The educated class has built an ever more intricate net to cradle us in and ease everyone else out. It’s not really the prices that ensure 80 percent of your co-shoppers at Whole Foods are, comfortingly, also college grads; it’s the cultural codes.
Status rules are partly about collusion, about attracting educated people to your circle, tightening the bonds between you and erecting shields against everybody else. We in the educated class have created barriers to mobility that are more devastating for being invisible. The rest of America can’t name them, can’t understand them. They just know they’re there.
And part of the cultural code is Progressivism.
In a society with a high degree of social and economic mobility, grandparents should not have much or any effect on the social and economic position that children attain as adults. Thus, on average you should expect your five grandchildren to be evenly distributed across the socioeconomic spectrum. More specifically, if the levels of income are ranked and then divided into five groups with equal numbers of people, or quintiles, or educational attainment is divided up into five quintiles, you should expect that one of your five grand children will end up in each of the five quintiles–from top to bottom.
Some grandparents in America would be delighted beyond words if they had a reasonable expectation of this outcome: that is, they would be thrilled if three of their five grandchildren were in the middle quintile or above. Other grandparents in America would be appalled by this outcome: that is, they would be dismayed and even horrified if three of their five grandchildren were in the middle quintile or below.
The upper-class Americans that Brooks labeled the Bobos behave as if they would be appalled to see their children or grandchildren experienced relative downward mobility.
An interesting question will be how well the Bobo signals correlate with skills going forward. As long as the correlation is high, the status equilibrium may be robust. If the correlation is low, then the status equilibrium may be more fragile.
It is exceptionally hard to read Brooks because he is worst example of Bobos on earth and he is lecturing those below his esteemed opinions. This reality of social cues have always been with any society and I bet they are lower today than any time before WW2 and possibly ever when you consider that minority populations can easily participate in all society.
Also his points on Whole Food can be explained by price discrimination/marketing not some belief on social cues.
An argument in favor of robustness is that people with skills who don’t merely perpetuate them with usually be both able and willing to quickly pick up on them, and adopt and imitate them. Indeed, in my experience, talented people of all origins with decent social skills, even from backgrounds where they were unlikely to learn these signals – and even adult immigrants from very foreign countries – seem naturally able to do this subsconsciously, automatically, and seamlessly, sometimes after some awkward adjustment during a transition period. This is especially true for new college students, at exactly the right age and environment that enables maximum flexibility and a commonly observed ability to rapidly reset or reprogram many aspects of socialization-relevant identity in order to fit in and start signaling status in their new milieu’s hierarchy of values.
Brooks simply makes too much of these factors being a real effective barrier to talented kids from lower quintile households.
The trouble is not social barriers or awkwardness at college – those get resolved quickly – it’s getting into the most prestigious college one’s talent can justify in the first place.
Much more important is when the parents (or, more commonly these days at lower deciles, parent) is ignorant not of class signals, but of how to groom and shape their child’s resume and set of experiences to optimally target the desires of admissions officers and maximize the chances of presenting a file that rises above the competition. Ah, but now we’re getting into thorny territory that implies maybe we shouldn’t let the most elite academic institutions do whatever they want with admissions behind black boxes that are inscrutible to people not in the know about such things, (who pay attention to the subject often to the point of obsession.)
As I said in my comment to the previous “social mobility” post, what’s really going on here is the fight for narrative deutungshoheit, so that one can ‘explain’ the current distribution of income with a story that justifies a particular ideological framing and political agenda.
In this case, people like Brooks are working from an unarticulated (and un-argued) model of what the distribution would look like in some socially equitable counterfactual from which the current world apparently deviates, calling the deviation injustice, and then playing the blame game to look for the culpable source of the claimed injustice.
In reality, the Occam’s razor explanation is that it’s completely obvious that people resemble their biological grandparents in lots of ways, and why should the elements leading to higher or lower marketable productivity and compensation be any different? Indeed, one would expect to see more of that in an increasingly fair meritocracy over time, not less. But a story in which there is no evil injustice to triumph over, and nothing to blame but bad luck, will never be a popular one. And certainly not one usefully leverageable in furtherance of progressive policies.
Indeed, in my experience, talented people of all origins with decent social skills, even from backgrounds where they were unlikely to learn these signals – and even adult immigrants from very foreign countries – seem naturally able to do this subsconsciously, automatically, and seamlessly, sometimes after some awkward adjustment during a transition period.
Yes, primates are good at mimicry. I would think someone who wrote a book called The Social Animal would grasp this. I suspect that, rather than, say, white guilt, Brooks is evincing status guilt.
