Wealth is More Unequal Than People Think - But That is Not So Bad

Wealth is hugely unequally distributed. Most people think it is reasonable that the richest fraction hold a disproportionate share of the wealth. However, most people underestimate just how disproportionate that distribution really is.

The top fifth of households in the U.S. control ____% of all the wealth in the country.

What number did you think of immediately?

Most people think the number is about 60%

Most people think it should be about 30%

But the actual number is 85%.

I do not think an unequal distribution of wealth is itself a bad thing. Moreover, the richer the society, the more wealth there is for the top group to have. And this report by quintiles is a little misleading - it is the gigantic wealth holdings by the top tenth of one percent of households where the huge disparities lie.

The top 20% of households includes many upper-middle-class families who worked up to significant earnings, from which they save. The main reason that the middle class has so little wealth is that they save so little of what they earn. The poor will never have much wealth, even if they do earn enough to live. But we could have a much more equal distribution of wealth between the just-below-the-top and the middle.

The paper, "Building a Better America - One Wealth Quintile at a Time," by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely, is available here.

I Want You to Stop Being Afraid

A fine poster by Al Haug.

My sentiments exactly.

Married Couples Dance Ministry

The name itself makes me happy. The video of any long-married couples dancing together is charming. To have a whole group of long-married black couples dancing together, cheered on by their church, is delightful in a larger context.

Grateful for the Health Care Reforms That Start Today

Some provisions of the health care reform act go into effect today.

Lifetime limits on coverage end. Insurance companies can no longer drop coverage without due process. You can't be refused insurance because of a pre-existing condition. Sick kids cannot simply be dropped. And one change that affects the Gruntleds directly is that children can stay on their parents' policies until they are 26, instead of 19. For the class for whom college is the norm, and further study is extremely likely, the years from 19 to 26 mostly mean no income to pay for insurance. This change is a real boon to our kind, and to all young people in a recession.

The health care reform was long overdue. It is not perfect - no bill that can pass Congress ever will be - but it contains many good improvements. Including those that start today.

Happy Nations Give More Than Merely Rich Nations

The Charities Aid Foundation did a world-wide survey of giving. The main finding:

CAF found that the link between happiness and giving is stronger than the link between wealth and giving.

A secondary finding is that the heirs of the British empire lead the world in charity. Here is the top of the list in the 153-nation study.

World Giving Index	Country	% of population who have given money	% of population who have given time	% of population who have helped a stranger	Wellbeing score out of 10
1	Australia	70%	38%	64%	7.3
1	New Zealand	68%	41%	63%	7.4
3	Canada	64%	35%	68%	7.5
3	Ireland	72%	35%	60%	7.0
5	Switzerland	71%	34%	60%	7.5
5	USA	60%	39%	65%	7.2
7	Netherlands	77%	39%	46%	7.6
8	United Kingdom	73%	29%	58%	5.6

Office Romance: Good for Married Knowledge Workers, Bad for Cheating Corporate Types?

Bloomberg.com has an interesting article by Spencer Morgan on how lawsuits are driving down office romance. Faced with ex-lovers filing retaliation suits, and co-workers of the boss' lover charging favoritism, some companies are establishing, and enforcing, no-fraternization policies.

On the other hand, other companies think that couples who work together are a good thing. They are more engaged in the company and are less likely to miss work.

Two things struck me about this article.

First, the author made no distinction between marriage, and the courtship that leads to marriage, on the one hand, and adulterous affairs on the other. I expect that married co-workers are good for a business, whereas cheating co-workers are very bad for office functioning.

Second, the list of companies that were in favor of office couples has a strong knowledge-class tilt: National Public Radio, Princeton Review, Pixar, and Southwest Airlines.

Where Should We Study Religion in Kentucky?

I will be teaching my "Sociology of American Religion" course in our intensive Centre Term in January. This term is designed for field trips.

Last time we went to:

Southeast Christian Church (largest in the state)
Presbyterian Center (denominational headquarters)
Gethsemani Abbey (Trappist monastery most famous as the home of Thomas Merton)
Sisters of Loretto Motherhouse
Both synagogues in Lexington
The Creation Museum.

In addition, we met with informed Mormons and Muslims who came to our class. An eminent Hindu leader was honored during Founders Day, which we incorporated into class. We looked into the Buddhist retreat center at Furnace Mountain, but January was not an excellent time to visit.

All of these places and people are great.

