The haves—and the have yachts: only 8 per cent of American men born into poverty make it into the top 20 per cent income bracket
In America, agonising over race is a national pastime. Gender gets a good airing as well. Class, however, is a touchy subject. We cling to the cherished myth of the meritocracy which insists that class does not matter, that anyone can go from a log cabin to the White House. Talk of class sounds unpatriotic, Marxist, European. During a presidential debate earlier this year, Mitt Romney tried to make a point about the middle class, only to be scolded by Rick Santorum: “There are no classes in America,” Santorum said. To use such terminology is “to buy into the class warfare arguments of Barack Obama.”
Yet class does exist in America. And now, when the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the top 1 per cent of households has a net worth 225 times greater than the median household—the biggest gap the nation has ever seen—we are forced to confront it. Concern about class, inequality and social mobility run through this year’s presidential campaign. It is there in the Occupy Wall Street protestors’ slogan “1 per cent versus the 99 per cent”; it’s there in the anxiety that the American dream may have ended; it’s there, even, in the chatter about America’s new favourite TV show: Downton Abbey.
What do Americans mean when they talk about class? Wealth is part of it, but not all. Former president George W Bush, whose forbears came over on the Mayflower, would be regarded as more upper class than, say, film director George Lucas (whose parents ran a stationery shop in Modesto, California), even though Lucas’s net worth is far greater. In a 2005 essay for the New York Times, Diane McWhorter, the Pulitzer prize-winning author, wrote, “The part of Birmingham, Alabama, I grew up in was so class-conscious that a boyfriend broke up with me in ninth grade because my telephone exchange was not the socially obligatory 871 or 879. My lapse in standing was the misfortune of being from the nouveau pauvre side of what passed for an elegant family there.”
The anthropologist W Lloyd Warner succinctly summed up the American attitude to class. “We are proud of those facts of American life that fit the pattern we are taught,” he said. “But somehow we are often ashamed of those equally important social facts which demonstrate the presence of social class. Consequently, we tend to deny them, or worse, denounce them and by doing so we tend to deny their existence and magically make them disappear from consciousness.”
Americans may be uneasy discussing class in their own country, but the trappings of the British class system hold an apparently endless appeal: 23m of us got up at dawn to watch Kate Middleton marry Prince William. Downton Abbey, meanwhile, has become the most successful series on American Public Broadcasting since 1981 when Brideshead Revisited spurred Teddy bear sales. Downton-related books have reached the New York Times bestseller list and across America there are Downton-watching parties at which gloves are worn, tea is drunk, and Apple Charlotte (a pudding the Downton Abbey cook is asked to make for a grand dinner) is eaten. Several collections shown during New York Fashion Week channeled aristo-chic. At Ralph Lauren, models in top hats slunk down the catwalk to the theme from Downton. You can even buy canvas totebags that say “What Would Lady Mary Do?” or thong underwear printed with the Dowager Countess’s bon mots, such as “What is a Weekend?”
Downton may be a fantasy of a cuddly, kindly class system, but it provides a vocabulary for America’s class conversation. In the first months of 2012 you couldn’t open a serious newspaper or magazine without seeing headlines along the lines of “Downton Abbey: the British One Per Cent.” The New York Times Sunday magazine featured a writer struggling with conflicted feelings over loving Downton, and the declaration by electoral analyst Nate Silver that “Here Comes Class Warfare.”
Whether you accept the power of class in the United States has become rather like whether you accept global climate change: the left says yes; the right says no. A column by Mona Charen in the right-leaning National Review reassures conservatives that they needn’t feel guilty about loving Downton Abbey (even though they want to cut funding for public broadcasting): “We don’t need lectures on the injustice of the class system. We’ve never had one.”
Henry James would have agreed with Charen. He once complained that, compared to Britain, America had “no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins… no great Universities nor public schools—no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow…” But James was exaggerating. In 1879 when he wrote this, America had a 200-year-old landed gentry of plantation owners in Maryland, the Carolinas and Virginia (whose descendants are still known as “FFVs,” First Families of Virginia). There were great houses, too—Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, for example, and the palaces built by the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson trumpeted that “all men are created equal,” but the American Revolution did not create a classless society. Privilege was built into the edifice of American government, favouring white men of property even into the 20th century.
Today schools and universities play a big role in maintaining America’s class system. Study after study tells us that education is central to economic mobility. Yet, as research from Georgetown University in 2010 shows, of the 193 colleges and universities with the highest admission standards—not just the Ivy League but other top universities such as Chicago, Stanford, and Duke—only 5 per cent of freshmen come from the bottom quartile of the income scale. Two-thirds come from the top quartile.
To their credit, many wealthy universities disburse generous scholarships that give bright working-class kids like Bill Clinton (Yale ’73) or middle-class kids like Barack Obama (Harvard ’91) a boost up the class ladder. But even with loans and grants, many students cannot afford the enormous fees needed for four-year college degrees. As a result, many poorer students go to community colleges, which offer two year courses, often geared toward vocational training. These students miss out on the far greater social, political and professional connections of the universities—the dining societies, fraternities and sororities that the rich students belong to. Beyond university, these organisations often function as old-boy and old-girl networks in business and politics.
