Income Inequality in America as shown in the graphic below: Real Median Household Income by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1967 to 2017. If the evident question is WHY? regarding the above large disparity of income level (2-to-1 from top-to-bottom!), then it is well worth a debate. The black race (of African origin) has been historically as much a part of "America" as the white race. The only difference being that the latter came from Europe (for the most part, poor) and the former from Africa as slaves. (Btw, most of Europe in the early 18th century had already banned slavery. See that historical record graphically here.) Both blacks and whites (and their intermingled forebears) have been in America since its inception. Why have the blacks not done as well economically as the whites and what is the solution? As regards the former of those two questions, I would like to suggest that "real, functional equality took a long, long time" to actualize itself in America - and it is not done yet. In 1917, the American general at the time (General Pershing) of our forces in France refused to allow the black contingents to celebrate victory by marching down the Champs Elysees along with the French forces. (And, in fact, French history is noteworthy in that the black contingents that did fight alongside the French Army were considered better soldiers than their white counterparts.) I propose this debate based upon the fact that race is a prominent factor in the distribution of income in America. We should all know that fact and the graphic above shows clearly the differences in mean-income amongst the races. American economic diversity is demonstrated by a great variety in Income Levels. And, frankly, I repeat my basic accusation of the American Economy - which is the fact that family-income very largely determines whose children go on to a Post-secondary Education. Which is the sine-qua-non of quitting an existence below the Poverty Threshold to quite simply live better. So, what is the solution? Quite simply, free or nearly-free post-secondary schooling by income level! (Which first Barney and then Hillary proposed* in the last election!) If we want real change in America, we must address the overarching issue of Income Disparity. With which I open the exchange ... *Based considerably upon a previous proposal made (in 2014) by a Senator Elizabeth Warren.
And of course the solution is "Throw money at it!" How much money? "All the monies!" How many times do we have to conduct that experiment, and watch it fail miserably, before the left will accept simple reality? NYC public schools(overwhelmingly minority students) are THEE highest-funded schools in the nation, and the academic outcomes are abysmal. Mayor DeBlasio pumped nearly a billion additional dollars into the NYC public school system in an effort to boost minority performance, and it accomplished about NOTHING. But free secondary education is somehow the solution to a problem that billions upon billions of dollars spent on primary education can't even begin to solve? Good money after bad, that'll fix it for sure!
I don’t think that is the correct way of looking at the issue. Race is certainly a factor but more of a consequential rather than direct one, which more complications and fuzzy edges than these kind of statistics acknowledge (sometimes by design). Nobody in the USA is in their individual financial position purely because of their skin colour, it is that there are a range of factors in financial positon that happen to effect different groups of people to different extents and in different ways but those various interconnected and overlapping groups aren’t all racially balanced. For example, regardless of what you think of immigration, the fact remains that immigrants from low-income countries will tend to be in a lower economic grouping. They typically arrive with little (specifically because they have little) and even if they’re legal immigrants, they’ll often be limited to lower paid work. Obviously a great proportion of these immigrants will be non-white, their race is not the key casual factor in their economic situation, merely a common feature of the causal factors. I’ve always thought the USA has an obsession with race and skin colour, largely due to your history and how the country came to be, and I don’t think this obsession helps with addressing these kind of wider problems. Indeed, I expect the obsession is one of the factors which compounds and complicates the problems in the first place. Education is always a major element in lifting up the circumstances of any group of people but it’s a classic easy to say, hard to do, especially across the board. You also have the issue that many of the people who are in those lower income groups, including many of the disproportionately non-white ones, arrive in the US after the age of at least core foundational education and so will always be playing catch-up. This isn’t the kind of issue which can be addressed with only one solution.
THE INFORMATION AGE IS UPON US I would call the cost of a state-school post-secondary education ($14K per year) an indirect impediment to obtaining the necessary education/training. Just ask anyone holding down a job at the Poverty Threshold ($24K per year) or even worse at the Minimum Wage why they never went to a postsecondary school to obtain at least a vocational degree. More often than not, they had no backing from their parents who were striving simply to put a roof over their heads and food on the table. This forces people into penury because they do not have the means to obtain the credentials that are more and more not just a secondary-school degree. That is long past. The world is changing from the Industrial Age to the Information Age and I don't think you give that fact the consideration it deserves. As a nation, we must make Tertiary-level education as free as possible - just as we did a century ago when we finally noticed that knowing how to read&write was necessary for anyone wanting a good-job in what was becoming the Industrial Age! And why did that above happen?: *Because of mankind's inventiveness. The steam and gas-powered engines were being employed to motor farm tractors and threshing machines, which were costly but far more efficient than manual labor! From here: *And that cycle is once again upon us. We are passing into the Information Age. All on board for a post-secondary diploma paid for by the US government! *Let's hope so - because the Chinese are already doing it!
