Robert Putnam on the gap between rich kids and poor kids

http://chronicle.com/article/Can-Robert-Putnam-Save-the/228443/

by jeffreyrogers • 11 years ago

56 58 11 years ago

msandford5• 11 years ago

I suspect that all the programs meant to help people are actually a part of the problem. Not directly, because helping people doesn't really hurt (except maybe in a "don't feed the wild animals" sort of way, but most consider that negligible). But more in a "somebody else's problem" or a "bystander effect" sort of way.

In other words, the existence of programs to help people in need -- and worse, large federally funded and administrated programs -- make people feel as though it's not their problem and also that they're already doing something to help: paying their taxes and not voting against these programs. I say large federally funded programs are worse only because that makes the responsibility far more diffuse and the ability to influence ever more limited.

So the programs to help aren't directly bad, but the knock-on psychological effect is that they absolve people of any personal need to help (since they're already helping in a very vague and miniscule way) and that leads them to not take any (additional) direct action.

It feels like the inverse case of the tragedy of the commons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Kurtz793• 11 years ago

You are making the assumption that without these programs people would actually do something themselves to solve other's problems.

In my opinion most people would just try to rationalize it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Government funded programs might be inefficient and open to abuses, but are better than the real alternative that would be doing nothing at all.

msandford5• 11 years ago

So I'm not railing against government programs because they're "bad" and in fact I'm not necessarily even opposed to them. I'm trying to explain a set of psychological effects that I suspect influence the way our society approaches these kinds of problems.

germinalphrase3• 11 years ago

Do you believe that our population would effectively self-educate without gov't funded education?

mrwarn• 11 years ago

Do you believe our population is effectively educated with government funded education?

xrange• 11 years ago

Does anyone have good sources of information on historical levels of "learnedness" in the United States? And it might be interesting to compare that measure to the number of years of formal education.

http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/01/were-colonial-americans-m...

As to the specific question of self-education, for some reason I'm inclined to believe that post-civil war literacy among the former slaves skyrocketed, and this wasn't because of compulsory education. Maybe someone has an interesting source to confirm or falsify my vague recollections? Sounds like that would make a good book.

jellicle• 11 years ago

But we've had thousands of years of testing of your hypothesis, and no, individuals do not step up in any great number to solve massive societal problems of poverty.

Which is why we invented governmental action to solve them. Which has proved extremely effective.

msandford5• 11 years ago

We also had thousands of years where basically everyone was poor and there wasn't anywhere near enough production so that there was a hope or a prayer of not everyone being poor. The middle class is a relatively recent phenomena. A great example of this is "The $3500 shirt" article that made it to HN a while ago: http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-l...

Which is why we invented governmental action to solve them. Which has proved extremely effective.

I was under the impression that the whole point of the article -- and also the book -- was that the programs in place currently are not effective. If they were, there would be no "Mary Sue"s, there'd be only "Miriam"s and there would be no problem.

carsongross• 11 years ago

A strong, common culture is the only historically verified way to escape the prisoners dilemma of social interactions. We've done a pretty good job of destroying that for the last fifty years in the west.

"We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

saturdaysaint• 11 years ago

Yet violence has dropped impressively in the west in the last 50 years, both in crime statistics and in the absence of wars between major powers. And the last 50 years mark many incredible advancements in society: civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, the first attempts to take sexual violence seriously, etc. etc. etc. I'd much rather be a random American today than 50 years ago.

Kurtz793• 11 years ago

Agreed.

I cringe when people say how things are going for the worse constantly.

gress3• 11 years ago

The fallacy here is that you are acting as though these things are all fungible.

Would you rather be a random American today who is unable to form satisfying emotional relationships because of the lack emotionally available parents during development or would you rather be a random American 50 years ago who has warm loving connections?

That's what's being compared here.

Why should we have to trade one for another? This should make us recognize that there is a problem. Otherwise the apparent celebration of progress is actually just a defeatist 'be grateful for what you have'.

ThrustVectoring2• 11 years ago

That drop may have more to do with removing lead from gasoline than any social changes.

Biological factors are staggeringly huge.

dzdt• 11 years ago

The last few decades in the US have seen a shift from 1 parent working sufficing to support a family to 2 parents working beening needed for middle class living, and longer hours than before. And more kids have only 1 parent in the household. There simply isn't time for participating in the community-building activities that filled the gaps before. So we are more isolated, and people's lies are in a more fragile balance.

dominotw• 11 years ago

I know lots of my friends have families where single income would sustain them but both husband and wife go to work.

