Are 'Classes' Back

Has a fairer America also become an America with less social mobility? That is the uncomfortable question raised by John Parker's long American survey in The Economist last month.

"A decline in social mobility would run counter to Americans' deepest beliefs about their country," Parker writes. "Unfortunately, that is what seems to be happening. Class is reappearing in a new form."

This was the conclusion, as well, of a recent series of articles in The New York Times -- although, as the Times and Parker both note, polls show that Americans think their chances of moving up are better than a generation ago. Statistics tell a different story: There is a higher correlation today between parents' and children's income than in the 1980s, and the income gap between college graduates and non-graduated doubled between 1979 and 1997.

"America," concludes Parker, "is becoming a stratified society based on education: a meritocracy."

Parker's view parallels that of another Brit, Ferdinand Mount, former editor of the Times Literary Supplement, in his 2004 book, "Mind the Gap: The New Class Divide in Britain." Mount notes that income inequality has been increasing in Britain, not just during the Thatcherite 1980s, but since Tony Blair's New Labor government took office in 1997 -- much to the dismay of many Labor ministers. He notes also that Britons are not converging on one lifestyle -- Uppers and Downers, as he calls them, still dress differently and speak with different accents -- and that Britain, more open to upward mobility in the past than popular legend would have it, is becoming less so.

This he partly blames on the abolition by equality-minded Laborites years ago of the academically demanding grammar schools that were the routes out of the working class for so many Labor politicians themselves.

"We cannot help noticing," Mount concludes, "that the old class system has been reconstituted into a more or less meritocratic upper tier and a lower tier which is defined principally by its failure to qualify for the upper tier."

Which is exactly what Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray predicted for America in their controversial book "The Bell Curve," published 11 years ago. Herrnstein and Murray noted that intelligence is both measurable and in some large but unquantifiable part hereditary, an unexceptionable finding for experimental psychologists but maddening to social engineers. As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it.

"Unchecked, these trends," Herrnstein and Murray wrote, "will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top."

Which leads to the question children ask on long car trips: Are we there yet? Mount says Britain is and Parker says America may well be. And maybe so.

Yet should we be so gloomy about this? The British have tended to see their society as a one-ladder system, with Oxford and Cambridge graduates at the top and lavatory cleaners at the bottom. Yet in America (and I think in Britain, too), there are many ladders upward, with many intermediate rungs. Not everyone has an emotional need to be on top: How many people, if they thought seriously about it, would really want the burdens of a CEO, however lavish the pay?

Meritocracy may leave people with no one to blame for failure. But, as Herrnstein and Murray argued, almost all Americans have the ability "to find valued places in society."

And that depends not so much on intelligence as on personal behavior. Here, perhaps, we are coping with meritocracy already. New York Times columnist David Brooks points out that since 1993, we have seen declines in violent crime, family violence, teenage births, abortions, child poverty, drunken driving, teenage sex, teenage suicide and divorce. We are seeing increases in test scores and, as Parker notes, in membership in voluntary associations.

As Murray has written, all you need to do to avoid poverty in this country is to graduate from high school, get and stay married, and take any job. The intelligence needed to get a place in the cognitive elite may become more concentrated in a fair meritocratic society, but the personal behaviors needed to find a valued place in society are available to everyone.

Meritocracy may mean less mobility, but that is bearable if, as Brooks says, "America is becoming more virtuous."

Read this part again:

As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence

That wasn't even approximately true in George Washington Carver's time. It has recently become approximately true, for the first time in human history. That's the point.

Until now, stratification according to merit could not have occurred, because there was this disconnect between ability and social position. Many natural geniuses picked cotton, because they were forbidden to read. That doesn't happen any more. Almost everybody gets his chance to shine, and the reality is that the shiny kids strongly tend to come from shiny parents.

Is that what you would expect? What do you think the reason is?

Has anyone noticed that the systematic dumbing-down of our "educational" system is producing endless crops of spiritually crippled Elitist parrots without a shred of critical-thinking ability?

Well yes, the author in fact alludes to that:

"...and that Britain, more open to upward mobility in the past than popular legend would have it, is becoming less so. This he partly blames on the abolition by equality-minded Laborites years ago of the academically demanding grammar schools..."

Personally.... I'm not sure the college education is that important anymore. (I am degreed btw) But, my hot water heater went out the other day. I changed it myself because the plumber wanted $600 labor to do the job. I did it in 3 hours and I don't do it every day. The plumber is a very nice guy, who stays busy by getting young college graduates making $300 per day... or old people making $1200 per month..... to pay him $600 to change their water heater.