Just considering people who have jobs, what is the difference in income between people who work the most hours and people who work the least hours? The underlying assumption here is that people who chronically don't work and are on the government teat would only skew the curve way, way downward.
I have to admit that I missed the key word “post” when I first read the thread so I was thinking school rather than high education. I still don’t think you have a solution to anything there though. You can’t educate everyone out of (relative) poverty, not least because if you lifted everyone up, you’d just lift the base line(s) defining poverty with them. I don’t think formal education should be the primary focus at all. Raw cost is far from the only limitation for many people going to college/university after all. I’d rather see a push for proper apprenticeship and formal on-the-job training, something that would better suit a wide range of people and job roles, even in the “new information age”. Ultimately though, poverty remains relative and the issue isn’t about simply lifting everyone up as much as managing the range and scale of differences from top to bottom. Dollar amounts aren’t significant but relative cost of living and it is that which has rapidly risen faster than wages and income. I think it should be noted that a key element of that is increased demand for things that would be considered conveniences and luxuries in the recent past. If you go for a vast increase in college educated workers producing our modern-era goods, the cost of those goods is going to increase, even further beyond the means of those who can’t or choose not to take that route through life.
Although the question, why the difference in income among ethnic groups, is a good one; you suddenly leap to free college as the answer. Based on what? I notice you have Asians at the top, so how did Asians get there without free college? How are Black and Hispanic students not able to access the Federal Student Loan program but Whites and Asians can? What percent of Black High School students who finish in the top 20% of their SAT's can't get a free ride?
What I meant is "free postsecondary education" that gives individuals the means to find a well-paying job in this Brave New World of ours brought about by the evolution out of the Industrial Age and into the Information Age. To obtain a well-paying job, people will need better credentials. Less than half the graduating class at American schools is going to tertiary-level education. And even fewer are graduating with a degree that will open-doors to them ... From here: Low-Income Students See Low Graduation Rates (Should read, "Students from Low-income Families See Low Post-secondary Graduation Rates.) 'Nuff said ... ? Because such families are likely those whose parents already possess a postsecondary degree. So, just like with most such families, the children follow the same paths as their parents. Btw, it has been well-demonstrated also that the children of blacks who have a post-secondary education also seek to graduate with such a degree! I am the son of European immigrants to the US. There was never a doubt in my parents' minds that their children WOULD NOT attend a post-secondary degree-institute of higher learning. That is how families emerge from the Poverty Threshold. And, aside from winning a lottery, it is the only way. My Point: The key to accelerating the process of preparing our work-force for the Information Age that is upon us is to make tertiary education as costly as secondary schooling is today. That is, at no real cost to families that are American citizens ...
Do you understand the biological phenomena of speciation, in the field of Ecology? Read up on warbler birds living in the same tree. https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/MacArthur's_Warblers.html The different birds all live in the same area, but they specialize in different things. And actually all these birds are actually the same species but they generally avoid mating with each other, because it would mix their genepools and take away from the advantage of their unique specialization.
Your point seems to have nothing to do with your OP and subject line. You want free college; I get that. But you give no evidence that fee post secondary education has anything to do with different income levels by race or ethnicity.
WE CAN TRY ... Perhaps not, but at least a nation can try hard. Spending half the National Discretionary Budget on the DoD is "better for America"? Especially as compared to the puny 5% on Education?!? My Point: We can TRY to educate everyone out of poverty, and - believe me - that "everyone" is close to 40 million Americans who live below the Poverty Threshold. Unless you have a better idea than a free or nearly free post-secondary education (vocational, associates, bachelors, doctorate level), that's where they are going to remain ...
I’ve no argument against spending more on a better range and availability of higher education, especially over and above massive defence spending. I just think it would be a mistake to present it as a solution to relative poverty in and of itself. It could certainly play a part but this issue would require a move complex and holistic approach to seriously address.
SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME No, not everyone. But when a country has around 15% of the total population - that is, 40 million men, women and children - who live below the Poverty Threshold, then it is obliged to try-harder! From the "UC of Davis": And we, as a nation, it seems we could not really give-a-damn. Certainly not with the Replicants in power because they think poverty was preordained since the people there were born lazy! As a nation, we must understand the evidence-at-hand. That is, when the Constitution was signed, the US was still in the Agricultural Age*. However, from the latter part of the 19th century we evolved into the Industrial Age that employed people who really needed only to know how to "read-and-write". That's all. (So, we went about establishing local schools to teach them just that!) But, the advent of the Information Age has changed the ground-rules. We need to educate our people to a higher-level of knowledge. (And I don't mean just how to manipulate the Internet!) My Point: -One can escape history over a sufficiently long breadth of time. Mankind has spent the past two-thousand years (of the Agricultural Age) fighting and killing one another to have supreme control of land-mass. Who ever thought that might change? Well, it did! But not until the Industrial Age gave us WW1 and WW2! -Like the Agricultural Age gave way to the Industrial Age at the end of the 19th century, the Industrial Age is now being replaced by the Information Age. -And one cannot escape historic Age-Changes that have been a definition of mankind's life-on-earth since the dawn of time ... *And by "Age", I do not mean "how old one is", but I am referring to a distinct period of history.
You may be very right. Please define and expand on that statement in green above. It's very interesting ...
(By race or ethnicity, see below*.) From the BLS, here: Measuring the value of education - excerpted: To see income-values click on the link to see the chart (which is not copyable here) ... BY RACE OR ETHNICITY *From the NCES income by ethnicity is shown here: Due to what? This: Thus the differences have not changed very much in the 15-years separating the two graphics above ... !
I’m not really looking to delve in to great detail to be honest. In general, it’s all very complicated and I’m no kind of socio-economic expert. Poverty itself is complicated. Just defining what poverty is remains an open question, with all sorts of different measures and definitions, each which can give very different results and can be spun in different ways (I can’t help but mention your initial focus on race). You also have the issue of drawing a simple poverty line that people are above or below ignoring the difference between those just below or above that line and those way below or above and the vast range of details and circumstances which can cause the statistics to misrepresent individual realities. The factors that can lead to people having low income (in relation to cost of living or in comparisons to other people) are obviously many and varied too, as are the factors which influence them. Some are short term, some implicitly life-long, some resolvable by the individual themselves, some resolvable only with the assistance of others and some difficult or impossible to eliminate at all. Government policy and social attitudes can be very significant (such as higher education as you initially raised) but ultimately, each individual case would need some individual attention (if only motivated self-attention). There are also bigger picture questions. Unless you had some form of pure Communist system, you’re always going to have differences between the richest and poorest and probably always have poverty by some measure or other, especially measured relatively. I think issues like widening gaps between the richest and poorest and supporting those who have little or nothing at all are at least as important to focus on as some arbitrary poverty line. I think we can get too caught up in simple numbers and statistics and thus lose sight of the real individuals they represent and those real individuals who fall between the cracks.
You keep switching the argument back and forth between poverty and ethnicity. Is poverty or ethnicity the causal factor? If every kid under the poverty line were given free college, would that eliminate eliminate income disparities between race ethnicity? Don't kids under the poverty line get pell grants and student loans now? Is there a large pool of qualified poor kids who can't get into college?
And you are not looking at the charts I posted! This one does not describe education by colour/ethnicity?: Percentage distribution of associate's degrees and bachelor's degrees awarded by degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by race/ethnicity and sex: Academic year 2013–14
In a way the difference is the level of ANGER!!!! The best answer to this problem I have ran into so far in my sixty years is in philosophy and para-psychology. The people with the least anger over the sins against their ancestors of a century to five centuries ago seem to be willing to make money for others......... especially of the offending racial groups....... and a willingness to earn money for somebody from an ethnic group whose ancestors were bad to your racial group....... is necessary to advance within management...... or even to have the motivation to be punctual, ethical and courteous to management and customers. What is that white guy doin in my head? (Past life regression under hypnosis).
Let me repeat what I said: " But you give no evidence that fee post secondary education has anything to do with different income levels by race or ethnicity." ...and then you post a graph of degrees by ethnicity. So you didn't even understand my comment. And you're a teacher huh? Sigh...move along...
