While I still grasp for exactly how to express my thoughts on the issues of income inequality, social mobility and the meritocratic state, I’ll pass along this video.
Remember that this is not a documentary or commentary but eduprop designed to Americanize a diverse culture.
I should also add that I can sense that a lot of my readers grope for the “point” of many of my posts. In the sense they are looking for, there isn’t one.
The point is to think more about what we really mean when we talk about inequality and mobility? What are the elements of America we care about and why?
And, of particular interest to me: Was there anything fundamentally different about the American economy during the mid 20th century; or are our stylized facts about inequality and growth merely the results of the temporally overlapping effects of urbanization, feminism and the fall of Jim Crow.
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Saturday ~ January 28th, 2012 at 2:45 am
Jeff
“I should also add that I can sense that a lot of my readers grope for the “point” of many of my posts. In the sense they are looking for, there isn’t one.”
lol. You should read Vonnegut.
Saturday ~ January 28th, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Becky Hargrove
Admittedly I hold a small bias to this day from my very early childhood, which felt a bit like a lower middle class utopia. The local refinery created our little neighborhood with its social perks, much like some of the stories one hears about some of the better workplaces created in China. I realize in retrospect that the equality wasn’t really what it seemed, but the part that was so nice was being able to go anywhere in that little community and not feel so different from anyone else. When our schools integrated (about halfway through) it felt perfectly normal to people like me…this, in the Texas county Ron Paul hails from. I know, what can I say…
Saturday ~ January 28th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Lord
Or the large wealth redistribution due to the war. Something was special, as evidenced by the much higher birth rate. People don’t have nearly as many children when times are bad like the Great Depression. The question is whether it took those bad times to make the good ones following.