The New American Dilemma by Jerome Karabel | Huffington Post | Posted: 05/16/2014 10:31 pm EDT Excerpts: "Some 70 years ago, the Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal published an incisive monograph on a searing question facing the United States - he named it "An American Dilemma." Myrdal and his associates were addressing the country's massive contradictions on matters of racial inequality, and concluded that the citizenry was riven by a legal, moral, constitutional commitment to equality, but still mired in Jim Crow laws and practices. Today, the country faces a new dilemma - the rise of an unequal distribution of income and wealth so extreme that it undermines that most American of values: that talent and hard work, not accidents of birth, should determine how far someone can rise. The basic facts about class division in America are well-known: the United States has the highest level of income inequality of any wealthy democratic country and faces the largest gap between the rich and the poor since the 1920s. But the question remains: how willing are Americans to do anything about it? The apparent tolerance of Americans for high levels of inequality has been a staple of foreign observers since the nation's earliest decades. Eight decades later, the German sociologist Werner Sombart wrote a book addressing the much-discussed question, Why is There No Socialism in the United States? In that classic 1906 study, Sombart cited many factors to explain Americans' aversion to ideologies of redistribution, but prominent among them was the greater opportunity for upward mobility in the United States: "The prospects of moving out of his class," wrote Sombart, "were undoubtedly greater for the worker in America than for his counterpart in old Europe." But Sombart's image of America as the land of opportunity, whatever its truth in the past, is now a myth; as a number of recent studies have demonstrated, the United States now has one of the lowest rates of upward mobility among the wealthy democracies1. Moreover, America's extremely high levels of inequality undermine upward mobility; in a well-documented pattern that social scientists have come to refer to as "The Great Gatsby Curve," the higher the level of inequality, the lower the rate of mobility There have been moments in our nation's history when Americans, challenged by difficult new conditions, came to support strong government policies to reduce inequality. The most transformative of these moments came during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Out of this crisis came a spate of government initiatives -- among them, the Social Security Act, the Wagner Act, the WPA, and the Fair Labor Standards Act -- that reduced inequality by strengthening labor unions, increasing taxes on the wealthy, establishing a federal minimum wage, and providing modest levels of economic security for the elderly and the unemployed. Three major community studies conducted in the 1930s - in Muncie, Indiana ("Middletown"), New Haven, Connecticut and Akron, Ohio - all found that even the harsh conditions of the Great Depression could not shake the commitment of the great majority of American workers, however sympathetic they may have been to the New Deal, to the "American way" of private enterprise and individual opportunity. The role of the American dream of advancement - for one's self and one's children -- remained alive, if a bit shaken, even under conditions of mass unemployment. Beginning in 2008, Americans have faced the nation's most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. There are, to be sure, some major differences; unemployment peaked in 2009 at one worker in 10 rather than one in four, and the nation's much higher standard of living as well as a stronger (if still porous) safety net have made it impossible to speak, as did FDR, of "one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished." Yet there are also some noteworthy similarities, including the arrival of economic crisis during a period of extraordinary - and increasing - income inequality. But perhaps the most striking similarity is the reluctance of the American people - even more pronounced now than in the 1930s -- to wholeheartedly embrace policies that call for muscular government action. The foundation of this reluctance is a deepening lack of trust in the federal government. From America's very founding, a deep-seated suspicion of centralized government power has shaped not only popular sentiment, but the very institutional arrangements enshrined on the Constitution. Nevertheless, when trust in government was high, as it was in the mid-1960s, the federal government could enact major policies to reduce poverty and economic insecurity. It was not a coincidence that some of the signature programs of the Great Society - Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty, and the expansion of Social Security - were enacted at a time when three in four Americans believed that you could "trust the government in Washington to do what is right all or most of the time." By 2010, trust in government had plummeted to an all-time low of 19 percent. But perhaps the most revealing figure compares the percentile of people viewing "big government" or "big business" as "the biggest threat to the country in the future." Despite Americans' mistrust of government, they are not happy with concentrated economic power; according to a 2012 study, just 30 percent of the public is satisfied with the "size and power/influence of major corporations." Nor is it the case - as some have claimed3 - that Americans don't care about inequality. On the contrary, Americans are quite unhappy with the distribution of income and wealth, with those dissatisfied outnumbering the satisfied by more than two to one (67 to 32 percent). And intense feelings are even more tilted against the status quo on inequality, with nearly four in 10 "very dissatisfied" and fewer than one in 10 who are "very satisfied." If Americans' mistrust of government and their commitment to limiting its role are obstacles to the enactment of policies promoting greater equality, they are hardly the only ones. Today's political system, which operates in a context of a radically unequal distribution of economic power, is far more responsive to the preferences of elites than to those of the middle class, much less the poor.. Moreover, the power of well-funded organized interests and the institutionalized tilt of the system towards inertia favor the current distribution of income and wealth, if not a drift towards even greater levels