With Social Insularity, a Sense of Community Is Lost

“I moved here to get away from all of them.” So said a man in the wealthy suburb of Potomac Maryland by way of explaining the lawsuit he and his neighbors had filed against the county government. Was the county proposing to build a half-way house for sex offenders? A new prison? To bus in minority students? No, this “social experiment” was a proposal to build townhouses for sale at $162,000 apiece to middle-income families, defined as those with incomes of up to $60,000.

His objection was straightforward: “I want to be with people at our income level who can appreciate what we appreciate.” A fellow plan opponent insisted, “A person that makes $60,000 doesn’t belong in this neighborhood,” while still another pointed to the sacrifices he and his affluent colleagues had already made: “We pay the property taxes so that the policemen and firemen and all that can live.” But not, apparently, so they can live nearby.

It is hard to know which is more extraordinary: that someone would feel that families making $60,000 are social untouchables, or that they would feel secure enough in this judgment to share it with a reporter.

Though lacking the drama of schoolyard violence or the poignancy of children having children, this story also captures something essential--and alarming--about the state of public values. We are rapidly losing something precious to any society. It’s the idea that we have fundamental moral obligations to one another; that while some of us may rise a little faster or slower, the ultimate goal is to all rise together. Most simply, that we are connected--by interests, values and mutual empathy.

If this kind of insularity were limited to the rich, one could just write if off to old-fashioned snobbery. But it is not. Increasingly, Americans at all socioeconomic levels strive to kick out the rungs on the opportunity ladder beneath them, so others cannot follow. Those remaining below are seen as potential threats or, precisely because of their lower status, as a source of psychic comfort--or both at the same time. Those a rung or two higher may draw resentment, even as those up in the clouds escape scrutiny.

America’s sickness is not greed. It is misdirected resentments: at struggling welfare recipients, perhaps, or union members with good health coverage.

As working-class and middle-class people struggle to make it, they too often attempt to wall off--usually figuratively, sometimes literally--those beneath them. But it’s futile: As the firemen and policemen of Maryland discovered, there is always someone higher up building a wall between you and them. In the end, everyone loses.

America’s culture of possessive individualism is not wholly bad--it has produced great wealth and personal freedom. For that matter, solidarity--when taken to an extreme--can itself create much ugliness. After all, no one is taking to the Florida straits this weekend in a southerly direction.

The most concrete, measurable consequence of the decline in community--and also a contributor to it--is America’s great and growing economic inequality. The evidence is now unassailable: Whether you compare the well-paid and the poorly paid, the well-educated and the less-well-educated, or the wealthy and those without wealth, the gap is growing. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute brings more bad news: The current economic recovery is not reversing the trends.

It is time not only to face the existence of this inequality, but the reality that it constitutes a political and social choice. We have historically preferred the delusion that distributional outcomes are determined by “free-market forces.” If some people make more than others, that reflects the different economic value of their work--which, in turn, reflects their talent, their effort and--when we’re feeling honest--their luck.

But, then, why is the United States so much more unequal than other industrialized societies? Why is the gap between the top and bottom wage earners, for example, nearly twice what it is in France or Germany, which are also free-market economies? Is the distribution of human talent or effort so different here? Of course not. These outcomes are politically determined, the result of tax policies, labor market organization and more.

Two nations, Britain and the United States, responded to slowing economic growth in the late 1970s with policies designed to reward those who owned property. These same two nations are the only ones to have experienced major surges in inequality.

Those who would make a moral claim on behalf of such levels of inequality should do so. I don’t doubt that many Americans will find them compelling--though I expect most will not. But let us dispense with the demonstrably false claim that “human nature” requires it to motivate people.

How does society advance equality? Part of the answer certainly lies in the realm of institutions and social policy. A good starting point would be to make work as rewarding as wealth. The distinction between earned and unearned income is still made in the tax code, but we have lost sight of its moral and economic meanings. We like to talk a lot about the work ethic, yet we don’t act consistent with that idea.

The tax debate today centers on whether we should continue to rely primarily on income-based taxes, or move toward a tax on consumption, such as a value-added tax. This is just a debate over how to get working people--coming or going. Yet, conservatives call for a reduction or elimination of the closest thing we have to a wealth tax, that on capital gains.

Another important step is protecting and strengthening workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively with their employers. The percentage of the work force in unions has declined markedly, down to 11% in the private sector, and is still falling. Even Business Week has concluded this is bad for the health of the nation’s economy.

In addition to building a sense of community among workers, today’s unions are also developing a new form of solidarity: cooperation between workers and management in pursuit of stronger companies and a better U.S. economy. The Dunlop Commission, appointed by Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, has pointed out that innovative forms of worker-management collaboration are particularly likely to survive in “unionized settings in which the union is involved as a joint partner.”

But this crisis of values cannot be solved solely by economics and policy measures. There is much talk today of the problem of declining moral values, and the need to teach our children better. Yet, a sense of mutual responsibility and obligation is rarely mentioned in this discussion. It has been so devastated that few even think to call for its resurrection.

America was founded as a monument to fundamental human equality. Once we were the most egalitarian nation on the planet; now we have become (outside the Third World) among the least. As we strive to return to “traditional” values, let’s make sure this is one of them.

Maybe Michael S. Dukakis was wrong to oppose requiring recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. We could do worse these days--and do--than having young people start each day with a reminder that America is supposed to be “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”