There are also several other great places and people within a three-hour drive (about the limit of a day trip).

Some that I am thinking about:
Covington Cathedral
St. Stephen's Church, Louisville (largest black congregation in the state)
The Louisville synagogues (including an Orthodox synagogue, not found in Lexington)
Lexington Universal Academy (Islamic school)
Southern Baptist Seminary
Asbury Theological Seminary

I am open to suggestions.

Yawning Is Contagious - But Less So for Autistic Kids

Yawning is a socially contagious action. A study comparing autistic kids and typical kids found that the autistic kids were much less likely to yawn in response to videos of people yawning. This suggests that responsive yawning is a kind of empathy.

Elizabeth Warren, Knowledge Class Hero, Gets a Big Job

Elizabeth Warren has been asked by President Obama to help start the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is only fitting: she thought it up in the first place.

The knowledge class has a critical, even alienated side. This is only one side of the story, though, and not even half. Most members of the knowledge class work within existing social institutions to make them work better for the common good. They tend to be earnest, a bit nerdy, not stylish, but, to my mind, wholesome in trying to use their smarts for all. They are not only trying to understand the big picture in some depth, but trying to make it better, too.

If you wanted a name and a face for that branch of the knowledge class, I nominate Elizabeth Warren.

State Prison Population Declines for the First Time in 40 Years

This is a little bit of good news. The total prison population went up last year, because there are more federal prisoners.

The boom in prisoners comes mostly from imprisoning drug dealers. I am all for imprisoning people who commit crimes, and drug dealers, as a group are vile.

Still, I think we should legalize marijuana and tax it heavily. In fact, I would be happy to dedicate the pot tax to fighting the really bad drugs - there seems a certain poetic justice in that. If we extract marijuana from the war on drugs, we can devote our prisons to the worse criminals.

Accommodating the Genderless Exceptions

Newsweek has an article about a possible "genderless" future, in which "no gender" would be one of the choices.

I am OK with legally acknowledging that some rare individuals do not have a clear sex or gender. And I think it is only civil to accommodate such people in social life in nearly every situation. The condition is so uncommon that I do not think we should build an entire third-gender infrastructure.

I do think it is a mistake to claim that gender is "assigned" for most people. For the vast majority of people, gender and sex are the same. We do not have to mentally disconnect the two in all cases just because they are not clearly connected in a few rare cases.

Marriage Would Help the Working Class Move Up

The growing class gap is between the married middle class and the cohabiting working class and poor people. One of the reasons the bottom half of the class structure is getting less likely to marry is that they think you already have to be steadily middle class first. Brad Wilcox and Andrew Cherlin present the latest numbers in a useful Wall Street Journal article.

The future success stories among the poor and working class who grow into the middle class will, I am confident, be mostly told by those who make the commitment to marriage (and religion) the foundation of their lives. With that strong foundation, building, saving, and investing in the family is easier and safer.

The best thing we can do for the working poor and working class is to promote the idea that a permanent commitment to marriage (and not just to your spouse) will help you make a richer and more secure life for yourself and your children.

Double Income Goes for Better School Districts

Robert H. Frank, in Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, reports this study from knowledge-class hero Elizabeth Warren:

As Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi have shown, ... most of the extra income earned by families as a result of the move to two-earner couples was consumed by higher housing prices as these families sought to buy homes in safer neighborhoods with better schools. (66)

Buying for better schools is a rational knowledge-class investment, and safer neighborhoods is a rational choice for every class.

If the cheaper places to live can make their schools better, then smart, able couples will move there. This would have the double benefit to the families of getting better schools for less, and allowing the couple (mostly the mothers) to cut back on work and invest the time in a happier life for the whole family.

Civility Triumph: Qur'an Not Burned

International Burn a Koran Day fizzled.

I am grateful to the imam who went to talk calmly with the pastor. And the pastor for calling it off.

Go civility (the hard way).

Reality Tuesday

Reality Tuesday Coffeehouse and Donuts is in Park Hills, Kentucky. The mocha is good, and the cheesecakes are rated the best in the Cincinnati area.

The name comes from a Tuesday night Bible study that the owners were involved in when they decided to jump in to the coffee business. They are Protestants, and the immediate neighborhood is home to Covington Catholic High School and Notre Dame Academy, so the whole place has a strong pan-Christian vibe.

Reality Tuesday is a happy, homey place that I commend to all friends of coffee houses.

