The Era of Living Dangerously

[motorfirebox]

Don't agree. Monarchy has little or nothing to do with class in the US (as opposed to many other nations...). Our classes divide by wealth, by job or career field, by academic accomplishments (a relatively recent addition...) and ethnically or nationally (and I mean that not in the racist sense. The Scotch Irish despise the English, many Italians do not like Germans, etc.). Even geography enters into it -- royal or peerage issues not at all.

So our derivatives-based monarchy will look a little different. It won't change its basic nature: peasants go down here, stockholder-royalty goes up here.

Is that a purpose or a by product?

A purpose. Otherwise, why not just let the financial elite run over everyone else?

Most will agree, many will quibble about mechanisms and degrees of up...There's truth in that and it does make a good if questionable talking point (in that it is repeatedly raised by some media personages and some politicians for partisan, not altruistic, reasons) but there's also a degree of unintended consequence. Recall that part of the top's recent upward trajectory was imparted by failures of social policies aimed at raising the bottom...

I still don't completely agree on that point. I don't think the social policies aimed at raising the bottom were the problem--the problem was the ability of those at the top, caused by reduced and weakened oversight, to exploit those programs to a disastrous degree.

My observation -- admittedly mostly but not exclusively in the South -- is that the over reliance exists in all strata but the emphasis on what's expected differs sometimes strongly from locale to locale and level to level in a rather complex mix.

Possibly, but I don't see the alleged over reliance of the lower strata as causing nearly as much of a problem as the over reliance of the upper.

True on the profits but consider also that the sale of new cars (as opposed to homes -- though we are arguably already over endowed with individually owned homes in comparison with most other nations even considering the Housing crunch) and large flat screen TVs to the great unwashed (we just bought a flat screen... ) indicate that while the bottom may not be getting elevated as much as many of us would like, much -- not all but much -- of it is living better than that Royalty did a few years ago.

That's becoming less true. While the middle class is doing better now--arguably--than it was two decades ago, we're eating into the middle class's savings and shunting them into the lower class.

We can disagree. Equal opportunity to me is to offer unimpeded access to use one's potential. Equal outcomes are efforts to insure that, regardless of capabilities, effort, merit or productivity, all have a relatively even standing in all things. In no case is the sorting of that simple, nor can, due to the variation in people and circumstances, hard and fast rule be laid down. It is also very important that everyone realize that nuances aside, there will always be outliers and exceptions and that, while true in any event, is particularly true in an issue this complex and in a nation as large and diverse as are we. One of the major flaws with the big government crowd is their refusal to acknowledge the inevitability due to our size of poor rules that will not work in all segments of the society or nation. They create flawed law, see inequities and try to fix it, often only making it worse for someone else...

I'm not talking about the same kind of equality of outcome you are. I am especially not speaking in favor of equal outcomes "regardless of capabilities, effort, merit or productivity". What I am in favor of is addressing the issue of generational wealth. In large part, generational wealth has to do with equality of outcome, because the outcome (or rather the income) of one generation directly affects the opportunities of the next. Now, let me be clear: people should never be prevented from using their wealth to improve the lives of their children. But. What concerns me is that lack of generational wealth--people lacking wealth with which to improve the lives of their children--has far too large a negative impact on the outcomes of their childrens' lives. This isn't a matter of Bobby being born in a poor household and growing up to be a poor man, while Charlie is born in a rich household and grows up to be a rich man--this is a matter of Bobby's great-great-great grandfather being poor, and all of Bobby's friends' great-great-great grandfathers being poor, and very few of them ever escaping being poor. At some point, the disparity of outcome between population groups over time becomes a clear indicator that there is a severe inequality of opportunity.