Arguing that the US is split into a two-caste society, Charles Murray produces compelling data to illustrate that trend, writes DAVID BROOKS
I’LL BE shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.
Murray’s basic argument is not new, that the US is dividing into a two-caste society. What’s impressive is the data he produces to illustrate that trend and deepen our understanding of it.
His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big. A house in an upper-crust suburb cost only twice as much as the average new American home. The tippy-top luxury car, the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, cost about $47,000 in 2010 dollars. That’s pricy, but nowhere near the price of the top luxury cars today.
More important, the income gaps did not lead to big behaviour gaps.
Roughly 98 per cent of men between the ages of 30 and 49 were in the labour force, upper class and lower class alike. About only 3 per cent of white children were born outside of marriage. The rates were similar, upper class and lower class.
Since then, the US has polarised. The word “class” doesn’t even capture the divide Murray describes. You might say the country has bifurcated into different social tribes, with a tenuous common culture linking them.
The upper tribe is now segregated from the lower tribe. In 1963, rich people who lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan lived close to members of the middle class. Most adult Manhattanites who lived south of 96th Street back then hadn’t even completed high school. Today, almost all of Manhattan south of 96th Street is an upper-tribe enclave.
Today, Murray demonstrates, there is an archipelago of affluent enclaves clustered around the coastal cities, Chicago, Dallas and so on. If you’re born into one of them, you will probably go to college with people from one of the enclaves; you’ll marry someone from one of the enclaves; you’ll go off and live in one of the enclaves.
Worse, there are vast behavioural gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 per cent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 per cent of the country). This is where Murray is at his best, and he’s mostly using data on white Americans, so the effects of race and other complicating factors don’t come into play.
About 7 per cent of the white children in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with about 45 per cent in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labour force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labour force, in good times and bad.
People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, to go to church, to be active in their communities and more likely to watch television excessively and to be obese.
Murray’s story contradicts the ideologies of both parties. Republicans claim that the US is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.
Democrats claim the US is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 per cent and the lower 30 per cent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 per cent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.
It’s wrong to describe a US in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.
The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.
Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganised, postmodern neighbourhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.
I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a national service programme that would force members of the upper and lower tribes to live together, if only for a few years. If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass. – (The New York Times)