Mind the Gap!

In an article from the Huffington Post, I learned that the division between the poor and the rich is greater than ever before. Obama even went as far as to call the problem of income inequality "a bigger threat to the United States economy than the federal budget deficit."

In a Ted Talk that I watched recently, Michael Sandel, an American political philosopher and professor at Harvard University, discusses the role of money in American society, and he explains the implications of this division between rich and poor. According to Sandel, America has gone from “having a market economy to being a market society”. This means that market thinking and values “begin to dominate every aspect of life.” For example, at amusement parks, costumers can purchase fast passes which allow them to avoid waiting in lines if they are willing to pay more. It used to be that no matter how much money you had, everyone had to wait in line. Now, people can be separated based on their incomes.

Another example would be the airplane class system. People with means who are seated in first class are actually separated from the rest of the passengers; the flight attendants will usually put up a curtain between the first and second-class passengers to act as a sort of barrier. Essentially, the market society leads to affluent people living completely different lives and being completely separated from the rest of the population.

But this division between rich and poor, upper class and lower class means much more than just different seats on an airplane or having to wait in lines. It means the rich control America. The wealthy have access to a good education, they have access to the highly respected schools. They are the ones who have the most political influence. They control the laws. They are the powerful ones. American society rewards wealth with not only respect and admiration, but with power. With the physical separations between the rich and the poor, it’s harder for those with means to identify with and have compassion for those who are less fortunate.

I wondered it America had always been divided in this manner. I was surprised to learn that even in the beginnings of the United States, there was a separation between the rich and the poor; only the rich could buy a ticket for the voyage across the Atlantic. It makes sense now that I think about it, but I never imagined that the U.S. was formed on the basis of this division.

Law Schools or Law Factories?

            According to The Law School Tuition Bubble, in 2011, the United States produced 44,495 law school graduates. The nation has, on average,  only 21,300 job openings that require a law degree. This means that there are more than two graduates per each job opening.

           

            New York Law School, ranked in the bottom third of all law schools in the nation, charges their students almost $50,000 a year, which is more than Harvard charges. According to an article from the New York Times, even after hiring in the law profession had just “imploded”, N.Y.L.S. still increased their class size in 2009 by 30 percent from the previous year. It is not just N.Y.L.S. either; according to the same article, in 2010, law schools all around the nation enrolled 49,700 students, the largest number in history.

            After reading this, I wondered “how can students be so dumb as to spend so much money on an education that they might not even get to use?” The answer: law schools trick their students. For example, N.Y.L.S. claimed, in a U.S. news survey, that the average salary among alums that graduated in 2009 was $160,000. This statistic is true… but only for 26 percent of the 2009 class. The other 74 percent is mysteriously not accounted for. The actual average is believed to be much lower.

            To me, law schools appear to be far more concerned with their own well-being than that of their students. It seems deceptive and cruel to have students pay $150,000 for an education that may be of little value to them. Using a false promise of a lucrative career to entice applicants into spending three years and money most of them will need to borrow, seems highly unethical.  Law school administrators must know that less than half of their graduates will find the job they have been prepared for and anticipated.

            Though some may say that the purpose of education is to learn and not to just for the purpose of ensuring yourself a job, not everyone has the luxury of spending $150,000 without a reasonable income after graduation. Many of these young, talented law school graduates will unfortunately not be able to use their talents in law. This delays the start of their career, and wastes precious education money. Law schools are just cranking out graduates, without concern about what will become of the oversupply of these graduates. The schools have lost sight of the responsibility they have to their students, making education just another big business.

A War On Women...?

When examining this idea of a war on women, I repeatedly came across the same statistic: that women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make. After giving this statistic, many of these sources that I looked at came to the conclusion that there must be gender discrimination, and that there really is a war on women. However, I am not convinced.

This statistic fails to take into account the number of hours worked, the amount of training/experience that workers have, and what type of work these laborers do. If all these things were constant between men and women and there was still a pay gap, then I would definitely argue that there is a war on women, but this is not the case. This statistic ultimately compares work that is not comparable, because these factors are so different.

