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Chris Rock’s econ bombshell: What his “riots in the streets” prediction says about American Dream
Salon ^ | December 3, 2014 | Elias Isquith

Posted on 12/05/2014 8:28:49 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

Comedian reveals what it means to be rich today -- and how little the average American really understands about it.

I’ve already written a bit about Chris Rock’s must-read interview with Frank Rich and, as much as I enjoy the comedian’s work, I didn’t expect to be returning to it quite so soon. But although Rock’s comments on racism initially drew the most attention, a recent study from Gregory Clark, a researcher at University of California, Davis, has got me thinking that the comedian’s most insightful (and potentially radical) statement came earlier in the interview, during a brief digression about inequality. “Oh, people don’t even know,” he said, responding to Rich’s claim that class was still “the elephant in the room” of American politics. “If poor people knew how rich rich people are,” he continued, “there would be riots in the streets.”

At first blush, this may not sound like such a profound statement; it could be easily mistaken for a comment about the politics of envy or simply the awesome scale of inequality today. But I don’t think that’s what Rock was getting at, really. Rather than speaking to the reality of inequality itself or the combustible resentment of the underclass, Rock was talking about our perception of American society, and how that perception influences politics. That’s why, in his next remark, he expanded beyond the poor to “the average person.” They too, he said, would also be outraged and bewildered by the lifestyle of the 1 percent. “If the average person could see the Virgin Airlines first-class lounge,” Rock said, “they’d go, ‘What? What? This is food, and it’s free, and they … what? Massage? Are you kidding me?’”

On strictly empirical grounds, Rock’s assertion is incontestable. Multiple studies have shown that Americans seriously underestimate the degree of inequality in the U.S. economy. As Slate’s Jordan Weissman noted in September, subjects in one test “estimated that the top 20 percent of U.S. households owned about 59 percent of the country’s net worth,” when in truth the number is closer to 84 percent. Moreover, the same study shows that even if the wealth of the U.S. economy was distributed like they’d believed, most Americans would still consider it too unequal. And these findings were consistent across many social groups; from Republicans to Democrats, from men to women, from the rich to the poor. No matter your vantage, it seems, Americans’ perception and their reality is not in sync.

To be fair, it’s quite likely that that’s always been the case. And while the gap between perception and reality was most pronounced in Americans, people from other developed (and increasingly unequal) economies also came up with ideal distributions that were markedly different from their countries’ actual status quo. What separates Americans from others, though — what makes inequality of this kind sustainable in the U.S. in a way that in other democracies isn’t; what makes the gap between perception and reality that Rock alluded to so difficult to bridge — is their faith in one of the greatest branding exercises in human history. I speak, of course, of the American Dream.

The American Dream isn’t new, of course, and it didn’t pop up as a response to the great divergence that started in the early 1970s. It’s been around for more than 100 years, and there really was a time, during the late 1800s, when rising wages and rags-to-riches stories made the theory at least plausible. But as the aforementioned U.C. Davis researcher Gregory Clark has found in a recent (paywalled) study, even if the American Dream was real in the past, it’s no longer operational today. “America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England or pre-industrial Sweden,” Clark said, according to a report from Sacramento’s KOVR-TV. In fact, while Clark joins many other experts in finding that social mobility today doesn’t make good on the American Dream’s promises, he goes one step further and argues that it never did.

“My students always argue with me,” Clark told KOVR-TV, because they find the idea that our lives are not much of our own making “very hard to accept.” And if the relatively liberal students of a public school in California consider Clark’s evisceration of the American Dream upsetting, imagine how most other Americans would take the bad news. Currently, the gap between perception and reality in U.S. society is papered over by the American Dream and its vow that regular people, through hard work and perseverance, will be able to get ahead. That dynamic won’t change until more Americans realize that the American Dream today is just an empty promise. But if that ever happens, the 1 percent and the stewards of government will have a whole lot more trouble on their hands than Chris Rock’s hypothetical riots.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: economy; inequality; wealth; wealthy
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Who here thinks that the food and massages provided by Virgin Airways are free?
1 posted on 12/05/2014 8:28:49 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

When you have an economic system based on forcing money from the top 2-49% to the bottom 50% you’ll have a 1% richer than the dreams of kings. It’s because typically the best group at holding and expanding the economy is the middle to upper middle class. When you have dollars sent down lower against market principles, it flies right to the top and stays there.

You see it every time the welfare and entitlement state expands. The inequality explodes.


2 posted on 12/05/2014 8:37:45 PM PST by Bogey78O (We had a good run. Coulda been great still.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Who here thinks that the food and massages provided by Virgin Airways are free?

Sorry - I can't get past the author's weird belief that Chris Rock's ramblings contain profound nuggets of wisdom that can help us all live better lives.

3 posted on 12/05/2014 8:40:17 PM PST by Interesting Times (WinterSoldier.com. SwiftVets.com. ToSetTheRecordStraight.com.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Some way or another they are built into the ticket price. A price I sure don’t want to pay, lol.

This makes it sound like people don’t know that wealthy people live different lives. Well...duh. I don’t live like a wealthy person by any means....but I live better than people that make less money than I do.

It is what is called...”The Way It Is”.


