The collapse of the Soviet Union was so traumatic for many of its citizens because people discovered very visible economic inequalities and didn’t know how to deal with that. Of course, since the closing years of World War II, really immense differences in the economic status existed between different groups of people in the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet ultra-wealthy never had a chance to mix with the regular citizens, which is why we could pretend that we were all equally poor and didn’t have to feel tortured by observing inequality on a daily basis.
In the 1990, the “wild capitalism” stage of the disintegration of the Soviet Union began. Now, anybody could make a fortune. Just as easily, anybody could become indigent overnight. Differences in the standard of living among neighbors, life-long buddies, former colleagues, sisters, brothers, etc. became striking and impossible not to notice. Many people didn’t find a way to process these changes and adapt to them. When the opportunities to live a lavish lifestyle had been limited to the chosen few who simply had the luck of being born into the right sort of family, one could tolerate that. However, the idea that one’s childhood friend could suddenly strike it rich right in front of one’s own eyes was intolerable.
Here is my question, though. People in the US never experienced any other economic reality than the fully capitalist one. Why, then, are they all acting like they suddenly discovered economic inequality two minutes ago? Haven’t the Americans had two centuries to adapt to the existence of glaring differences in the standard of living and find ways of processing them? I just read this article, and it reminded me a lot of articles that proliferated in the FSU countries between 1991 and 2001.
When I go on my daily walks, I first pass through my own middle-class neighborhood, then a poorer neighborhood, and finally arrive at an incredibly wealthy neighborhood. There are veritable mansions that I see there. As somebody who was born in the Soviet Union, my first reaction to these palaces is to feel joy that it’s possible for people to live this well. For me, it’s still something new and surprising. I always thought that for people who were born in a capitalist country this should be a non-issue and they should not have an emotional reaction of any kind to it because they must be very used to the great disparity in wealth. But then I read the articles like the one I just linked to and I feel like I’m back home, discovering capitalism for the very first time.
You’ll say this is because of the recession but, honestly, I don’t buy that. This isn’t the first economic crisis and neither is it the last. Capitalism by its nature does not exist without constant crises, shocks, and upheavals. It is not a static system and would not survive as such.
So here is my question: how do you react to the great disparity in economic status that you observe around you on a daily basis? Do the mansions of the very rich make you feel curious? Angry? Or do you fail to notice them because you are used to their existence?
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In US one is taught to believe there is “equality” and that poverty is elsewhere so yes, people rediscover these things daily and many never see the poor neighborhoods as they don’t go there.
I don’t fail to notice but I am not too patient with those discovering for the first time. Still horrified by really bad conditions even though I used to have some relatives living in such rather permanently.
Here a lot of people live in houses that look like they’re straight out of a Walker Evans photo or are literally. The time warp aspect of it still amazes me, yes.
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I always thought it was about the equality of opportunity, not the equality of living conditions.
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Yes but that is not how the majority is taught to read it.
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A lot of people have the Puritan idea that if you work hard, you’ll do fine. Therefore, they could dismiss the poor as “lazy” or “stupid” during the boom years for the middle class. But that middle class is shrinking quickly, pushing people into the lower class or up into the upper class, and formerly middle-class people are starting to realize that it’s NOT all about hard work. Rather than completely changing their worldview, however, they’ve decided that they’re being cheated (which, yeah, but lower-class people already knew that, just nobody was listening) because they’re working hard but still losing money. Previously, the middle class looked at the upper class mansions and aspired to be in them someday (and put themselves in debt up to their eyeballs getting there, hence the current economic crisis), so said mansions didn’t make the middle class as sick as they make those of us who grew up in several different slum houses and are now having to beggar ourselves to get through college in the HOPE that maybe we’ll have a better life on the other side. You know, if the economy doesn’t slam us back into the Great Depression between now and then.
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“A lot of people have the Puritan idea that if you work hard, you’ll do fine. ”
-I don’t think it’s a Puritan idea as much a normal psychological response. How can one live in peace if one doesn’t believe that? The anxiety would be intolerable.
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Good point. I think it’s amplified in the US, though, partly due to the cultural Puritanism and overwork-ethic. Granted, this is the opinion of a person who has never been out of the country (though I do study British culture quite a bit), so take it with however much salt it needs. 😛
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Mansions don’t make me feel angry – they do make me feel judgy about how people with money choose to use their money though. I’d much rather spend a million on a nice piece of acreage and a small cottage than a huge mansion that is merely feet away from another huge mansion that looks almost identical. (Pretty common in the rich suburbs of Atlanta.)
