WSJ: The New American Divide by Charles Murray

[Cowlesy]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html?m od=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel_1#printMode

I thought this was a very interesting article, and that Murray is right on several points. This is a long essay, but worth reading. I'll post a portion of it here but you'll have to read the rest at the link.


The New American Divide
The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why.
By CHARLES MURRAY

America is coming apart. For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway. "The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. "On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day."

Americans love to see themselves this way. But there's a problem: It's not true anymore, and it has been progressively less true since the 1960s.

People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.

When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

To illustrate just how wide the gap has grown between the new upper class and the new lower class, let me start with the broader upper-middle and working classes from which they are drawn, using two fictional neighborhoods that I hereby label Belmont (after an archetypal upper-middle-class suburb near Boston) and Fishtown (after a neighborhood in Philadelphia that has been home to the white working class since the Revolution).


You can read the rest at the link here. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html?m od=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel_1#printMode)

[Paul Fan]

Summary: The rich are getting richer, and still have family values. The poor are getting lazy, and no longer have family values. Solution: the rich should live outside their enclaves, near the poor, in order to demonstrate how the poor should live.

Not a word about stopping entitlements, or reforming government to allow more local power. Lame - especially from Murray, who wrote some good stuff a while back about the importance of local control.

[youngbuck]

Summary: The rich are getting richer, and still have family values. The poor are getting lazy, and no longer have family values. Solution: the rich should live outside their enclaves, near the poor, in order to demonstrate how the poor should live.

Not a word about stopping entitlements, or reforming government to allow more local power. Lame - especially from Murray, who wrote some good stuff a while back about the importance of local control.

I agree. Though he may have been hinting at the entitlements and reforms when he said "Because the process has become self-reinforcing, repealing the reforms of the 1960s (something that's not going to happen) would change the trends slowly at best."

Either way, it was an interesting article. Thanks for posting, Cowlesy.

[Cowlesy]

Summary: The rich are getting richer, and still have family values. The poor are getting lazy, and no longer have family values. Solution: the rich should live outside their enclaves, near the poor, in order to demonstrate how the poor should live.

Not a word about stopping entitlements, or reforming government to allow more local power. Lame - especially from Murray, who wrote some good stuff a while back about the importance of local control.

I'm not sure that's a totally fair summary. In several instances he puts the crosshairs on public policy for hurting, not helping things. He doesn't suggest government as an answer either. I think you can read some implicit ideas of reducing entitlements.


The only thing that can make a difference is the recognition among Americans of all classes that a problem of cultural inequality exists and that something has to be done about it. That "something" has nothing to do with new government programs or regulations. Public policy has certainly affected the culture, unfortunately, but unintended consequences have been as grimly inevitable for conservative social engineering as for liberal social engineering.

There remains a core of civic virtue and involvement in working-class America that could make headway against its problems if the people who are trying to do the right things get the reinforcement they need—not in the form of government assistance, but in validation of the values and standards they continue to uphold.

The one line I like, and I don't think it just applies to educated people, is this:


Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn't hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms.

Amen to that. Start saying you don't approve of all this leftist bullshit social engineering, instead of just ignoring it and not judging it. You need to engage. Otherwise they'll just keep picking away until there is nothing left.

It's funny. I imagine 50 years ago, we'd be calling on for workers in the industrial production arena to be stepping up to the plate to be civically engaged. When I try and think of a group today I wish would get involved from where I grew up, it is the oil and gas workers. These guys work extremely hard doing a dangerous job, and make great money doing it. Instead of letting public policy people push agenda items at town council meetings, these guys who are helping to produce the local profits that drive the economy should be stepping up to the plate. There will always be a place for doctors/lawyers/accountants/bankers there, but the well-paid working class people need to engage. Also, the Information Technology people. A lot of them are very bright, and well compensated. It'd be great to get them involved with local initiatives as they're likely to have a bead on the education needs to get their communities' kids to be future IT leaders.

/rant

[MsDoodahs]

Thanks for posting this, Cowlesy.

[CaptUSA]

Wow. Charles Murray. I haven't heard that name in awhile.

I read a book by Charles Murray some 20 years ago and it had a pretty dramatic effect on me. In fact, it was the reason I started to understand that the libertarian model makes the most sense. I'd +rep him for that now, if I could.

