America’s Affluent and the New Bunker Down

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



America’s Affluent and the New Bunker Down
November 20, 2011

Just 40 years ago, most Americans rubbed elbows with neighbors from a fairly wide cross-section of income levels. But today’s rich, Census data show, are keeping everyone else at arm’s length — and more.

By Sam Pizzigati


How many neighborhoods have you ever seen with oodles of rich residents — and poor schools? Or, vice versa, how many neighborhoods do you know with lots of poor people and richly appointed schools?

Silly questions. We all know the answers. Kids in affluent neighborhoods don’t go to schools with leaky roofs, tattered textbooks, and uncertified teachers. Kids in poor neighborhoods do.

And what goes for schools, of course, goes for every other public service as well — from parks and libraries to road repair and garbage pick-up. You’re going to be much better off, as a person of modest means, if some of your neighbors have more substantial means.

Back in 1970, the vast majority of Americans lived in neighborhoods that did mix people of substantial and modest means. No more. In fact, says a new study just released by the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University, the share of Americans living amid intense income segregation has more than doubled. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/income-segregation-americas-affluent-bunker-down/

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[no_hypocrisy]

2. From K to 12, none of us knew or cared what our fathers did for a living.

We didn't split into socioeconomic groups/cliques. My father was a doctor but I wasn't treated as a doctor's daughter. Someone's father was the school janitor. So what? There were scores of fathers in uniform raincoats, carrying briefcases who waited for trains to take them to their office buildings in the city. That's nice.

As an aside, as a senior in a sociology class, I had an assignment. There was a list of 50 occupations (attorney, physician, street-cleaner, teacher, secretary, garbageman, etc.) and we were instructed to rank them 1 to 50 as far as their importance to society.

I brought my assignment up within 60 seconds. What's this, my teacher asked. All of the occupations had a "1". I explained that a functional society needed all of them to do their jobs and you couldn't rank the occupations.

[rfranklin]

3. Did you get credit for creative thinking?

or was the teacher flummoxed?

[no_hypocrisy]

4. My teacher probably thought of me as a socialist and a dangerous element in society.

[johnd83]

5. To play devil's advocate for a second

1970 was before the real drug epidemic started. Poor Gen X and millenial kids have had to deal with parents who are addicted to drugs during and after pregnancy, and this caused a huge range of behavioral problems primarily among poorer kids. There is a reason that rich and poor segregate and it is not really along ethnic lines at this point. The segregation is along class.

[bemildred]

6. And money, and the governments abdication of its responsibilities to its citizens. nt

[Demeter]

7. You think the rich aren't druggies?

Think again.

[johnd83]

8. Rich people who do hard drugs don't stay rich for long

I think a lot of people do smoke pot, but it doesn't really make sense that it is illegal at this point.

[midnight]

9. It should be interesting to track the people living in a bubble..

or gated communities.