10 ms·

People in the USA no longer share a common lived experience

54 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

pseingatl 7y ago
Not true. The sole, unifying common and shared American tribal experience continues to be high school.
- robbyt 7y ago
  Don't you think highschool is a bit different in NYC compared to Nebraska?
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    Not significantly. I did high school in a farming town in rural South Jersey and a Phoenix suburb and didn't notice that big of a difference other than that the building was newer and nobody wanted to spend time outside.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > I did high school in a farming town in rural South Jersey and a Phoenix suburb and didn't notice that big of a difference I did public high school in one of the bigger cities in California's Centela Valley and in a relatively affluent suburb on the fringes of the Bay Area (and, for a brief while, a third place less than 50 miles from the second) and noticed huge differences at all three that had nothing to do with physical infrastructure or climate.
      - pseingatl 7y ago
        In what ways were there "huge" differences? No cliques? No sports teams? Vastly different curricula?
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        Violence, race relations, involvement of street gangs, degree and nature of law enforcement presence and regular interaction on campus, nature and pervasiveness of drug culture, diversity of academic and extracurricular opportunities; some of these in exactly the way you'd expect based on relative wealth and demographics of the various districts, though the differences in the last went the other way, I suspect because they were controlled more by the size of both the school and the district. Some of that (most except the last and possibly the penultimate) probably would be attenuated (though still present) in the experience of middle class and higher white students.
        coldtea 7y ago
        Depending on high school there are vastly poorer students, vastly more or less immigrants, vastly more or less minorities, vastly more or less gangs, vastly more or less desolated communities, vastly more or less no-college prospects, vastly more or less resigned teachers, vastly more or less violence, and so on. On these aspects your high schools in "rural Jersey" and "Phoenix" could be more or less in the same league, the same way a Beverly Hills high school and a rich Boston area high school could be. That would not the case across high schools in general though. The only "common" part of the experience is kids being kids, boredom, bullying, puberty and so on. But that's true for high schools in Japan, Africa, or Denmark as well...
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    I think another question is private high school vs public.
lukebuehler 7y ago
What about consumerism? Things like going to the mall, Center Street, your nearby strip mall, huge grocery store, and amusement parks. All these things have a distinctive North American flavor and are quite homogeneous across the US and Canada.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  The DMV.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Things like going to the mall, Center Street, your nearby strip mall, huge grocery store, and amusement parks. All these things have a distinctive North American flavor and are quite homogeneous across the US and Canada. And all of those things have been in decline, especially malls and "center street"...
selimthegrim 7y ago
If his idea helps Louisiana kick the habit of corporate tax giveaways I’m all for it (and yes I know what economic theory says about corporate tax and deadweight loss getting passed to consumers, these recipients are not consumer products companies by and large)
fsagx 7y ago
I humbly offer an alternate title: "Larry Has No Common Lived Experience with People Outside His Bubble" Comparing Arlington, VA or any of the top-earning metro areas to Flint, MI makes little sense to his argument. There are thousands of communities that he could compare to Flint and find much in common. A more compelling argument might be: 100 million people throughout the USA similarly struggle to make ends meet. They unemployed black man in Flint has a great deal in common with the under-employed white woman working at walmart in Peoria, Larry just can't see it.
- branweb 7y ago
  I think you're being unfair. To say Arlington and Flint differ is not to say Flint and Peoria do not differ. If anything, Flint is being used as a stand-in for similar struggling communities in the non-costal, non-urban US. Also your "more compelling argument" is contained within Summer's argument: Flint is way worse off than Arlington, this is bad, here are some ideas to fix it. He even goes on in the last paragraph to say: These may or may not be the best ideas for enabling people wherever they live to share in U.S. economic progress, and they are no substitute for addressing inequality more directly. But it is hard to see how we can bring about enduring improvement in the nation’s condition without addressing the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who live in places that are failing to catch up with the rest of our country.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    The phrase "sharing in U.S. economic progress" is kind of euphemistic and misleading when you're talking about Arlington, which is basically a tumor on the federal government. I'm not saying it's inherently bad that stuff happens outside of DC proper, but northern VA didn't just inexplicably become the wealthiest area in the country through "progress"; it's obviously runoff from DC. So it makes no sense to take it as an aspirational model for less wealthy areas which aren't physically located nearby.
- jccalhoun 7y ago
  Agreed. When have we ever had a common lived experience? Even in purely economic terms anyone who wasn't a white male would disagree that there has ever been a time when this was true.
sixtypoundhound 7y ago
"Invest more in education" seems to be a bad pattern. We need to invest in job creation; a lot of those newly "educated" people have only raised their fixed costs while competing for the same jobs (that don't require the degree)
davidf18 7y ago
Notably, Summers did not discuss the cause of the decline of many communities which was from policy by the Clinton administration specifically allowing China to join the WTO and the creation of NAFTA both of which served corporations over workers who saw their jobs exported to low-wage countries. Economist Paul Krugman wrote recently in Bloomberg about this as being a cause for the success of Trump (and in a related manner in Britain) BrExit. Krugman: What Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization The models that scholars used to measure the impact of exports from developing countries in the 1990s underestimated the effect on jobs and inequality. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/inequality-globalization-and-the-missteps-of-1990s-economics https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/inequa...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 7y ago
Inequality will do that for you... Not knowing "how the other half lives" was always a thing, but at least back in the day was easier to see if one cared. Now with so much of life spend in the artificial world of echo bubbles, the internet, social media, secluded communities, gentrified areas, coasts and inner states, etc, that's increasingly more difficult.

