I have made a number of sacrifices for the sake of this blog, but today I perhaps Above and beyond; I read a David Brooks column. Yes, I know somewhere there's probably a blog that offers to read David Brooks so I don't have to, much like the folks at Newshounds masochistically watch Fox for my benefit. Nonetheless, today I read Brooks myself, since the teaser on the Times website was so tempting that I overcame my aversion and dismissed the certainty that the process would be more painful than the results would warrant.
Actually, the teaser led me to conclude that Brooks thesis of the week is that upward mobility is a thing of the past because we no longer believe in the American Dream. But no, it's not quite as bad as that, though my guess is that Brooks would endorse that premise too. Rather, Brooks advances the notion that the decline in geographical mobility is caused by a lack of faith in the American Dream; i.e., young men are no longer “going West” for opportunity, because they (and young women too) no longer believe that opportunity beckons from other quarters.
It never occurs to Brooks that there may be no opportunity beckoning, and one by one he dismisses such trivialities as the facts that homeowners are stuck with underwater mortgages and labor markets have become, as he puts it “homogenous”. Nor does he mention the fact that the job market sucks everywhere, unless you count Texas, which claims its economy isn't doing so bad, since they have managed to reduce nearly everyone to the minimum wage. (Oh, on second look it's doing terribly, but it is chock-a-block full of minimum wage jobs that I'm sure Brooks feels should make any red blooded American not named Brooks ready to pull up stakes and migrate to the land of crazy.)
Brooks will have none of these liberally biased facts:
No, a big factor here is a loss in self-confidence. It takes faith to move. You are putting yourself through temporary expense and hardship because you have faith that over the long run you will slingshot forward. Many highly educated people, who are still moving in high numbers, have that long-term faith. Less-educated people often do not.
Brooks is befuddled. He can't seem to understand how things could come to this sorry pass:
Thirty years ago, a vast majority of Americans identified as members of the middle class. But since 1988, the percentage of Americans who call themselves members of the “have-nots” has doubled. Today’s young people are more likely to believe success is a matter of luck, not effort, than earlier generations.
Whatever could have induced those young people to come to the conclusion that success in this country is a matter of luck. Oh, right, because it is. But don't confuse Brooks with the facts, much less expect him to inquire into said facts. If there is any empirical evidence that effort in this economy leads to success then maybe Brooks should cite us to it, rather than assert it as dogma. As one small but incredibly important example of where luck plays a part, consider the difference it makes, effort or not, if a person can emerge from our educational system unburdened by mountains of student loans. That is a matter of luck, in that it is almost solely a function of the parents one happens to have. Brooks, in his pseudo-Burkean way, is just joining in the usual Republican game of blaming the victims.
When I first saw the above noted teaser the first thing that came to mind was Peter Pan (the play, not the cartoon or book). In one scene poor Tinkerbell is dying, and the only way for her to survive is for the audience to join Peter in affirming an absolute belief in fairies. Brooks is asking the young people of America to do precisely the same thing. The American Dream, if it was ever a reality, has been destroyed by the people for whom Brooks carries water twice a week. You might as well believe in fairies. At least in the play Tinkerbell survived, but it's really unlikely that the upcoming generation in this country will live in a nation where they are better off than their parents or grandparents, no matter how hard they try. Brooks and his ilk have taken care of that.
Update: As Dean Baker documents here, there is ample reason for both those with only high school degrees and those with college degrees to be pessimistic.
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