The Health of Our Civilization
admin January 11th, 2009
The below paragraph is an excerpt from a paper I wrote several years ago (therefore the older statistics), but after digging it up and re-reading it, I find it still quite relevant. Around election time, opponents of the Obama administration frequently spoke to me of their fear that his policies would set an uncomfortable precedent towards socialism. In every great civilization, one of the key indicators of internal weakness cited by historians is a large gulf between the wealthy and the poor. Though I don’t have the most recent statistics, I do not think that these numbers have changed much since the study dates.
“In the meritocracy of the US, we value not necessarily social equality, but social mobility. Although not everyone can be president, anyone can, or so the thinking goes. In actuality, both social equality and social mobility are declining in the US. The past several presidents have been the progeny of elite families and Ivy League schools. Economist Magazine cites the Economic Policy Institute’s figures that while between the years 1979 and 2000, the income of households in the lowest fifth of earners increased by 6.4%, that of households in the top fifth grew by70%, with those in the top 1% growing by an astounding 184%. A later study found that from 1979-1998 70% of bottom tier sons moved up the ladder more often than their fathers had. As reasons for these statistics, many point to our stratified and struggling education system. Public school funds are often tied to property taxes, hitting those in lower income areas the most, and government funds once aimed at these students are now getting converted into loans. Even affirmative action dollars are now decreasingly reasonable proxies for social disadvantage.”