How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

Why would you want to live your life like so many other people are forced to live. If you are at the very top that means privilege. Those are the only people left with privilege, everyone else works for a living and works harder than everyone else for a better living.

It's not a bad article, but it makes the same observations about opportunity we've read about a thousand times before. The article mostly describes the status quo, but doesn't say much about the root causes or about possible solutions. Maybe the full book is better, but I doubt it. The author doesn't strike me as a person with deep insights.

One sentence from the article really sticks out: "The American ideal of a classless society is, to me, a deeply attractive one. It has been disheartening to learn that the class structure of my new homeland is, if anything, more rigid than the one I left behind and especially so at the top."

The author, a highly educated middle aged British guy who works at a think tank, needs years to figure out that the United States isn't the bastion of opportunity it purports to be? Come on! Literally the moment your plane lands at the airport you notice food is prepared by immigrants, and taxi drivers have missing teeth. The inequality is visible everywhere, and it stares you in the face. The author only barely recognizes the contradiction between his wish for equal opportunity for all and his desire to give his children a leg up.

Ultimately he concludes that hoarding opportunity by the top 20% "results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society". In other words, he's _still_ arguing that the top 20% should be in favor of equal opportunity out of self interest, because it builds a better society for all. This is in direct contradiction with his earlier observations about the zero-sum nature of opportunity. Efforts to redistribute wealth and opportunity from the rich to the rest does not benefit the rich: it's called class conflict for a reason. Maybe in another decade or so the author will figure this out.

It is only natural that the people in possession of resources are reluctant to share them; that is also the case in most countries, in my experience. The weird thing about the U.S. is that so many below-median-income folks are right-wing -- the very ones that would benefit from increased wealth distribution. I guess part of the explanation comes from the mirage that is The American Dream. In some sense a lot of us Top 20 percenters are Dream Sellers -- if you just buy the right shoes, food, anything, you too will be successful and get social status. (Yes I am one of those Scandinavian socialists)

For households without kids it wouldn't be egregious to have the ability to make 529 size contributions to Roth-IRA.

I'm not sure I agree with the author's policy prescriptions, but the figures on income growth among different segments are interesting. As much as we might be falling behind the top 1%, we 2-20% folks are still pulling away from the rest and that has important implications. A thought-provoking read overall.