We have stigmatized staying at home and raising children as a society.

donbronson• 11 years ago

Who is this "we" ? People without kids?

paganel• 11 years ago

I'd say is a net positive for society that women nowadays are more financially independent compared to the 1960s-1970s. Consider it this way, you're a stay-at-home mom who has decided to focus on her kids in her later 20s, and then you're 40 and divorce happens.

In the happy case your ex-husband and father to your kids still pays for their education and food and relared stuff, but what about you and your own financial needs? Now that you've been out of the work-force for 10+ years you're basically unemployable.

me1010• 11 years ago

I agree. If you have more than one child, one parent's salary will go directly and entirely to pay for child care. It's also likely that one parent will need to work fewer hours and be available to drop off / pick up / emergency pick up the kids at day care -- which means at least one parent will need to be partially not working or at least not advancing in his/her career.

However, raising kids is very difficult and emotionally draining. Personally, I feel parental involvement is much more important than whatever might have been called a middle class lifestyle.

gress3• 11 years ago

This is capitalism failing humanity.

rayiner• 11 years ago

Hours worked per worker is slightly down from 1950: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2812.pdf (Table 1). Inflation-adjusted single earner income is flat since 1950: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/pdf/cah_slides.pdf, while HHI for two-income households is up over 15%. In summary, people have made the choice to have more money instead of having one parent stay home.

And who can blame them? I love being a parent, but child care is messy, often gross, and physically exhausting. It's blue collar work. Across the economy, people eschew physically-demanding blue collar work for service jobs, even when the former pays more. So it's totally unsurprising that, given the choice, women (or men for that matter) would rather go work, even if most of the money goes to child care, instead of staying home with kids. You don't need to create a false rationalization about the economy forcing both parents to work to explain the labor trends.

foobarqux6• 11 years ago

In summary, people have made the choice to have more money instead of having one parent stay home.

Not really, disposable income has gone down, savings have gone down, while health insurance and mortgage payments (for roughly equivalent housing) have gone up.

It looks like having two earners is more out of necessity than preference for the middle class.

wavefunction3• 11 years ago

But before that the majority of human history has either both parents or both parents and the children (as they are able) helping out to sustain the family. We need to be sure to survey a long-enough time-line to understand the actual norms and what may have been a relatively small period of recent fortune.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

But before that the majority of human history has either both parents or both parents and the children (as they are able) helping out to sustain the family.

For most of that history, much of that "helping out to sustain the family" did not mean "working in wage labor".

In two parent homes of, say, the 1950s with one parent working outside the home, the other one was also engaged in work to "sustain the family", it just wasn't work for an outside capitalist that sustained the family through a paycheck.

Torgo• 11 years ago

Yet some people here think it would be feasible to skip completely over one working parent all the way to no working parent, via guaranteed income. I personally think it's not, but I can see how it's appealing since it sidesteps the fear that a single worker household would cause a reversal of women's liberation, without appearing to be in favor of equality of suffering under wage work.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

The last few decades in the US have seen a shift from 1 parent working sufficing to support a family to 2 parents working beening needed for middle class living

The last few decades have seen an increased marketization of labor such that it is more likely that two parents will need to do wage labor to support a middle class lifestyle, where previously a middle class lifestyle involved one parent working at wage labor and one parent doing labor outside of the market.

ChrisLomont• 11 years ago

Average annual hours actually worked per worker has decreased over the past few decades, not increased [0,1]. Household size is decreasing as well [2], lowering the percent of households with multiple workers.

[0] http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

[1] http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

[2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0884238.html

littletimmy• 11 years ago

The key to well functioning kids is involved parents.

The key to involved parents is less time spent working.

Americans need to get over their fetish for hard work and start staying home more. Or just stop having kids altogether and use work as the primary source of joy.

thehoff• 11 years ago

That sounds great from where you may sit but what about those families where the parents have to work long hours just to provide?

I know there are some that are definitely not in a financial position where they can do that. Working less is just not an option when you are barely making ends meet. And trust me, they would love to spend more time with their kids.

Robert Putnam on the gap between rich kids and poor kids

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