This reminds me of Frank Costello, the Mafia boss. He was supposedly a great example of this. Despite being from a dirt poor Calabrian family and a careeer criminal, once he was rich, he became exceptionally good at adopting the mannerisms of the “legitimate” aristocrats and even managed to impress journalists with his sophistication. Supposedly he was an important inspiration for The character of Vito Corleone largely for this reason: he evoked that aura of a blue blooded gangster.
“Increasingly fair” is not an accurate description of residential zoning restrictions.
The trend is not actually towards an “increasingly fair meritocracy” in Portland, New York and San Francisco.
And Brooks specifically refers to “housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities.” So he isn’t talking about any hypothetical, utopian, libertarian meritocracy. He’s talking about “Portland, New York and San Francisco.” Where the furtherance of progressive policies has done a great deal of damage already.
Brooks: “Research by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti suggests that zoning restrictions in the nation’s 220 top metro areas lowered aggregate U.S. growth by more than 50 percent from 1964 to 2009.”
What you call “some socially equitable counterfactual from which the current world apparently deviates” could also be called an economy growing twice as fast as it has been.
You say there’s “no evil injustice to triumph over, and nothing to blame but bad luck.” Whereas Brooks says that progressive policies have made us all worse off.
This is a great three languages of politics illustration.
The fundamental question is, “Is the fact that some people in developed countries earn consistently lower incomes throughout their lives more like somebody’s else’s fault, more like their own fault, or more like bad luck?”
Having a blameworthy boogeyman is a useful rhetorical device to get what you want politically for other reasons, but in the name of helping the unfortunate, a socially desirable signal, which also “shows you care”, a high status behavior.
So, some progressives might answer, “It’s the fault of the rich, privileged class, oppressing and discriminating and keeping all that loot for themselves while keeping capable competitors locked out. We should thus redistribute more wealth, expand government services, and vigorously prosecute disparate impact. That will help the poor become like the middle class.”
Some libertarians might answer, “It’s the fault of the government and rent seekers, restricting the supply of important goods like conveniently-located affordable housing, private transportation options, and the number of jobs in lucrative but licensed occupations. We should abolish those restrictions and privileges and let everyone compete in the free market and do whatever they want with their private property. That will help the poor become like the middle class.”
Some conservatives might answer, “It’s the fault of bad culture and values, social pathology and family chaos, the pernicious and corrosive effects of welfare and the nanny state, and the lax attitude towards the criminals that plague poor communities and neighborhoods. We need to go on a civilizing mission, to wipe out crime and vice, restore respect for authority, teach self reliance, individual responsibility and work ethic, and cultivate the bourgeois virtues, and give the highest social status to those raising families in stable monogamy. That will help the poor become like the middle class.”
Then there are some people who say that all of those stories are just politically convenient and deluded fairy tales, and while each of the proposals may help some poor people in the short term and on the margin, in general these interventions won’t accomplish their claims because their implicit models of human nature – in which there is all this tragically untapped potential for marketable productivity that could generate higher compensation for the poor in a hypothetical better world – are simply wrong.
Well written, succinct, and I want to agree.
However, the economist in me begs me to remember: always think on the margin. Always.
Narratives are intoxicating. Our chimp brains gravitate towards them. They can be right on average and wrong on the margin.
In fairness you alluded to this in your post. Maybe I’m an optimist. In other words, I agree and still want to try by deregulating school districts and housing restrictions.
But deep down I don’t think it’ll make a huge difference.
Culture does matter though. And we’re heading in the wrong direction. Libertarians, always in the wilderness.
However, culture is a force of nature. There’s no going back.
The idea that we turn our entire underclass into middle class was always nonsense. Politically useful nonsense, but I don’t think we need take it seriously.
The more pressing question is that at time N it seems that the underclass (Fishtown behavior) seemed to be X% of the population. Now at time N+1 its Y% of the population. Where Y% > X% by quite a lot, and getting bigger.
While some of that may be unavoidable, certainly some of it was avoidable. When we say “at the margin” how much of the Y% – X% gap is under our control if we make different choices.
” in general these interventions won’t accomplish their claims because their implicit models of human nature – in which there is all this tragically untapped potential for marketable productivity that could generate higher compensation for the poor in a hypothetical better world – are simply wrong.”
Herein lies problem. We don’t need to push lower income people to catch up. We need to make it OK not to.
It should be perfectly OK to not go to college, to instead get a trade job, put in 40 hours, and call it a week, but it isn’t. If you are poor, the laws, the rules, the regulations, the infrastructure of the society you live in are all more hostile and difficult. It doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s difficult to maintain a good life for your bottom half if your bottom half composes the entire world. The global bell curve is not the American bell curve, and natural resources shared by billions are spread thinner then those shared by a single billion.
Also, the number one problem people face is the breakdown of the family, and there is no “regulation” causing that.
Even when they have the potential to become productive members of society, the loss of welfare state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit ‘tax’ on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on a millionaire. If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose $15,000 in government benefits, would you do it?
That’s Thomas Sowell. Not a fairy tale. Not any kind of story at all. He’s just describing the incentives.
housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools
This implicitly assumes that there is some major difference between schools in physical plant, supplies, or teachers. But in the United States, there pretty much isn’t. It’s like American cars. There are bare bones cars and there are Lexuses. The trip will be easier and more pleasant in the latter but they will all get you where you want to go if you know how to drive.
Most of what makes a school good or bad are the students in it. Switch the students from Great Neck North and PS 95 and suddenly PS 95 will be a great school and Great Neck North will be a failing one.
This is the problem with focusing on ranking, a zero sum game, versus increased equality and growth which can be positive even without a greater gdp.
Re: Brooks…Good grief. It reads like a piece from The Onion.
Here’s another quote:
“Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.”
Is that for real?
Well, yeah, it’s for real. Don’t you have any friends or people you know who stick with what they know and are comfortable with, and are intimidated or at least not attracted to new experiences outside their social peer level? What I find hard to relate to is those who cannot relate to this anecdote. Some of our social bubbles are more pernicious than is generally recognized.
Notice the difference between your words (‘intimidated or at least not attracted to’, especially ‘not attracted to’) and Brooks’ (‘erecting shields against everybody else’). You’ve softened it for him.
If someone doesn’t share Brooks’ tastes, it isn’t necessarily because the person lacks a college education or that a trendy sandwich name is an invisible shield to societal mobility.
It may just mean the person doesn’t share his taste in food. Maybe she ate there yesterday and didn’t feel like eating there again or doesn’t eat much bread trying to watch her carbs.
People can erect these cultural and social barriers without being aware of what they’re doing. And people’s tastes are a great example, because people just pick them up, unconsciously, habitually.
Heh, it’s actually quite ironic that a tacit class signifier among intellectuals is that one is supposed to know better than to ask or care about whether this anecdote is “real”. Just like you’re not supposed to make the obvious statement that, “Isolated anecdotes aren’t data and prove nothing.” Everybody knows that everybody already knows that.
That’s not the point. The point is the idea the writer is trying to illustrate by means of story-telling in the little tale of a “relatable and illuminating, intimate, personal, and very human experience.” Questioning the veracity or representativeness of the tale sets the less savvy up for a negative and condescending social judgment on the part of those who know better, and anyway, there’s no way to do it without bringing the integrity or intelligence of the writer into question, which just isn’t done.
This is a very common device for op-ed columnists who are also “public intellectuals” who write books, do interiews, and get invited to speak at big-think conferences. Thomas Friedman does this so often as his trademark shtik that it’s become a bit of a joke. He lands in the airport of a country of millions of people, has a brief conversation with his cab driver, and suddenly he has the insight which helps him (that is, us) understand everything important we need to know about that place and some big global phenomenon. So, he might as well just turn around and get back on the plane.
Actually Bryan Caplan was recently guilty of using this device, telling a story of a German mechanic who he claimed testified that the locals didn’t appreciate the beauty of his own quaint village because it was just too normal to them to even notice or think about. Therefore … yadda yadda … beauty doesn’t matter so stop worrying and learn to love the
bombugly.Only an unscrubbed rube would question the academician’s Confessional Poet shtick.
Actually, one could make quite a game out of seeing who can come up with the longest, most absurd anecdote regarding a matter at hand or the news of the day.
http://people.com/food/new-york-times-op-ed-david-brooks-sandwich/
“He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!” said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. “And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!”
That’s from Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. So it’s not “for real.” It’s out of a novel.
You could also search out a really insightful movie about the immigrant experience, about a Peruvian who comes to Britain and has a hard time figuring everything out and fitting in. The movie’s called Paddington, and Ben Whishaw supplies the voice of the titular bear.