In an article from the Heritage Foundation, I learned that there is, in fact, a great difference between the type of work that women and men do. For example, women make up only 17 percent of all engineers and 75 percent of all social workers. On average, engineers earn $117,849 while social workers make $79,569. Because so many more women choose to work in the fields that traditionally earn less (childcare, nursing, etc.),  of course there is going to be a pay gap.

In fact, when the Heritage Foundation analyzed federal workers, there was virtually no pay difference among those in the same profession. Female engineers, for example, earned 95 percent as much as male engineers while female social workers made 97 percent as much as their male counterparts. These statistics don't even take into account differences in experience, hours worked (including overtime pay), or other wage-affecting factors. So when men and women who work in the same field are compared with one another, this pay gap decreases significantly.

In general, there is also a large difference in the amount of hours worked between men and the women. In his article Statistical Frauds, economist Thomas Sowell wrote that he discovered, in his research, that the average female doctor works 500 hours less per year than the average male doctor. So when studies claim that women are paid so much less than men, we must read the fine print and determine whether or not the work is comparable. In addition, Sowell points out that women often take time off from their careers, or choose a job with more flexible hours at the expense of their careers, in order to make more time for family.

Women should be applauded for putting family first in many cases, and often at the expense of career. Families with young children especially, need at least one parent to have reasonable working hours and flexibility in schedule. At least one parent needs to be home enough to provide the support and guidance that kids need growing up. Someone has to find the time to do all the things that keep a household running—shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. In our society that role has traditionally fallen on women. Often, women make the choice to take on this role and sacrifice their careers. While personal sacrifice to do what is best for the family is selfless and admirable, it is also a partial explanation for pay inequality between men and women. Women who make the choice to have a family and fill the primary caretaker role cannot fairly demand to be paid the same as their counterparts who have focused more on their careers. 

On the other hand, we cannot dismiss the fact that among some companies and careers, there likely is a bias against women. The term “old boys network” probably has some truth to it in certain male dominated fields where women have been traditionally excluded.  Fortunately this seems to be changing. In an article from Forbes, I learned that the CEOs of GM, Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Pepsico are all women. Granted, women CEOs make up only 4% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but it does show a gradual acceptance of women as leaders in business that is beginning to take place.

Moving Up

            I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” This statement implies a lack of mobility between social classes. While I believe that education and cultural sophistication is the most important factor in determining one’s social class, many Americans find income to be the most important. Income provides an opportunity for education, so regardless of your view on this subject, income undeniably plays an important role in determining one’s social class.

Thomas Sowell, an African American economist at Stanford University explores this idea of social mobility in his book Economic Facts and Fallacies. He states that “three quarters of those Americans whose incomes were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point during the next 16 years” (166). He also notes that over 50 percent of people who were in the top one percent of earners in 1996 were no longer there in 2005 (167).

These two quotes suggest that there may be more social mobility in America than we might expect. Upward mobility is not easy, but it is also not impossible, and while there is some truth to the “rich get richer” saying, the situation is not as hopeless as it may sound.

One of the best predictors of social mobility, even greater than the family’s initial income, is the emphasis of education in the person’s culture and family. For example, in an article in the Jewish World Review, the author cites a study that found that immigrants from Asia were one of the groups whose achievements go against the idea that upward mobility is very hard to reach in America. This finding shows that certain cultural values may help a person overcome class mobility barriers, by promoting hard work, determination, and education.

In an article from the Brookings institute, it was found that children born to parents with an income in the highest quintile were five times more likely to end up in that highest 20 percent than the lowest 20 percent. This shows that kids with means are more likely than not going to wind up in the same income level as their parents. So, there will always be greater opportunity for those who are born with means.

Social mobility in America has its limits, but there do seem to be factors that can allow an individual to escape poverty. Education seems to be a game-changer, but unfortunately, access to education is at least partly limited by income.