[Vision2020] Downton and Downward

[Art Deco]

[image: Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the
Web]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/>
February 14, 2013, 9:00 pmDownton and DownwardBy TIMOTHY
EGAN<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/timothy-egan/>

Like everyone else with a perverse curiosity about a castle-bound community
fussing over whether to use a bouillon or a melon spoon, I've been consumed
by the turns in "Downton Abbey," the latest export from England to keep
American public television afloat.

In a season of haute-soap plot twists, the story of the working-class
Irishman, Tom Branson, whose marriage to Lady Sybil gives him a life leap
in upward mobility, is worth examining for what it says about class, then
and now.  Branson is still "the chauffeur" to a family living on moldered
wealth, and his brother the car mechanic is "a drunken gorilla" for asking
if there's any beer in the House of Lord Grantham.

But if someone with grease on his hands and an accent from a
workaday neighborhood can rise to an estate management position in the
rigid British class system, what, by comparison, are we to make of the
American experience nearly a century removed?

Oh, but we are a nation free of class conflict, we tell ourselves daily,
and live with the illusion that everyone with a job is somehow middle
class.  Our core, motivational narrative is that anyone with gumption and
good luck can rise to a comfortable tier. They don't call that the British
Dream.

And yet, a raft of recent studies has found the United States to be a less
upwardly mobile society than many comparable nations, particularly for men.
One survey reported that 42 percent of American boys raised in the bottom
fifth of income stayed there as adults. For Britain, the numbers were better
by 30 percent<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all>.
Just 8 percent of American men made the jump from the lowest fifth to the
highest fifth, compared to 12 percent for the Brits.

The fictional Branson, of course, marries upward in a country that George
Orwell  called "the most class-ridden society under the sun."  Their world,
in which a tuxedoed toiler's main job in life is to dress a grown man and
wipe the dandruff from his collar, is part of the archaic draw of "Downton
Abbey."

But shocking though it is for a chauffeur to marry into a post-Edwardian
estate, can you imagine an American cab driver tying the knot with a
Hilton, a Rockefeller or a hedge fund manager's daughter?  On "Downton,"
upstairs and downstairs are in close, albeit strictly defined, contact.
Rich and poor seldom encounter each other in the United States.

It's painful to read that Britain, much of Western Europe, and Canada are
becoming more socially and economically fluid while the United States
hardens its class arteries. Even in our bleakest time, the Great
Depression, the presidential aide Harold Ickes said, "Life for us would not
be worth living if we did not have this urge to reach for what will always
seem beyond our reach."

The urge remains. The character is unchanged.  What's different now are the
opportunities, and the hard fact that too many of those born at the bottom
of the economic ladder are likely to stay there.

Class stagnation was the underlying theme of President Obama's State of the
Union speech on Tuesday. He called on us to "restore the basic bargain,"
and outlined a few things - universal preschool, more help for college
students - that are proven elevators to a better station in life.

The Republican response, from Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, was
 illustrative of Obama's point - though unintentionally.  This son of a
bartender said, "More government isn't going to help you get ahead. It's
going to hold you back." The Rubio story proves otherwise. He said he
couldn't have gone to college without financial aid.  He made his money by
leveraging a government job in politics. His Cuban-born parents can live in
elderly dignity, as he noted, because of that great government product,
Medicare.

As a footnote, Rubio noted that he still lives in "the same working class
neighborhood I grew up in." Not for long. The four-bedroom home with a pool
is on the market for $675,000. Good for him. But please, don't make the
preposterous claim that government "limited" his jump in class.

Short of winning the lottery, education is the best route to a change in
class status. Yet, because of the obsolete, factory-like nature of high
school, which fails to propel at least a third of its students, and the
confiscatory cost of college, the next rung up for 18-year-olds is becoming
another haven for the rich.

"Education, a force meant to erode class barriers, appears to be fortifying
them," my colleague Jason De Parle
wrote<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/education/poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html?pagewanted=all>in
one of many terrific pieces on the decline of the American Dream. The
affluent, by a whopping 45 point gap, are more likely to finish college
than those without means.  While family income has been flat or has fallen,
the cost of attending a public university has risen 60 percent in the past
two decades.

Obama mentioned a vague plan for more flexible college grants, and a
"scorecard" so parents can get more bang for their buck -  a small start.
The ambitious call to make preschool available to "every child in America,"
shows more promise.

Republicans have expressed little interest in fixing the class divide, and
are likely to block every Obama initiative, just because they can. Despite
Rubio's protestations,  his party is the defender of a status quo that has
made the United States a case study in income inequality.

They would do well to remember the words of Andrew Carnegie, the capitalist
who gave away his vast fortune. Carnegie was born in a single-room weaver's
cottage in Scotland, and saw the British class system at its worst before
he moved to America.  "There is no class so pitiably wretched," he
concluded late in life, "as that which possesses money and nothing else."


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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