How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality
It&#x27;s not a bad article, but it makes the same observations about opportunity we&#x27;ve read about a thousand times before. The article mostly describes the status quo, but doesn&#x27;t say much about the root causes or about possible solutions. Maybe the full book is better, but I doubt it. The author doesn&#x27;t strike me as a person with deep insights.<p>One sentence from the article really sticks out: &quot;The American ideal of a classless society is, to me, a deeply attractive one. It has been disheartening to learn that the class structure of my new homeland is, if anything, more rigid than the one I left behind and especially so at the top.&quot;<p>The author, a highly educated middle aged British guy who works at a think tank, needs years to figure out that the United States isn&#x27;t the bastion of opportunity it purports to be? Come on! Literally the moment your plane lands at the airport you notice food is prepared by immigrants, and taxi drivers have missing teeth. The inequality is visible everywhere, and it stares you in the face. The author only barely recognizes the contradiction between his wish for equal opportunity for all and his desire to give his children a leg up.<p>Ultimately he concludes that hoarding opportunity by the top 20% &quot;results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society&quot;. In other words, he&#x27;s _still_ arguing that the top 20% should be in favor of equal opportunity out of self interest, because it builds a better society for all. This is in direct contradiction with his earlier observations about the zero-sum nature of opportunity. Efforts to redistribute wealth and opportunity from the rich to the rest does not benefit the rich: it&#x27;s called class conflict for a reason. Maybe in another decade or so the author will figure this out.