I live in an “up and coming” area now, but it is still a far cry from a poor neighborhood. But even when inequality is “obvious” as you drive by it each day, I don’t think it really hits home until you’re forced to acknowledge it by living among it.
I think the idea that we’re being “cheated” by the superrich is a fairly new concept to a lot of people, because we do tend to believe that we can all become super rich – that’s why people will vote for tax cuts for the rich, even if they’re not affected by it. But for people who’s lives aren’t working out, to suddenly be told “hey, it’s not your fault, you can blame someone else” I think that is a new concept.
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“I think the idea that we’re being “cheated” by the superrich is a fairly new concept to a lot of people, because we do tend to believe that we can all become super rich – that’s why people will vote for tax cuts for the rich, even if they’re not affected by it. But for people who’s lives aren’t working out, to suddenly be told “hey, it’s not your fault, you can blame someone else” I think that is a new concept.”
-Exactly. This is a brilliant comment.
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Americans really believe that they have a classless society in spite of evidence to the contrary so when their fundamental belief system gets kicked in the teeth, they react strongly. If you don’t agree then read this story published today in the New York by Frank Rich entitled “The Class War Has Begun” with the leader, “and the very classlessness of our society makes the conflict more volatile, not less.”
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/class-war-2011-10/
P.S. I read the article that you referenced and it reminds me a lot of the recession chic post that I did on a bedsheet which looks like a pavement with a duvet designed to look like a cardboard box for those who have money but want to identify with the poor.
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“Americans really believe that they have a classless society in spite of evidence to the contrary so when their fundamental belief system gets kicked in the teeth, they react strongly.” Yes.
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“Americans really believe that they have a classless society in spite of evidence to the contrary”
-I so don’t get that. How can anybody really think that? Is this some kind of a collective delusion that’s going on? Are people that blind? I’m not doubting these statements, mind you. I just don’t get them.
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The problem in the US is that the inequality between the social classes is getting greater and greater. We are headed toward a feudal system where the only way the people who are not ultra-rich will be able to survive is to swear fealty to some aristocrat or other.
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or some corporation.
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As I mentioned before, corporations in the Us today prefer employees who do not stay employed at the same place for more than 5 years at most.
I don’t share these doom-and-gloom scenarios because I’ve seen the really wild stage of capitalism unfold right before my eyes and the economic inequalities were like nothing anybody has seen in the US for about a century. And nothing that dramatic happened as a result.
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I live in the US and am relatively poor. And, that doesn’t really bother me…too much. Almost invariably, when I see a conspicuous display of wealth, whether it be a multi-$100,000 automobile, or a multi-million dollar mansion, the thought, “people have too much money” comes to my mind. However, being from the USA, I don’t ever think, “People don’t have enough money.” I am acutely aware that the average American has much, much more than the average person in any developing country. In fact, what the West calls “poor” is probably infinitely more wealthy than what “poor” really is, globally speaking. When I was a kid growing up in the US, I can remember families that were on relief. And back then, you couldn’t even own a car, color TV, telephone(I think), diamond jewelry or furs, and still be eligible for public relief. Today the average “poor” person has all of those things in multiples, plus an abundance of other new gadgets. I have never bought into the worldview that most westerners have that says, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” I believe this is a lie. It is a lie that keeps most of us occupied, and thus, distracted, for most of our lives. I prefer to put my trust in things that are eternal, since I believe this material world is fading and will not exist forever. I am trying to build up a treasure in heaven that won’t ever fade away.
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“I have never bought into the worldview that most westerners have that says, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” I believe this is a lie. It is a lie that keeps most of us occupied, and thus, distracted, for most of our lives.”
-How come I’m getting so many BRILLIANT comments today? 🙂
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One way Americans blind themselves to the income disparity is to divide cities and towns into “good” and “bad” areas. The “bad” areas are the poor areas–and people tell one another that they’re “dangerous” and to avoid them. On the other hand, the “good” parts tend to be the extremely wealthy areas, and people flock to the shopping and restaurants available there, pretending that they are part of that. Americans are really good at cognitive dissonance.
