The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

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Smashter
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Smashter »

Tyler9000 wrote:
Fri May 18, 2018 9:58 am
BTW, I wonder if the author also believes that the zero-sum-game also applies internationally, where the privilege of the US 90% (really the global 9.9%) is taking opportunities away from kids in war-torn middle eastern countries.
I wonder about stuff like this too. It gives me a lot of respect for companies like GiveWell and the effective altruism movement in general. They seem laser-focused on saying "all us first world folks are incredibly rich by global standards, so don't be greedy and buy some malaria nets for kids in Africa".

7Wannabe5
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@BRUTE:

Sorry, context would be that according to what I recently read in "Basic Economics" by "supply-side" Sowell, the primary difference between the wealthy and those who gripe is total hours devoted to pure productivity, thus I am currently engaged in an experiment in Poly-Jobbery. So, I am simultaneously working at 3 different jobs while also engaged in a course of study in a theoretically high demand technical field. Therefore, I no longer have very much time to chit-chat/expound at length on a forum such as this.

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jennypenny
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jennypenny »

I keep thinking back to Tyler Cowen's The Complacent Class and how we all tend to self-segregate (in the US at least). Cowen's take isn't nearly as nefarious sounding as Stewart's, even though both illuminate the negative consequences that can result from the tendency.

I wonder if the push towards solopreneurs and entrepreneurship in general will counterbalance that trend and create a new entrepreneur class that will compete with the professional class Steward described.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

I'm an educational pessimist in the sense that I first and foremost believe that it's impossible to take a person on the left side of bell curve and via longer or better education transfer them into the cognitive elite on the right side. IOW, I think that politicians' calls for more education mostly result in longer education to the benefit of educational institutions and banks. This has unfortunate side-effects: More student debt + race to the bottom in terms of credentials, hence "must have bachelor degree + ability to lift 50pounds". This whole idea about sending everybody to college will ultimately turn out to be a stupid idea: it hurts individuals because they got into debt and it hurts society because it wasted resources.

Looking at the Gatsby curve, it's quite evident that you're better off pursuing the American Dream in Denmark or the Scandinavian countries in general as those have the lowest odds of children ending up in the same social class as their parents.

How are these countries different from the US?

They're different in that there's a lot of money and services being redistributed towards mothers and early/preschool childhood development (<5 years old) in terms of daycare, etc. Mothers (and fathers) get very generous parental leave. As far as the child is concerned, it does not matter if you're a single mother in Scandinavia. This ensures that all children start out on a fairly equal basis whereas in the US a rich parent can ensure that their stupid child gets a significant leg up by paying for private tutors, fancy preschools, ... and generally building their extracurricular resumes before the toddlers even know what a resume is. In Scandinavia, to a large degree ALL children get to eat the same cognitive diet until they're 12+ years old. Of course there are still mobility effects but they're the lowest in the world.

In a way, being born rich in the US in terms of success later in life is what being born in January is to success as an athlete: You'll always a bit stronger, taller, and bigger than those born in December. This is crucial for further development since teenage sports is idiosyncratically divided according to which year you were born in (say 2003) ... not how old you are (say 15). This translates into early wins for the rich/January crowd who is almost a year older than the December crowd. The Matthew effect takes care of the rest (on average).

There's a lot of potential talent being wasted in December or the poverty class. Those with athletic talents who end up being born in December give up their sports career in their teenage years because they can't beat the January guys in their respective age bracket. Being 50 weeks older matters a lot when you're a teenager in the beginning of your sports career. (This is also why some parents hold their children back ... so that the kids have 1 year of maturity on the other kids when it comes to competition. That doesn't work in sports unless you lie, but it does work in education.) Those with cognitive talents who end up being born to poor or unconnected or uneducated parents have the same problem. Having access to fancy tuition matters a lot when you're 5-10 years old.

So there's the policy suggestion. One answer that has been demonstrated to work is to heavily regulate resource allocation towards children below the age of 10 or so. Beyond that, there's not much money can do anymore. The price of that redistribution is that it costs money. Therefore countries where the influence of advantages and disadvantages is removed from the talent pool also end up with less inequality (the Gini index).

