The Choices of the Elite
In case I sounded flippant in my previous post -- sure, anybody can afford to pass up the big bucks and serve their country on a dime! -- I wanted to clarify a few points. The Trap is based on a set of revealing interviews with high-achieving young adults in their twenties and thirties. By the time Brook comes upon his subjects, they've already graduated from elite schools and pursued the right unpaid internships, jobs, and extracurricular activities to make real the choice between high status, low-paid work and high status, wealth-creating work.
Some have made the decision to accrue massive law school debts that they know will probably push them into the private sector. Others pursue academic Ph.D's despite the fact that only 25 percent of graduates land on the tenure track. These are choices that the already privileged make for themselves.
Of course, many, many more college graduates are never confronted with these choices because they can't afford to do elite unpaid internships or don't have guidance on what other options are out there in terms of gaining work experience. They're desperate for any job after graduation day, and further education is not an option. Repaying loans and landing health insurance are the orders of the day, with little time to think about what one is passionate about doing.
Simply put, these are not the characters in The Trap. Brook profiles one recent grad who leaves journalism behind after several unpaid internships because he can't make the transition to a "real job." His choice seems due more to career frustration (rightfully so) than real financial need. So from my perspective, The Trap simply didn't descend far enough down the class ladder to really come upon young people who are "trapped." The young people Brook writes about come from mostly professional homes, and most have college-educated parents.
And here's one other addendum, on the cost of urban living. Scott reminds us that the neighborhoods young public interest workers live in aren't "middle income" at all (with incomes up into the 70Ks), but would be more likely classified as "low income." Indeed, I came to this conclusion myself last week, as this nifty Internet tool was making the rounds. You enter your zip code, and voila, you can see the median income and demographics of your neighborhood. I learned that in my neighborhood, 20010, the median income is $33,408. That reflects the mix here: Young professional renters in group houses, families who own their own homes, and immigrants in apartment buildings. This is a very typical neighborhood choice for non-profit workers, and reflects exactly the dynamic I illustrated in my previous response.
Because of that Zipskinny tool I will get no work done today. I will accept your apology for that.
To your points: I don't see what's such a big advantage about having college educated parents who had jobs. It's hardly a golden ticket.
Your own facts suggest that there really is a problem. You say that people go for doctorates even though there aren't enough tenure track jobs for them all. The point of this discussion is that the economy isn't adequately allowing people to follow their bliss and passions. Folks who go for Ph.Ds are really passionate people. Then they do all that work to amass all of that knowledge and there's no job for them. It's a cruel joke.
I agree that as you go down the economic ladder people are even more trapped by this economy. But I'm not sure why you're so unsympathetic to basically middle class people. Part of the point is that if even a kid with two college educated, employed parents high SAT scores and a degree from a good school can feel trapped then we have a huge problem to deal with.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 16, 2007 11:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the addendum. It's a fiction that children of the elite (i.e. with college educated parents and good-paying jobs) have the same choices as children without that headstart, who don't have the same types of help along the way to pursue the careers they choose.
It's also one that those of us in this category too easily indulge, imagining that our tough straits are the same as the tough straits of someone who can't afford to fail (and whose salary might also be expected to help out other family members not lucky enough to have made it so far). And that all college students -- even at elite universities -- are similarly situated as they go out to pursue their careers.
I haven't read the book yet -- but it seems the fact that those who DO have the headstart still pursue money over public-good professions is the problem.
October 17, 2007 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I learned that in my neighborhood, 20009, the median income is $33,408. That reflects the mix here: Young professional renters in group houses, families who own their own homes, and immigrants in apartment buildings. This is a very typical neighborhood choice for non-profit workers, and reflects exactly the dynamic I illustrated in my previous response.
So is the takeaway that these young idealists want to save the poor, just not live near them?
Sorry, I can't buy the whole premise of this book (at least as it has been described--I haven't read it and honestly don't see much reason to read it). Is it really such a big surprise to today's young graduates of elite colleges that working for a nonprofit might mean a modest income? Has it ever been different? And is it really such an injustice?
