertising to become a constant hum in our daily lives. I think it’s far more corrosive than sitcoms that feature working class folks living in upper middle-class digs.