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The majority of the wealthiest people is littered with those that were once poor and made it on their own.
I think the epic post is full of hot air, but the comment above is incorrect as well. Most wealth is in fact self-propagating in the form of investments (which are taxed at a lower rate than wage income), and has been accumulating and passed down in the same several hundred families for centuries.
To insinuate that anyone would have been "pushed out" by a group of Puerto Rican immigrants is laughable. People with a higher socioeconomic status cannot be pushed out. They, having more money, have a choice as to whether to stay or to go. If they choose to leave, that's their right. It's a common phenomenon. But they aren't being forced out by any stretch of the imagination.
That is possible true only if you limit the parameters of the conversation to economics.
But in the bigger picture, that's just an ignorant statement - Organized violence is quite effective at driving out a community, wealth may or may not be a factor. (eg, did the Jews choose to leave Germany?)
I know multiple, regular working-class folk who did not want to leave Humboldt Park but did so due to the preposterous gang violence and culture it fed into.
I googled Humboldt Park earlier today, as I have recently been considering a move there. This worries my mother a good deal, so I thought I would look into the stats and also see what other people have to say. That brought me to this thread, and I registered for the site in order to post a reply.
PuertoRicanIndependence, I kind of hope you're still reading, because you need support. But I mostly hope you've left, because this isn't a good place to find it.
While reading this thread, I was at first saddened by the reactions the OP received. They are cruel, although I'm sure the cruelty stems mostly from ignorance, not outright sociopathy. I was later encouraged by posters offering some recognition of the validity of the OP's concerns. I wish I could address all of the posts. But I will try to sum up what I can remember of the many thoughts they triggered.
Many people are dismissing (and mocking) the OP's feelings because Humboldt Park was once Norwegian (as well as other identities), supposedly taking away his "right" to be upset about the current gentrification. This type of post is also trying to imply that the Puerto Rican community was as guilty of taking the homes and community of an earlier group as the OP is saying the gentrifiers are of taking the homes and businesses of the more recent Puerto Rican residents. Comparing the immigration or relocation of the poor to the enterprising business choices of the better-off is completely absurd. To insinuate that anyone would have been "pushed out" by a group of Puerto Rican immigrants is laughable. People with a higher socioeconomic status cannot be pushed out. They, having more money, have a choice as to whether to stay or to go. If they choose to leave, that's their right. It's a common phenomenon. But they aren't being forced out by any stretch of the imagination. And that individual choice to divest from their old community and invest in another is informed by much, much larger trends in investment. Ones that ultimately benefit those same groups with the greater access to capital and other social privileges..
To those who have said that Puerto Ricans (or any other marginalized group) have not experienced explicit segregationist policies--please look into redlining and other such artifacts of racism written into law in the US. It goes without saying, I would hope, that such laws were only an additional obstacle to equality, on top of institutional racism. Redlining is making into policy the racism people are accusing the OP of. The OP is not "reverse racist." Redlining is racist. Redlining is saying that no one except us can reside, buy property, or have a business here(where we want to be, or might want to be in the future). The OP is justifiably anxious and angry because his community does NOT have the means (capital, privilege, etc) to protect themselves the way that others have protected themselves against him (readppression), and still do. He sees and feels what many on this thread do not. This is not to say that the OP does or does not want to oppress ("reverse racism") those he sees as gentrifying Humboldt Park--I obviously don't know. But to have anxiety about the influx of a more monied and intellectual class displacing those without means to either hold onto their homes or businesses or move somewhere equally or more appealing or beneficial to them? It is a clearly understandable reaction of upset and fear.
Redlining is no longer on the books, officially. But not only are the practices still there, they have become arguably more difficult to fight because they can be so easily denied. People can and do participate without even being aware of it. But the effect is that certain qualified people denied rental applications and bank loans much, much more than others, they are charged higher interest rates and greater fees, they have to put more money down, leave a bigger security deposit, etc. They are also actively sought out to be defrauded and have the little they have taken by someone who thinks they can make some money off of that bungalow or that corner store(see fix-your-credit scams, fraudulent loans, buy your home for cash scams, etcetc). The way money is made is indeed to push out the have-nots, take what they have and sell it at a huge profit to the well-to-do. Those leaving the community due to the rising rents, taxes, application denials and fraudulent profiteers are never compensated for their losses, and in the worst cases they are purposefully cheated. People who say otherwise are completely ignorant of banking and business practices and the histories of those institutions and the laws that have enabled them, and any individual cases that show otherwise are the exceptions.