4 posted on 12/05/2014 9:06:14 PM PST by berdie
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Chris Rock is one of the dumbest black people to ever live


5 posted on 12/05/2014 9:06:34 PM PST by Viennacon
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate the emotion of envy tomorrow, the democrats would never win another election. They are the party of fruits, nuts, and people envious of what other people have.


6 posted on 12/05/2014 9:26:14 PM PST by MNnice
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
I got bumped up into first class once, back in the 1970s, when it meant something. Very nice, but I'm not losing sleep that it hasn't happened again.
7 posted on 12/05/2014 9:41:22 PM PST by CaptainK (...please make it stop. Shake a can of pennies at it.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

More Socialist/Communist agitprop.

No doubt the article is liberally sprinkled with lies and dramatically false statistics to make a seemingly persuasive case against America and Capitalism. Just following in Marx’s footsteps.


8 posted on 12/05/2014 10:03:30 PM PST by BeauBo
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To: Interesting Times

It’s not so much that he has profound nuggets of wisdom, but that he can present the staggeringly obvious in an unavoidable & irrefutable way that many humans of the wrong shade would be demonized for attempting.


9 posted on 12/05/2014 10:54:09 PM PST by ctdonath2 (Si vis pacem, para bellum.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Chris Rock still has the juvenile delusion that everything must be fair..

Whatever “fair” means.. which varys by people that want FREE stuff..
-OR- do not want to work for it.. -OR- want something you have.. and they don’t...

-OR-are hustling RACE.. like Rock..


10 posted on 12/05/2014 11:04:04 PM PST by hosepipe (" This propaganda has been edited (specifically) to include some fully orbed hyperbole.. ")
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To: BeauBo

Once the government gets to decide how much you can have, who do you think will be the rich m..f...ers then?

Who was rich in the Soviet Union?


11 posted on 12/05/2014 11:57:41 PM PST by joshua c (Please dont feed the liberals)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I believe it.

I have a Pinterest board named “Flying First Class”. Life is pretty cool with a lot of freebies if you are flying top of the line. But I think it depends on what you call free.

To get on a Virgin Airlines flight, you have to have a ticket. Everything is included in the ticket, the food, the drinks, the massage, all the perks. Was it free?

The most awesome are thing that come with a first class Emerites ticket. Lots!!!

Let me know if you want a lint to the Pinterest page.


12 posted on 12/06/2014 12:21:07 AM PST by BunnySlippers (I LOVE BULL MARKETS . . .)
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To: BunnySlippers

OK, my “Flying First Class”. Emerites, Qatar and the Middle East are all the best for so-called free stuff

http://www.pinterest.com/terila9/flying-first-class/


13 posted on 12/06/2014 12:25:42 AM PST by BunnySlippers (I LOVE BULL MARKETS . . .)
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To: BunnySlippers
Yes. I flew first-class several times as an enlisted man, as back then the airline attendants would often put soldiers in empty first-class seats. Much better food, more room, etc. Nothing like the unbelievable accommodations now, though.
14 posted on 12/06/2014 12:27:50 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

If you believe the goodies you get in first-class air travel are free, you probably believe the room, board, shows, clubs and hookers high-end gamblers get in Vegas are free. (Oops, escorts, because you can’t get hookers in Vegas. Prostitution is illegal in Clark County. What? It is. Stop laughing.)


15 posted on 12/06/2014 12:36:43 AM PST by RichInOC (No! BAD Rich! (What'd I say?))
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Now it is full top of the line sleeping garments, luxury brand name evening slippers, full size toiletries ... All of the champagne , you name the brand, that you can drink. All of the caviar you can eat, etc.

The pre-boarding lounges are even more luxurious.

So free food and massage, no problem.


16 posted on 12/06/2014 12:40:59 AM PST by BunnySlippers (I LOVE BULL MARKETS . . .)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I fly quite a bit, but I see airline flights as a way catch up on sleep, not as some alternative to a hotel bar or luxury spa.


17 posted on 12/06/2014 12:54:26 AM PST by rdcbn
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To: Interesting Times

the entire theory is killed off by the inclusion of Chris Rock in the beginning. Rock is a successful entertainer who came from nothing. Yet through hard work and good fortune, he is now a wealthy person with an amazing lifestyle.

I bet any one of us can think of ten people off the top of our heads that went from nothing to middle class upper middle class or outright wealthy.

We also have to remember that even poor people in America constitute the upper 1% of all mankind in lifestyle. Our poor are fat, cable watching, I-phone using, car drivers with three tv’s, two cars and no chance of starving to death.


18 posted on 12/06/2014 12:57:51 AM PST by Jim from C-Town (The government is rarely benevolent, often malevolent and never benign!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
even if the American Dream was real in the past, it’s no longer operational today. “America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England or pre-industrial Sweden,”

Big-government advocates just do not understand the concept of working capital. When government takes all the profit, it is more difficult, even impossible, to grow a business, start a business, or advance economically as a family or individual.

19 posted on 12/06/2014 1:02:14 AM PST by meadsjn
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To: meadsjn

Being an independent agent or associate of a larger company is one way around that concern. My total investment was a one-time $99.


20 posted on 12/06/2014 1:05:38 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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