
America's Complacent Class - simonsarris
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/02/517915510/americas-complacent-class-how-self-segregation-is-leading-to-stagnation
======
brownbat
> "wealthier people tend to live together more than before and so do poorer
> people"

Some people are essentially told to contribute to this phenomenon when you buy
a house in the US. High home values mean good school funding, which means
homes will hold their value over time, pricing out people of different
incomes. Buy the cheapest house you can in the most expensive neighborhood you
can afford for the best return (with the caveat that mixed use zoning is
rare).

If had a Japanese zoning model,[0] decoupled school funding from local
incomes,[1] and ended or capped the mortgage interest deduction, a lot of this
would go away.

None of those are trivial changes without entrenched interests though.

[0] [http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-
zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

[1] I've heard some states do this already. Oregon maybe? I know economic
mobility varies a lot based on where you are in the US.
[http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-
mobilit...](http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobility-no-
tougher-in-u-s-than-two-decades-ago) Would be interesting to cross compare
that with some of these policies, see how much they matter. Maybe the effects
of redlining can't just be papered over so quickly.

~~~
nradov
There's more to it than just school funding. Homes are expensive in certain
areas _because_ they are expensive. Affluent people are willing to pay more
specifically to avoid being near poor people.

~~~
Nadya
People who can hardly-afford-their-(new)-home will _also_ move to expensive
areas to avoid being around the "typical" poor people: alcoholics, drug-
addicts, dropouts, street gangs, etc.

My mother raised me as a single mom. Her two options were "live reasonably in
a poor, drug-riddled, crime-filled area" or "live poorly in a more affluent
area with far less drug/crime issues". As a kid I understood that we were too
poor to be living where we were living but was still too young to understand
why we had moved "if we couldn't afford it". It wasn't until I was old enough
to know I'd never raise my kids in my hometown either, even if it meant
struggling to live somewhere I couldn't quite afford.

We weren't affluent by any means, but we we had _just_ enough money to not be
living down the street from a meth addict and being next-door-neighbors with
the neighborhood slinger.

------
65827
This touches on something that's been bugging me for awhile, and I think it's
related to all the harm people do in the process of furthering their careers.
Most people's goal seems to be either to get into that perfect career spot or
do ANYTHING to maintain that current job they acquired.

Everything else is secondary. Family, religion, strong personal beliefs,
politics, getting treated for substance abuse, etc etc. Everything is less
important than that career, you are not a real man or woman if you don't have
a job and don't provide for your family. Everything important is disregarded
to further one's own career (I HAVE to fly to this conference, I have a super
important career and all that carbon emission nonsense is for other people or
other days).

When this all goes away and nobody works unless they want to the shift is
going to break so many fucking brains. I really hope people can embrace the
shift and work on self improvement and curiosity above all, but my hunch is
most people with this idea that their job completely defines them won't handle
the transition very well.

~~~
ryanSrich
That's the wrong way of looking at it. Question why people are like that.
Humans aren't infatuated with their work by some corporate conspiracy. Work
has always defined the individual. Look at the history and origins of family
names.

~~~
sndean
> Look at the history and origins of family names.

