"The Kids Are in Charge: On Downward Mobility," part 2

Well-known economics expert Chris Rock

“Income inequality” is a term that has only recently come into vogue. It instantly turns up 20 million hits on Google, way ahead even of “anthropogenic climate change.” Before 2011, however, according to a May 2014 article on the website of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the term was infrequently mentioned in the news, at least not online. The New York Times began to lead the way in 2010, with 46 mentions. Did the Times’ coverage give birth to the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement? Somehow one feels there was symbiosis. By 2013, the term appeared in the Times 430 times, compared to 277 in the previous year. Even CNN.com was way behind: “income inequality” appeared only 79 times in 2013, compared to 25 times the previous year. Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has spectacularly profited from the phenomenon. A March 31, 2015, article entitled “Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think” in Scientific American by Nicholas Fitz, “a graduate student in neuroethics” at the University of British Columbia, shows that you don’t have to know anything about economics to opine on the subject. The article begins by quoting well-known economics expert Chris Rock. And now a book has appeared, The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon, reviewed in January in the New York Times by Eduardo Porter. The headline: “America’s Best Days May Be Behind It.” As is well known, the seemingly endless prosperity of the U.S. came to an abrupt end in the mid-1970s.

All these writers seek to pin inequality on economic factors. Left-wing writers, for instance, argue for income redistribution or massive taxation on the wealthy to solve the problem. Most Americans are aware, if not exactly consciously, that such "solutions" have been ongoing for years without much to show for them. After all, the U.S. has spent TRILLIONS since the 1970s in an attempt to address the problems of poverty. (The data for this comes from what is apparently a conservative website. I would like to have added here a link to the New York Times or the Washington Post, but Google turns up no references to articles in either paper concerning the costs of the Great Society programs. Go figure.)

As I suggested in my last post, income inequality is a result of the downward trend of educational achievement since the 1950s. Who wants to hire kids who graduate from high school with below-par reading and computational skills? The downward trend, I argue comes from having put kids in charge of education, which began to take place in 1973. I don’t mean, literally, kids, as in Americans under the age of 18. I mean the values of kids.

What is the value world of kids?

Foremost is getting what they want, which is the natural, indeed most rational, inclination of kids, especially in adolescence, when they are driven by new urgencies. Left to their own devices, kids will always seek their short-term interest, often to their detriment. Consider the risks that teenage boys and girls succumb to, if not kept on the straight and narrow by their parents. At the same time, as parents know, it is hard to "reason" with kids: without ever having heard of Jacques Derrida, kids are natural “deconstructors.” They instinctively feel that all adults are mean. They think all people over the age of 25 are old. Their interests do not include knowing the size of the national budget or about foreign affairs.

Now, if they come from a background in which their every need was met while growing up, and without any particular obstructions in their way, the "kid mentality" will continue into the age of adulthood. Many will continue to live with their parents and be dependent on them for their needs.

Short term describes our current national priorities. Adults are no longer in charge, and we have a nation of dependents.

The transition from adults being in charge to kids being in charge took place beginning in about 1973, which is when my generation began to take over the reigns of the institutions from our parents. We are the generation described in my previous post. It is we who have presided over the decline of American education and of American prosperity.

To be continued.

Picture credit: Time; Rolling Out