Page 9 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

from the bloody Civil War that freed the slaves to the bloody civil rights movement that made their grandchildren citizens . There were battles to defend the rights of labor to organize and the rights of gays to enjoy basic human rights free of government interference . So while the American Dream has always been constrained by who was doing the dreaming, the history of our nation is living proof of the maxim first articulated by the abolitionist Theodore Parker but made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr .: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice .”8 So, too, the history of America bends toward the realization of the American Dream . The moral arc of the universe, however, does not bend itself, and the march toward the Dream is not inexorable . It bends because people, activists, organizations, and government decide that they believe in America enough to take her promises seriously and demand that she keep them .
Today, we face a difficult moment in history . Despite the enormous progress we have made toward equality of opportunity, there are troubling clouds on the horizon . We need to demand the American Dream now as much as we have at any point in our history .
Income inequality, measured by the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of income, has been widening greatly since the 1970s .9 Income inequality is at its worst level since 1928 .10
Yet even income inequality is not necessarily inconsistent with the American Dream, if you believe that those at the bottom of the economic ladder have an opportunity to rise . Such gaps may offend our notions of justice, particularly when those at the top have so much while those at the bottom struggle with the basic necessities . But one could argue that the American Dream is fulfilled if those at the bottom have a meaningful chance to advance . However, this is proving not to be true . For example, a child born to parents with income in the lowest quintile is more than ten times more likely to end up in the lowest quintile than the highest as an adult (43 percent versus 4 percent) . And, a child born to parents in the highest quintile is five times more likely to end up in the highest quintile than the lowest (40 percent versus 8 percent) .11
Among Western democracies, only Britain rivals America in the persistence of our social classes . The late historian Tony Judt pointed out that: “[C]hildren today in the UK as in the US have very little expectation of improving upon the condition into which they were born . The poor stay poor . Economic disadvantage for the overwhelming majority translates into ill health and missed educational opportunity .”12
The American Dream is under threat in other ways as well . We are on the cusp of true marriage equality, perhaps the most important advance in civil rights since the right to choose was upheld in Roe v. Wade . Yet, many of the laws and policies America has established to advance the Dream are under assault in courthouses and legislatures around the nation . Section 5 of the Voting Rights
8 For the original quote by Rev. Theodore Parker, see Theodore parker, Justice and the Conscience, in Ten sermons of religion 66, 84-85 (1853).
9 See u.s. census Bureau, income and poverTy in The uniTed sTaTes: 2013 30-35 (2014), available at https://www.census. gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf.
10 See Emmanuel Saez, Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States, u.c. Berkeley 1-3, http:// eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf.
11 See michael greensTone eT. al, The hamilTon proJecT, ThirTeen economic facTs aBouT social moBiliTy and The role of educaTion 6 (2013), available at http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/THP_13EconFacts_ FINAL33.pdf.
12 See Tony JudT, ill fares The land 3 (2010).
The Challenge of Economic Inequality
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