Yeah, largely derived from occupation or location [0], at least in the West.
They've lost their meaning though. Example: I'm a German-American kid named
Scott; as in "from Scotland." This has always bothered me.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Typology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Typology)

~~~
ryanSrich
Right. It doesn't mean much anymore, but it certainly has history. OP seems to
think this infatuation with work is a new phenomenon.

------
cjslep
It certainly hasn't helped that:

\- The adage "don't believe everything you read on the internet" from the 90's
and 00's has substantially died off.

\- People have turned to listening to reply, not listening to understand.

\- Death of "the expert", where people believe they're a search away from
being an expert on a topic.

\- The language of the current divide (Patriots vs Authoritarians) is still
instead presented along the partisan axis (Democrat vs Republican).

\- Glorification of the 50's prosperity, where the USA was the only major
manufacturing power worldwide not decimated by WW2.

All of this is fuel for various forms of civic-oriented intellectual laziness.

------
pm90
The article paints a pretty negative picture of the present. While its true
that there has been a convergence of factors that have caused much
despair/desolation in most of America outside Tech/Coastal areas, this might
simply be a rebalancing of the economy. Completely anecdotal of course, but
most of the young Americans I see/meet are incredibly optimistic about the
future, willing to work hard for their future, interested in other cultures
etc. (But perhaps this is only because I live in a liberal city). It seems
like Millennials are much better poised to build and contribute to a 21st
century America.

At the risk of sounding incredibly ageist, it seems like its the older
generation, the baby-boomers who are unwilling to retrain, unwilling to move,
unwilling to accept or understand the new economy and world order. They seem
to be yearning for a time when life was easier. While I can understand the
sentiment, it seems to be producing incredibly toxic effects on the nation;
we've seen the political ramifications, soon we might see social and economic
ones as well.

~~~
throw_away_777
I think there is a strong selection bias going into effect here. I know plenty
of young people who are struggling to find good jobs and not optimistic about
the future, and I live in a "liberal" city.

------
throw_away_777
"On the fact that median male wage was higher in 1969 than it is today"

The obvious explanation for this is women entering the workforce, it is basic
supply and demand. While this is good for the economy and society as a whole,
clearly men now face more competition for jobs.

------
ZogZogZog
On the one hand I'd love to talk about this with other people, particularly
the sort of person who gets (some of) their news from Hacker News. On the
other hand I feel like political garbage is what killed off Slashdot, and I
love how HN feels like /. before it tanked. So with that being said - what I
took from the article was the author's belief that Trump won because the
economy is doing great for some people and terribly for others (this seems
like a reasonable statement to me). He goes on to say that those people who
are doing well haven't done enough to help those who have been left behind. I
think there's a kernel of truth here, but I think he's also leaving something
important out. Many of those most solidly left behind vote hard-right. They go
to the polls and vote for politicians who promise to gut the government - to
slash taxes, eliminate public education, slash Social Security and Medicare,
to make the government so small you can drown it in a bathtub. It's very, very
hard for those who are doing well to help those who are left behind when the
people who are left behind are working so hard to eliminate any help they
could (and should!) get from the government.

------
wonderwonder
The fact that the rich keep getting richer seems to argue against his point of
people becoming complacent around those like them. I would argue that the
wealthy surrounding themselves with other wealthy is actually a driver for
them to acquire more.

On the other hand this definitely has a negative affect on the poor and
minorities. Although I would argue they are not so much complacent as just
treading a path that is very difficult to deviate from, probably in part due
to factors the article references.

In the tech sector I don't really see any aversion to moving for a job or
reluctance to jump ship, just the opposite, and the tech sector is a major
driver of US industry. But I can understand how this occurs in fields such as
manufacturing. This is just my personal experience though.

I think complacency is not the best word to describe this phenomenon.

------
rhardgrave
Tyler Cowen has a good video on this as well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdfYEJa_Q38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdfYEJa_Q38)

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MikeTheGreat
I'm new here, and just read the Guidelines. It says "Off-Topic: Most stories
about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some
interesting new phenomenon."

This post doesn't seem particularly technical, and (IMHO) isn't particularly
interesting. Should this article actually be here?

~~~
grzm
HN has a complicated relationship with submissions related to politics.
There's been plenty of discussion related to what's appropriate and what's
not. Also key to remember is what's on-topic: "anything that gratifies one's
intellectual curiosity." Please note I'm not here taking a position on this
particular submission.

Here's a link to some comments by mods on the topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527940)

When you've been on HN after a while you'll get a feel for what's appropriate
and what's not, and when you've accumulated enough karma, you'll be able to
flag submissions you think are inappropriate.

------
tomcam
I love the idea of NPR discussing a complacent class