The American dream—the idea that citizens can grow up to realise their full potential no matter what their background—is the story we Americans want so much to believe. The disconnect between the romantic rhetoric of classlessness and the reality of a stratified society is painful. In 2007, the Brookings Institution’s Julia B. Isaacs found that while Americans are more optimistic about their ability to move up the income scale than citizens of other nations, that optimism is somewhat misplaced. The Scandinavian countries, France, Germany and Spain are all more mobile than the US. In addition, parental income has a greater impact on future earnings in the US than in western European countries.
Perhaps we should give up talk of the American dream and look instead to the Danish dream. According to a 2006 report by the Institute for the Study of Labour, an economic research institute based in Germany, a child born into the bottom fifth on the income scale in Denmark is likely to better his situation—only a quarter of those at the bottom stay there, compared to over half of Americans. A paltry 8 per cent of American men born into poverty will make it into the top 20 per cent of income. In Denmark, the figure is 14 per cent. Even Britain—which Americans often view as the classic class-bound society—beats the US. 12 per cent of British men born into poverty can expect to make it to the top tier.
However, the first step to solving (or at least mitigating) a problem is to recognise its existence. And it seems America has finally reached this stage. A Pew Research Centre survey published in January indicates most Americans now think that the ever-swelling chasm between rich and poor is the most important social issue facing the nation—more important than immigration or racism. The 2012 presidential campaign will not only be about “the economy, stupid,” but about class itself.
Talk of class even haunts the speech of Republicans who deny its existence. Rick Santorum wraps himself in the frayed mantle of the working class, calling himself “someone who comes from the coal fields,” even though he’s really a lawyer. (His grandfather was a coal miner). These allusions link Santorum with the vote-winning values of hard work and personal responsibility. Mitt Romney’s grandfather-in-law was also a coal miner—when campaigning for her husband, Ann Romney has taken to mentioning how the old man was down the mine in Wales so much he only saw the sun when he went to church on Sunday. As for Romney himself, he doesn’t approve of making income inequality an issue. “I think it’s about class warfare,” he says.
In an interview on NBC, Romney said, “The president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach.” It would be better “to talk about those things in quiet rooms,” said Romney.
When Mitt Romney accuses Barack Obama of “replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society,” he looks out of touch, given that Europe is more “merit-based” than the US. As billionaire Warren Buffett says: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
In America, agonising over race is a national pastime. Gender gets a good airing as well. Class, however, is a touchy subject. We cling to the cherished myth of the meritocracy which insists that class does not matter, that anyone can go from a log cabin to the White House. Talk of class sounds unpatriotic, Marxist, European. During a presidential debate earlier this year, Mitt Romney tried to make a point about the middle class, only to be scolded by Rick Santorum: “There are no classes in America,” Santorum said. To use such terminology is “to buy into the class warfare arguments of Barack Obama.”
Yet class does exist in America. And now, when the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the top 1 per cent of households has a net worth 225 times greater than the median household—the biggest gap the nation has ever seen—we are forced to confront it. Concern about class, inequality and social mobility run through this year’s presidential campaign. It is there in the Occupy Wall Street protestors’ slogan “1 per cent versus the 99 per cent”; it’s there in the anxiety that the American dream may have ended; it’s there, even, in the chatter about America’s new favourite TV show: Downton Abbey.
What do Americans mean when they talk about class? Wealth is part of it, but not all. Former president George W Bush, whose forbears came over on the Mayflower, would be regarded as more upper class than, say, film director George Lucas (whose parents ran a stationery shop in Modesto, California), even though Lucas’s net worth is far greater. In a 2005 essay for the New York Times, Diane McWhorter, the Pulitzer prize-winning author, wrote, “The part of Birmingham, Alabama, I grew up in was so class-conscious that a boyfriend broke up with me in ninth grade because my telephone exchange was not the socially obligatory 871 or 879. My lapse in standing was the misfortune of being from the nouveau pauvre side of what passed for an elegant family there.”
The anthropologist W Lloyd Warner succinctly summed up the American attitude to class. “We are proud of those facts of American life that fit the pattern we are taught,” he said. “But somehow we are often ashamed of those equally important social facts which demonstrate the presence of social class. Consequently, we tend to deny them, or worse, denounce them and by doing so we tend to deny their existence and magically make them disappear from consciousness.”
Americans may be uneasy discussing class in their own country, but the trappings of the British class system hold an apparently endless appeal: 23m of us got up at dawn to watch Kate Middleton marry Prince William. Downton Abbey, meanwhile, has become the most successful series on American Public Broadcasting since 1981 when Brideshead Revisited spurred Teddy bear sales. Downton-related books have reached the New York Times bestseller list and across America there are Downton-watching parties at which gloves are worn, tea is drunk, and Apple Charlotte (a pudding the Downton Abbey cook is asked to make for a grand dinner) is eaten. Several collections shown during New York Fashion Week channeled aristo-chic. At Ralph Lauren, models in top hats slunk down the catwalk to the theme from Downton. You can even buy canvas totebags that say “What Would Lady Mary Do?” or thong underwear printed with the Dowager Countess’s bon mots, such as “What is a Weekend?”