If money is the goal and the measure of success, then I am a living example of how education can be a positive hindrance. What's at issue here is not money per se, but what it takes to become part of the cognitive elite, and for one's children to belong to it. The money comes later, if at all.

The smart kids will still be able to compete for the high-paying plumber jobs if they so choose. The not-so-smart kids won't be getting the high-paying surgeon jobs, regardless.

Nobody will be getting the high-paying physicist jobs, because there is no such thing. :-)

Very true. I grew up in a very blue collar family. My neighborhood had about a 25% high school graduate rate. My parents thought is was strange that I wanted to go to college - much less law school. All types of people come from all types of families.

I think there's the cognitive elite.... and then there's the people with money. Being part of the "cognitive elite" is like a moral victory. It's like when OSU plays OU and they only lose by 1 touchdown instead of 5. That's a moral victory.

the media and certain rich kids believe it's both cool and fun to be impoverished crime-ridden inner city minorities

I can totally understand what you are saying with the whole hip-hop and gangster rap culture (that make it ok to be on welfare, sell drugs, commit acts of violence, beat women, etc.)

However, I have notice that very lately, some of the newer TV are starting to celebrete wealth or at least the upper class. (The OC, Laguna Beach, Who Wants to be a Hilton).

I was playing video poker at the Stardust on Friday and met a fine young Hungarian fellow playing video games next to me, mid-20s, and friendly.

He is new to this nation and embarassed by his english (which was fine, by the way). He says even on vacation he brings his english study book. He very much wants citzenship in the usa. He mentioned many times how much he loved the states and is tired of Europe. He wants to work in real estate in his new home of Florida, money and have a good life (wife, children) but also wants to enjoy himself and have a good standard of living. He is also not a greedy guy.

It was just a 5 minite covo but I knew he had the drive and dedication to be sucessful. If more homegown americans had 1/2 his energy and enthusiasm, the country would be a much better place.

Anyway, it shows to go you, a lot of people worldwide see this nation still as the land of opportunity, and indeed it is.

Exactly. In fact, my parents were disappointed that none of us went to college. However, my brother has a good job and bought his own home at age 24. My youngest brother and I both served in the military (he's still in...NG deploying in a few months, actually). We're all married, have kids, good jobs and have never been arrested, ect.

Not a bad success rate, if you ask me. Personally, I can see where my folks were coming from, as I want my own children to attend college, but I would be perfectly satisfied if they had a good job and provided for their family on their own, degree or not.

Murray for sure said that the welfare state should be abolished entirely. During an interview this weekend on CSPAN, he said that welfare for single mothers for example, had created an accountability vacuum that promoted low expectations for males and made the government the ghetto's Daddy. He said that he had been roundly drubbed in the media for that stance, but that its logic was unassailable.

He's right.

I agree with your analysis. The Left (the diabolically narcisstic core, not its' usful idiots) wants to re-establish the "old ways"...smallish aristocracy running the show at the expense of the "unwashed masses." Hence they love to speak in terms of 'inherited' intelligence...meaning themselves, of course.

Maybe you should read (or re-read) and understand Murray and Herrnstein. They explicitly speak of tendencies, trends, and statistical probabilities, NOT about any determinism at the level of an individual. Say, out of one thousand children of college graduates 800-900 will be "college material", while, say 50-100 would be college substandard. Out of one thousand lower class children the proportion of "college material" [they define it as IQ 115+] could be , say 50-100, while those who would not make it in a college could number, say, 700. But in both cases there would be those falling through the cracks (in the former case -"cracks in the floor", in the latter case - "cracks in the ceiling"). And in neither case would one be able to predict the individual's fate based merely on the background of that individual. More interesting things occur when such sorting is repeated over several generations.

"Does Mr. Parket suggest that George Washington Carver was some kind of an intellectual fluke? That the children of crop dusters will produce only cropdusters?"

It's not even primarily an issue of intelligence, i.e., high IQ. It's a social issue, not so much an intelligence issue that causes successive generations of college grads to go to college.

The reason the college-graduates have more children going to college is because the college-educated parents expect more of their children.

...the guy would have a point, that meeting your spouse in college could result in a widening gap of intelligence.

Not if the guy or his spouse made it to college by affirmative action.

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