America’s Broken Bootstraps

"A democracy ... must recognize political, economic and social distinctions, but it must also withdraw its consent whenever these discriminations show any tendency to excessive endurance." - Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life

When at the last-minute bequest of his boss my friend from college changed our casual catch-up drink into a black tie dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, I wasn't exactly perturbed -- a little up-tick in luxury never hurt anyone. And as I daintily stepped into the sleek black chauffeured Mercedes he sent to pick me up, peering out of the tinted windows as we flew up Park Avenue, I thought to myself, 'I could get used to this.'

I didn't know until I arrived that the event was being held to honor two CEO/Philanthropists who happen to be huge scholarship donors to colleges across the country. The irony didn't hit me until the Latino server -- a senior citizen with a limp -- carefully placed a steaming plate of filet mignon in front of me. Lifting the fork to my lips, I surveyed the 500 or so well-heeled attendees and noticed that not one of them seemed to take notice of the people serving them their dinners.

As the generosity of the honorees was caroled throughout the huge room by various speakers, I registered the presence of what has slowly but surely become the two main slices of American life: the very rich and the poor, with the possibility for upward mobility for people like me -- not to mention my dinner server -- dissolving into that widening gap.

The numbers are clear and utterly shocking: between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the bottom 20 percent grew by 6.4 percent while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70 percent. Income of the top 1 percent grew in that time frame by 184 percent.

American Dream: from fact to fiction

In the '70s, the ability for a person to move up began to slip because the economic growth and development spurred by World War II downshifted. Add to that the creeping in of globalization starting in the '80s, and by the time we got to the '90s, overall relative mobility slipped by 2 percent.

That may not seem like a lot, but economists say it's really bad news considering that the '90s enjoyed the best economy our country had seen since thirty years prior. In other words, even if people were getting a bigger paycheck, they were still stuck in the same societal position. Two recent studies concluded that "the persistence in inequality is about 50 percent higher than previously thought" (meaning a person's class status is harder to break out of) and even more troubling, between 1973 and 2000, the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers saw their average real income fall by 7 percent. The reality of "upward mobility" is that fiction has replaced what used to be the fact upon which American life was based.

Admittedly, I'm a Horatio Alger apologist. I grew up in a lower/middle working class part of Buffalo, N.Y., but I was lucky enough to be raised by a mother who scraped together enough money to send my sister and me to the best high school in the city and two of the best colleges in the country. In short, she -- and by extension me -- viewed a top-notch education as tantamount to a successful, fruitful life.

The problem that the dinner at the Waldorf illuminated for me is our conservative government's assault on that institution. Allowing students to benefit from the largesse of wealthy people is a wonderful thing, and for many of us, the only way we got through college.

However, increasing dependency on scholarships as the only chance to get higher education is indicative of the lack of a level playing field in our country where education is concerned -- and it's not a situation that's going to be improving any time soon.