“Paul Krugman in the Nation”:http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040105&s=krugman :
bq. The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago. The name of the leftist rag? _Business Week_ …
{ 28 comments }
Mikhel 12.22.03 at 2:07 pm
Daniel posted the link a couple of days ago.
Because every link one of you posts make me think of another one, here’s a page with some statistics on American wealth.
Chris Bertram 12.22.03 at 2:11 pm
I’d missed that Daniel had done that … But I’d better leave it up now given the link embedded in your comment.
Mikhel 12.22.03 at 2:42 pm
You know what would be a great holiday present? An edit feature. Some of us can’t seem to write a response without making a small (but telling) grammatical error.
Sigh. . .
Jim Miller 12.22.03 at 4:05 pm
Well, in response to Kurgman’s comment, it isn’t unusual even for business publications to have journalists who have the same ideology as people who work at leftist rags.
I recall, for example, a piece in the Economist that wondered why housing prices had risen in the Seattle area, after the enactment of a “growth management” plan. The plan had restricted the supply of land for houses, as most such plans do. The rest you can work out for yourself, I assume, even though the the Economist writer couldn’t.
Matt Weiner 12.22.03 at 4:21 pm
Here’s a cached version of the article, should anyone wish to judge for themselves* whether it is an example of BW’s creeping leftist ideology.
*Brian, help! What’s the reflexive form of singular “they”?
Jeremy Osner 12.22.03 at 4:41 pm
Matt — try “themself”…
Bob 12.22.03 at 4:42 pm
It seems not to be widely appreciated that the distribution of income in Britain under Blair’s governance has become more unequal compared with more Thatcherite times:
“The gap between rich and poor in Britain is at its largest in 13 years and poverty levels under Tony Blair exceed those under Margaret Thatcher, government statistics reveal.
“Figures from the Office for National Statistics for income inequality show that differences in disposable, post-tax income at the top and bottom of society have returned to levels last seen in 1990.
“The report shows that the “Gini coefficient”, an international measure of inequality, has increased from an average of 29 points under Baroness Thatcher to 35 points under Mr Blair. The figure for 2001-02 was 36 points.
“The gap between rich and poor, which was relatively static in the early Tory years, soared in the late 1980s and then declined slightly through the early 1990s. It began an upward trend in 1995 and continued to rise under Labour, which came to power in 1997. . .”
– from (subscription): http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=405436
Ophelia Benson 12.22.03 at 6:34 pm
“I recall, for example, a piece in the Economist that wondered why housing prices had risen in the Seattle area, after the enactment of a “growth management†plan. The plan had restricted the supply of land for houses, as most such plans do. The rest you can work out for yourself, I assume, even though the the Economist writer couldn’t.”
Hmm. Are you quite sure you’re not muddling up correlation and causation there? At least in part? Are you quite sure that the Growth Management plan was the only thing driving up housing prices? No other factor(s) involved at all?
Michael 12.22.03 at 8:46 pm
– Business Week has seemed to me a bit left-of-center going all the way back to the 1980s. (Not a criticism, just a subjective interpretation.) I don’t think the article’s appearance in BW is quite the man-bites-dog story Krugman makes it out to be.
– Krugman’s presentation and interpretation of the data in his Nation article are suspect. See Donald Luskin
Dugger 12.22.03 at 9:27 pm
Perhaps Krugie is is saying that in the great Three Stooges debate (which ended in a pie-throwing fight) of heredity versus environment, heredity wins most of the time. But, I guess ample proof of the Krugman/Business Week theory is the huge emigration out of this country to Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia.
degustibus 12.22.03 at 9:38 pm
Old news: Horatio Alger, Farewell, Celeste Macleod, 1983.
Vinteuil 12.22.03 at 9:46 pm
Dugger: you have committed irony.
Bad Dugger. Bad, bad Dugger.
Matt Weiner 12.23.03 at 12:47 am
Wow, what a train wreck. No one seems to have anything to say about the Business Week article–the Luskin link crashes my computer, but his past record does not cause confidence–so we get a bunch of irrelevant insinuations about BW’s leftist sympathies, a howling non sequitur about some Economist article, a mind-boggling insinuation that this settles the heredity v. environment debate (newsflash: parents determine children’s environment as well as heredity), another crashing non sequitur in the form of a joke, and a self-congratulatory reference to the same. This is one of those comment threads that’s not taking off, I guess.
Well, De Gustibus’s comment might be interesting, if someone can tell us anything more about MacLeod’s book.
Vinteuil 12.23.03 at 2:16 am
Matt Weiner: sorry, but there just isn’t much here to go on. Krugman says that socio-economic mobility in the U.S. declined between the end of Nixon’s presidency (1973) and the end of Clinton’s second term (2000). He predicts that Bush’s policies will exacerbate the trend. But there’s just not enough detail here to tell whether we should attribute this change to “conservative” economic policies under Reagan and Bush I, “liberal” economic policies under Carter and Clinton, both, neither, or whatever. It’s just a very shallow and partisan piece of analysis.
Besides–it’s not at all clear how much one ought to *care* about socio-economic mobility, as such. Conservatives and libertarians are much more worried about other things. If those other things result in lots of socio-economic mobility, fine. If not, well, that’s fine too.
Personally, though, I’d welcome a return to the Clinton years. All of the same trends continue or accellerate, but suddently the Krugman’s of the world stop fussing about it.
