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The unbearable lightness of being David Brooks
David Brooks contemplates the great chasm
Dan Rottenberg
(With apologies to David Brooks of the New York Times.)
Over the past few months, writers like Charles Murray have produced alarming work on the bifurcation of American society. In his recent book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, Murray and his team described their personal observations of hundreds of Americans bifurcating in the back seats of cars, on park benches and in rest room stalls. In some extreme cases, people bifurcated so many times that they went blind.
Murray's magesterial work was the most profound study of American society since the extensively footnoted Unfit to Command, by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which in turn was the most significant analysis of American society since To My Son the Teenage Driver, by Harry Mark Petrakis.
But now, just as I was examining some very significant new lint in my belly-button, the eminent Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his team have come out with even more horrifying statistics for a columnist who'd rather not venture outside his office for original subject material.
They looked at inequality of opportunities between rich children and poor children. They help us understand what the country will look like in the decades ahead. Centuries even. Possibly millennia. Surely at least until Charles Murray writes another book.
Putnam's data verifies what many of us have seen anecdotally: that the children of affluent parents live in bigger homes, attend better schools, have more butlers and housemaids and own more designer gowns than the children of poor parents.
Birthday parties
Putnam finds that fully 100 percent of rich people have more money than poor people. Not surprisingly, 100 percent of poor people have less money than rich people.
This imbalance produces alarming consequences. Affluent children spend 87 percent more time in country clubs, yachts and polo camps than children who aren't affluent. More than 90 percent of rich children have had at least one birthday party attended by a clown, pony, chimpanzee, symphony orchestra or Major League shortstop; by contrast, more than 72 percent of poor children have spent at least three birthdays watching their mother get slapped around by her boyfriend.
Educational differences between rich and poor further exacerbate this gap. For example, Putnam reports, rich children have 77 percent more birthdays than poor children.
As Putnam points out, affluent parents also invest more time and high-quality attention in their children. While poor parents spend their time slaving away at pointless low-wage jobs, affluent parents are at home, acting out scenes from Long Day's Journey Into Night with their kids. At bedtime, while affluent parents are reading Goodnight Moon to their children, lower-class parents are mooning their children.
While affluent parents give their children esteem-building names like "J. Pierpont Morgan," "C. Jared Ingersoll" and "A.J. Drexel Biddle III," 47 percent of poor children can't even spell their names. Two-thirds of affluent children spend their summers in the Hamptons; 84 percent of poor kids think Hampton's is a budget hotel chain.
Cynical and paranoid
As Putnam writes, "It's perfectly understandable that kids from working-class backgrounds have become cynical and even paranoid, for virtually all our social institutions have failed them— hedge funds, boutiques, vineyards, stud farms, housecleaning services, custom tailors, motor car dealerships and concierge medical practices."
Forty years of poverty programs have not brought us closer to the goal of equal opportunity. If Putnam's data are extrapolated into the future, the gap between rich and poor that has grown into a gulf will become a chasm by 2024 and a Grand Canyon by the next century.
The hard questions are these: Are Americans willing to set ideology aside to deal with this crisis? Are liberals willing to admit that poor people are just plain fucking stupid? Are conservatives willing to expand the federal government's power in order to eliminate these parasites once and for all?
Maybe Americans are not willing to rise above partisan politics. But maybe they are. And maybe I can figure out some graceful way to conclude this column. But one thing is certain. And when I find out what it is, I'll tell you.♦
To read responses, click here.
Over the past few months, writers like Charles Murray have produced alarming work on the bifurcation of American society. In his recent book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, Murray and his team described their personal observations of hundreds of Americans bifurcating in the back seats of cars, on park benches and in rest room stalls. In some extreme cases, people bifurcated so many times that they went blind.
Murray's magesterial work was the most profound study of American society since the extensively footnoted Unfit to Command, by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which in turn was the most significant analysis of American society since To My Son the Teenage Driver, by Harry Mark Petrakis.
But now, just as I was examining some very significant new lint in my belly-button, the eminent Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his team have come out with even more horrifying statistics for a columnist who'd rather not venture outside his office for original subject material.
They looked at inequality of opportunities between rich children and poor children. They help us understand what the country will look like in the decades ahead. Centuries even. Possibly millennia. Surely at least until Charles Murray writes another book.
Putnam's data verifies what many of us have seen anecdotally: that the children of affluent parents live in bigger homes, attend better schools, have more butlers and housemaids and own more designer gowns than the children of poor parents.
Birthday parties
Putnam finds that fully 100 percent of rich people have more money than poor people. Not surprisingly, 100 percent of poor people have less money than rich people.
This imbalance produces alarming consequences. Affluent children spend 87 percent more time in country clubs, yachts and polo camps than children who aren't affluent. More than 90 percent of rich children have had at least one birthday party attended by a clown, pony, chimpanzee, symphony orchestra or Major League shortstop; by contrast, more than 72 percent of poor children have spent at least three birthdays watching their mother get slapped around by her boyfriend.
Educational differences between rich and poor further exacerbate this gap. For example, Putnam reports, rich children have 77 percent more birthdays than poor children.
As Putnam points out, affluent parents also invest more time and high-quality attention in their children. While poor parents spend their time slaving away at pointless low-wage jobs, affluent parents are at home, acting out scenes from Long Day's Journey Into Night with their kids. At bedtime, while affluent parents are reading Goodnight Moon to their children, lower-class parents are mooning their children.
While affluent parents give their children esteem-building names like "J. Pierpont Morgan," "C. Jared Ingersoll" and "A.J. Drexel Biddle III," 47 percent of poor children can't even spell their names. Two-thirds of affluent children spend their summers in the Hamptons; 84 percent of poor kids think Hampton's is a budget hotel chain.
Cynical and paranoid
As Putnam writes, "It's perfectly understandable that kids from working-class backgrounds have become cynical and even paranoid, for virtually all our social institutions have failed them— hedge funds, boutiques, vineyards, stud farms, housecleaning services, custom tailors, motor car dealerships and concierge medical practices."
Forty years of poverty programs have not brought us closer to the goal of equal opportunity. If Putnam's data are extrapolated into the future, the gap between rich and poor that has grown into a gulf will become a chasm by 2024 and a Grand Canyon by the next century.
The hard questions are these: Are Americans willing to set ideology aside to deal with this crisis? Are liberals willing to admit that poor people are just plain fucking stupid? Are conservatives willing to expand the federal government's power in order to eliminate these parasites once and for all?
Maybe Americans are not willing to rise above partisan politics. But maybe they are. And maybe I can figure out some graceful way to conclude this column. But one thing is certain. And when I find out what it is, I'll tell you.♦
To read responses, click here.
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