Conservatives ruining 'American exceptionalism'

Beinartfeb argues convincingly that conservatives, who say they defend "American exceptionalism," are actually doing the most to destroy Americans' feeling of having a special place in the world that diverges historically and culturally from Europe.  

How?  First, because of conservatives' politicizing religion. Feelings of exceptionalism are strongest with those who attend church regularly and identify with a particular religious denomination. By politicizing religion, starting in the 1980s, conservatives have steadily turned off generations of Americans from churchy Christianity. They believe church has gotten too political.  (They're right).  We have an increasing contingent of "spiritual not religious" Americans who never hear the pastor's or televangelist's politicized sermons.

Secondly, because of Dubya. A belief in American exceptionalism goes along with an aggressive, "unapologetic" U.S. foreign policy. Thanks to Bush's avoidable debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, two generations have been turned off from an active, interfering U.S. role in the world; and they are less likely to believe in "going it alone" and more likely to trust the UN and international institutions.

Third, because of economic inequality. Republican policies have limited class mobility, have encouraged accumulation of wealth at the top, and have made more Americans class-conscious: they are more likely to look at their country just like any other, where the Haves rule the Have-Nots -- not the land of the "American Dream" where anybody who works hard can live comfortably and even strike it rich. 

The End of American Exceptionalism

By Peter Beinartfeb

February 3, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-end-of-american-exceptionalism/283540/

Study: In U.S., geography is destiny

Yet more evidence that bootstrapping oneself from rags to riches is pretty darn unlikely, and depends a lot on luck and accident of birth:

“Where you grow up matters,” said Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and one of the study’s authors. “There is tremendous variation across the U.S. in the extent to which kids can rise out of poverty.”

Meanwhile...

Geography mattered much less for well-off children than for middle-class and poor children, according to the results. In an economic echo of Tolstoy’s line about happy families being alike, the chances that affluent children grow up to be affluent are broadly similar across metropolitan areas.

This directly contradicts the conservative belief in the power of rugged individualism to overcome all obstacles.  But we already knew that Ragged Dick was an old fairy tale, didn't we?... 

In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters

By David Leonhardt

July 22, 2013 | New York Times

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html?_r=0

Obama preaching to vanishing middle class

Cox's conclusion is quite alarming:

Referring to "the middle class" as a sympathetic totem, or even as an aspirational construct, now runs the risk of alienating voters as much as inspiring or comforting them. Offering "protections" to the middle class might even raise resentments: for a growing number of Americans, that means giving benefits to someone else.

I've been talking for years now about the disappearance of the middle class.  See here, here, here and here.  Economists tell us that things have been bad for years, just covered up by households borrowing and spending more than they could afford to.  The Great Recession removed that fig leaf of middle-class affluence and laid bare the truth.  

Obama's address to the incredible shrinking middle class

By Ana Marie Cox

July 24, 2013 | Guardian

Republicans seized upon Obama's speech on the economy as a chance to reiterate their contention that very little about the nation's situation has changed in the past five years – and, paradoxically, there's very little Obama could do about it, even if he wanted to.

"The president himself said [the speech] isn't going to change any minds," John Boehner said in a floor speech before Obama even started. "All right, well. So exactly what will change? What's the point? What's it going to accomplish? You probably got the answer: nothing."

Of course, inertia – in both the political and economic sense – was a major theme of the speech itself. Obama started off with some applause-worthy boosterism: the country leads in technological advances! We manufacture a lot of stuff!

But the crux of the speech was less optimistic: the existing trends in "a winner-take-all economy where a few do better and better, while everybody else just treads water – have been made worse by the recession."

Obama's complaints about the parallel stagnation in Washington were familiar as well. He called out Republican obstructionism repeatedly, and in at least one unscripted and pointed assertion:  "Repealing Obamacare and cutting spending is not an economic plan. It's not."

Your opinion as to whether the speech served its purpose depends on your party identification, and your opinion on what its purpose was probably does, too. For me, it's a split decision: I am sympathetic to the president's policies – using government spending as a lever to enable upward mobility – but I think he may not have succeeded in what most progressives probably thought was the purpose of the speech: to rally his base and frame a renewed economic policy debate over the coming months.

