The Great Gatsby Effect

There is a novel and movie I never tire of seeing again and again, The Great Gatsby. It is about class and the abuses that go with it. 

While it might be class differences will always exist, the great question is how much, if any, opportunity exists for generations to move up in class or more down. We can see, even in the Bible, there is always resistance by upper classes to encourage or even allow upward mobility. In the U.S, we have experienced growing resistance to upward mobility. It is hard to see how we can continue as a world leader unless we unleash lower economic classes so they can compete with upper classes. 

I don't see how any reasonable person can think our country, or any country, is stronger with a rigid class system. If, for example, we need soldiers to defend our country, most of them will come from families without much money. If those soldiers feel they might do better with some other economic or political system they will not defend well this one. We only need look at the unenthusiastic soldiers of the Afghan government. They had little to gain from the current government, maybe a lot to lose, and were lackluster soldiers.

Internal revolutions are not started by citizens happy with their lot. It seems to me revolutions quite often are started, or fueled, by very unequal wealth and incomes. When upper classes think they are outsmarting lower classes by exploiting them with low wages and no opportunity the upper classes are playing with fire. 

I suppose the closest we have come in this country to another civil war was the great depression. Mostly no longer discussed were acts of rebellion by poor farmers and workers. Fortunately Democrats put in place programs that either helped or gave the impression of helping. 

Today we need the same kind of ideas. One of the dramatic results of the Covid layoff period was the smaller number of people willing to return to long hours of mindless work. Restaurants and other industries cannot find workers to get back to previous staffing levels. Perhaps millions of people found they could do without some goods and services and be happier than they were working many hours to feed consumer goods and services with no better future in view.