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"The big difference is that most of the people on the highest rung in America are in denial about their privilege. The American myth of meritocracy allows them to attribute their position to their brilliance and diligence, rather than to luck or a rigged system."
I think the wealthy having the ability to hold onto their wealth is a big merit...
so what's this about the myth of meritocracy? the nation is build upon wealth, not how "smart" someone is, or how much physical labor someone puts in. This isn't called the country of bibliophiles or country of hard labor.
if the smartest hard working person is dumb enough to get drunk and lose his money, he will end up working his entire life... at least a wealthy person who sits around all day, if he wants to stay wealthy, knows how to control his spending habits.
how come you guys think managing/having money isn't a merit?
It may be nearly impossible for someone in the bottom 20% socioeconomically to move up to the top 20% in their lifetime.
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I did. How about from Section 8 to the top 5%? I did that too and I did it in only 20 working years. All of it done working a job that has a base requirement of a GED. Simply hard work and being willing to suffer to achieve the end goal was all it took. The connections and networking I did along the way were integral to my success.
It's not impossible. It just takes an amount of effort that the vast majority of the population is unwilling to put forth. It's far easier to complain about how difficult a task is than to actually perform a task.
I think the wealthy having the ability to hold onto their wealth is a big merit...
so what's this about the myth of meritocracy? the nation is build upon wealth, not how "smart" someone is, or how much physical labor someone puts in. This isn't called the country of bibliophiles or country of hard labor.
if the smartest hard working person is dumb enough to get drunk and lose his money, he will end up working his entire life... at least a wealthy person who sits around all day, if he wants to stay wealthy, knows how to control his spending habits.
how come you guys think managing/having money isn't a merit?
It most definitely is a merit! This is why I have particular respect for persons who are unambitious and perhaps lazy, but also circumspect and modest in their habits. We expect our wealthy people to be paragons of altruism and community service – because, you know, that makes their being wealthy more “moral”. But why must it be so? Why must the son of a wealthy man take over the company’s reigns? Surely it is stupid for him to become a playboy or a junky, but what if he spends a lifetime in a brookside cabin, writing poetry, while the good people at Vanguard manage his wealth?
The point is that if the wealthy “deserve” their wealth, it becomes incumbent upon them to stay frenetically busy, to work long hours, to make public appearances and ribbon-cuttings and charity-balls and so forth. Whereas in a more aristocratic country with a feudal tradition, where nobody has illusions about “justifying” wealth or deserving it, nobody reproves the affluent for living quiet lives of passive leisure.
This article touches on a lot of things. But I can't say that it's incorrect.
I never considered my upbringing to be upper class or even upper middle class. I didn't realize I was until I went to a private high school, where there were parents that were truly working class working to send their kids to a Catholic High School and I saw that I probably was.
My dad didn't consider his father to be rich either. His dad worked, hard, a lot. My dad saw that.
My dad worked, a lot. I saw that.
We didn't have cable. "Can't Afford it," he'd say. I'd ask and he'd show me a newspaper advert offering it for $37/month. He'd tell me to multiply by 12. Then he'd ask if I had the $400+ to buy cable.
He drove nice-ish cars, but used cars. He hasn't bought a new car since before I was born.
Mom got new cars, but we kept them awhile, and they weren't flashy or expensive. She drove a Buick Wagon, Honda Van, Volvo Wagon.
We didn't have trips to Florida or Mexico on Spring Break. One year we went to Washington DC and that area and did a lot of sightseeing, but most years we didn't go anywhere or went to see my Mom's family several hours away. Summer vacations were to the cottage my Grandparents owned.
He did provide me with a college education, debt free, same to my brothers.
There is something that I didn't appreciate, and I rarely see talked about. And that is the level of guidance that people like my father or my grandfather can provide to their children when it comes to career decisions, and how to handle money. I saw it when I graduated college, something that my friends with parents of a more working class background didn't have, and that was a career coaching. If I said I was looking at XYZ job in ABC corporation, he would have input on what it could lead to, what it was going to do for me in the long run, etc...I didn't look at jobs because "that looks neat." I looked at jobs with a conscientious long term outlook, and that I think that that is the long term legacy going back at least two generations that has made a big difference.
When you tell someone that is working a lot, who has chosen to pay a lot of property tax to live in a nice neighborhood in good school districts that he's wealthy, he's likely to resent it, or tell you that its a result of choices he's made. And there is something to that. Even when there are outside forces that have helped him a long.
ETA: There are some things that can be done to level the playing field, but those aren't easy. Minnesota has implemented open enrollment at their schools, meant to level the playing field for parents willing to drive to the next town over for schools. In the south, schools are administered on the county level, which helps somewhat. However, in some places the middle and upper middle class work hard and have worked hard to send their kids to private schools in the wake of integration. This legacy continues in some places. In other places, like Raleigh, it hasn't been the case, but I think that's because of a huge influx of northerners.
You can't force people do put their kids in suboptimal schools by legislation.
We had a 10 star elementary school in our neighborhood (homes $400k-over $1 mil). They started busing in kids from poor
apartments south of here. Everyone in the neighborhood left the school (sent kids to private or petitioned to get kids moved to different elementary in the same district). School fell to 3 stars and no one wants their kid to go there.
You can jam poor folks in anywhere you want - result: rich folks leave.
This describes San Diego to a T. We tried forced desegregation by busing in the poor. The results go just like that. The rich send their kids to private schools. The upper middle class send theirs to areas mostly out of reach to the poor and what used to be good schools in middle class areas are taken over by the poor. I live in a fairly wealthy area and wouldn't think for a second to send my kids to schools they could walk to. Then we simply shutter the schools in the poorer areas. It's a complete failure. The HS that was supposed to be my kid's default had over 100 Seniors that didn't graduate.
Mythology alert! There are certainly a number of bank vice presidents in the country, but do the math -- the notion that anyone who wants to be one can become a bank vice president does not at all follow. Similarly, upper middle class is too small a slice for a large percentage of people to be able to fit into.
Bank Vice President's are a dime a dozen Go to your local Bank of America branch, there are 2-3 of them sitting in each branch
I know what you mean, but VP titles are handed out like candy on Halloween in the banking industry, so it's not the best analogy.
Charles Murray wrote a book about this 5 years ago as well: Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010
Murray took more of a bottom up stance when it comes to the poor staying poor, but had a very similar stance on the upper middle class in the fact that he said they are purposefully segregating themselves from 'normal America'.
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Go to your local Bank of America branch, there are 2-3 of them sitting in each branch 