Give Back Yes, Its Time For The 99 To Give Back To The 1 By .docx

Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The
1%
By Harry Binswanger
Published in Forbes Magazine, September 17, 2013
It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s
the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to
the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth
of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And
beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is
accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value—as
if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-
existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for
iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.
Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The
community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the
“society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting
individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above
them. And when some individual person—a parent, a teacher, a
customer—“gives” something to someone else, it is not an act
of charity, but a trade for value received in return.
It was from love—not charity—that your mother fed you,
bought clothes for you, paid for your education, gave you
presents on your birthday. It was for value received that your
teachers worked day in and day out to instruct you. In
commercial transactions, customers buy a product not to
provide alms to the business, but because they want the product
or service—want it for their own personal benefit and
enjoyment. And most of the time they get it, which is why they
choose to continue patronizing the same businesses.

All proper human interactions are win-win; that’s why the
parties decide to engage in them. It’s not the Henry Fords and
Steve Jobs who exploit people. It’s the Al Capones and Bernie
Madoffs. Voluntary trade, without force or fraud, is the
exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. In trade, both
parties gain.
Each particular individual in the community who contributed to
a man’s rise to wealth was paid at the time—either materially
or, as in the case of parents and friends, spiritually. There is no
debt to discharge. There is nothing to give back, because there
was nothing taken away.
Well, maybe there is—in the other direction. The shoe is on the
other foot. It is “the community” that should give back to the
wealth-creators. It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit
from the 1% than vice-versa. Ayn Rand developed the idea of
“the pyramid of ability,” which John Galt sets forth in Atlas
Shrugged:
When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade,
you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your
work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of
the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.
When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for
your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made
that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built
it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on
the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who
designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for
the work of the inventor who created the product which you
spend your time on making . . .
In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who
creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his
value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he

makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who
works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention,
receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort
that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men
between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the
top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those
below him, but gets nothing except his material payment,
receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value
of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would
starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those
above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is
the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak
of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which
you have damned the strong.
For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the
high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in
their debt.
Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars
or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too
little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to
augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the
year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of
Honor.
Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if
the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to
the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the
moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like
Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward
billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since
profit is the market value of the product minus the market value
of factors used, profit represents the value created.)
Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as

“a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”
That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to
their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on
government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere.
There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of
humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level,
it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS
possible: an envy-ridden moral code that damns success, profit,
and earning money in voluntary exchange.
An end must be put to the inhuman practice of draining the
productive to subsidize the unproductive. An end must be put to
the primordial notion that one’s life belongs to the tribe, to “the
community,” and that the superlative wealth-creators must do
penance for the sin of creating value.
And Ayn Rand is just the lady who can do it.
PAGE
1
New Product Launch: Apple MacBook
Team …
MKT/571 Marketing
Running head: NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH: APPLE MACBOOK
1
NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH: APPLE MACBOOK
7

New Product Launch: Apple MacBook
The launch of a new product is crucial for successful sales. It
involves adequately describing the product services that the
target market can look forward to and analyze some of the
competitors in the domestic and international market. The
strategic plan guides different departments on the role in
promoting a new product. Domestic and international markets
require varying approaches because the cultural, economic and
legal requirements are different. Therefore, the launch plan for
each market will feature unique characteristics that are
appropriate to the potential market. This paper focuses on the
product launch of the new Apple MacBook by defining the
product, creating a SWOT analysis, introducing the target
market, identifying the competition, and evaluating the
product’s potential growth rate.
Product Definition and Description
The Apple MacBook is a brand of laptop computer
manufactured by Apple Inc. The product is known for unique
features that distinguish it from its competitors. For instance,
the Apple MacBook is powered by Core i5 and i7 processors. It
is also designed to use less power while retaining high
performance. The product handles graphic task and games
especially better because it has the Intel HD Graphics 6000
processor (Andre et al., 2010). When the MacBook is connected
to the base station, such as the AirPort Extreme or the AirPort
Time Capsule, it operates three times faster than the preceding
models. These features are unique to the product and solve the
problem of slow performance with little storage space.
The product launch of the Apple MacBook would involve the
use of social media significantly to advertise the Apple
MacBook through a social media campaign, such as videos on
YouTube and reviews from gadget gurus and experts.
International markets would also require product demos in
technology stores to showcase them to the customer directly.
SWOT Analysis

