“The Populist Prophet” is a New Yorker puff piece on Bernie Sanders. There are some interesting nuggets, however.
Sanders’s father was a Polish Jew who, at the age of seventeen, came to America shortly after his brother, and struggled through the Depression in Brooklyn. By the time Sanders was born, in 1941, his father was working as a paint salesman. Sanders had an older brother, Larry, and their mother stayed home, like most of the women in their lower-middle-class corner of Flatbush. … “There was tension about money,” Sanders said of his family. They lived in a three-and-a-half-room rent-controlled apartment, and his mother pined for a house. “It wasn’t a question of putting food on the table. It was a question of arguing about whether you buy this or whether you buy that. You know, families do this. I remember a great argument about drapes—whether we could afford them … ”
I spoke with a few of Sanders’s contemporaries who had grown up in the same neighborhood, and their memories were rosier: they recalled kids playing stickball on safe, familiar streets until their parents called them home for dinner.
In other words, there was just one wage earner in the household. This person was an immigrant. The family was receiving one of the few forms of government handout available at the time, an apartment at below-market rent. But at least one member of the family felt that a recent immigrant should be entitled to own a house.
Sanders’s childhood thus involved the same conflict that Americans face today. A large amount of the measured inequality of income in the U.S. stems from the large number of immigrants and children of immigrants among the general population (chart). People who didn’t grow up here, don’t speak English, and weren’t educated in a developed country tend not to be highly valued by employers. If someone freshly arrived cannot get a middle-class American lifestyle from the market, to what extent should taxpayers step in and provide that person with a comfortable house, food, health care in the world’s least efficient system, etc.? Everyone seems to agree that a legal resident of the U.S. gets the basics for free (thus making them pretty rich by global standards), but we argue, as apparently did Sanders’s parents, about whether or not it is fair for some families (typically native-born) to have way more than the basics.
A person’s position on this issue would seem to drive a lot of the political debate in the 2016 election. If you want to level the playing field so that a freshly arrived immigrant is at parity with a native-born citizen you would advocate for a 100-percent estate tax rate. You might also advocate for higher tax rates for those with high incomes (since it is rare for an immigrant to achieve a very high income).
[Separately, one of my most liberal friends in Cambridge supports virtually every redistributive idea put forth by Democrats. She has essentially never worked and will soon reach normal retirement age, thus there is no personal cost to her in advocating for higher income tax rates. However, she stands to inherit what a lot of people would consider to be a huge amount of money from her father, a self-made founder and manager of a small engineering and manufacturing business. As it happens, she opposes estate taxes and agrees with George W. Bush that money on which income tax has already been paid should not be taxed a second time when the earner dies (i.e., she wants an estate tax rate of 0 percent).]
Where does the quote say that Bernie Sanders mother felt entitled to a house? Was the mother also an immigrant?
“as apparently did Sanders’s parents …”
The quote says nothing about what Bernie Sanders parents thought.
Maybe Bernie Sanders thinks his parents were entitled to more, but his parents?
Philip, aren’t you a bit too harsh, too post-Alan-Greenspan’ish, too conservative “fiscal responsibility is everybody’s responsibility” minded on Momma Sanders? You analyze what effectively is partial, filtered hearsay from way past as were this an immigrant’s conscious expectancy of (city finance averse) entitlement. What if only that tidbit survived the atrophying of memory, and not the others of her/ or their/ house considerations or calculations. If they had to discuss whether they could afford drapes (i.e. not roll-up blinds, as cheap then, I assume, as they are now), most probably they knew they couldn’t afford to keep a house—even were they assigned one. Only, was NYC govt then if ever ladling out such subsidized objects to mere 2-child families? I think not. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Mrs. Sanders had to quit expressing her dream. Perhaps there were other families in similar circumstances nearby that saved up, and, in the post-war boom town years managed that transfer with favorable mortgage etc. So she (or more likely both Sanders’ parents) might not have been merely daydreaming.
Further on, you say: “A large amount of the measured inequality of income in the U.S. stems from the large number of immigrants and children of immigrants among the general population”
You read statistics like “the Devil reads the Bible” (traditional). It’s not the large numbers of immigrants with large families that are the cause of that measured inequality in income, but the low income these immigrants can muster that forces them to keep large families which in turn affects the measured inequality (previously expanded upon by me in another thread here.)
Pay them more, which will raise their standards of living, and they won’t produce as many old-age-security offspring. Perhaps even have the time to attend English elocution classes to compete for better jobs in the future, which will level out your beloved staples—at low end only, mind, because there is no paper roll long enough in the world to graph the entire USA nil-to-highest income span logarithmically.
People who didn’t grow up here, don’t speak English, and weren’t educated in a developed country tend not to be highly valued by employers.