I know a woman who is a perfect example of this. She lives in one of the lower-income neighborhoods, even referring to it as “ghetto.” She doesn’t consider herself to be part of it, however. She refuses to shop at the mall in the lower-middle class area, also calling it “ghetto.” Instead, she’ll travel even farther, to the upper-income area, to shop at the malls there.
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So true. My boyfriend refused to go with me to a Kroger near a bad part of town this weekend, even though it is directly across the street from the Whole Foods he normally shops at. We were just getting bakeware, so the quality of food available wasn’t the issue – fear of the other people who would be there was.
I tried to explain that most people go to the grocery store to get groceries, and not to mug random grad students that decide to check it out.
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If I may self-promote on my own blog (hee hee), here is a post I wrote a long time ago precisely on this kind of attitude: https://clarissasblog.com/2009/05/04/bar-talk/
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I have a number of thoughts but they aren’t organised into anthing coherent, sorry. 😀
This first bit isn’t totally original, so I can’t take credit for the formulation, but I forget exactly where I read it first. (Embarrassed face!)
Anyway, so the theory goes, America = land where anyone can make it, gets translated as America = land where everyone* can make it. I think some people are waking up to the idea that if everyone* actually means the *>0.9% of people who started from the front and <0.1% of people who came from the middle / back then it's not a very good definition of everyone.
I think also there's growing awareness of the subtext of the message, which is that "if anyone can make it and you haven't then it's your fault," and the fact that this message suits those who were born at the top very well, because then institutional inequities doesn't need to be addressed.
I also think as an additional factor the underlying societal contract that "hard work brings rewards" is to many people's minds being breached – if you work as hard as you can and can't ever get a step further forward; well that's not very fair, and American society in general likes to pride itself on being fair.
I suppose what I'm working around to saying is that the underpinning beliefs in US society made it possible to accept inequity before, because to many people, they were just a step away from the top of the heap; however the beliefs that supported that assumption have eroded with along with better access to education, and mass communication / transport that made the inequity levels more visible. Hence, resentment.
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Actually, in my long experience of meeting very rich people, those who are born into very rich families never make anything out of themselves. And things are even worse for those who are the second and third-generation rich.
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But why do you need to be as rich as those top 0.1% to feel like you have “made it”?
Maybe it’s because I’m from 3rd world south africa, but Americans on average have pretty good lives. They have free schools with electricity and running water, books, computers. In my “poor” neighborhood, anyone can go and play soccer on two huge fields, complete with goals, maintained by the town.
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Yes well, that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax – not that I disgree with you, you understand, but I thought we were talking about inequity – not average living standards. I recall reading a certain piece of research that suggests that it’s not the living standards that cause discontent, it’s your level of standards compared to those of everyone around you; basically the the perceived norm and your distance from it. If the perceived norm is much greater than your level, or you are living at the perceived norm, but there are a significant percentage who are living at a greater level, and that level is unattainable but perceived as realisable ‘but for’ then there will be resentment. It seems to be a human thing.
I was groping for reasons as to why some Americans, having lived relatively peacefully, if not contentedly, with high levels of social inequity for a long time are suddenly feeling resentment.
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In other words, America is the opposite of New York: If you can’t make it there, you can’t make it anywhere. That’s always the sense I’ve gotten based on the mainstream belief system, and it has fed my inferiority complex very effectively.
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This is part of what I was groping towards – I think US society has the idea that if you work hard you will definitely do well, and doing well is dependent on working hard – so the idea that that might not be true, as you say, is a massive psychological shock (of course, as discussed below the US idea of doing well is out of whack, but that doesn’t prevent it from having an effect upon people.) To mangle a Buffy quote; “Anxiety makes you do the whacky.”
I think we’re having small tremors of this nature in the UK as well, but because the idea of success as a co-dependent metric of work is only a relatively recent import (Thanks Thatcher! Not.) it’s not quite so bad here – we’ve never really gotten over our cynicism about the Monarchy so don’t seem quite so susceptible to such guff.
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“And back then, you couldn’t even own a car, color TV, telephone(I think), diamond jewelry or furs, and still be eligible for public relief. Today the average “poor” person has all of those things in multiples, plus an abundance of other new gadgets”
The average poor person has tons of diamonds and furs. They are all just spoiled. Funny how Americans are always compared to the poorest third worlders, and not working classes in other developed countries, or the rich in less developed countries.
