Land of Disparity

In today's New York Times, David Brooks writes the following:

Income inequality is on the rise. The rich are getting better at passing their advantages on to their kids….Seymour Martin Lipset, the eminent sociologist who died at 84 on New Year’s Eve. Lipset, …was relentlessly empirical, and rested his conclusions [about inequality] on data as well as history and philosophy. He found that Americans have for centuries embraced individualistic, meritocratic, antistatist values, even at times when income inequality was greater than it is today.

Large majorities of Americans have always believed that individuals are responsible for their own success, Lipset reported, while people in other countries are much more likely to point to forces beyond individual control. Sixty-five percent of Americans believe hard work is the key to success; only 12 percent think luck plays a major role. In his “American Exceptionalism” (1996), Lipset pointed out that 78 percent of Americans endorse the view that “the strength of this country today is mostly based on the success of American business.” Fewer than a third of all Americans believe the state has a responsibility to reduce income disparities, compared with 82 percent of Italians. Over 70 percent of Americans believe “individuals should take more responsibility for providing for themselves” whereas most Japanese believe “the state should take more responsibility to ensure everyone is provided for.”…Political movements that run afoul of these individualistic, achievement-oriented values rarely prosper. (“The American Way of Equality")