If novels and movies aren’t what you’re into, you could read J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. It’s been discussed a bit this year:
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things I didn’t know when I got to Yale Law School: That you needed to wear a suit to a job interview. That wearing a suit large enough to fit a silverback gorilla was inappropriate. That a butter knife wasn’t just decorative (after all, anything that requires a butter knife can be done better with a spoon or an index finger). That pleather and leather were different substances. That your shoes and belt should match. That certain cities and states had better job prospects. That going to a nicer college brought benefits outside of bragging rights. That finance was an industry that people worked in. Mamaw always resented the hillbilly stereotype—the idea that our people were a bunch of slobbering morons. But the fact is that I was remarkably ignorant of how to get ahead. Not knowing things that many others do often has serious economic consequences. It cost me a job in college (apparently Marine Corps combat boots and khaki pants aren’t proper interview attire) and could have cost me a lot more in law school if I hadn’t had a few people helping me every step of the way.
Eh, my Dad was a truck driver and I still knew to wear a suit to an interview. Some of what he’s talking about is dysfunction, not social class.
J.D. Vance tells a lot of stories about how hard it was to be top 1% IQ and come from the working class, but he ended up a successful professional in the end. I guess he might have risen higher faster if he went to prep schools growing up, but this is hardly the end of the world.
The relevant question is whether he has much of worth to say about what to do with 90 IQ people from Appalachia (which BTW he wasn’t even from, he was from a not that bad part of Ohio not far from major cities). The answer appears to be no. Because he thinks they could all do what he did if things were set up just right. They can’t. Don’t have the genes for it.
His advice isn’t even that good for smart kids from coal country.
“That going to a nicer college brought benefits outside of bragging rights.”
If he means that being smart enough to get into Harvard is better then being smart enough to get into State U, then duh. But most people back home aren’t going to read that and go “oh, I should have gone to Harvard, duh.” They are going to read it as “I should go to an expensive private school around the same US News ranking as my State U because that’s all I could get into”, and that would be terrible advice cause it would be a lot of debt for no additional employment prospects.
The world we live in has two confounding factors. 1. Incomes are meritocratic, and 2. children inherit a high degree of their parents genetic ‘talent’ in a way that is independent of upbringing e.g. as has been shown in twin studies. Accounting for these factors, the parent-child correlation of income should very much not be zero. So then is there an appropriate level of heritability of income given the ‘natural order of things’? Secondarily, is it an issue if a doctors daughters tend to become doctors — they have gotten some level of ‘free’ preparation for the work simply by exposure to their parents so there would be some deadweight loss in encouraging them to branch out.
Indeed.
Perhaps a more relevant question is “what degree of non-meritocratic advantage should parents be able to provide their children?” After all, what good could people value more then their children’s status. Based on expenditure they value it a lot (look at education and real estate).
Though maybe their own lack of appreciation for genetics is causing them to overpay for snake oil?
In any event, I think we ought to admit that a degree of status inertia, above and beyond genetic inheritance, isn’t such a bad thing. You just don’t want so much that totally rotten lines are downwardly mobile and red hot “new men” can move up the system without revolution. It would be nice if we could arrive at such a place without the ideological and financial baggage associated with the current system of buying your children undeserved status.
Suppose your income is inflated by restrictive government policies, policies that shield you from foreign competition, or competition from people who lack the credentials but not the skills, or competition from people who aren’t officially licensed to do the work they’ve been doing for twenty years.
Or maybe there’s a different set of government policies, policies that are actually the only reason your job even exists, legislation that threatens people with lawsuits that would bankrupt them if they don’t play by the government’s rules.
Or suppose your income is augmented by regulations that boost the value of your house by thirty per cent? Suppose your income is artificially inflated by the arms race of all these lousy government policies building on and feeding on each other, by the vicious spiral of regulations and subsidies and ever-narrower channels and hoops through which you must jump or squeeze and contort yourself.
I wouldn’t call this the natural order of things. I wouldn’t call this the obvious and simple system of natural liberty. I’d call it a rent-seeking society.
Whatever system you set up, the high IQ are going to want he game. And IQ is heritable, so peoples own children are going to win the game. That’s his basic point. Libertarian meritocracy doesn’t change that.
BTW. Zoning clearly works. It drives away riff-raff and creates an upward spiral of gentrification. Housing values are just a measurement of how well you keep out the riff-raff. That is why zoning isn’t going away. DC, SF, etc, are getting less and less black as the high rents cause them to leave, thus raising property values and justifying the higher rents.
If you want to make urban environments cheap you need to allow gentrification to take place based on some metric other then price.
“Thus, on average you should expect your five grandchildren to be evenly distributed across the socioeconomic spectrum.”
No. Even if grandparents have 0 effects on their grandkids outcomes, you would still not expect this unless you have dozens of grandkids. This is like saying we expect every medium-skilled NFL team to go 8 and 8 this year. In the real world, the 0.3% DVOA 2016 Dolphins went 10-6 last year (0 DVOA is medium skilled)