Cartoon: Class difference in society

[russ_watters]

I think the point is that it's harder for low income people to complete their degrees - with the main factor being time. If you're working full time, it's going to be extremely difficult to complete a STEM degree as quickly as a person that can devote all of their time to being a full time student. And it's that extended time that gives one the opportunity to experience extra outside challenges (with a sick parent being a lot more sympathetic example than "getting knocked up and becoming a single parent working full time and trying to complete a degree part time"). What the outside challenge is is beside the point. There will be more of them the longer one spends as a full time worker/part time student.

It can be very non-linear. I spent 20 years in the Air Force. Many military personnel eventually get a degree. On top of taking fewer classes per semester and having their education disrupted by TDYs, deployments, remote assignments, etc, they have to complete more credit hours to get their degree than the average student...

My journey was also non-typical and not too dissimilar to yours. So I certainly get that timelines can vary, but if I were to make a comic strip of my journey to adulthood, it wouldn't end with a shot of me chipping paint on the deck of a frigate at age 26, it would end with me sitting behind a desk at my first engineering job at age 27.

So I agree that it is tough to put people in "boxes" -- which is also part of what I don't like about the strip or more specifically, it's title. It is saying that for people in "class x", life goes this way and for people in "class y", life goes that way ("class x" and "class y" as yet undefined). If it just titled more vaguely that some people have an easier path than others, sure, I'd agree -- but I also believe that it wouldn't have been interesting/profound enough to get posted here: That's too obvious/pointless of a point to make.

More on the still undefined "class" thing:
If people want to define "class" according to income, that might be a potentially objective measure, but it is still deeply flawed and doesn't relate well to the cartoon:

I know people who's parents were above average in income and didn't help their kids at all in paying for college and others who went to service academies or enlisted first in the Navy, where it is free. And to Evo's point: there is a "doughnut hole" that covers an awfully large fraction of the population who's parents make too much to qualify for financial aid, yet paying for college outright is a serious hardship. And I know someone who's father died while she was in college and her mom cut her off financially, resulting in a sudden need for her to pay for the rest of her schooling (and her younger brother, all of his schooling). And I know someone (again, parents above average income) who got a masters' degree from an expensive school in something useless and now works at a grocery store with $80k in student loan debt.

My point is that hardships can happen at all levels and for a variety of reasons: and none of those stories - nor Paula's - have anything to do with "class".

For Paula, if, indeed she delayed college to care for her sick father and that resulted in her losing her student loans/aid, she'll have to decide for herself if she made the right decision. Do you [all] think her father would think it was the right decision?

Interesting article here that tracks four "Paulas" in their journey through college that ended with a total of zero degrees:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/e...ater-role-in-success.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

There are a lot of mis-steps along the way and the stories bear some similarities to Paula's. While not all of the events that happened were of their own making, their own decisions weigh very heavily on the results. If indeed we are being told that Paula did not finish college, then the sympathetic story we are being told about why becomes less connected to reality.

...also setting aside the fact that completing "some college" should still put Paula well above her parents in earnings potential.

Interestingly, clicking on the link to the whole strip now takes you to a comment from a reader who felt personally insulted by it: he started in the column on the right and ended in the column on the left because, according to him, his family "espoused hard work and high expectations" and didn't let those same sort of hardships get in the way of that.

 

[russ_watters]

That's my interpretation as well. It's a very straightforward cartoon and I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Well,
1. "Class" is still undefined.
2. If the cartoon is all about Richard, why bother putting Paula in it at all? If there is going to be contrast for the sake of contrast, it should represent some reality.

With the two issues above, if it is all about Richard, to me the cartoon doesn't say anything useful about anything. Its just a fictional story with no value. Are there Richards in the real world who don't realize how good they have it? Sure. Are there Richards who do? Definitely. So what?

 

[BobG]

Interestingly, clicking on the link to the whole strip now takes you to a comment from a reader who felt personally insulted by it: he started in the column on the right and ended in the column on the left because, according to him, his family "espoused hard work and high expectations" and didn't let those same sort of hardships get in the way of that.

I think the only issue I have with what he says is that he feels insulted by the cartoon.

For many: of course it's hard. Like the Tom Hanks character said in the movie, "A League of Their Own":

"Of course it's hard! Hard is good! If it weren't hard, then anyone could do it! And then they'd only pay you minimum wage to do it!"

Mmmm, maybe I didn't quite remember the exact words he used. But I think that's what he meant.

Overcoming hardships is a reason to be proud of one's accomplishments. I don't think identifying that hardships can prevent success for many people is a reason to be insulted.

 

[Tobias Funke]

Well,
1. "Class" is still undefined.
2. If the cartoon is all about Richard, why bother putting Paula in it at all? If there is going to be contrast for the sake of contrast, it should represent some reality.

With the two issues above, if it is all about Richard, to me the cartoon doesn't say anything useful about anything. Its just a fictional story with no value. Are there Richards in the real world who don't realize how good they have it? Sure. Are there Richards who do? Definitely. So what?

I think just about everything you said has been answered by someone else, but I'll note that you never defined "reality" and I highly doubt that you can without being circular, but everybody seems to know what you mean. Is this one of Plato's dialogues where we spend all our time trying to define "good" or "virtue" or "temperence"?

 

[Vanadium 50]

The problem with the "I know it when I see it definition" is that when you are talking about mobility, it matters how many classes there are: obviously the more classes you consider, the higher the degree of mobility. I've seen as few as 3 and as many as 30. Certainly just looking at a single number does not capture the whole picture: a person with a net worth of a million dollars at age 25 is very different than someone with a net worth of one million dollars at age 65.