Epacris 12.23.03 at 10:14 am
My very-small contribution to a similar debate in Australia, dealing with some of the problems of argument & statistics is at this page.
http://uk.geocities.com/epacris55/writing_gallery/average_fallacy/average_fallacy.htm
(sorry abt length)
When I get time & energy, I might put together a short note on the Australian myth/legend of the three Japanese prisoner-of-war camps (British, American & Australian) supposedly showing the difference between the three societies & why the Australian one is superior.
Matt Weiner 12.23.03 at 2:58 pm
vinteuil–Thanks for the actual debate. Of course I disagree with you, but there’s actually stuff to talk about here.
(1) I don’t see Krugman as naming any names as to whose economic policies are responsible for the decrease in intergenerational mobility. All he says is that “public policy plays a role” along with Wal-Martization. He then says that Bush II’s policies are likely to exacerbate this–and can you deny that?
(2) Sure, conservatives and libertarians don’t care much about intergenerational mobility. But lack of intergenerational mobility indicates a lack of equality of opportunity. See a bunch of other threads.
Douglas 12.23.03 at 6:30 pm
look for this trend to accelerate as the ‘knowledge worker’ jobs are also outsourced to India, China, etc. Most of these jobs require a college degree: having said degree no longer offers protection against declining wages. In fact it seems likely that more of the middle class will slip into poverty. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”..
Dugger’s comment is asinine. The poor who are immigrating are grasping at the chimera of the American Dream. Do you think they are reading this blog, or Business Week ? Instead they’re operating on the delusion that America is still the land of opportunity: or on the bet that the American dollar will be able to buy more than their currency. A lousy income in US$ sent back to Mexico is a good income.
Incidentally, Krugman did criticize some of Clinton’s policies. It’s just that there’s a lot more to criticize in BushCo.. The point here being that given the known inequality and rigidity of the American class system, a rational public policy would be aimed at ameliorating the problem, not exacerbating it.
Dugger 12.23.03 at 6:47 pm
Douglas,
“The poor who are immigrating are grasping at the chimera of the American Dream.”
But my comment precisely referred to the poor who aren’t emigrating. If the immigrating poor can afford to come here, then wouldn’t it make sense that they could also afford to leave here (emigrate) – were it that the situation for the poor here is so hopeless – as Krugweek says? The truth, of course, is that the poor here are nearly (equivalent to) the rich in the third world and nearly the middle class in Europe. And they don’t leave because they don’t want to leave; because they are better off here; because we have a vibrant free market economy that almost always rewards effort and ingenuity.
Chris Bertram 12.23.03 at 7:20 pm
What was it Vinteuil wrote?
“Dugger: you have committed irony.
Bad Dugger. Bad, bad Dugger.”
Lawrence Krubner 12.23.03 at 8:37 pm
I remember Krugman as being brutal on Clinton. I remember in 95, especially, when Clinton was engaging in some serious Japan-bashing, it seemed like every column Krugman wrote was pretty intensely anti-Clinton.
Vinteuil 12.24.03 at 1:33 am
Matt Weiner–I’m going to cop-out (quite shamelessly) on the serious response you deserve. Too much to do, too little time–all the usual excuses. Plus I’m still thinking about it. Suffice it to say, for the moment, that I think C’s and L’s should just stop talking about “equality of opportunity.” It’s a loser for them, except under an extreme and implausible interpretation of the phrase. (This is just one of many reasons why the right will never give me a job.)
Matt Weiner 12.24.03 at 1:57 am
vinteuil–Thanks, I was planning to cop out as well for the same reasons. :-) Of course I like to talk about equality of opportunity because I’m not C or L.
Zizka 12.24.03 at 5:45 am
It costs money to emigrate. I’m working on it. The EU is not friendly to American immigrants, and I have few transferable job skills.
Antoni Jaume 12.24.03 at 10:27 pm
Ziska, IIRC there are about the same number of EU-citizen in the USA than USA-citizens in the EU.
DSW
Anti 12.25.03 at 4:18 am
Dugger
The poor here are nearly equivalent to the middle class in Europe.
Have you been to Switzerland lately? Norway? Belgium? Sweden? The Netherlands?
Viteuil
Are you putting conservatives and libertarians in the same box? Conservatives have security as their first priority, libertarians freedom. And security and freedom are mutually exclusive. No way do freedom and security fit into the same box.
Dugger 12.25.03 at 11:53 pm
anti,
No to all of the above. Is your point that one cannot make gross judgments about the wealth and quality of life of nations unless one has been there lately?
anti 12.26.03 at 1:24 am
Dugger
No, it wasn’t. The going there was a metaphor for being aware. My point was that the per capita wealth and quality of life in the countries I mentioned are higher than in the USA.
The USA isn’t nearly as prosperous in comparison to other nations as it used to be. And the quality of life in the most obese nation in the developed world with the highest divorce rate and highest crime rate isn’t too wonderful either.
JRoth 12.28.03 at 7:07 pm
The immigration argument is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Anyone with an awareness of Europe knows that, despite much less immigration-friendly laws, Europe has tons of immigrants, as does Australia. In other words, every first world country gets third world immigrants, so it’s no pat on the back to us (Americans) that we get our share.
Anyway, getting to the one substantive comment in the thread, I think that it’s dishonest to claim that status heritability is irrelevant to arguments on one side of the spectrum, because perceptions of opportunities for advancement are critical to political choices. Americans love the Horation Alger story, and our policies reflect that – the idea that no one should help the poor, because they can, with just a little self-discipline, become not-poor, as well as the idea that we shouldn’t tax the rich, because we all may become rich, any day now. If everyone knew that these premises were false – or that current policies will tend to falsify them – then everyone would prefer different policies.
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