By John C. Goodman
Saturday, March 08, 2014
Today I'm going to get personal. The reason? To see if
readers have had similar experiences.
There were about 450 students in my high school
graduating class. I don't remember a single one I would call "poor."
Only one would I call "rich." All the rest were squarely within the
20 yard lines. Socioeconomically, we were all very much alike: solidly middle
class. We went to school together, played sports together and socialized with
each other. Since my school was segregated by law at the time, all of the students
were white.
Now let's run the tape forward and approach the time of
normal retirement. At this point I made five observations.
First, I made a rough calculation that between 5% and 10%
of our class was earning about half the class income. Obviously, my calculation
was far from precise, but I believe that the inequality of income within my
high school class was similar to the inequality we observe in society as a
whole.
Second, I have no idea why this happened. The highest
earners in my class were not necessarily the ones with the highest grades or
test scores. They were not the ones I would have predicted if I were making
such predictions when I was young. A few of my classmates had the opportunity
to enter their fathers' businesses and I suppose this gave them a leg up. But
this was less than 10% of the high-earner group. Also, just about everybody who
is doing well got there through hard work and perseverance. None of my
classmates won the lottery.
The surprising thing is that I don't know why the
distribution of income among my classmates looks the way it does. I know why
the high earners are high earners in the sense that I know how they are
earning an income. But I don't know why everyone else wasn't equally
successful.
Third, if my subjective impressions are correct, when we
were in school only one child had parents who were in the top 1% of the
national distribution of income the group that Paul Krugman is always railing
about. Yet by the time of retirement, that group included 20 of my classmates,
or more.
Fourth, I don't know anyone in my class who thinks the
distribution of class income is unfair. If you read Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz
and similar commentators, you get the feeling that they think some great
injustice has been done to create inequality in society as a whole (but without
ever saying what that injustice is). My class includes Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and a few libertarians like myself.
But I'm pretty sure that regardless of political beliefs, no one in my class
thinks that what their classmates are earning is the result of some general
unfairness.
Finally, I don't know anyone in my class who regards this
as a problem that needs correcting. If we were to have an expensive reunion
that couldn't be paid for with normal fees, I'm sure that those who have more
would chip in and underwrite the expense. But that would be voluntary and
everyone would expect it to be voluntary. It's noblesse oblige.
Here is my theory. Our basic notions of what is fair and
unfair and which problems need correcting and which ones don't are actually
very similar when we are talking about people we all know. It is only when we
are talking about abstractions and amorphous groups of people ? people that we
don't know ? that political ideologies pull us apart.
What do you think?
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