To conclude, I want to return to what I said earlier about cruelty. I think it's extremely cruel to mock and dismiss someone who is in distress and suffering. I also think it ironic and extremely telling that so many posters have done so with such vehemence and glee, all the while telling the OP to calm down and asking what he could possibly be so up in arms about. The ganging up on the OP and the extent to which the OP has been villified and dehumanized is saying something---it's saying that there is a major stake in dismissing the OP's concerns and in demonstrating that the problem is not with the fact of gentrification or in ways that it is accomplished, but with the the OP.
The problem is not the OP or anyone else that has gone through the same thing or feels the same way. No matter how much anyone would like to believe that "they" are the problem. It's crazy to say things like "this is your fault because you should have bought your house." "You should have gotten a good education and bettered your community." Etc. You can't tell someone that being pushed out, disenfranchised and marginalized is their fault because they have not seized enough power. People are not poor or poorly educated by choice! People do not deny themselves access to upward mobility because of individual choices! Look at the ways we are all implicated in the problem of social inequality (which does tend to fall along "racial" lines) instead of attacking a victim of it. No single person has to have any malicious intent in order for inequality and oppression to continue. Everyone just has to remain ignorant (blissfully or not, and intentionally or not) and continue to point fingers at those with the least opportunity, who have little hope of defending themselves or even of being able to relate their experiences to those who might be in a position to help.
No single person makes only ethical or only exploitative choices. But there is a major and growing problem of inequality, and the problem is real. Just because you might be on the benefitting side or would like to be does not mean that we should let this injustice go unexamined. Thank you for reading.
I agree that OP raises valid concerns, but I think it's mistaken to find the lion's share of the fault in the newcomers and outsiders. It's mainly that his neighbors are doing what they think is best for themselves, which isn't necessarily what is best for the community.
Analysis of this issue in terms of race and class is off base. The “oppression” narrative overestimates the individual autonomy of middling folk, and underestimates that of the poor, and in any event, the issue here is more about solidarity and the way in which individual choices become communal choices in the aggregate. If people don’t get together to preserve and/or improve their own communities, they should look to themselves and their neighbors and/or (in some cases) wrongheaded public policy that prevents them from doing so.
The relationship between individual and communal choices applies regardless of the community’s relative wealth and power. Middling folk can be pushed out of a neighborhood by unwelcome newcomers as surely as the poor can be pushed out by gentrifiers, if they perceive that if they stick around, their home values will plummet, their schools will go to hell and their kids might get shot. Whether or not they are justified at the outset, those fears are often a self-fulfilling prophesy; they’re at least as coercive as a bank denying you a loan or charging interest based on risk of default, and more so than some developer handing you a check for the fair market value of your property. Either way, it comes down to what members of a community are choosing to do individually, and how that affects their neighbors.
On another note, you may be right that few individuals explicitly and purposefully choose to be poor or uneducated, but in this day and age at least, those outcomes are usually the unintended consequences of a person’s (and his parents’) choosing to follow folkways that tend to perpetuate poverty and ignorance. There’s often a lot of social pressure to do that, but it comes from within the community. So again, it’s matter of how individual choices relate to communal ones.
Last edited by EJ3791; 02-27-2013 at 12:06 PM..
Reason: Formatting
I think the epic post is full of hot air, but the comment above is incorrect as well. Most wealth is in fact self-propagating in the form of investments (which are taxed at a lower rate than wage income), and has been accumulating and passed down in the same several hundred families for centuries.
I know plenty of wealthy people and many of them made it on their own and without the help of a silver spoon. Look at the Forbes list of billionaires, the majority are self made and many of those grew up with little of anything. When you enter the Middle Class millionaire segment many of those are self made, I would say the majority of them as well. Those that I know did not grow up with a wealthy family to help pass it on to them.
You are also overlooking the fact that fortunes change. Many people that grew up with wealth end up spending what their parents took years to acquire. The mindset is that it may just not be that great of thing to leave it to the kids. I have heard by some that they intend to leave it to the grandkids and let them live a life of working for success just as they did. Others have just made the wrong investments. Merv Adelson who started Lorimar ended up losing a $300million fortune when he invested the majority of his holdings in AOL Time Warner.
Within the next decade the number of self made millionaires will more than double and yes I plan on being part of that group.
