5 ms·

Conversely, it's also what has attracted so many immigrants to America and created so much historic social mobility[0]. Note - I believe this has largely been r

by mbesto 8y ago

Conversely, it's also what has attracted so many immigrants to America and created so much historic social mobility[0]. Note - I believe this has largely been reversed (and thus stagnated) due to a generation of "I got mine" attitudes, aka the Baby Boomers. [0]Example - in the UK there is very much a "these are the cards I've been dealt" attitude towards social mobility.

ixtli 8y ago
Well certainly working up from nothing in America is still better than certain places an immigrant can come from but i do increasingly feel bad for people who do this when they're not from a war zone :/
naravara 8y ago
>Conversely, it's also what has attracted so many immigrants to America and created so much historic social mobility[0]. Note - I believe this has largely been reversed (and thus stagnated) due to a generation of "I got mine" attitudes, aka the Baby Boomers. It's not "I got mine" attitude nearly as much as it is plain racism. As a block, White Americans preferred to shred social services rather than extending the umbrella to cover minorities. Why else would "hardhats" have voted for Ronald Reagan over their own working class interests?
- kazen44 8y ago
  how does the quote go again? "every working class person in the US thinks they are a temporary inconvinced millionare?". One of the major differences i have found between people of working class in the US and those of other nations is their relation to their social class. a lot of people in the US seem to be trying to get out of a "working class" strata, instead of getting a bigger piece of the pie for said strata.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  In the US there's a strong belief in self reliance. Just because something is harder doesn't mean it's worse (so the thinking goes). You can't honestly say everyone that supported Regan is racist. People just don't believe in hand outs, to anyone (I know I don't). There's nothing racist about that. You're also ignoring many other social issues that Republican's have traditionally supported that have nothing to do with race. There are probably very few people taking race into consideration at all when they vote.
  - naravara 8y ago
    >In the US there's a strong belief in self reliance. This is mostly a self-aggrandizing myth. According to the world values survey (here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inglehart_Values_Map.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inglehart_Values_Map...) the US puts LESS emphasis on self-expression than most of the Nordics and even the Anglosphere outside of the British Isles. All countries have much stronger safety nets than we do. It's Britain and the US where Thatcherism shredded the safety net, and in both cases the conservative parties went hard on racially coded appeals to get working class support to do it. Just from eyeballing it, I would guess traditionalism vs. secular-rationalism is the axis that determines robustness of the safety net. But that's a hard correlation to draw just because of how much variables like state capacity and literacy play a role. > People just don't believe in hand outs, to anyone (I know I don't). There's nothing racist about that. It's not a coincidence that all the talk about "hand outs" focused on racially coded language about who is receiving the hand outs. It's not an accident that the "welfare queen" narratives were always in the projects of urban areas and never in trailer parks. >You're also ignoring many other social issues that Republican's have traditionally supported that have nothing to do with race. There are probably very few people taking race into consideration at all when they vote. Plenty of other countries have socially conservative parties that still advocate for strong welfare states. Christian Democratic parties throughout Europe are like this. Christian Democrats start losing to right wing conservatives right around when a lot of immigrants or refugees show up. This too, is not a coincidence.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Do you think I'm speaking in coded racist terms and not being honest? I'm not, I just think we're all better off with the mindset that we should help ourselves first.
      - naravara 8y ago
        >It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Your feelings didn't just bubble up out of nowhere. They were incepted in you by the culture and values you absorbed growing up. When you're conditioned from the cradle to view social services as "hand-outs" being given to "underserving" populations who don't look like you, you're being influenced by a racially coded language and a racist cultural narrative. You don't even have to be consciously racist to be perpetuating it and influenced by it. Political advertising made you imagine a specific type of person when I ask you to imagine someone on public assistance the same way advertising made you imagine a chubby, rosy cheeked man in a red coat when I mention Santa Claus. And we have to be honest with ourselves about accepting that when asked to imagine a recipient of public assistance, and it's not an accident how many of those stories are racially coded.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Why else would "hardhats" have voted for Ronald Reagan over their own working class interests? Lack of a perceived positive vision from the other side; the lack of doing something with the moment of attention after the crisis of confidence (or “malaise”, though he never said that in it) speech is particularly frequently pointed to.
- mbesto 8y ago
  Not to marginalize the severity of racism in the USA, but blaming it on "plain racism" is a bit myopic. The "I got mine" attitude that I'm referring to involves mainly white American boomers who created/supported NIMBY legislation and inappropriate higher education funding that has effectively lead to the limitations for younger white American social mobility as well.
  - naravara 8y ago
    Even a lot of that NIMBYism is focused on making sure the "wrong kinds of people" don't move into the neighborhood. People have complained about public transit because they don't want "those people" being able to get to their neighborhoods, even if it makes life objectively easier for them to not be dependent on a car. Even our school districts have functionally been racially segregated by how district lines are drawn and property taxes are assessed. It's hard not to understate the extent to which racism permeates the policy frameworks we operate under in the US. It's very deeply embedded to the point where many of its effects are invisible.
ska 8y ago
Not that social mobility was ever as high as many people think, but you are right that it seems to have reduced significantly since the 1970s, and is now lower than some European countries. I suspect it isn't as a simple as "blame the boomers".

