KRUGMAN: Down the Up Staircase

[kpete]

Down the Up Staircase

James Surowiecki makes an important point: if you want a society in which everyone has a decent life, you need to construct a society in which everyone has a decent life — not a society in which everyone has a small but equal chance of living the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

Not that we’re anywhere close to the second condition, anyway — the most important factor in whether you can become rich is whether you chose the right parents: Most people are going to end up with socioeconomic status close to where they started. But even if that weren’t true, those moving up the ladder would be matched by an equal number moving down. Since anyone could find himself or herself downwardly mobile, social mobility arguably actually strengthens the case for a strong safety net.

I think you want to read Surowiecki in the context of people like Eric Cantor, who first chose to celebrate Labor Day by congratulating people who start businesses — forgetting about the workers — then, more recently, tried to get his fellow Republicans to understand that most people work for other people, and that employees vote too. The point is that even in the best of worlds, only a few people will live out Horatio Alger stories; the quality of our society depends on what happens to everyone else.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/down-the-up-staircase/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

[bemildred]

1. Exactly, and if you want real growth, you just can't beat a very large well-off middle class. nt

[hfojvt]

2. the other part might be

define "decent life"

In America it tends to be defined by "status, and money". Those are the measures of "success".

I was struck by a sort of alternative American Dream, express in the book "The Barbarous Years" about the outlook of Winthrop, one of the early Puritan leaders.

"His [Winthorp's] thinking was illuminated by a desire to construct freshly, on distant shores, a society reformed, not merely in religion but also in human relations, relieved not only of ecclesiastical tyranny but also of the hurt and grief of everyday conflicts. He yearned for wholeness, for a peaceful, unconflicted life in godly communities whose people were bound together in mutual support and obligation, and where the abrasions of competition and clashing desires would be softened and one could hope for generosity of spirit and goodwill from one's neighbors." p. 399

That would be a flip from the ideology of "more and more and more for me and mine" into one of "generosity of spirit and goodwill to neighbors".

The alternative American "good life" perhaps "household income of $60,000" is not really sustainable, and a good chuck of America would already be spluttering at THAT. "$60,000?? Who could live on just THAT?"