54 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

pseingatl 7y ago

Not true. The sole, unifying common and shared American tribal experience continues to be high school.

robbyt 7y ago
Don't you think highschool is a bit different in NYC compared to Nebraska?
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  Not significantly. I did high school in a farming town in rural South Jersey and a Phoenix suburb and didn't notice that big of a difference other than that the building was newer and nobody wanted to spend time outside.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > I did high school in a farming town in rural South Jersey and a Phoenix suburb and didn't notice that big of a difference I did public high school in one of the bigger cities in California's Centela Valley and in a relatively affluent suburb on the fringes of the Bay Area (and, for a brief while, a third place less than 50 miles from the second) and noticed huge differences at all three that had nothing to do with physical infrastructure or climate.
    - pseingatl 7y ago
      In what ways were there "huge" differences? No cliques? No sports teams? Vastly different curricula?
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        Violence, race relations, involvement of street gangs, degree and nature of law enforcement presence and regular interaction on campus, nature and pervasiveness of drug culture, diversity of academic and extracurricular opportunities; some of these in exactly the way you'd expect based on relative wealth and demographics of the various districts, though the differences in the last went the other way, I suspect because they were controlled more by the size of both the school and the district. Some of that (most except the last and possibly the penultimate) probably would be attenuated (though still present) in the experience of middle class and higher white students.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        Depending on high school there are vastly poorer students, vastly more or less immigrants, vastly more or less minorities, vastly more or less gangs, vastly more or less desolated communities, vastly more or less no-college prospects, vastly more or less resigned teachers, vastly more or less violence, and so on. On these aspects your high schools in "rural Jersey" and "Phoenix" could be more or less in the same league, the same way a Beverly Hills high school and a rich Boston area high school could be. That would not the case across high schools in general though. The only "common" part of the experience is kids being kids, boredom, bullying, puberty and so on. But that's true for high schools in Japan, Africa, or Denmark as well...
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  I think another question is private high school vs public.

lukebuehler 7y ago

What about consumerism? Things like going to the mall, Center Street, your nearby strip mall, huge grocery store, and amusement parks. All these things have a distinctive North American flavor and are quite homogeneous across the US and Canada.

perl4ever 7y ago
The DMV.
coldtea 7y ago
>Things like going to the mall, Center Street, your nearby strip mall, huge grocery store, and amusement parks. All these things have a distinctive North American flavor and are quite homogeneous across the US and Canada. And all of those things have been in decline, especially malls and "center street"...

selimthegrim 7y ago

If his idea helps Louisiana kick the habit of corporate tax giveaways I’m all for it (and yes I know what economic theory says about corporate tax and deadweight loss getting passed to consumers, these recipients are not consumer products companies by and large)

fsagx 7y ago

I humbly offer an alternate title: "Larry Has No Common Lived Experience with People Outside His Bubble" Comparing Arlington, VA or any of the top-earning metro areas to Flint, MI makes little sense to his argument. There are thousands of communities that he could compare to Flint and find much in common. A more compelling argument might be: 100 million people throughout the USA similarly struggle to make ends meet. They unemployed black man in Flint has a great deal in common with the under-employed white woman working at walmart in Peoria, Larry just can't see it.

branweb 7y ago
I think you're being unfair. To say Arlington and Flint differ is not to say Flint and Peoria do not differ. If anything, Flint is being used as a stand-in for similar struggling communities in the non-costal, non-urban US. Also your "more compelling argument" is contained within Summer's argument: Flint is way worse off than Arlington, this is bad, here are some ideas to fix it. He even goes on in the last paragraph to say: These may or may not be the best ideas for enabling people wherever they live to share in U.S. economic progress, and they are no substitute for addressing inequality more directly. But it is hard to see how we can bring about enduring improvement in the nation’s condition without addressing the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who live in places that are failing to catch up with the rest of our country.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  The phrase "sharing in U.S. economic progress" is kind of euphemistic and misleading when you're talking about Arlington, which is basically a tumor on the federal government. I'm not saying it's inherently bad that stuff happens outside of DC proper, but northern VA didn't just inexplicably become the wealthiest area in the country through "progress"; it's obviously runoff from DC. So it makes no sense to take it as an aspirational model for less wealthy areas which aren't physically located nearby.
jccalhoun 7y ago
Agreed. When have we ever had a common lived experience? Even in purely economic terms anyone who wasn't a white male would disagree that there has ever been a time when this was true.

sixtypoundhound 7y ago

"Invest more in education" seems to be a bad pattern. We need to invest in job creation; a lot of those newly "educated" people have only raised their fixed costs while competing for the same jobs (that don't require the degree)

davidf18 7y ago

Notably, Summers did not discuss the cause of the decline of many communities which was from policy by the Clinton administration specifically allowing China to join the WTO and the creation of NAFTA both of which served corporations over workers who saw their jobs exported to low-wage countries. Economist Paul Krugman wrote recently in Bloomberg about this as being a cause for the success of Trump (and in a related manner in Britain) BrExit. Krugman: What Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization The models that scholars used to measure the impact of exports from developing countries in the 1990s underestimated the effect on jobs and inequality. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/inequality-globalization-and-the-missteps-of-1990s-economics https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/inequa...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 7y ago

Inequality will do that for you... Not knowing "how the other half lives" was always a thing, but at least back in the day was easier to see if one cared. Now with so much of life spend in the artificial world of echo bubbles, the internet, social media, secluded communities, gentrified areas, coasts and inner states, etc, that's increasingly more difficult.