On Bootstraps

Are people who are out of a job lazy?  Are people who are protesting Wall Street and the unequal economy moochers who disdain real work?  Is the American Dream--that hard work, education, will be rewarded with a comfortable life, no matter what station in life you were born into--still true?  Are we a meritocracy?

Let's explore.

• THIS IS REALLY REALLY GOOD:  click, go thru the choices; see if you can make it thru the month:  http://playspent.org/ 
• Very Sad Graph: How Much Americans Have Left to Spend After Essentials, Today - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic (8/1/2012) http://bit.ly/UhFJDk
• Economist Joseph Stiglitz: ‘U.S. No Longer Land Of Opportunity’ | Here & Now (6/2012) http://goo.gl/5blI9
• Katrina vanden Heuvel - Challenging the Self-Made Myth | The Nation (3/2/2012) http://bit.ly/zgaSVU
• Not Movin’ On Up | On Point with Tom Ashbrook (Jan. 9, 2012)  
• Understanding Mobility in America, Center for American Progress (by Tom Hertz, American Univ.)  (Apr 26, 2006)
• The State of Young America: The Databook | Demos (Nov. 2, 2011) 
• Inside Out Documentaries : The Vanishing Middle Class: WBUR Boston (2011)
• Inside the Middle Class: Bad Times Hit the Good Life | Pew Social & Demographic Trends (April 9, 2008)   
• Still the Land of Opportunity? - Brookings Institution (Spring 1999) 
• In talking about this issue, we often invoke the phrase "equal opportunity," but we seldom reflect on what we really mean by "opportunity," how much of it we really have, and what we should do if it's in short supply. Instead, we have an increasingly sterile debate over income equality. One side argues for a redistribution of existing incomes, through higher taxes on the wealthy and more income support for the poor. The other side argues that inequality reflects differences in individual talent and effort, and as such is a spur to higher economic growth, as well as just compensation for unequal effort and skill. If there is any common ground between these two views, it probably revolves around the idea of opportunity and the measures needed to insure that it exists.
• In a meritocracy, one would expect to find considerable social and economic fluidity. In such a system, the abler and more ambitious members of society would continually compete to occupy the top rungs. Family or class background, per se, should matter little in the competition while education should matter a lot.

Here's what millionaires are saying about bootstraps and taxes:

SAFETY NET

• Dean Baker, TruthOut: Why Is President Obama So Anxious to Cut Social Security? (8/22/2011) http://bit.ly/Pjd14d 
• The Congressional Budget Office new projections show that the Social Security trust fund is fully solvent through the year 2038. Even after that date, the program would have enough money to pay 81 percent of scheduled benefits for the rest of the century. The folks who say that there will be nothing there for our children or grandchildren are just making it up or repeating the nonsense promulgated by some political hack.
• Fox News And The GOP Are Wrong: Red States Use The Most Food Stamps (1/29/2012) - Politicus -  food stamp users are Fox News’ base. Naturally, they hate themselves.
• Clare Higgins: Beyond 'food stamp' buzzwords | GazetteNET (1/28/2012) (author is former Mayor of Northhampton) 
• Do Tea Partyers support Social Security and Medicare? - CBS News (Nov 8 2011) 

WORK, LONG TERM UNEMPLOYMENT

• Unemployment/99ers: The Forgotten Millions Krugman on the 99ers (3/2011)  
• Work That Needs Doing (2011)
• The graying of the long-term unemployed - The Washington Post (11/2/2011)
• As overall joblessness declines, young vets see an uptick (in unemployment) - News - Stars and Stripes  (11/4/2011) 
• Jobless recovery: "A real drop in unemployment looks to be real--altho why the job rate has grown so slowly remains a mystery" (Economist, 2/4/2011)

"WELFARE!!!'" aka POOR IS THE NEW RICH

• Very Sad Graph: How Much Americans Have Left to Spend After Essentials, Today - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic (8/1/2012) http://bit.ly/UhFJDk
• Marry in Massachusetts: Mine, Not Yours, Politics (3/26/2012) http://bit.ly/Ha00kT 
• The self-identified Tea Party types tend to be older, often in retirement. As their parents did, they take Social Security payments, Medicare and such, and before that, there were likely GI Bill or similar grants, subsidized mortgages, dirt-cheap college money and on and on  They are quick they claim they earned every penny and deserve what they got and get. That's not so clean and easy. Absolutely the WWII and Korean generations and likely the early Boomers end up [taking out] more than they put in the funds for such benefits. 
• Now the real problem comes when someone else is due benefits. To those who have long ridden on dearly subsidized highways, disguising the true societal cost of their personal vehicles, to those who have otherwise benefited in myriad ways from federal and state largess, much becomes welfare. 
• Deconstructing claims of "mooching"/moochers: Nancy Folbre: Measuring Mooching - NYTimes.com - (8/6/2012) http://goo.gl/79WQv

IF YOU'RE POOR, IT'S YOUR FAULT

• THIS IS REALLY REALLY GOOD:  click, go thru the choices; see if you can make it thru the month:  http://playspent.org/ 
• Gail Collins - Only the Good Get Rich (the narrative from RNC 2012)  (8/30/2012) http://t.co/x8yW5oYR
• People, do you think the Republican hierarchy really believes that working hard and playing by the rules is a guarantee of big-dream fulfillment? 
• Listening to the convention speeches, it was easy to get the impression that every high-ranking Republican in the country had parents who were truck drivers or convenience store workers who moved up entirely through their own efforts. Also, there were a lot of grandfathers who worked in the mines. Republicans love mines, particularly coal mines. This is partly because of their big donors, but the fact that environmentalists hate coal makes coal mines even more adorable.
• And the miners themselves are always sympathetic figures because they work hard and play by the rules. As a result, their biggest dreams have been realized, and they are able to spend their lives underground developing chronic pulmonary disease.
• Making Ourselves Feel Better « Heterodox Thoughts (on the language of "failure") (12/2011) 
• Unintended consequences of rugged individualism | Being Latino Online Magazine 
• Classism « Learned Curiosity  (1/2011)

POVERTY AND POLICY

• With new housing plan, Obama again makes unabashed case for government - The Plum Line - The Washington Post (2/1/2012) 
• Ed.: A Harder Squeeze on the Poor - NYTimes.com (1/30/2012) House Republicans have hit upon a noxious scheme to help pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut: a tax increase on millions of poor working families.
• Obama's Destructive Urban Policy Alienates Low-Income Communities | Truthout (1/31/2012) 

HARD TIMES AND POLICY

• After Three Years, Homeowners Still Being Treated as Political Pawns | Mother Jones (2/1/2012) 

OTHER

• “Pulling Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps”: An Etymology of an American Dream | a better world is probable (5/2011) 

ON PRIVILEGE (YOUR BOOTSTRAPS HANDED TO YOU ON A SILVER PLATTER?)

• Mitt Romney’s a self-made man? - Opinion - The Boston Globe (1/31/2012) - he may have made his own fortune, but he had a big head start. 
• Privilege: A User's Guide - Gianpiero Petriglieri - HBS Faculty - Harvard Business Review (1/25/2012) 

DO THEY SELL BOOTSTRAPS IN CHILD SIZES? 

• Another face of the U.S. recession: homeless children | Reuters (Dec 2011)