Ponder how much athletic or cognitive talent is lost when a society is inefficiently directing resources towards athletes who are born early in the year or towards cognitive workers who are born to rich parents and away from those who are born in December or to parents who can't afford fancy preschools.

Deregulating serves to make the "free market" create its own form of regulation in the form of cartel-like structures. This is essentially the situation that dominates the US more so that the countries at the other end of the Gatsby curve. You see this effect in education. You see this effect in health care(*). In the US, in practice, you get different health care depending on whether you have a full-time job or a part-time job. Ditto education.

(*) Those who have traveled to Europe (north and south) as well as the US might have noticed that you could plot people's height on the Gatsby curve as well. Average population height is epigenetic and relates to how healthy and well-fed a country was two generations ago. You find the tallest people (on average) in Northern Europe. Same place as where the social mobility is highest and the inequality is lowest. Americans are not very tall relative to the rest of the developed world. Not that healthy or educated either. As an individual, I'm average in NE... but I have a one-head advantage over the average person in the US as well as in countries below Germany. This benefits me in crowds, concerts, ... stand-offs. It's a great privilege and mostly thanks to my grandparents' government system.

This works as long as people can tell themselves great narratives cf. how the American Dream is least likely to happen in the US yet remains dominant as a cultural narrative in the US. This irony is lost on most Americans which is exactly why that meme works so well. The deeply ingrained belief helps propagate the system. Ditto "freedom".

You can see this as a country based thing, a state based thing, or a city based thing.

In the US its fun to see it on a county-based basis. It's astounding that counties that voted blue in 2016 represented 2/3 of US GDP but only slightly more than 50% of the population. IOW, blue counties are TWICE as productive as red counties. You can likely derive the same result by looking at urban/rural counties. Cities---where the cognitive elite lives---are simply more productive. Not just a bit more. Twice as much!

You can plot education along similar lines. The "educated" or cognitive people live in cities. If you're cognitively talented and got born in the countryside and you moved to the city for education...you'll probably stay in the city. Since this flow is not symmetric, there's a brain or rather cognitive drain effect from the country.

(Insofar that moving is hard, that compounds the issue. Think tech. AI. ...)

Interestingly, until recently, the US benefited from talented people born elsewhere emigrating to the US. If you're already born and talented, moving to a country with a high Gini index is a good move for you as a [talented] individual. Conversely, a country with a high Gini index is not a good place to get born. Conversely^2, being talented, leaving a country with a low Gini index is also a good move (for you as an individual). Scandinavia has long been frustrated about their brain drain.

Recent US politics have worked to reverse this with some success. Talented people from other countries are now less likely to want to go and live in the US because of #MAGA. Under the previous administration, talented immigrants were prevented from leaving again lest they suffer significant clawback in the form of an exit-tax. They still are.

Is this a good thing? It depends! Would you rather have a small piece of large pie than a large slice from a small pie. What if the former is larger than the latter? In terms of sheer amounts, the former should be more appealing ... but ordinary humans universally prefer the latter beyond the point where absolute necessities (clean water, warm home, ... about $10,000/year of consumption) are satisfied. People compare themselves to their neighbors, first and foremost.

This [innate psychological] effect creates the resulting politics, wherein the two-party system in the US (and the UK) exhibits the most extreme result of that effect.

Stahlmann
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Stahlmann »

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Last edited by Stahlmann on Mon Jul 02, 2018 4:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

Another thing this thread reminded me off was the Gervais principle with losers, clueless, and sociopaths.

In that framework, the 9.9% are the clueless. Insofar you're a FI-loser, the Aristocratic-clueless should be encouraged to keep working to pay our dividends. That's kinda what Sclass suggested. In that framework, the 0.1% are ignored---in the sense they're more like an invisible force of nature. The 90% are also irrelevant as long as they don't revolt as per OP article.

Of course overall, in order to create a working system, it takes all three groups. If anyone of them stop cooperating, the system will change.

Stahlmann
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Stahlmann »

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Last edited by Stahlmann on Mon Jul 02, 2018 4:40 am, edited 3 times in total.

jacob
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

Yes, the English language is in dire need of a neutral/third person pronoun for these kinds of discussions.

