Inequality Matters — and How!

A Too Much review of
Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide
in America and Its Poisonous Consequences
Edited by James Lardner and David A. Smith
The New Press, 2005.

By Sam Pizzigati

January 2, 2005

Midway through 2004, veteran journalist James Lardner, with the help of the Demos think tank in New York, put together the first national conference directly focused on economic inequality — the gap between America's rich and everyone else — since that gap started widening in the late 1970s.

This Inequality Matters conference drew several hundred people to New York University for a weekend of robust discussion and debate. But few outside NYU's conference rooms ever noticed. America's ever more unequal business as usual rolled on unabated.

Here's hoping that Inequality Matters the book can do what Inequality Matters the conference could not — trigger a long-overdue bit of national introspection over the incredible concentration of income and wealth we Americans have witnessed ever since Jimmy Carter begat Ronald Reagan.

Today's conventional wisdom, of course, simply denies that this concentration of wealth makes any difference. So long as “even a have-not can have a VCR and a cellphone,” argue the apologists for inequality who saturate our politics and our media, what possible reason could we have to worry about whether our richest are getting fantastically richer?

Inequality Matters the book takes on this question, in a series of essays inspired by Inequality Matters the conference. Ably edited by James Lardner and Demos senior fellow David Smith, this book's pages abound in insights that even regular readers of progressive books and periodicals will find fresh and provocative.

One example: Tamara Draut's treatment of the “growing college gap.” A college education, most progressives already understand, is becoming an unaffordable dream for millions of low-income families. But the concentration of wealth at America's economic summit, Draut's contribution to Inequality Matters makes clear, is also making the college experience a nightmare for families who would consider themselves securely middle class — and this nightmare goes way beyond the costs of tuition and board.

“As the spoils of our economy are increasingly spread among only a small group of top performers,” Draut points out, “getting into the winner's circle from the outset is imperative.”

A generation ago, in a more equal United States, Americans did not obsess over getting into the “winner's circle,” for the simple reason that, a generation ago, middle class families were experiencing, at every turn, a higher quality of life — and poor families could credibly see themselves entering the middle class.

But America's growing concentration of wealth over the last 30 years has pulled the plug on this positive outlook. The “only sure way to the good life,” as Draut notes, now appears to be getting inside that “winner's circle.”

And the surest ticket to that “winner's circle”? That's getting a degree from one of the nation's elite colleges or universities.

For many parents, consequently, getting their kids admitted into an elite institution has become life's be-all-and-end-all — and an entire industry has sprouted up to help parents grad that elusive admission ticket.

To ready their kids for elite status, parents now feel pressed to shell out many thousands of dollars for prep courses, private tutors, admission consultants, intellectual summer boot camps, and special guided tours through the Georgetown-Columbia-Hardvard-Yale circuit.

Back in 1990, only 1 percent of the nation's families with graduating high school seniors felt compelled to pay the freight for services like these. Over the past 15 years, that percentage has soared six-fold.

Those families already in the “winner's circle” can, of course, easily afford these extra expenses. No one else can. The inevitable result: Our nation's elite colleges and universities are more and more enrolling only the already affluent. What Draut dubs the “college cleavage” now thoroughly defines higher education.

Equality Matters has plenty of these sorts of stories to tell, in everything from housing and health to happiness. Communities with the widest income gaps between top and middle, as Cornell economist Robert Frank points out in his contribution, turn out to display “significantly higher personal bankruptcy rates, divorce rates, and average commute times.”

In other words, you don't have to be poor — or getting poor — to feel inequality's sting. Your standing in our economic order relative to the top matters, and deeply so.

“Relative differences,” as James Lardner puts it so well, “have absolute consequences.”

These relative differences, contributors to Inequality Matters help us recognize, reflect conscious political decisions that have funneled wealth out of average American pockets into the hands of our most fortunate few.

These fortunate few today totally dominate — and distort — our democracy. But this domination need not paralyze us.

“The current plutocracy is no more difficult to depose than Jim Crow,” suggests Inequality Matters contributor Betsy Leondar-Wright. “It's incumbent on those who know how improbably some past changes seemed, and how they happened despite the odds, to be messengers of hope.”

And how exactly might we go about deposing our current plutocracy? On this score, Inequality Matters does not have much new to offer, but, then again, that's not this book's purpose.

Inequality will continue to plague us only so long as inequality doesn't seem to matter. Jim Lardner, David Smith, and their fellow contributors to this fine volume understand this dynamic. And they've done their part to help shine new light on the economic gaps that divide us.

So apologists for inequality, beware! With the publication of Inequality Matters, your case — that we need not worry about the wealth of the wealthy — has never seemed more dim-witted. Or dangerous.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the weekly online newsletter on excess and inequality. For updates on inequality books — and everything else about inequality — just sign up here for a free weekly subscription.