I know plenty of wealthy people and many of them made it on their own and without the help of a silver spoon. Look at the Forbes list of billionaires, the majority are self made and many of those grew up with little of anything. When you enter the Middle Class millionaire segment many of those are self made, I would say the majority of them as well. Those that I know did not grow up with a wealthy family to help pass it on to them.
You are also overlooking the fact that fortunes change. Many people that grew up with wealth end up spending what their parents took years to acquire. The mindset is that it may just not be that great of thing to leave it to the kids. I have heard by some that they intend to leave it to the grandkids and let them live a life of working for success just as they did. Others have just made the wrong investments. Merv Adelson who started Lorimar ended up losing a $300million fortune when he invested the majority of his holdings in AOL Time Warner.
Within the next decade the number of self made millionaires will more than double and yes I plan on being part of that group.
I think you are confusing/conflating two different issues.
I agree there are still many self-made people who end up quite wealthy due to innovation.
But that doesn't contradict the larger reality that I'm speaking of, which is wealth and assets do most certainly accumulate in families, and this goes back to the middle ages.
Here's another way of looking at it - do you ever watch Antique Roadshow? Have you ever noticed how few minorities are on there with crazy-valuable objects? There's a reason for that.
My thoughts are that people do infact choose where they want to be economically. I can show you homes in my area of the world and I can show you homes in the Chicagoland area that are owned by self made people, those that created wealth out of an idea or vision. The majority of the wealthiest people is littered with those that were once poor and made it on their own.
It is no individuals fault other than the fault of the individual for lack of wealth or opportunities. We all have the same opportunities in this nation to build something better. If not for us then at least for our children. I look at my ansectors that moved to Chicago from Poland and started new in a big new country and made it here in this great nation of ours. Unlike Puerto Ricans they were not American Citizens to start out with and spoke a strange language.
The majority accept their fate and do little to change cituation or circumstance. Both are only minor problems to creating the kind of life that one would want as apposed to a life that one would accept. Everyone has to realize that acceptance of an unwanted life is not a mandate on any race or background. We can all make it here if we are willing to work for what we want.
I think the epic post is full of hot air, but the comment above is incorrect as well. Most wealth is in fact self-propagating in the form of investments (which are taxed at a lower rate than wage income), and has been accumulating and passed down in the same several hundred families for centuries.
Income inequality and wealth inequality are two different issues.
With respect to wealth, there's a big difference between the majority of wealth and a majority of the wealthiest people, so you both could be partially right. If you had 1,000 people, one could have inherited $20,000, nine could have $1,000 each which they acquired as earned income, and everyone else could have $10. The richest 0.1% would control a majority of the wealth, but it would also be true that 90% of the richest 1% earned their wealth.
It depends on what you mean by the wealthiest (I expect that SOON2BNSURPRISE had a larger category in mind than several hundred families), but to the extent that this has been studied, it appears that about 15% of the richest 1%'s average wealth is inherited, and that is a figure that has dropped over time, so, while it may be a bit much to say that they started off poor, it's probably fair to say that a majority of their wealth comes from their own enterprise.
BTW, the US federal estate tax was created to collect extra revenue to pay for World War I, not to reduce income inequality. Inheritance taxes in general are just a relic of feudalism and manorialism, when the son had to pay off his father's lord in order to take over tenure in the fief or tenement. Not sure that I see a place for them in a modern society.
I'd also question your claim that taxes on inventments are lower than taxes on wage income- it depends on the type of inventment income. Dividends are taxed at a higher rate than wage income if you consider that the corporate entity has already paid income tax on the same money- up to something like 45% on qualified dividends.
With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property.
"I'd also question your claim that taxes on inventments are lower than taxes on wage income- it depends on the type of inventment income. Dividends are taxed at a higher rate than wage income if you consider that the corporate entity has already paid income tax on the same money- up to something like 45% on qualified dividends."
Question away, but a tax rate is a tax rate. I think that argument is a bit irrelevant as it extends to everything - my employer pays lots of taxes, do I get partial credit for that when figuring out my tax rate? Of course not.
btw, if you haven't actually read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, I guarantee you will have your mind blown trying to reconcile what we call "capitalism" in 21st century America with what its founding father was talking about.
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ppression), and still do. He sees and feels what many on this thread do not. This is not to say that the OP does or does not want to oppress ("reverse racism") those he sees as gentrifying Humboldt Park--I obviously don't know. But to have anxiety about the influx of a more monied and intellectual class displacing those without means to either hold onto their homes or businesses or move somewhere equally or more appealing or beneficial to them? It is a clearly understandable reaction of upset and fear. 