"He" used to be acceptable/neutral, but now it results in immediate PC-trouble!

suomalainen
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by suomalainen »

One can always find an english equivalent of a gender-neutral "pronoun" if one is so inclined.

BRUTE
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

Stahlmann wrote:
Sat May 19, 2018 4:08 pm
Invisible FistH^H^H^H^H Hand of The Market
...
and I'd have more energy to find better job :lol: :lol: :lol:
or maybe pressing 8 keys in emacs to change a 4 letter word is what exhausted Stahlmann so. there are real editors out there. same thing in vim is only 2 keys: cw

Campitor
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Campitor »

As I got older, the holiday pomp of patriotic luncheons and bridge-playing rituals came to seem faintly ridiculous and even offensive, like an endless birthday party for people whose chief accomplishment in life was just showing up. I belonged to a new generation that believed in getting ahead through merit, and we defined merit in a straightforward way: test scores, grades, competitive résumé-stuffing, supremacy in board games and pickup basketball, and, of course, working for our keep. For me that meant taking on chores for the neighbors, punching the clock at a local fast-food restaurant, and collecting scholarships to get through college and graduate school. I came into many advantages by birth, but money was not among them.
Why does patriotism and bridge games offend the writer? This seems illogical. It appears there are deeper psychological issues behind his outrage. Could it be that as a young man he wasn't privy to all the hard work and sacrifices made by the targets of his moralizing? Perhaps he is jealous of the perceived ease other had while he toiled away at his chores?
The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children.
He makes this allegation but provides zero facts to backup his claim. How exactly are the privileges being stolen for other people's children. I know a lot of educators who work in inner city schools. They are motivated and well credentials in their area of teaching. Without exception they lament the lack of parent engagement in their child's education and the child's lack of motivation for learning and their penchant for disrespecting authority. These difficult children, and parents, are the real thieves who monopolize a teacher's time and focus to the detriment of the other poor inner city kids who actually want to learn.
I’ve joined a new aristocracy now, even if we still call ourselves meritocratic winners. If you are a typical reader of The Atlantic, you may well be a member too. (And if you’re not a member, my hope is that you will find the story of this new class even more interesting—if also more alarming.) To be sure, there is a lot to admire about my new group, which I’ll call—for reasons you’ll soon see—the 9.9 percent. We’ve dropped the old dress codes, put our faith in facts, and are (somewhat) more varied in skin tone and ethnicity. People like me, who have waning memories of life in an earlier ruling caste, are the exception, not the rule.
Again where are the facts to backup his assertions? It's obvious by his choice of words (new aristocracy, caste, etc.) that he is highly biased.
Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below. But not everyone in the 99.9 percent gave up a slice. Only those in the bottom 90 percent did. At their peak, in the mid-1980s, people in this group held 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. Three decades later that had fallen 12 points—exactly as much as the wealth of the 0.1 percent rose."
So what could explain this? So what was happened between 1980 and today? Hmm... NAFTA, an acceleration in technology, and an increase in immigration (*Migration Policy Institute *Center for Immigration Studies). So pressure on wages resulting from an increase in immigration and the elimination of jobs to foreign countries or loss via new technology is the fault of the 9%? Per the US Census Bureau the biggest losses to income has been to the households without Bachelor's Degrees or above. The image below is some Census Data which I've cobbled together. The increase of GDP, population, and the explosion in technology throughout the years can account for the the wealth disparities when you add up the number of households without a bachelor's (or above) versus those with advanced degrees (masters or above); 77.9 million for the former versus 16.5 million for the latter.


Census Bureau Historical Income Tables *see H-13
:
Image

"Economists are prudent creatures, and they’ll look up from a graph like that and remind you that it shows only correlation, not causation. That’s a convenient hedge for those of us at the top because it keeps alive one of the founding myths of America’s meritocracy: that our success has nothing to do with other people’s failure."
So other people's failures and the subsequent loss of earning potential is the fault of the 9% for being successful? WTF? And what of the economist that would disagree with his premise? Would those economist be any less prudent? I could go on and on but what's the point? This article is so full of fail that I have to award it a full raspberry.

