Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the tempest-tossed, to me:I lift my lamp beside the golden door."-Emma Lazarus
The inscription that met thousands of immigrants in New York harbor expresses a fundamental part of our national culture: the notion that this is the land of opportunity -- a place where the poor can find wealth, the persecuted can find respite, and the displaced can find a home. The great melting pot was not only thought to blend nationalities, but also social classes, allowing those condemned to lower castes in other cultures to reach economic and social levels that were closed to them at home.
Is the dream still true today for all Americans, let alone all immigrants? Is this a country of refuge for those who feel their options are limited at home? A look at the statistics indicates a society increasingly polarized between rich and poor. Indeed, a comparison with other industrialized countries may suggest that their poor should think twice before coming to our shores in search of economic opportunity.
Compared with other industrialized countries, the United States has the highest level of inequality between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent of individuals ranked by after-tax incomes. A study released in 1995 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicated that while inequality increased substantially in the United States, Japan, Britain and Australia during the previous decade, the degree of inequality increased only modestly or decreased in 12 other countries studied.
Our concern might abate if it were true that income and social class mobility were higher in the United States than elsewhere -- that the poor can work their way to the top and that the disparity is necessary to reward those who do so. Alas, this vision is largely a cultural myth. Recent studies suggest that the income mobility in the United States ranks in the middle of other industrialized countries, below countries such as Germany, where individuals were more likely to move into higher income categories, despite a smaller disparity between the rich and the poor.
Nor do international statistics prove that the best way to help the poor is to promote total growth, disparity be damned. The absolute incomes of Americans in the bottom fifth of our income distribution are lower than the absolute incomes of residents in the bottom fifth of poorer countries. The poor in many OECD countries are wealthier than the poor in the U.S. Even though economic growth has driven our median income to the highest level in the world, this growth has not led to benefits for our poorest citizens.
What does this mean? It may mean that the U.S. becomes a comfortable place for the wealthy and the privileged, but a lousy place for the poor. It may mean that the dissonance between reality and our ideals becomes so great that we have to change our self-image. It may also mean that the U.S. will lose its position as a leader of moral ideals to the Scandinavians, the Canadians or the Australians. This would be a real loss of world leadership.
