What to Do About Richie Rich
Dear Deborah,
Over the course of our dialogue, we've written a lot about children living in poverty and about inequality. But you've been practically daring me to engage on the question of the other end of the spectrum: the children of the rich. OK, fine, I see that resistance is futile!
In your most recent post, for instance, you argued,
Children are born into whatever they are born into. That some start the six-mile foot "race" at a mile behind the starting line and others a few miles ahead is not fair, not a level playing field. A few in the bottom quintile (3 percent?) overcome the odds. But it would be a lot easier for the message of hope to reach the other 97 percent if they were closer to the starting line, and the rich weren't so incredibly far ahead, looking back at them with disdain. If my childless, working-age grandchildren aren't too proud to take a "hand-out" from their parents, why should the adult children of families who have experienced a lifetime of poverty and racism feel otherwise about taking a helping hand from a society they didn't ask to be born into poor? Alas, many do feel shame.
This reminds me of the old joke about people who were born on third base and thought they'd hit a home run.
If you recall, we started our discussion last spring with a debate about Sean Reardon's finding