IlliniDave
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Sat May 19, 2018 3:12 pm
(*) Those who have traveled to Europe (north and south) as well as the US might have noticed that you could plot people's height on the Gatsby curve as well. Average height is epigenetic and relates to how healthy and well-fed a country was two generations ago. You find the tallest people (on average) in Northern Europe.
I thought for people of European descent height was only 20% epigenetic (80% genetic)--forget where I read that. As tall as Swedes and Dutch are, the are essentially equaled by some of the groups in Sudan (Dinka, et. al)--not a place one would want to imitate economically or socially. Most states in the US make at least a token attempt to funnel resources to economically disadvantaged children, but it is something we can do better I believe.

It is an interesting dichotomy that the deepest blue voting often comes from places where poverty has its highest concentration, public schools are among the worst, and (speculating) Gini coefficients are among the highest. In a state we are both familiar with, Chicago public schools are not even in the top 600 school districts ... in Illinois, despite Cook ranking in/near the to ten counties in the state by per capita income (probably a high Gini thing). I don't think Cook County has voted red in my lifetime. The real wealth in Illinois is in the "swing counties" (in terms of how they vote, red or blue, for presidents) clustered around Chicago. There too are the best public school systems. Hence my anecdotal observation/unscientific belief that neither far right nor far left leads to the best results.

Maybe it is somewhat naive on my part, but it seems like in places with a very low Gini number, higher income mobility (which is presumably a relative thing) is a little bit of an illusion? Maybe that is where you were going with the important thing for many is simply how they compare to their neighbors?

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by ThisDinosaur »

C40 wrote:
Fri May 18, 2018 2:31 pm
This seems like one of the most straightforward ways to help with inequality in the U.S. It's been spoken about for a long time, but I don't ever hear anyone talking about actually implementing it. I don't recall hearing/reading it on any politician's platforms ever (though I follow politics very little).

Does anyone here know - is there any real talk of this happening? It'd probably not be acceptable to make huge reductions for schools in nicer areas, so, would it be extremely expensive to, say, fund all schools as well as what is currently like the 80th percentile)
It's what they do in a few European countries. But think about how difficult the transition from our system to their system would be. The parents in the 9.9% will fight for the option to buy their kids an advantage.

And its not just expensive private schools to fix. The SAT is basically an IQ test. But one of the secrets of IQ tests is that you can study, practice, and get better at a particular test. You can spend a couple grand on SAT prep courses and get a better score, even though doing so won't make you any better at the things the score is supposed to be measuring.

If you standardized all schools, you wouldn't need standardized tests. Because 13 years of grades is a better proxy for how you'll do in college than one day of testing. So, the current system is favored by upwardly mobile people who donate to political campaigns.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Kriegsspiel »

C40 wrote:
Fri May 18, 2018 2:31 pm
ThisDinosaur wrote:
Fri May 18, 2018 11:43 am
... elimination of tuition-based private schools, the separation of public school funding from local property values...
This seems like one of the most straightforward ways to help with inequality in the U.S. It's been spoken about for a long time, but I don't ever hear anyone talking about actually implementing it. I don't recall hearing/reading it on any politician's platforms ever (though I follow politics very little).

Does anyone here know - is there any real talk of this happening? It'd probably not be acceptable to make huge reductions for schools in nicer areas, so, would it be extremely expensive to, say, fund all schools as well as what is currently like the 80th percentile)
If you both are talking about making it impossible for parents to put their kids in a private school, as in criminalization... that seems wrong.

I could definitely see forcibly distributing kids from disparate neighborhoods throughout the school systems decreasing inequality, because the smart/rich kids would do a lot worse with the disruptions caused by riots in the hallways, kids calling teachers faggots with no recourse (1), absences, apathetic school officials (2, 3) etc etc. I think it was in Our Kids, by Putnam (the guy who wrote Bowling Alone) that he talked about how even in public schools, the honors kids were segregated from the commoners so that they could learn.