The truth is poor people usually have older cars that they and their friends often maintain, and color tvs and telephones etc are much cheaper than they used to be. Look at ads for tvs in the 1950s-60s, they cost the same as today! If I sell my TV and other “gadgets” that are always used to show how rich poor people are compared to earlier days, it will get me exactly nowhere today as far as paying my rent. Rents are sky high compared to earlier times. And yes, the banking industry has moved in exploited the situation. Many people went into debt, which we can all sit here and judge as supremely stupid, because they didn’t believe their situation was permanent. And credit was never so easy before.
The other thing no one mentioned here is upward mobility, which used to be much more possible. People didn’t all dream of being millionaires, most just wanted a better life, their own house, a yard, to send their kids to college. When you read “Fast Food nation” note how people started amazing businesses by having a popular hot dog cart. My working class parents were able to buy a house in the suburbs where our neighbor was a mailman. No young working family could buy either of those houses today. It is just not possible today.
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“Look at ads for tvs in the 1950s-60s, they cost the same as today! If I sell my TV and other “gadgets” that are always used to show how rich poor people are compared to earlier days, it will get me exactly nowhere today as far as paying my rent. Rents are sky high compared to earlier times. And yes, the banking industry has moved in exploited the situation.”
-The good news, though, is that now you can make money of your own and start a career in most industries. In the 1950ies you’d be a secretary, a stenographer or a wife with no money of her own.
“The other thing no one mentioned here is upward mobility, which used to be much more possible. ”
-Much more possible for whom? Women? Only through marriage. Black people? Ha ha. Those folks who had all that upward mobility did not include people like you and I. So honestly, I could care less about them losing their mobility.
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I would disagree. Many blacks were able to move into the middle and upper classes even before the civil rights era. And I was talking about families moving up from the working classes, not men or women. It was helpful to me that my parents were able to move into a better neighborhood with great schools, even though like all children of immigrants I didn’t fit in and suffered for it; it ultimately helped me get where I am today. However two of my siblings have slipped downward, even though they worked as hard as our Dad.
Women could be successful also, though not as much as now obviously. How helpful are rights if they can’t be used? Upward mobility is less common for blacks now too, since the mid-90’s at least. It really is a different situation now, though you, like many, seem to be denying it.
But my main point was that electronic gadget acquisition is a very poor metric to use when making judgmental statements about how people are not really poor. It also has an ugly implication that lower class people should be spending every waking hour on improving themselves culturally instead of watching TV or eating fast food or wasting their money on anything except food clothing and shelter. If they sacrifice enough, someday they will deserve to have a TV I suppose.
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Today, in my Freshman seminar, out of 20 students, 5 were black, 1 was Asian, 2 were Latinas. Half of the students were male, half female. Most of our students are the first generation in their families to go to college. Can you imagine a classroom in the 1950ies that looked this way?
This is real social mobility.
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In the 50’s, it would’ve been unusual for there to be more than 2% black students; Asians and Latinos together, maybe 2%; and females, maybe 30 % (all guesses). But hasn’t the demographics of the country itself changed drastically since then? I mean, I’m sure the male-female ratio is probably the same. But the racial landscape has changed quite a bit, I’ll wager…
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Yes but you already admitted in a recent post that it is not going to get them far. There is not more upward mobility now. Are you saying there is? There is also more pressure to go to college so many more people in general are going. Few white men who were not in the uppermost classes went to college in the 1950’s either, only a few percent of the population did. But they were able to support families without going, not now. Even people who have completed undergrad may not find good jobs, but without it they are screwed.
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“Yes but you already admitted in a recent post that it is not going to get them far. There is not more upward mobility now. Are you saying there is?”
-It got them into the classroom, which is a huge thing in itself. And, of course, that is actual social mobility. Note that we are not talking about economic mobility right now but about social mobility, which is not the same thing.
‘Few white men who were not in the uppermost classes went to college in the 1950′s either, only a few percent of the population did. But they were able to support families without going, not now”
-But now those men don’t have to support families single-handedly. They can have a partner who will carry half of the financial burden or, in cases of unemployment, the entirety of it. Once again, that’s a huge thing.
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You are right about one thing: having a bachelor’s degree is no guarantee that one will find a decent job. Not in this economy. I went to university in my late 30’s and have been earnestly looking for a decent job for over 3 years, to no avail. I freely admit, however, I am not willing to relocate, or even commute very far. But is that unreasonable for a 50+ year-old?
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“Note that we are not talking about economic mobility right now but about social mobility, which is not the same thing.”