Nevertheless, they come in droves, because job prospects at home are even worse than in the USA, and/or living more dangerous, and are admitted in in order to (as a Marxist would say) over saturate the menial and other low-paid job market, so that these wages can be kept low. And they take those jobs, often in gray economy sector, because they have no option but to work multiple badly paying jobs to survive.
You complain—with some justification—of mandatory minimum wage raise that will scare off employers from hiring these so-suddenly-entitled wage earners (Ayn Rand would have said “looters,” but then she was an Objectivist ;-)) Were you consistent, however, you’d be welcoming this development, because without any jobs, these your (statistical) “economy-drift-anchor” immigrants eventually ought to leave the country, die off, or turn to crime & be jailed (=jobs for our boys in otherwise depressed counties).
DIGRESSION: time for a thought experiment. Let’s say The Donald wins the nomination, and then the election for the next POTUS. One of his campaign promises is curbing (if not outright deportation of) the Mexican “influx.” Let’s say the newly-victorious Donald starts to implement his promises, first voluntary whole family resettlement south of the border (travel and permanent exit bonuses paid by the taxpayers like you); then ever harsher methods (rounding up of Mex-looking people on the streets, etc). There is a ready-made scenario for that outlined in the unclassified document “The Plot Against America” penned by one Philip Roth… [just ed “s/Jews/Mexicans/g”]. I assume The Donald will first be impressed with its sales figures, far bigger than his own “Things The Donald’s Father Never Told Me,” then have it summarized into Talking Bullets Powerpoint. Assume The Presidential Donald manages to empty the USA of that superfluous, welfare-parasitary work force to bring the overall costs down… you think it would make your, and people in your elevated social class’, life easier? Because the tax burden would become smaller? You answer that to ‘self. End of thought experiment.
If someone freshly arrived cannot get a middle-class American lifestyle from the market, to what extent should taxpayers step in and provide that person with a comfortable house, food, health care in the world’s least efficient system, etc.?
Is there/ HAS THERE EVER BEEN/ a danger (risk, chance, opportunity – pick one or more) of this being codified into local or higher laws or regulations, and then acted upon? Which is that city/state where that’s the norm, perhaps I’ll immigrate. As I understand it, however, in the USA when anyone without health insurance has been run over in traffic, the ambulance nurses on the scene will first examine if the victim can pay for being treated in situ or in emergency unit. I’m unsure what happens if one is both penniless and dead already, perhaps thrn only recorded as “roadkill.” This private responsibility for survival principle doesn’t apply to new immigrants?
we argue, as apparently did Sanders’s parents, about whether or not it is fair for some families (typically native-born) to have way more than the basics.
Do you REALLY think that the Sander(ski)s’ recent arrival on the American soil somehow awakened the ENTITLEMENT virus inside them? And that they compared their predicament/ fate/ poverty/ to the affluence of native-born families? I can’t speak without a mandate from the dead, but think that any comparisons they made were not with the Joneses, but with the next-door Greenblatts. No, not these Greenblatts, other Greenblatts.
PS. I haven’t read the TNY article, prefer not to, because it’s like a Literary Roach Motel… I could never check out. So I’m glad Philip reads it ;-))
According to http://cis.org/node/3877 the median income for immigrants is about 13% below natives. If this is actually the case, it is hard to see how they account for a “large amount of the measured inequality”. The increased immigrant population population would reduce expected income by about 2% (100 * 0.13 * 0.12). This compares with a (roughly) 100% increase in per capital GDP over the same time period.
This chart http://i.imgur.com/AG24iVK.png clearly shows the decades-long effects of immigration on the national average income:
– 1945-1970 = flat/declining immigrant population + steeply rising incomes
– 1970-2010 = steeply rising immigrant population + flat/declining incomes
One side of my family came from Canada, the other half came from Poland. My wife’s family came from Italy.
If you are going to make any case for American Exceptionalism it is that we do a great job of incorporating immigrants and we always have. In France, they warehouse Muslims in big brick apartments that are a two hour train ride from anything in Paris, don’t get them in work, and abuse them with all the little racist insults they can. No wonder the only thing they learn from the French is how to burn cars.
In the U.S. I see Muslims succeeding and the worst thing they ever did to me was the time one of them put ice cubes in a beer she served me in NYC.
As for Mexicans, they come here to work and coming from a working class background, I respect that. Everybody knows that illegal immigrants are all over California and the South but you find them in agriculture in all 50 states. It’s awfully hard to find U.S. citizens that want to wake up in the morning and milk somebody else’s cows.
US citizens want to milk somebody else’s cows for more than they can get working retail, which is rather different.
Redistribution should also be applied to our politicians. For example, I wholeheartedly support the idea of campaign contributions. However, those contributions should be pooled and the aggregate taxed. The remainder should be distributed equally among all the candidates 12 months before the election.