by mbesto 8y ago

ixtli 8y ago

Well certainly working up from nothing in America is still better than certain places an immigrant can come from but i do increasingly feel bad for people who do this when they're not from a war zone :/

naravara 8y ago

>Conversely, it's also what has attracted so many immigrants to America and created so much historic social mobility[0]. Note - I believe this has largely been reversed (and thus stagnated) due to a generation of "I got mine" attitudes, aka the Baby Boomers. It's not "I got mine" attitude nearly as much as it is plain racism. As a block, White Americans preferred to shred social services rather than extending the umbrella to cover minorities. Why else would "hardhats" have voted for Ronald Reagan over their own working class interests?

kazen44 8y ago
how does the quote go again? "every working class person in the US thinks they are a temporary inconvinced millionare?". One of the major differences i have found between people of working class in the US and those of other nations is their relation to their social class. a lot of people in the US seem to be trying to get out of a "working class" strata, instead of getting a bigger piece of the pie for said strata.
malvosenior 8y ago
In the US there's a strong belief in self reliance. Just because something is harder doesn't mean it's worse (so the thinking goes). You can't honestly say everyone that supported Regan is racist. People just don't believe in hand outs, to anyone (I know I don't). There's nothing racist about that. You're also ignoring many other social issues that Republican's have traditionally supported that have nothing to do with race. There are probably very few people taking race into consideration at all when they vote.
- naravara 8y ago
  >In the US there's a strong belief in self reliance. This is mostly a self-aggrandizing myth. According to the world values survey (here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inglehart_Values_Map.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inglehart_Values_Map...) the US puts LESS emphasis on self-expression than most of the Nordics and even the Anglosphere outside of the British Isles. All countries have much stronger safety nets than we do. It's Britain and the US where Thatcherism shredded the safety net, and in both cases the conservative parties went hard on racially coded appeals to get working class support to do it. Just from eyeballing it, I would guess traditionalism vs. secular-rationalism is the axis that determines robustness of the safety net. But that's a hard correlation to draw just because of how much variables like state capacity and literacy play a role. > People just don't believe in hand outs, to anyone (I know I don't). There's nothing racist about that. It's not a coincidence that all the talk about "hand outs" focused on racially coded language about who is receiving the hand outs. It's not an accident that the "welfare queen" narratives were always in the projects of urban areas and never in trailer parks. >You're also ignoring many other social issues that Republican's have traditionally supported that have nothing to do with race. There are probably very few people taking race into consideration at all when they vote. Plenty of other countries have socially conservative parties that still advocate for strong welfare states. Christian Democratic parties throughout Europe are like this. Christian Democrats start losing to right wing conservatives right around when a lot of immigrants or refugees show up. This too, is not a coincidence.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Do you think I'm speaking in coded racist terms and not being honest? I'm not, I just think we're all better off with the mindset that we should help ourselves first.
    - naravara 8y ago
      >It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Your feelings didn't just bubble up out of nowhere. They were incepted in you by the culture and values you absorbed growing up. When you're conditioned from the cradle to view social services as "hand-outs" being given to "underserving" populations who don't look like you, you're being influenced by a racially coded language and a racist cultural narrative. You don't even have to be consciously racist to be perpetuating it and influenced by it. Political advertising made you imagine a specific type of person when I ask you to imagine someone on public assistance the same way advertising made you imagine a chubby, rosy cheeked man in a red coat when I mention Santa Claus. And we have to be honest with ourselves about accepting that when asked to imagine a recipient of public assistance, and it's not an accident how many of those stories are racially coded.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Why else would "hardhats" have voted for Ronald Reagan over their own working class interests? Lack of a perceived positive vision from the other side; the lack of doing something with the moment of attention after the crisis of confidence (or “malaise”, though he never said that in it) speech is particularly frequently pointed to.
mbesto 8y ago
Not to marginalize the severity of racism in the USA, but blaming it on "plain racism" is a bit myopic. The "I got mine" attitude that I'm referring to involves mainly white American boomers who created/supported NIMBY legislation and inappropriate higher education funding that has effectively lead to the limitations for younger white American social mobility as well.
- naravara 8y ago
  Even a lot of that NIMBYism is focused on making sure the "wrong kinds of people" don't move into the neighborhood. People have complained about public transit because they don't want "those people" being able to get to their neighborhoods, even if it makes life objectively easier for them to not be dependent on a car. Even our school districts have functionally been racially segregated by how district lines are drawn and property taxes are assessed. It's hard not to understate the extent to which racism permeates the policy frameworks we operate under in the US. It's very deeply embedded to the point where many of its effects are invisible.

ska 8y ago

Not that social mobility was ever as high as many people think, but you are right that it seems to have reduced significantly since the 1970s, and is now lower than some European countries. I suspect it isn't as a simple as "blame the boomers".