[Jingles]

I actually really liked this article because it really illustrates the destruction of the standard of living for Americans. I feel like it has like super accelerated in the past 8 to 10 years.

[Southron]

Great article .

[Cowlesy]

//

[Krugerrand]

I blame property taxes and the foundations of the real estate bubble for playing a part of this.

There was a time when many rich and poor people lived in the same neighborhoods. Helping your neighbor was something people did and did not need a government to tell/force people the do. Part of the problems we face is that our society is much more "us" and "them." The "uses" and the "thems" have become divided by economics ... and that is in large part because of the housing phenomenon.

A house became more than a place to live. It was an "investment." It was your loan equity. Our tax laws encouraged people to buy the most expensive house they could for deductible interest and to yield the maximum "return on the investment." That return would be jeopardized if houses around yours sold for 1/2 or 1/4 the price of your house. Entire housing communities and neighborhoods became 'segregated by income level.' Even if you happened to already own a smaller value home in an area of wealthier homes, property taxes would essentially force you to sell, because you could no longer afford to live in your house.

I think people are by nature good and want to help those around them. But government welfare isn't helping the 'uses' it is helping the 'thems' and that just makes the situation that much worse.

[Paul Fan]

I really liked Charles Murray's earlier work about local control. This one disappointed me because I found it really patronizing. Others have shown how public assistance rules caused most of the social problems he describes - eg, when benefits go to unwed mothers only, why get married? So it is lame for Murray to say that what is now needed is just a 'good example', or even worse, more patronizing instructions from the 'rich' about how 'others' should live their lives.

In my view, it is none of our business how others live their lives, and we shouldn't insult them by presuming that our way is best for them. I exempt missionary types, because they have a big picture approach; but otherwise, why is it my business if one person prefers to work hard and be richer, while another prefers to laze about and be poorer.

It only becomes my business when I am told that the fruit of my labor will be taken to support those who could work but choose not to. So my solution is, stop the social welfare, encourage charity instead, and leave pople alone to seek charity, work, or whatever.

It was interesting, if depressing, to see Murrays's current viewpoint.

[Cowlesy]

I really liked Charles Murray's earlier work about local control. This one disappointed me because I found it really patronizing. Others have shown how public assistance rules caused most of the social problems he describes - eg, when benefits go to unwed mothers only, why get married? So it is lame for Murray to say that what is now needed is just a 'good example', or even worse, more patronizing instructions from the 'rich' about how 'others' should live their lives.

In my view, it is none of our business how others live their lives, and we shouldn't insult them by presuming that our way is best for them. I exempt missionary types, because they have a big picture approach; but otherwise, why is it my business if one person prefers to work hard and be richer, while another prefers to laze about and be poorer.

It only becomes my business when I am told that the fruit of my labor will be taken to support those who could work but choose not to. So my solution is, stop the social welfare, encourage charity instead, and leave pople alone to seek charity, work, or whatever.

It was interesting, if depressing, to see Murrays's current viewpoint.

Like you point out, it's not right when you're told that the fruit of your labor goes to support these people who choose not to work.

Well no matter what, as that class of society grows, it has equal voting rights to you, and it has no moral qualms about voting themselves a chunk of your paycheck. In fact you greedy snot, you deserve to pay your fair share, and your fair share is what they think your fair share is. And they will make sure they elect politicians who share their point of view.

I agree Murray patronizes a bit, but it is simply his opinion. While I like his recommendation, I am afraid it falls far short of what is needed to help treat the flu plaguing our society.

[Pericles]

Two things that I would say contribute to the phenonenon, but not explicitly stated.

1) Social mobility that made it possible for people with the same relative intelligence (which is linked to long term economic wealth accumulation). Smart people have a good chance of making it to a college, where they will meet and marry someone of similar educational achievement. People with degrees tend to marry or form relationships with others of similar educational attainment.

2) Women in the work force long term and the impact on having children, and the jobs open to women. We women had limited job opportunities (teacher, nurse, and non professional occupations), smart women were more evenly distributed throughout society. Smart women generate their own economic power, which influences where they end up, and by extension, where the non college educated women will have as avalible relationship opportunities.

[Gary4Liberty]

charles murray. wow. he wrote "losing ground" one of my college textbooks from 1985.