The Latest in my Liberal-Inspired Wake-Up Calls
by John Reit (April 27, 2006)

This article might sound a bit hypocritical. After all, the theme of this website could be construed as "bashing" America. Let's clear that up right now. I love America. I love the ideals that created it. I love the Constitution that was written for it. And I love the freedoms I enjoy living in it. It's because I love all these things that I fear the rising liberal philosophies - even by so-called Republicans - that are turning America into a socialist's paradise. That's why this site exists - to do what little I can to prevent that from happening. And while I do believe we're heading down the socialist path, studies like the one done by economist Professor Tom Hertz remind me how truly great America still is.

The only access I have to Hertz's study (Understanding Mobility in America) is this Reuters article - the study is not up on the American University professor's website. So, I will admit upfront that I have not read the study and don't know if the results have been filtered to make the journalist's point. But according to the article - the American dream is a farce. There is pretty much no opportunity to go from poverty to wealth in America. If you're poor at birth, you will be poor at death… ditto for the rich. Not only that, but your chances of success are lower than if you lived elsewhere in the world. And heaven help you if you're black - you might as well pack it in right now.

Someone might want to alert all those immigrants facing death to flee their countries of origin to come here that it just isn't worth it.

Now, let's set aside common sense for a second. Get out of your mind all those images you see everyday of people who would be considered "poor" shopping at the mall, driving in cars, living in homes they own, and talking on cell phones. Let's even forget that according to Labor Department statistics, most "poor" people don't stay poor forever and, for the most part, move up at least one income class during their lives. Based on the article, there are so many obvious fallacies and biases that it makes the study seem laughable.

First and foremost, the study was sponsored by the Center for American Progress, which is a famous liberal think-tank. The study can therefore be viewed as skewed from the start. I don't believe that this organization would sponsor a study that might prove Americans have a decent chance of success anymore than I believe Rush Limbaugh would sponsor a study to prove the success of communism in the 20th century.

But let's go a little deeper into the study itself. Hertz's research was based on a panel of over 4,000 children, whose parents' income were observed in 1968, and whose income as adults was reviewed again in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1999. Before an audience comprised of CAP members, Hertz presented his study and stated, "the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if you are born rich than if you are born in a low-income family." Four thousand children. Not the nearly 200 million workers of whom the United States Labor department keeps track every year. And again, this might be the fault of the journalist, but we don't know where these people are from (are some of them living in a rural or urban area where there are more jobs?), their education, whether or not the females got pregnant when they were teenagers and if the fathers are still around, etc.

This is where the study breaks down on sheer principle. You can study individuals purely on income level, but that doesn't say squat about the individuals themselves. Just because a person comes from a poor family and is still poor when he is an adult doesn't automatically discredit the American economic system. You must consider that poor people usually behave in ways that make them poor and rich people behave in ways that make them rich. And people who behave in ways that make them poor will often pass those values on to their children. Does that eliminate the opportunity? Or are these children simply ill equipped to take advantage of those opportunities when they become adults? A person can certainly be born poor and later on decide he's not going to follow in his parents' footsteps, educate himself, get a job, and become more successful than his mother and father. Likewise a rich person can get hooked on drugs or develop a gambling habit and waste his entire fortune on these vices.

It appears here that Hertz fails to analyze the factors that truly make one rich or poor.

And since the point of this study is to see whether or not the American dream of "getting rich" is plausible, let's discuss that. Hertz fails to define (again, could be the journalist's fault) what he means by "rich." Is it purely income level as indicated? Or is it being able to live comfortably? Is Hertz's point that you are either rich and happy in America or poor and miserable? I certainly am not "rich." But I live comfortably. I can afford the necessities and, with saving and financial discipline, those comforts that I choose to buy from time to time.

Forget the dream of being rich. Isn't that what America is truly about - the opportunity to do well? Sure, we all want to be rich. But for most of us, we will simply get a job, buy a car, get married, buy a house, have kids, and retire. All along we can anticipate a life in which we're never hungry and always have a roof over our heads - and that is assuming we don't make foolish choices. Can we do things to better our situation? Sure. We can study law or economics in school instead of philosophy. We can go to work earlier than our fellow employees and work later than they do. We can even buy books about investing, risk a good amount of savings, and hopefully make a fortune in the stock markets or in real estate. But many of us won't go that extra mile. And thus, we will simply have to make do with living comfortably

The reality is that America is about the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... not the guarantee of happiness. Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that every citizen will amass great wealth. It's about the effort. What you put into it is what you get out of it. If you make the choice that your lifelong contribution to this country is as a Wal-Mart Associate, you should expect a life of low income. You can be the best damn Associate that Wal-Mart ever had. You can work your fingers to the bone. The fact remains that you perform a task that requires no skills and you have chosen to be an expendable worker. However, if you choose to be a doctor or a lawyer or any other occupation requiring specialized skills, you can usually expect a lot more money and the spoils that go with it.

There are so many instances of people who start with nothing and go on to earning more money than they know what to do with that common sense alone debunks this study. So I shouldn't have gotten so upset when I first read it. I guess what got my blood boiling is that this study will be used by liberals to say, "See? It's all a lie! America sucks! You have no chance!" And of course, that will be followed by a call for more government assistance. All the while they will gloss over one important thing (just as this journalist did) - the people in the study were evaluated based on their parents' income in 1968… just about the time Johnson's Great Society was rolling. Is it possible that growing up in an era where their families knew nothing but government handouts had an effect on the values they learned?

Perhaps (just perhaps) it wasn't America and the capitalist system. Could it be that growing up with government safety nets like welfare and the expansion of Social Security skews your expectations in life? Could it possibly suggest to you that even if you choose not to work hard or change your poverty behavior, the government will take care of you?

It makes you wonder if Professor Hertz would be prompted to do a study to measure the incomes of parents who had children in 1946 and then measure the income of those children as adults in 1975. I think he might find slightly different results. He might even find that when capitalism goes unfettered and people are expected to provide for themselves, the American dream is alive and well.