Bad Glacier

It’s usually a mistake when I pick up the newspaper. I know this, but I still pick it up from time to time. Something always manages to ruin my day.

Today, it was a column by Michael Barone of the U.S. News & World Report. Mr. Barone looks at two surveys claiming that social mobility is decreasing in both America and Britain and tries to convince us that this is a good thing.

First, he tries to justify things by saying, basically, that it’s okay, poor people didn’t want to be rich, anyways. “Not everyone has an emotional need to be on top: How many people, if they thought seriously about it, would really want the burdens of a CEO, however lavish the pay?”

That may be true, Mr. Barone, that’s not the point. It doesn’t matter that most people wouldn’t want to be a CEO. The point is that a lack of social mobility means that someone from a lower class cannot become a CEO, even with the required social skills and intelligence, even if she wanted to.

Which brings us to our next point: a society where the lower classes and the upper classes remain static is not a meritocracy, contrary to Mr. Barone’s claims. A meritocracy would allow smart, talented people to transcend the lower classes and would not permit untalented people to remain in the upper ones. This social mobility is exactly what the cited surveys say we have less of now. Unless you feel that upper-class people and all their descendants inherently have more merit than lower-class people and all their descendants–y’know, noble bloodlines and all that–social mobility is required for a meritocracy.

Mr. Barone takes snips from The Bell Curve to suggest that this is just a case of intelligence concentrating in the upper classes. But he also quotes the author of the British survey as saying that one of the reasons for the lack of mobility is the abolition of good schools available to working-class kids. You can’t both take away the lower classes’ opportunities for good education and then claim that they’re not intelligent enough to become upper-class.

And then we get to the money shot: Barone quotes David Brooks to show that crime, violence, divorce, and many other social ills are declining, and then says that this justifies the decline in social mobility without even attempting to show a causal relationship between the two. I don’t expect opinion columns to meet the standards of academic work, and I know Mr. Barone only has a law degree, but come on. Say it with me: Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation does not equal causation.

Never mind the bit that “all you need to do to avoid poverty in this country is to graduate from high school, get and stay married, and take any job.” This is just elitist junk, completely divorced from logic and common sense. Michael Barone, you are an asshat.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 9:48 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.