Downton may be a fantasy of a cuddly, kindly class system, but it provides a vocabulary for America’s class conversation. In the first months of 2012 you couldn’t open a serious newspaper or magazine without seeing headlines along the lines of “Downton Abbey: the British One Per Cent.” The New York Times Sunday magazine featured a writer struggling with conflicted feelings over loving Downton, and the declaration by electoral analyst Nate Silver that “Here Comes Class Warfare.”
Whether you accept the power of class in the United States has become rather like whether you accept global climate change: the left says yes; the right says no. A column by Mona Charen in the right-leaning National Review reassures conservatives that they needn’t feel guilty about loving Downton Abbey (even though they want to cut funding for public broadcasting): “We don’t need lectures on the injustice of the class system. We’ve never had one.”
Henry James would have agreed with Charen. He once complained that, compared to Britain, America had “no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins… no great Universities nor public schools—no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow…” But James was exaggerating. In 1879 when he wrote this, America had a 200-year-old landed gentry of plantation owners in Maryland, the Carolinas and Virginia (whose descendants are still known as “FFVs,” First Families of Virginia). There were great houses, too—Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, for example, and the palaces built by the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson trumpeted that “all men are created equal,” but the American Revolution did not create a classless society. Privilege was built into the edifice of American government, favouring white men of property even into the 20th century.
Today schools and universities play a big role in maintaining America’s class system. Study after study tells us that education is central to economic mobility. Yet, as research from Georgetown University in 2010 shows, of the 193 colleges and universities with the highest admission standards—not just the Ivy League but other top universities such as Chicago, Stanford, and Duke—only 5 per cent of freshmen come from the bottom quartile of the income scale. Two-thirds come from the top quartile.
To their credit, many wealthy universities disburse generous scholarships that give bright working-class kids like Bill Clinton (Yale ’73) or middle-class kids like Barack Obama (Harvard ’91) a boost up the class ladder. But even with loans and grants, many students cannot afford the enormous fees needed for four-year college degrees. As a result, many poorer students go to community colleges, which offer two year courses, often geared toward vocational training. These students miss out on the far greater social, political and professional connections of the universities—the dining societies, fraternities and sororities that the rich students belong to. Beyond university, these organisations often function as old-boy and old-girl networks in business and politics.
The American dream—the idea that citizens can grow up to realise their full potential no matter what their background—is the story we Americans want so much to believe. The disconnect between the romantic rhetoric of classlessness and the reality of a stratified society is painful. In 2007, the Brookings Institution’s Julia B. Isaacs found that while Americans are more optimistic about their ability to move up the income scale than citizens of other nations, that optimism is somewhat misplaced. The Scandinavian countries, France, Germany and Spain are all more mobile than the US. In addition, parental income has a greater impact on future earnings in the US than in western European countries.
Perhaps we should give up talk of the American dream and look instead to the Danish dream. According to a 2006 report by the Institute for the Study of Labour, an economic research institute based in Germany, a child born into the bottom fifth on the income scale in Denmark is likely to better his situation—only a quarter of those at the bottom stay there, compared to over half of Americans. A paltry 8 per cent of American men born into poverty will make it into the top 20 per cent of income. In Denmark, the figure is 14 per cent. Even Britain—which Americans often view as the classic class-bound society—beats the US. 12 per cent of British men born into poverty can expect to make it to the top tier.
However, the first step to solving (or at least mitigating) a problem is to recognise its existence. And it seems America has finally reached this stage. A Pew Research Centre survey published in January indicates most Americans now think that the ever-swelling chasm between rich and poor is the most important social issue facing the nation—more important than immigration or racism. The 2012 presidential campaign will not only be about “the economy, stupid,” but about class itself.
Talk of class even haunts the speech of Republicans who deny its existence. Rick Santorum wraps himself in the frayed mantle of the working class, calling himself “someone who comes from the coal fields,” even though he’s really a lawyer. (His grandfather was a coal miner). These allusions link Santorum with the vote-winning values of hard work and personal responsibility. Mitt Romney’s grandfather-in-law was also a coal miner—when campaigning for her husband, Ann Romney has taken to mentioning how the old man was down the mine in Wales so much he only saw the sun when he went to church on Sunday. As for Romney himself, he doesn’t approve of making income inequality an issue. “I think it’s about class warfare,” he says.
In an interview on NBC, Romney said, “The president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach.” It would be better “to talk about those things in quiet rooms,” said Romney.
When Mitt Romney accuses Barack Obama of “replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society,” he looks out of touch, given that Europe is more “merit-based” than the US. As billionaire Warren Buffett says: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
