The debate about the growth in income inequality in the United States was framed by Occupy Wall Street as the gap between the top 1% and the 99% of Americans in the majority. New research shows that the share at of the wealth has increasingly been concentrated in the hands of a much small group, “the plutocrats.”
Slate’s Jordan Weissman explains:
But they are basically in keeping with what has already been shown about income inequality. Occupy Wall Street trained Americans to frame the economic gap in terms of the 99 percent and 1 percent. But writers and economists have been pointing out for years that the biggest winners in today’s globalized, finance-heavy economy have been an even smaller band of super-rich. Tim Noah dubbed them “the stinking rich.”Chrystia Freeland went with “plutocrats.” No matter what you choose to name them, the largest economic gains have accrued to Americans at the very, very tiniest tip of the earnings pyramid. Here’s one dramatic illustration I’ve drawn from the World Top Incomes Database. The top 0.5 percent, with minimum household income of $551,000, have roughly tripled their share of the nation’s paycheck since 1978, to about 18 percent. The bottom half of the 1 percent, the work-a-day rich, have upped theirs only to around 4 percent.
Are American kids stripped of their independence, denied the chance to take risks, and unable to make discoveries on their own? The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin argues that’s the case–and we’re not even making kids safer in the process:
It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of “children’s independent mobility,” conducted in urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods in the U.K., shows that in 1971, 80 percent of third-graders walked to school alone. By 1990, that measure had dropped to 9 percent, and now it’s even lower. When you ask parents why they are more protective than their parents were, they might answer that the world is more dangerous than it was when they were growing up. But this isn’t true, or at least not in the way that we think.the
Deadlines and Prompts
- The Welty revision (prompt, page 2) will be due Monday in class. I will give you your first draft with comments on Wednesday or Thursday.
- The Barry essay (prompt, page 3) has a more complicated process. You need to find a peer editor and turn in a final draft attached to your peer-edited draft on Friday in class.
Suggestions for the Welty Revision (and really all analysis essays)
- Please make sure to fix end punctuation and quotation marks. The comma and the period go inside the quotes.
- Your thesis statement needs to answer the central question of the prompt. In the case of the Welty essay, that means answering how her feelings about reading changed.
- Topic sentences need to extend to answer the purpose of the paragraph, not just the subject.
- Combine sentences!
- Make sure that your topic sentences make your structure clear.
- Use the author’s name correctly. The first time you can use her first and last name; following that always use her last name. Unless you are Facebook friends with her, using her first name is inappropriate in a formal essay.
We’ll be debating the issue of whaling during the block schedule on Wednesday. Our topics will be:
- Do nations and cultural groups have the right to hunt whales as part of their cultural expression?
- Is hunting whales cruel because of their intelligence and socialization?
- Do the economic/scientific benefits of whaling justify it?
Some evidence will be available here, but you should primarily do your own research.
- Arguments in favor of whaling
- Arguments against whaling
Some of the best articles on the topic are available here:
- The Whale Debate
- Why Japan Keeps Whaling
- Japanese, Norwegians, and Icelanders Spout Off
- Japanese Whaling: Why the West is in the Wrong
- Opposition to Whaling: Arguments and Ethics
- Ecological Arguments Against Whaling
- Is Whaling Culturally Significant?
- The Animal Welfare Argument Against Whaling
- The Argument Against Whaling
- Why We Should Let Faeroe Islanders Hunt Whales
- Good Whale Hunting
- Why Japan Supports Whaling
Slate’s Reihan Salam argues that couples with above-average incomes who have no children should pay higher taxes because of the social benefits of parenting:
So now, as a childless professional in my mid-30s, I often reflect on the sacrifices working parents make to better the lives of their children. And I have come to the reluctant conclusion that I ought to pay much higher taxes so that working parents can pay much lower taxes. I believe this even though I also believe a not inconsiderable share of my tax dollars are essentially being set on fire by our frighteningly incompetent government. Leviathan is here to stay, whether I like it or not, and someone has to pay for it. That someone should be me, and people like me.
Who should pay more? Nonparents who earn more than the median household income, just a shade above $51,000. By shifting the tax burden from parents to nonparents, we will help give America’s children a better start in life, and we will help correct a simple injustice. We all benefit from the work of parents. Each new generation reinvigorates our society with its youthful vim and vigor. As my childless friends and I grow crankier and more decrepit, a steady stream of barely postpubescent brainiacs writes catchy tunes and invents breakthrough technologies that keep us entertained and make us more productive.