Well that explains the confusion. Judging from the OP I thought we *were* talking about economic mobility. Which is something that you can research, and believe me, the research shows that it has frozen. As we all know, the middle class is shrinking, not growing. For white working classes upward mobility stopped in the 1970’s. For minorities, thanks to AA, upward mobility was a reality until the mid-90’s.
“They can have a partner who will carry half of the financial burden ”
The woman HAS to work now, sometimes at really shitty jobs, and they still can’t afford the same neighborhoods as they grew up in. Children often end up in less than optimal daycare, and families, including kids, are stressed out.
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“For white working classes upward mobility stopped in the 1970′s.”
-You see, here is the problem. I don’t believe in the uniform white working class before the great feminist revolution of the 1970s. In my mind, a social or economic mobility that one has as one’s husband’s appendage is no mobility at all. Of course, today there is a discrimination of women in the workplace. Of course, the daycare options are limited and very poor in this country. But still, this is already a great progress from what existed before the 1970s for women.
‘For minorities, thanks to AA, upward mobility was a reality until the mid-90′s.”
-I’m not sure I understand because I’m not very familiar with the history of AA. Has AA been in decline since the mid-90ies?
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This is a very realistic comment (Isabel).
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I haven’t really been following this thread, but as regards gadgets of all sorts, many of them are very cheap in Zimbabwe. They come from China and when these cheaply put together gadgets don’t quite function as they should, the users are inclined to emit a sigh and pronounce, “Zhing Zhong.” (They seem to have taken the old-fashioned British slur, “Ching Chong” and given it a Shona intonation.
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As I mentioned before, iPads, which cost between $600 and $1000 and have no use other than as a toy and a bragging object, were sold out in the matter of hours across the country and people were fighting for them in the stores. This really makes me want to sigh and use some old-fashioned British slur. 🙂
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Lower class people were buying them? There are tons of people in the top 15% who love these gadgets. “Sold out” of how many?
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Yeah, most people are still doing quite fine in the USA. (I actually don’t know, but I remember one woman who used to complain all the time that the middle class was disappearing, but she traveled overseas every 3-6 months — so this isn’t poverty.)
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I know I will be crucified for this, but I’ll just mention in a whisper that the definition of poverty has been so eroded in the US that now real poverty is a lot less visible. For many people, poverty means they can’t buy a new car, an iPad, or a house. I know somebody who lives in a two-floor apartment with a working chimney and says they are poor on every corner because the apartment is rented and doesn’t belong to them. I know a departmental Chair who had a house filled with antiques who kept referring to himself as poor because he couldn’t afford to send his kids to Ivy League schools.
This is precisely why I find the whole 99% versus 1% to be extremely unhelpful to the actual poor, or whom there are many in this country.
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This is RIGHT ON!
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“I actually don’t know” but feel free to opine anyway.
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If I say I don’t know, that is what it means. It doesn’t mean something else.
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I think you were pretty clear. You said:
“Yeah, most people are still doing quite fine in the USA.”
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It gets drummed in in school.
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Much affirmative action was abolished in the 90s although the attacks on / erosion of it started in the 70s that I remember (when it was still a new concept).
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I wasn’t aware that it had been abolished in the 90’s, just that it doesn’t work miracles. The events that affected whites affected everybody, they were just delayed or masked for a while for blacks thanks to AA. If you close all the factories and send every type of job you can oversees, open the borders (one million immigrants/yr now as opposed to 20K/yr in the 60’s) and meanwhile bombard the country, particularly the majority population, with negative portrayals of itself in media as racists, fools, etc, you are going to get a less healthy country and cause a lot of weird reactions and movements to occur.
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Okay.
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This is a fairly normal/average standard of living in Zimbabwe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM-5xzUDplc
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Also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVsrfaG1zg0
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Zim is not worse off than that?!
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Again, why are American workers not compared to workers in other industrialized countries? How about workers in Japan, or Sweden? That would be less of an apples and oranges situation.
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I can only speak to what I know. If we have readers from Japan or Sweden hanging around, it would be great to hear from them. All I know about the working conditions in Japan is that they are completely draining, humiliating and require people to give every ounce of themselves to the job. Japan is probably the last place on the planet where I would like to have a job. Of course, I’m willing to be corrected by more knowledgeable people on this.
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I don’t know…and I don’t know anyone who can answer this question. It’s a very good question.
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