1. https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-th ... 14951.html
2. http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/12/hi ... ion-rates/
3. Our Kids section on Santa Ana

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jennypenny
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jennypenny »

While philosophically it might sound like a good idea, there are practical considerations that would make life much more difficult for parents. When kids go to the local elementary school, it means they become friends with local kids, making play dates much easier. It also makes group projects easier to organize (very common in schools now) and carpooling possible. Most parents work so having neighborhood families that can pool their resources to manage snow days, days off, extracurricular activities, etc, makes life so much easier. It also means being able to walk to school or at least spend a lot less time on a bus.

edited to add: My kids went/go to a private high school. Many of the parents sent their kids to that high school because it was near their job (it's close to big pharma row near Princeton) which was much more convenient than sending them to their local public high school. It meant they could drop off/pick up, attend sporting and other events, and be near by if someone got sick. The high school also offers staffed supervision and an open cafeteria from 7am to 10pm most days, so if kids need to spend extra time at school because parents are working late/early, they are well cared for. (Just FYI so people can see another side of why people choose private schools sometimes.)

BRUTE
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

"play dates"

brute doesn't envy human kids these days

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by CECTPA »

Campitor wrote:
Sat May 19, 2018 10:40 pm
So other people's failures and the subsequent loss of earning potential is the fault of the 9% for being successful? WTF?
All the troubles they are getting into (debt, poor health, legal problems etc.) becomes a source of income for the 9% (doctors, lawyers, social workers, people who are involved into creating all kinds of entertainment for the 90%). That's how I understood his premise.

Campitor
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Campitor »

CECTPA wrote:
Sun May 20, 2018 12:48 pm
All the troubles they are getting into (debt, poor health, legal problems etc.) becomes a source of income for the 9% (doctors, lawyers, social workers, people who are involved into creating all kinds of entertainment for the 90%). That's how I understood his premise.
People need to be paid for the services they render. The slope to being a money lender, healthcare professional, or lawyer is neither cheap or of small duration. Debt can be avoided by living a sufficiently frugal life within the scope of one's wages. And legal problems also have a sufficient probability of avoidance via good judgement. Health is the only thing that can be outside of one's control (contagion, etc,). But regardless, everyone is happy to have the services of the money lenders, doctors, and lawyers when a crisis arises.

What does the author propose the money lenders, lawyers, and doctors do? Give out free loans or work for no pay or at cost? How many people would take these stressful jobs if they paid next to nothing? The guy who wrote the article is just another promoter of class warfare who wants to punish people for desiring to get paid for their services, for making better choices, and working harder.

CECTPA
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by CECTPA »

Campitor wrote:
Sun May 20, 2018 8:06 pm
What does the author propose the money lenders, lawyers, and doctors do?
Oh, I was trying to have a conversation based on the premise that you read the article given by the topic starter, as you would know that the author is not suggesting any solutions. This is just a subjective sociopolitical analysis, an elaborate opinion on what is going on. And I did not even express my agreement or disagreement, so maybe I'm not the best person to speak for the author when questions like yours arise. You trying to dissect the ethics of it, but I don't think there is a need.

I'm actually in healthcare, quite well paid managerial position, my husband has a well paid job in IT and we are both immigrants. Our house will be 100 % paid for in January. Before coming to Canada we did not have a lot of education under our belts and we were quite poor. So we have an experience of going from ZERO to where we are, so we would have the right to ask poor and marginalised Canadians, like some of my patients "Why the hell you're still can't figure out your life? You have English as first language, and you were born in a country where people are not deprived of human rights"
But since I had a lot of sociology in Nursing school, I know that this is not that simple, there's a lot more context come into play. So I found the article quite interesting, although I can't really critique it because I'm not an expert.

BRUTE
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

CECTPA wrote:
Sun May 20, 2018 12:48 pm
All the troubles they are getting into (debt, poor health, legal problems etc.) becomes a source of income for the 9% (doctors, lawyers, social workers, people who are involved into creating all kinds of entertainment for the 90%).
brute sees this from the libertarian point of view: services rendered by the 9% (or the 0.1% for that matter) are only immoral or problematic if they consist of rent-seeking instead of voluntary exchange of goods and services. lobbying to block entry into a profession: bad. performing a service and charging money for it that the consumer pays voluntarily: good.

some humans get hung up on the voluntariness of consuming health care services. brute is very libertarian on this. humans also require water and food for survival, yet going to the grocery store seems pretty voluntary for most humans most of the time.

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