The New World Order: Rush Limbaugh vs Empowered Women in the 21st Century

http://www.sociology.org/media-studies/the-new-world-order-rush-limbaugh-vs-empowered-women-in-the-21st-century

What Class Divide? Rich and Poor, Red and Blue Agree on Wealth Distribution

By GARY BELSKY & TOM GILOVICH 

What’s an acceptable level of income inequality in America? Is the current situation far too unfair, as many who lean to the political left maintain? Would ending tax breaks for people earning more than $250,000 a year constitute “class warfare,” as many on the political right contend? Complex questions, to be sure. But some surprising insight into these issues comes from a remarkable recent study by Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University. You might be surprised by the results, whatever your political persuasion or net worth.

Norton and Ariely were motivated by a simple but noble idea. As they explain:

Disagreements about the optimal level of wealth inequality underlie policy debates ranging from taxation to welfare. We attempt to insert the desires of ‘‘regular’’ Americans into these debates, by asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to ‘‘build a better America’’ by constructing distributions with their ideal level of inequality.

In their survey of 5,500 Americans, Norton and Ariely started by asking respondents which of three templates of wealth equality they thought would be best: one representing perfect equality, where the bottom one-fifth of the population owns one-fifth of all wealth, as does the top fifth and every other fifth; one representing the current U.S. situation, where the top fifth controls 84% of all wealth, while the bottom fifth owns 0.1%; and one representing the distribution in Sweden, where the top fifth owns 36% and the bottom fifth controls 11%.

(MORE: Why a Bad Economy is Good for Marriages)

Note that the countries where the last two distributions currently exist — the U.S. and Sweden — were not revealed to the survey participants, which no doubt helps to explain why better than 90% of respondents preferred the wealth distribution in Sweden. Even more striking, this overwhelming preference for Sweden’s income distribution held among people who voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 election as well those who pulled the lever for John Kerry. And it varied only to a minuscule degree with the survey takers’ own incomes.

It’s also worth noting that the average American estimated that the top one-fifth of the U.S. controls about 59% of the country’s wealth—nearly a third less than the reality!

Regardless, Norton and Ariely also wanted to learn the kind of wealth distribution regular Americans would choose if they were creating an economy from scratch. Toward that end, they had respondents indicate what percentage of the country’s overall wealth should ideally belong to the richest one-fifth of the population, what should belong to the next-wealthiest fifth and so on. What they found was that U.S. respondents as a whole prefer a country with much less inequality than the one we now have. On average, respondents said that the top one-fifth of the wealth hierarchy should own 32% of the country’s wealth (vs. the 84% they now have and the 59% people think they have) and the bottom fifth should ideally own 11% (vs. the actual 0.1%).

(MORE: Why America’s Recovery is Slow, Spotty and Anemic)

It’s a fairly revealing set of results. Despite all the talk about a divided America and class warfare, there is a remarkable level of consensus about the ideal wealth distribution across the political spectrum and income levels. The preferred wealth distributions of Bush and Kerry voters were only trivially different—in the direction you would expect—as were the preferences of those making less than $50,000 and those making more than $100,000. For all the alleged discord in this country, there’s an amazing amount of real agreement on what “a better America” would look like.

To be sure, liberals and conservatives often have very different ideas about how that ideal distribution should be achieved. But much of the prattle about class warfare these days comes not from mainstream Americans, but rather from those folks who have the most to gain from pointing out differences even when they may not exist: politicians and the media who cover them.

Read more: http://moneyland.time.com/2012/04/03/what-class-divide-survey-shows-remarkable-agreement-on-wealth-distribution-among-rich-and-poor-left-and-right/#ixzz1rb04RcpC

The New Upper Class and the Real Reason We Dislike Them

By Charles Murray

The Pew Foundation discovered in a recent poll that tensions over inequality in wealth now outrank tensions over race and immigration. But income inequality isn’t really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealth isn’t what sets them apart or creates so much animosity toward them.

Let’s take a guy — call him Hank — who built a successful auto-repair business and expanded it to 30 locations, and now his stake in the business is worth $100 million. He is not just in the 1%; he’s in the top fraction of the 1% — but he’s not part of the new upper class. He went to a second-tier state university, or maybe he didn’t complete college at all. He grew up in a working-class or middle-class home and married a woman who didn’t complete college. He now lives in a neighborhood with other rich people, but they’re mostly other people who got rich the same way he did. (The new upper class considers the glitzy mansions in his suburb to be déclassé.) He has a lot of money, but he doesn’t have power or influence over national culture, politics or economy, nor does he even have any particular influence over the culture, politics or economy of the city where he lives. He’s just rich.

(PHOTOS: Portraits of American Poverty)

The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country. By “the people who run the country,” I mean two sets of people. The first is the small set of people — well under 100,000, by a rigorous definition — who are responsible for the films and television shows you watch, the news you see and read, the success (or failure) of the nation’s leading corporations and financial institutions and the jurisprudence, legislation and regulations produced by government. The second is the broader set, numbering a few million people, who hold comparable positions of influence in the nation’s major cities.

What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly share a common culture that separates them from the rest of the country. Fifty years ago, the people who rose to the most influential positions overwhelmingly had Hank’s kind of background, thoroughly grounded in the American mainstream. Today, people of influence are characterized by college education, often from elite colleges. The men are married not to the girl next door but to highly educated women socialized at the same elite schools who are often as professionally successful as their husbands. They were admitted to this path by a combination of high IQ and personality strengths. They are often the children — and, increasingly, grandchildren — of the upper-middle class and have never known any other kind of life.

(MORE: Why Are the Rich So Interested in Public-School Reform?)

As adults, they have distinctive tastes and preferences and seek out enclaves of others who share them. Their culture incorporates little of the lifestyle or the popular culture of the rest of the nation; in fact, members of the new upper class increasingly look down on that mainstream lifestyle and culture. Meanwhile, their children are so sheltered from the rest of the nation that they barely know what life is like outside Georgetown, Scarsdale, Kenilworth or Atherton. If this divide continues to widen, it will completely destroy what has made America’s national civic culture exceptional: a fluid, mobile society where people from different backgrounds live side by side and come together for the common good.

MORE: What Ever Happened to Upward Mobility?

Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, most recently, of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. The views expressed are solely his own.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/07/the-new-upper-class-and-the-real-reason-we-dislike-them/#ixzz1ratoxR4D

To be a talented starter or reservist with very limited playing time.

Would you rather be a talented starter on a team with a losing record or a reservist with vary limited playing time on a undefeated state championship team? Why or why not?

The cost of education

Keeping the previous two post in mind, how would you propose paying for your new school and why?
Raise taxes only for those that live in the ACGC district, charge tuition, Increase the state contribution to ACGC in effect raising the taxes for the whole state or any other creative funding plan.

Everyone must respond
Only post after you have posted to the previous two topics.

If ACGC were to create a new school...

If ACGC were to create a new school and money was no object, how would you design the school? What would you include? (facilities, classes, desk, chairs, technology, teachers, lunches and so on) Just remember that the goal must be to create an optimal learning environment. Be creative! What are your personal objectives?

Everyone must respond.
Post only after you have posted to the previous topic.

What do you like and dislike about our school?

Make a list of all the things you like and dislike about ACGC High School. Include things like facilities, classes, classrooms, how the school is organized, interactions with students and teaches with out naming names and so on.

Start with this one and move on to the other post:
Everyone must post to this topic.