Maybe, I'm being too literal, but I keep getting stuck on the very title of the speech, "A Better Bargain for the Middle Class."

Here's the problem: the "middle class" – a once-reliable rallying point for both parties – is shrinking (not really news); and so are the numbers of Americans who think they are members of it.  What used to be the case – Americans defined themselves as "middle class" even if they weren't – is starting to adjust to sad reality: Americans don't think of themselves as "middle class", because they're not.

A Pew study this spring found the number of Americans defining themselves as "middle class" has slipped from 53% to 49% since 2008, while those identifying themselves as "lower class" went from 25% to 32%.  Actual class slippage mirrors this finding almost exactly: the 2011 census found that since 2007, the share of working families with an income less than double the federal poverty line (the government's definition of "low income") rose from 28% to 32%.

Referring to "the middle class" as a sympathetic totem, or even as an aspirational construct, now runs the risk of alienating voters as much as inspiring or comforting them. Offering "protections" to the middle class might even raise resentments: for a growing number of Americans, that means giving benefits to someone else.

It may be sometime before political rhetoric adjusts to these harsh realities. I hope that the economy turns around before it has to.

Study: Class mobility in U.S. is a myth

This is all essential reading, I just wish BI wouldn't use the term "social mobility," when they are really discussing class mobility.

It's typical of Americans and especially the MSM to avoid the concept of class altogether, because we're supposed to be a classless society... or God forbid, some disgruntled conservative will accuse somebody of "class warfare!" Oh no!

Why Social Mobility In The United States Is A Total Myth

By Eric Zuesse

March 18, 2013 | Business Insider

URL: http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-is-a-myth-in-the-us-2013-3

Stiglitz: American Dream is statistically a myth

Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

February 16, 2013 | New York Times

President Obama’s second Inaugural Address used soaring language to reaffirm America’s commitment to the dream of equality of opportunity: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”

The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible. The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity.

Perhaps a hundred years ago, America might have rightly claimed to have been the land of opportunity, or at least a land where there was more opportunity than elsewhere. But not for at least a quarter of a century. Horatio Alger-style rags-to-riches stories were not a deliberate hoax, but given how they’ve lulled us into a sense of complacency, they might as well have been.

It’s not that social mobility is impossible, but that the upwardly mobile American is becoming a statistical oddity. According to research from the Brookings Institution, only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top. Economic mobility in the United States is lower than in most of Europe and lower than in all of Scandinavia. [...]

American Dream v. American Lotto

I was waiting for the part when Robert Samuelson blamed the death of the American Dream on Obama.  Whew! -- he didn't.  Instead, he explains it was Bill Clinton's fault for perverting the Dream to:  Americans “who work hard and play by the rules shouldn’t be poor.”  

We knew it had to be one of them to blame.  (Beating up on Jimmy Carter is so '70s.)  Damn you, Slick Willy!

Seriously though, outside of pundits and politicians, most Americans have gotten the memo that the Dream is dead.  Maybe they have read how income mobility is greater in Canada and Europe, although I doubt it.  All they have to do is compare how they live now to how their parents or grandparents did. The Dream is now the Lottery: keep working, paying your taxes and buying those tickets, year in-year out, and maybe, just maybe, you'll get lucky, too.  

Is it any wonder that casinos, online poker and other forms of legalized gambling are making a huge comeback?  Everybody knows the game is rigged, the house always wins, and yet, and yet.... They prefer to hope against the odds.  

Today Ben Franklin would be scratching lotto cards.

The American Dream’s empty promise

By Robert J. Samuelson

September 24, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-the-american-dreams-empty-promise/2012/09/23/e630946c-0428-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_story.html

U.S. no longer 'land of opportunity'

I missed this one earlier but fortunately stumbled across it today.

Less equality, less mobility than in other countries, including "socialist" Europe. Is the American Dream dead?

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

By Jason DeParle

January 4, 2012 | New York Times

Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. "Movin' on up," George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

[...]