[Vision2020] Soles Hundreds of Feet Thick: Visualizing Economic Inequality in America

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

I took just enough time off from my concrete work to tape my radio commentary, but now that it's poured, I have finished the 700-word version.  The 1,100 word version is at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/inequality.htm.

I will also write a longer response to the thread "All Things Southern" very soon.

Nick Gier

SOLES HUNDREDS OF FEET THICK:
VISUALIZING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN AMERICA

In 1971 Dutch economist Jan Pen offered an illustration that demonstrated economic inequality in a very dramatic way. Pen was writing about the British economy, but his thought experiment works even better for the current American economy.

Let's imagine that every working American walking by in an hour-long parade.  Let us also assume that everyone's height is proportional to his or her salary. The first ones to pass, those underemployed working at odd jobs, are only an inch high. 
 
Next the spectators would see the fully employed making minimum wage, but they would be only a foot high. For the rest of the first half hour, the parade goers would observe most of America's skilled workers, and they would still be only about three feet tall.

Only after 45 minutes would the spectators begin to see people as tall as they are—those in the upper class.  During the last six minutes rich Americans in our economic parade would be shooting up in height at an astounding rate. This is because nearly half the money made in America goes to a mere 10 percent of the population. 

Doctors and lawyers would be at least 20 feet tall, and CEOs and top financial managers would be looming above us from 100 to 500 feet. Finally, America's billionaires would be marching by in shoes whose soles are hundreds of feet thick. 

Libertarians, who believe in unfettered free markets and who have profoundly influenced the Bush administration, argue that this is simply the American dream in operation.  Those who work hard, take risks, and make lots of money with their investments deserve to keep every penny they earn.  

The corollary to the American dream, that anyone can become a Bill Gates, has been false for decades. The social mobility and opportunities that allowed Andrew Carnegie to rise from rags to riches simply do not exist anymore.  

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the percentage of those moving from the lowest quarter to the highest quarter dropped from 22 to 10 percent. In a recent study on the mobility between generations in rich countries by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it was found that an American child born in the lowest fifth of the income scale had only a 7 percent chance of climbing to the top one fifth. A full 40 percent will remain at the bottom, while only to 25 of Danes do or 30 percent of those in the UK.

In 1966, when I spent a year as Rotary Fellow in Denmark, only 8 percent of students attended gymnasium, the high quality European university preparatory schools.  At that time Denmark had only four universities, but now it has seven serving 5.3 million people. While the U.S. workforce has 33 percent higher education graduates, the Danish portion has now risen to 40 percent.  

Increasingly, more American students are finding that they cannot even afford to attend public colleges and universities. In stark contrast, Danish students in higher education pay no tuition and are given a $500 monthly stipend if they keep up their grades.  

Progressive income taxes, the highest in the world, allow European governments to make the investment in human capital that has essentially eliminated poverty and produced the most successful societies in history. Contrary to popular opinion, high taxes do not mean economic stagnation. Seven of the ten most economically competitive countries are European welfare states with highly unionized workforces.  

Young students without adequate health care obviously do not do well in school, and European governments make sure, unlike ours, that every one of their children has proper medical and dental care, with Scandinavian dentists assigned to every school.

America has been known as the land of the greatest economic opportunity, but unless both the native born and immigrants have quality education and access to health care, their American dream may turn out to be tedious haul of long hours, low pay, poor health, little vacation, and meager pensions. 

The reference to Jan Pen's economic parade was found in Clive Crook's "The Height of Inequality" in The Atlantic Monthly (September, 2006).