The Gospel of Wealth and the American Establishment

David Brooks has a nifty column on the critique of our material excess. It is not surprising when greens and lefties make this critique, but Brooks is citing David Platt, a Southern Baptist megachurch pastor, who says the evangelical church is as guilty of pursuing material wealth, and even, in effect, worshiping it. Platt says we have to choose God or mammon.

Brooks rightly notes, though, that Americans, including American evangelicals, have a counter tradition of disciplining wealth. The Gospel of Wealth that he refers to is not the "health and wealth" gospel that some pentecostal churches preach, that God will reward your faith with riches. Quite the opposite. Rather, the Gospel of Wealth is that the rich - which includes most Americans, compared to the rest of the world - have a religious obligation to use our wealth for the common good. Wealth, though a huge temptation, is not bad in itself. It does impose great obligations.

The Gospel of Wealth was developed by the original Establishment of this country, the Protestant Establishment that E. Digby Baltzell wrote about. Wealth, health, privileges of all kinds are gifts of Providence, as well as connected in mysterious ways to our own work. As gifts, they come with religious responsibilities.

How Men of Different Races Describe Themselves to Potential Dates

OkCupid is a data site run by statisticians. Their reports are a gold mine for people interested in mate selection.

Their current report analyzes the terms people use in their profiles to describe themselves. Based on more than half a million participants, divided by their self-described race, the data cupids found this interesting trend in how men describe themselves to a prospective date:

Black men say I am cool - a very common choice (#2 out of the top 50).
Asian men say they are simple. This includes Indians and Middle Eastern men as well as East Asians (#2).
Latinos say they are funny guys (#25).


White men are much less likely to offer an overall self-description. The closest item in the top 50 profile items, coming in at #38, is I'm a country boy.

I don't have a deep analysis of what this means, and would welcome your thoughts. I have some guesses that are somewhat informed by the actual marriage patterns of each group, but I know I could be way off.

Cool: fun to spend time with, but doesn't demand commitment.
Simple: does not want an emotionally complicated relationship, just commitment.
Funny: will pay attention to you and not be overbearing.
Country boy: masculine and simple; hasn't had to give much thought to what kind of man, because white men have the privilege of thinking of themselves as just normal guys.

Decent Religious Americans in Gainesville Gather for Peace Against the Qur'an Burning

Trinity United Methodist Church in Gainesville, Florida, and the Gainesville Interfaith Forum will be hosting a Gathering for Peace, Understanding, and Hope on September 10.

Mainline Christian churches join together all the time with Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, as in this interfaith forum for peace and tolerance.

Why, then, do I note this particular gathering? Because Trinity United Methodist Church is right next door to the Dove World Outreach Center, a pentecostal church that is planning to burn the Qur'an on September 11.

I truly hope, as a church elder, that the Dove church changes its mind.

Even if it does not, though, I am glad the good people of Gainesville, through the Interfaith Forum, will be coming together in a gentle counter-demonstration of American decency and tolerance.

Similar Spouses Stay Married

A new study by Mikhila Humbad and colleagues at Michigan State tested whether spouses converged in their basic personality over a long marriage.

They don't.

This is not really so surprising, though. Our basic personality characteristics are one of the most stable parts of us. We may come to look and sound more like our spouses as we come to imitate one another's facial expressions and speech. But personality mostly stays put.

What this study really shows, I think, is that people with enduring marriages were similar in values, and complementary in personality, to begin with. The researchers note that they do not have many recently married couples in their study - not surprising, since they were piggybacking on the long-running Minnesota Twin Study to find their couples.

I would expect that couples with dissimilar values and non-complementary personalities would be less likely to make lasting marriages.

But neither the couples in the real study, nor the couples in the hypothetical study, would be likely to show much personality change.

American Tolerance Tradition Triumphs Over Know Nothings

Nicholas Kristoff has a fine column arguing that that fear of the Ground Zero mosque, and other expressions of Islamic life in the United States, is not driven by sheer bigotry. Rather, it is driven by the desire of well-meaning people to protect the nation from what they imagine are unassimilable aliens and the possible physical and moral danger they might bring. Like the anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement of the nineteenth century, this impulse is not new in American history. But Kristoff offers a hopeful answer:

But we have a more glorious tradition intertwined in American history as well, one of tolerance, amity and religious freedom. Each time, this has ultimately prevailed over the Know Nothing impulse.