The 20th percentile household income in the US is about $20,000. The 80th percentile is about $97,000. The median is about $48,000. So a salary in the $30K range is lower than the median, but still way above the bottom fifth. I know it's hard for elite graduates to duplicate their parents' lifestyle on a $30K salary in a major urban area. But I bet their parents aren't working for nonprofits for the most part. Their parents "sold out" so the kids could go to the Ivy League. But is this really selling out? Maybe their parents like their jobs? Maybe they like being able to send their kids to the best colleges? Maybe this isn't selling out or being trapped? Maybe it's just a recognition of the reality that all economies since the dawn of history have really been about putting food on the table. Passions are important, but you gotta eat, and eating has, since Adam, always meant labor--much of it unpleasant and uninteresting. Don't get me wrong--pursuing your passions is a wonderful thing--but it does take time away from ploughing the dirt. And so your crop may be smaller. I'm not sure, though, that putting aside your passions so that you can plough a bigger field and reap an abundant harvest is necessarily selling out. Maybe it's just acceptance of the quotidian nature of much of life. Accepting that happily, without bitterness, may be as wise and noble as pursuing one's passions without regard for one's stomach. And maybe one even learns to like ploughing--maybe even to find a certain fulfillment in it?
Now if you can pursue your passions and still have a full stomach (and a clean conscience), all the power to you. But being resentful of the sacrifice that so often comes with pursuit of one's passions seems to me at least as much "selling out" as pursuing wealth at the expense of one's ideals. In both cases, you are letting your material needs interfere with your spiritual happiness. In the latter case, it is your fulfilled material desires that cripple your spirit. In that former, it is your unfulfilled. As the Buddhists understand, acceptance is the true key to happiness and wisdom. The specifics of what one does and what one is paid are irrelevant to that deeper ability to accept the goodness of life, of its joys, and of its flaws.
October 17, 2007 10:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do we look for mutable stratas in our society?
Are "traps" impediments that obscure our vision
or an insight to use as an alternate perspective of our lives?
Think of each strata of society as if it were contained in one of the enclosures
of the Russian Dolls. We open each of the dolls to find a smaller one inside
and never think we may be "enclose" or fixed in a layer as each doll.
Those above in higher strata used to be discussed by the society. They were referred to as influential, elites, the powerful and other such names. Maybe we have forgotten how to discuss this directly because of the myth of equality of opportunity in America.
Do we understanding how the stratum of the elite and powerful affects the environment of our lives?
Look at this site in this view. Are we discussing different layers, seeking or describing the divisions in this organized system called the American Society.
Is this discussion important? Is the discussion by Dana Goldstein about a job the totality of the trap? It could be this may be only an unthinking incidental byproduct of the elite's actions in their stratum? Do we really think anyone can gain this status except for money?
Delusional citizens produce a delusional society.
-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking
October 18, 2007 5:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Zip codes are not good proxies for neighborhoods.
October 18, 2007 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
as I said on the other thread, that's a really old story. :-)
October 18, 2007 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I haven't read the book yet -- but it seems the fact that those who DO have the headstart still pursue money over public-good professions is the problem."
One of the bigger problems certainly.
When this happens, we end up with nobody able and willing to pursue the public good. With predictably disastrous results.
October 19, 2007 2:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please, young self-absorbed bourgeois idealists, do not move into poor neighborhoods, you do more harm than good. You have no respect for the people who live there and what you call concern is not concern but pity. Your radicalism is false and more importantly, self awareness is foreign to you.
Social Democracy is not a politcal platform, it's the description of a form of social life out of which a platform grows. When you're capable of living such a form of social life the politics will follow. The sincere bleatings of oh so sensitive individualists is not a manifestation of social democratic thought.
October 20, 2007 7:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
You have no respect for the people who live there and what you call concern is not concern but pity.
You're too kind Seth--I might have replaced "pity" with "egotism".
October 20, 2007 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink