America: ‘Land of Inequality’ (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany)
Has American society given up one of its foundational principles – that anyone who hunkers down and works hard can make it? Columnist Reymer Kluever of Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung explains President Obama’s State of the Union change in political tact by pointing out that since the 1970s, the United States has become one of the least fair industrialized countries in terms of tax policy and the capacity of the ‘little guy’ to get ahead.
For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Reymer Kluever starts out this way:
The Barack Obama of the 2012 presidential election is different from the one four years ago: The conciliator is no longer in demand. Instead, what is needed is a class warrior who stands up for social justice. This may be un-American, but it is nonetheless necessary. For in the face of a tax system that is unfair in the extreme and shamelessly favors the rich, many U.S. citizens have experienced a profound loss of confidence: namely in the belief that everyone has the chance to make his or her own luck.
Four years ago Barack Obama took office as a conciliator. The Americans had voted for him in the hope that he would narrow the conspicuous gulf that had opened up in the early years of the new millennium: The deep animosity between the country’s two political camps and the huge chasm between the profiteers of the boom years and the rest of society, in which more and more people are threatened with social decline. Since then everything has changed.
The hope that surged for Obama is long gone. Therefore this time around, a different Obama will stand for election. This was abundantly communicated during his State of the Union address to Congress. In 2012, it is Obama the class warrior who will stand for election.
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9 Responses to “America: ‘Land of Inequality’ (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany)”
It doesn’t matter whether you call it class warfare, inequality of opportunity, the dying of the middle class, etc. What matters is that it IS happening and it can’t be denied, demonized or explained away with phony narratives.
“In 2012, it is Obama the class warrior who will stand for election.”
It had better be. The prez has had enough time to learn the job and to figure out what needs to be done. It IS the right fight. At least now he’ll be going into it without any illusions about getting help from the other side of the aisle.
It has been statistically proven the Europe is more economically mobile than the US. The major differences being that in the US you can become much more wealthier than you can in Europe, but in Europe, more people are moving up into the middle-upper class…or moving up into the middle class from the lower.
And this obviously has to do with the fact the Europe’s lower class is protected and thus the jump into the middle class is much easier.
Poor people have health care and a roof over their heads in Europe. In America Middle Class people go bankrupt paying for their health care, and millions of others are one paycheck away from losing their homes.
Yes and no. It really depends on which way you look at it. There are two major articles that most people reference. One done in 96 by McMurrer and Sawhill covers single generation mobility and basically had mobility as very similar. And the Corak, 2006 article referenced by the Economic Mobility Project focuses inter-generational mobility and found that in the US your parents income was a greater indicator of what you would make than in other countries.
Your conclusions about this info is entirely speculative and in fact directly contradicts some of the know data. Some of the factors you ignored are the rising costs of degrees and importance the current corporate structure places on them. These generational studies also ignore immigrants because they don’t have 2 generations in the US and that has always been considered on of our strengths, the immigrant success story. There is also the skewed comparisons because the relative mobility is based on percentile not actual income. In Denmark for instance a family can go from the bottom 10th up to the 90th percentile with just $45,000 dollars. In the US the same would require $93,000. The lack of mobility is really not our middle class but the top and bottom. The rich seem to pass along the benefits to their kids and the poor tend to stay poor. As to why that’s the case there seem to be several factors in play as to why the poor stay poor. One may be that the US has a larger percentage of single mothers. The other is that education is more important in the US than other countries, by that I mean your education is a larger factor in your relative pay than in other countries.
It’s a complex and interesting subject but any attempt to summarize it for some quick political message is BS and almost automatically means the user either knows squat or really doesn’t care about facts and is just using random info to push an agenda. Basically it is not about facts it’s about beliefs.
“it is not about facts it’s about beliefs.”
That might as well be the motto for today’s “conservatives”, since facts have become so dispensable to them – at least as a political party. They seem quite comfortable with having removed themselves from any responsibility for 90% of America and have become quite comfortable rationalizing about it as well.
From the link:
“In the decades after the Second World War, the distribution of rises in production in the U.S. economy and gains in income were fairly evenly distributed. That didn’t begin to change until the late seventies. Since then, income disparity in the U.S. has grown – and that growth was particularly rapid in the nineties.”
“Grown” isn’t quite the right word. Mushroomed would be more appropriate.
It’s funny you say that since the “facts” here are misrepresented by the left to try and bash the right. As an example lets take your quote.
“In the decades after the Second World War, the distribution of rises in production in the U.S. economy and gains in income were fairly evenly distributed. That didn’t begin to change until the late seventies. Since then, income disparity in the U.S. has grown – and that growth was particularly rapid in the nineties.”
What isn’t mentioned is that the income distribution is measured by percentile or where people stand in reference to each other. If you take real income and or buying power almost everyone has done better. It’s a “We did good but it’s unfair that someone else did even better” situation. Stated in that manor tho you wouldn’t get much sympathy so why not rearrange and change the context to get your message across.
Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with pushing an agenda, but that is what the majority of it is. It’s advertisement and propaganda masquerading as intellectual thought.
I don’t know the political leanings of William Kern, but — as a former translator for Robin Koerner’s “Watching America,” — I am quite certain that both Watching America and Worldmeets.Us translate and post such translations at the Moderate Voice, not to bash the right — or any political party — nor to push any agenda,but rather as Kerner’s site states:
“Worldmeets.US is a nonprofit journalism project that gathers and translates the world’s news and views about the United States.
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Worldmeets.US is a non-partisan, volunteer-based, nonprofit organization that operates solely in the public interest. The opinions expressed in articles posted by Worldmeets.US are not necessarily those of Worldmeets.US, its sponsors or its volunteers.”
Juist mij twee centen ..
I don’t doubt that. If you look at the range of articles it seems quite clear that it’s about giving a sample of what others are writing. My responses were to those that were using half facts to push agendas.
“so why not rearrange and change the context to get your message across” – EE
I think that’s what you just tried to do… unsuccessfully – if facts matter and revisionist history doesn’t.