of inequality. Yet such a conclusion would be unwarranted because however ambivalent Americans may be about equality, they have no such ambivalence about an even more fundamental value: equality of opportunity. Belief in this cherished American ideal is almost universal. But Americans are increasingly worried that the United States is no longer the land of opportunity. As recently as the late 1990s, 81 percent agreed that "anyone who works hard can go as far as they want," compared to only 17 percent who thought that "the average person doesn't have much chance to really get ahead; by 2012, the gap had narrowed to 52 vs 43 percent. Americans' commitment to the value of equal opportunity has been steadfast; between 1984 and 2008, 82 to 91 percent agreed that "Our society should do whatever is necessary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed." Offering concrete and realistic policies to move towards this widely shared goal may provide a political opening for those committed to a more equal America. For, in the end, the very policies that would move the nation towards greater equality of opportunity - high-quality early childhood education, universal health care for children and their parents, and strong economic and social support for families -- overlap heavily with policies that would advance the cause of greater equality. Americans, in short, face a genuine dilemma. They would like a more equal distribution of wealth and income and are firmly committed to equality of opportunity, but they are deeply skeptical of the government, the only institution capable of enacting policies to move America in a more egalitarian direction. In particular, on the issue of equality of opportunity, Americans cannot have it both ways. As a series of recent studies have demonstrated, the very societies that have the most income inequality tend to rank lowest on equality of opportunity; this is why the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia have high rates of mobility, and highly unequal societies like the United States and the United Kingdom have low rates of mobility. Americans must choose. If they are truly committed to equality of opportunity, then they will have to demand vigorous measures to reduce the drastic levels of inequality that now divide the nation." read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerome-karabel/american-dilemma-income-inequality_b_5341029.html ....... IMO: Until American businesses started moving overseas for cheaper, untrained labor in 2006, leaving large portions of American workers without thier jobs, the growing inequality of upward mobility for American workers became a stopping point for workers to rise out of their class toward greater mobility in work status. It was then president G.W. Bush who turned a deaf ear to wholesale illegal entry into the U.S. that also had a resounding bad effect on the American workers' ability to rise in their class. So while the large corporations recorded great profits from illegals and overseas cheap labor, the American workers was studiously left behind. It appears we have much to thank or hate GW Bush for - it depends on whether you are a corporate CEO, an illegal, or a formerly hardworking, loyal American worker who suffered the most in either unemployment thru no fault of his own, or a low wage job that was impossible to live on. When do we wake up to the horrible injustice done to many formerly happy workers, who now are unemployed or part time workers at Walmarts at minimum wage - why aren't the Waltons, the Kochs, the Banks, the CEOs - all the corporations that have enjoyed fantastic profits while giving their workers minimum wages and no hope of achieving the American Dream...getting ahead thru hard work and striving for the good things in life that should be ours also.
John Steinbeck said “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” S'why you get all these working class or middle class ditto-heads who have been convinced "One more big tax cut for Rush and I'LL become a millionaire too!!!!!"
And Obama did not reverse the trend? WTF was he doing all these years, playing golf and hanging out with celebrities, maybe?
The Democrats won't reverse it either. Progressives are the leading champions of a "Global Economy", but tell their useful idiots that they are for American workers and the little guy. The useful idiots then parrot the talking points about wealth inequality, offshoring, outsourcing, trade agreements, etc. But go on to continually support and elect the very same people who are doing this and they STILL don't see it.
Too busy golfing and sliding his butt to give a hoot. Well, we got two for one, our first black President and our first adolescent.
Ha ha ha, just the image an American president wants to project. I'm (*)(*)(*)(*)ing ashamed of being lead by the clown.
I wish this was not another of the endless cut and pasted assembly line screeds from the huffington post. If Jerome Karabel were here i would tell him that free trade with china thanks to bill clinton and a crappy lib public education and an anti business attitude by obama are the reason that so many good jobs have left the country. But the truth is that most libs do not really care about jobs. As long as they have der black fuhrer and the wipe every nose nanny state to feed them libs can sit home and write rap music while illegal aliens from mexico do the work.
Can you make a post without dropping rush's name? - - - Updated - - - We have massive income inequality in America because we have massive genetic inequality in America.
Outsourcing and over regulating started in the 70's with Nixon and was carried out by every president afterwards, and cronyism capitalism, banking protectionism, hostile takeovers and the deliberate extermination of the mom and pop/small business model, started in the 80's, even though small businesses saved the day economically back then. The free trade BS started with Bush I and was implemented by Clinton. Bush II took care of 'his people' and started the blatant in your face, too large to fail trend, and Obama has followed it through just like a good little corporate foot soldier/sock puppet.
Absolutely. Government loves business and business loves government. Of, by and for the people is now of, for and by corporations.
Yea, here's another gem we all remember the current administration is famous for - makes us so proud of our dear leaders...
Since its HuffPo, we can safely assume this knucklehead favors government-enforced equality of economic outcome. That's a big step down the road to being like Cuba.