 

[russ_watters]

For many: of course it's hard. Like the Tom Hanks character said in the movie, "A League of Their Own":

"Of course it's hard! Hard is good! If it weren't hard, then anyone could do it! And then they'd only pay you minimum wage to do it!"

I only know one quote from that movie and that wasn't it - but I like it.

I think the only issue I have with what he says is that he feels insulted by the cartoon...

Overcoming hardships is a reason to be proud of one's accomplishments. I don't think identifying that hardships can prevent success for many people is a reason to be insulted.

It's a potential double-insult:
1. Paul didn't work hard for what he got.
2. Paul doesn't recognize how easy he had it - he's ungrateful.

It's worse for someone who ends up in column A while starting in column B because - as we all apparently agree - that tends to be the hardest of the routes. For someone who started and finished in column A, it might only be one insult; maybe he really was handed everything he got on a silver platter and didn't work hard for it. But obviously that's not necessarily true even of people who's entire path was in column A.

 

[russ_watters]

I think just about everything you said has been answered by someone else, but I'll note that you never defined "reality" and I highly doubt that you can without being circular, but everybody seems to know what you mean. Is this one of Plato's dialogues where we spend all our time trying to define "good" or "virtue" or "temperence"?

Huh?

 

[russ_watters]

Missed this before:

"Europe" is a big place, do you have a reference?

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2010-en/11/02/02/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2010-89-en

Avoiding economic hardship is a primary objective of social policy. As perceptions of "a decent standard of living" vary across countries and over time, no commonly agreed measure of "absolute" poverty across OECD countries exists. A starting point for measuring poverty is therefore to look at "relative" poverty, whose measure is based on the income that is most typical in each country in each year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Relative_poverty

Relative poverty is the "most useful measure for ascertaining poverty rates in wealthy developed nations."[46][47][48][49][50] Relative poverty measure is used by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) and Canadian poverty researchers.[46][47][48][49][50] In the European Union, the "relative poverty measure is the most prominent and most–quoted of the EU social inclusion indicators."[51]

"Relative poverty reflects better the cost of social inclusion and equality of opportunity in a specific time and space."[52]

"Once economic development has progressed beyond a certain minimum level, the rub of the poverty problem – from the point of view of both the poor individual and of the societies in which they live – is not so much the effects of poverty in any absolute form but the effects of the contrast, daily perceived, between the lives of the poor and the lives of those around them. For practical purposes, the problem of poverty in the industrialized nations today is a problem of relative poverty (page 9)."

So that last bit is basically saying that "poverty" as the word is typically defined doesn't really exist in a meaningfully large quantity in Western countries, so in order to keep the word useful, they had to choose a broader definition. Fortunately, by tying the measure of it to a fraction of median income, poverty can never go away.

The problem, of course, with using a relative measure of poverty is that when the economy crashes like it did for most western countries in 2008-10, the poverty rate goes down, not up. And when the economy grows, the poverty rate goes up. We have a detailed thread discussing with this problem including the OECD's inventing new stats to temporarily replace the flawed measure at times when it is most flawed. I can find it for you if you are really interested.

Although, one issue with the US definition is it doesn't seem to keep up with actual costs of living. The CPI doesn't even include the things that poor people need to buy most, like food.

Sorry, but that's all wrong too:
http://stats.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm#Question_7

Do you think the fact that there are "different measures, some more useful than others" means that homeless is not a problem or not important?

No, all I'm saying is it just isn't necessarily what people think it is -- like poverty and "class".

 

[russ_watters]

The problem with the "I know it when I see it definition" is that when you are talking about mobility, it matters how many classes there are: obviously the more classes you consider, the higher the degree of mobility. I've seen as few as 3 and as many as 30...

Well, right now the most popular (in the US) seems to be two: The 1% and The 99%. That wouldn't work for this cartoon, though.

Anyway, I think the "I know it when I see it" definition is ok for abstract things like art, music and porn, but when a thing is supposed to be objectively identifiable and have clear consequences, it needs a clear and preferably quantitative definition. At least with "poor", people attach some sort of logic and quantification to it. Even if not everyone agrees on the particular criteria, an identified and consistent criteria enables a starting point for a discussion and tracking the issue through time.

 

[Tobias Funke]

Huh?

Is it really that confusing? You used the word "reality". Define it! Or don't, but don't demand something like a mathematically rigorous definition of a word that just about everyone else seems to comprehend for the sole purpose of trying to deconstruct it with feel-good "counterexamples" and personal anecdotes.

I think you're trying to have it both ways by claiming that other countries have or had classes (or "classes" with scare quotes) but then saying you don't think class is a meaningful concept. It must mean something to you or you would have no basis for saying that, yet you refused to define it.

 

[Czcibor]

Socioeconomic class has been pretty closely tied to overall health and life expectancy. People in lower socioeconomic classes tend to have much greater levels of stress which can be a great contributor to a range of health problems. In addition, life expectancy in the wealthier classes tends to be greater. See here and https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-wsh.aspx . This is why the poor one is portrayed as sick; because it's typical of differences that exist between these two social classes. Less access to medical care, aside from just the stress, is a significant contributor here as well.

I'm impressed that when you compared differences between classes life expectancy you somehow managed to omit differences in caloric intake and cigarettes smoked...

EDIT:
I've got one more idea:
-the poor kid should have come from a single parent household, which according to demographical data would be one of many areas where is a class difference between rich and poor in the US society...
...or that would be thought provoking in the wrong direction? ;)