The Price We Pay for Having Upper-Class Legislators
The Price We Pay for Having Upper-Class Legislators
What explains the almost total absence of working-class people from elected positions in state government?
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"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" I know I sound like a jerk here, but I expect someone with the ability to be an effective politician to have the ability to reach the upper middle class, generally by becoming a lawyer, even if starting with nothing.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
-Kurt Vonnegut
If America was a meritocracy, sure.
You’re so rich, how can you be so dumb?
Wealth and status has everything to do with family background and generational wealth. You either have it or you don’t.
That's simply not true for the upper middle class - look at the statistics for Chinese immigrants. They start out much poorer than the average native-born American but they quickly end up earning significantly more than the average native-born American does. Plenty of them go from poverty to the upper middle class in one or two generations.
It’s almost like people who come from a culture that’s not “fuck you, I got mine” are really successful when dropped into a tight immigrant community in a country that has more open social and economic policies.
America’s problem is Americans.
By your logic, you must be destitute.
Okay now do Americans.
You sound lost my friend.
Social mobility is largely a lie, but even if it wasn't, why would you think that a government controlled by a narrow group of interests is better? You're arguing for oligarchy.
This may be true if your working with two assumptions. One society is a meritocracy, which isnt true in most cases success is determined by birth and luck rather than merit, other comments have mentioned this so I won't get too deep into it.
The other is that politics and government are just about getting the smartest most credentialed people in the room and then they will solve all the issues. While we do want smart capable people in office this view ignores the other qualification a representative needs, to identify with and understand the people they're representing. If Congress is just a bunch of lawyers from Harvard they don't understand what it's like to be a single mom working on minimum wage and are unlikely to increase that wage. If there only talking to people in the successful upper middle class that they inhabit they're less likely to see the struggles of the common worker. This is why we need working class representatives to give a voice to those struggles.
You make a good point. In my experience, American society is a meritocracy - my family started out with almost nothing and now we're upper-middle-class. I know plenty of other people with a similar experience; this experience is one reason why so many immigrants want to come to the USA. However, it's clear that my experience isn't universal. I don't identify with the many people here who don't think we're living in a meritocracy, and I don't identify with people in generational poverty despite having experienced poverty myself. I admit I don't understand the former group (are we living in the same country?) and my understanding of the latter group is only academic. I can see why people in these groups wouldn't want a representative with a life experience like mine.
On the meritocracy argument if you think of it like economic success = merit = hard work and determination, I think that's wrong because there are two things required, that are matters of luck, to turn that hard work into economic success.
One you have to be talented, or have some innate ability that others may not have. Just like some people will never be a top basketball player no matter how hard they work because they just don't have the body for it many people just dont have the brain to understand medicine or law or business at high levels. There's nothing wrong with not being able to do that though and people shouldn't be punished by having a lower standard of living because of it. Hard work !=merit
The second is you have to be talented in a field that the market values. The classic example of this is the starving artist but even if you're talented at child care you may not be payed well unless you "advance" to becoming a manager which you may not be good at. This also goes into how we value work as a society since that childcare worker is doing more good for society then a Google engineer figuring out ways to click ads, but the latter is payed far more and is deemed worthy of merit. Merit != Economic success
If you'd like to know more about this perspective I'd recommend reading "the tyranny of merit" by Michael sandel. It's written by a Harvard philosophy professor on the reality and the moral and political implications of the "meritocracy" as it exists in the U.S. today.
I disagree with this. Law school isn't cheap. Law school doesn't come from nothing. I'm seeing kids in my class who are stacked six to a bed, working full work weeks and trying to squeak by in class, and largely failing. Also, effective politicians need to raise funds to run campaigns. Funds come from rich people. Even if this effective politician somehow manages to afford an expensive law degree, they also need to have the time and opportunity to succeed in school, and then somehow manage the free time to also make connections among the wealthy so they can raise the funds to run a campaign.
Politics has become for the rich, by the rich.