The MacBook strengths lie in its parent company’s strengths for
constant innovation, healthy financial position, strong investors,
and customer loyalty. The company’s financial health has been
outstanding “since the first iPhone was launched, including
about $38 billion in cash assets and $127 billion in long term
marketable securities” (Domke-Damonte, Keels, & Black,
2013).
The primary MacBook’s weakness is its high price compared to
similar products from competitors. Although Apple’s customers
are very loyal, they are susceptible to price competition. The
high price point also deters those customers who are more price
sensitive.
Opportunities for the MacBook are the integration of tablet
features, such as a touch screen, which will help promote
additional market share growth within the international sector,
while also leveraging cloud technology. Apple has “near 20% of
the global PC/tablet market, we foresee this number increasing
in the years ahead, especially as the company gains ground in
China and the rest of the Asia/Pacific region” (Domke-
Damonte, Keels, & Black, 2013).
The threats the MacBook face are the high number of substitute
products available in the market, with the number of
competitors increasing daily, and gross margin pressure. New
technology in the form of E-readers, tablets, and larger phones
can potentially reduce demand for laptop computers like the
MacBook.
Figure 1. SWOT Analysis for the Apple MacBook
Target Market Introduction
The Apple MacBook needs to be introduced because the new
features redefine the notebook’s design by lowering the entry
price by $700, making them more affordable to both university
students and business professionals between the ages of 25 to
34. Apple has invented better methods of manufacturing
notebooks that are more efficient and creates less waste than the
competition, making the MacBook the computer industry’s

greenest notebooks. The MacBook is being introduced at a
starting price of $1,299. The new MacBook will have an
incredibly compact and sleek design by being .95 inches thin,
4.5 pounds, and 13 inch screen, arsenic-free glass, uses 30
percent less power, 3D graphics, LED backlight display, and
vivid, crisp images. These features are what will keep the
MacBook flying off the shelves (Apple, 2008). In introducing
such a durable and reliable product, the MacBook will set itself
apart from other notebooks that are currently being sold on the
market, making it more appealing to the targeted audience.
Apple needs to continue introducing new products in order to
keep the targeted audience engaged and to keep them buying
additional products and accessories from Apple.
Product Competition
Competition in the domestic market comes from Dell Computer
with the Dell Chromebook 2-in-1. The Dell Chromebook 2-in-1
offers an 11.6-inch laptop and a touch screen tablet in one
device, starting at a price of $329.00 (Dell, 2017). Competition
from the international market will be Taiwan’s Acer
Chromebook. This device also offers the 11.6-inch screen as
well as an 8-sec boot time and 7 hours of battery life, starting at
a price of $249.99 (Acer, 2017).
The competitive advantage that Apple has over both products is
brand equity. Consumers are reliant on Apple providing more
than what the competition can offer; thus, consumers will pay
three to four times as much for an Apple product versus other
products in the domestic or international market. From the
product refresh, Apple does deliver with a lightweight and
sleeker design as well as longer battery life than the
competition has to offer; while also offering the same features
that the competition promotes as high product points.
Potential Growth Rate
Apple Inc. has built a product ecosystem integrating their
products into all aspects of people’s lives (Kerr, 2015). The
MacBook comprises of nearly 11% of the annual revenue or
roughly $25.5 billion for the company. This is mainly due to the

low price competition in the notebook market such as Dell,
Lenovo and Asus. Sales of Mac computers have consistently
increased over the years, showing to be a rather stable but yet
growing source of revenue for the company (Statista, 2017).
Apple sold 13.6 million MacBook laptops in 2010 to 18.5
million in 2016 (Statista, 2017). From 2014 through 2016,
Apple sold 57.9 million MacBook laptops with the highest
activity in 2015 at 20.5 million sold. There was a slight drop in
2016, as Apple did not update the products. Despite PC
shipments declining in 2016, the market research firm
International Data Corporation (IDC) said that overall fourth
quarter shipment results indicate a possible PC market rebound
in the New Year (Vanian, 2017). The prior three years of
activity on the MacBook indicates that the product will continue
to be stagnant or grow minimally in the next three years
depending on innovation and new releases. The desktop and
notebook computer market is struggling. Overall shipments of
PC’s dropped 5.7% year over year in 2016 to 260 million,
according to a report by IDC (Vanian, 2017).
Conclusion
The Apple MacBook has the potential to be a game changer in
the personal computing industry. It is important for Apple to
carefully plan and execute the items identified in this paper in
order for the product launch to go well. Even though the
potential growth rate is not positive, capitalizing on the
strengths of the product by appealing to the target market will
ensure the MacBook will enjoy the same success as other Apple
products have demonstrated in the past.
References
Acer. (2017). Acer Chromebook 11 C740. Retrieved from
www.acer.com:
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/professional-
series/chromebook11c740
Andre, B. K., Coster, D. J., De Iuliis, D., Hankey, E., Howarth,
R. P., Ive, J. P. & Russell-Clarke, P. (2010). U.S. Patent No.

D611, 045. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Apple. (2008). Apple; new MacBook family redefines notebook
design. Science Letter, 3277. Retrieved from https://search-
proquest-
com.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/docview/209032290?accountid=
458
Dell. (2017). Chromebook 2-in-1. Retrieved from
www.dell.com: http://www.dell.com/en-
us/work/shop/category/dell-tablets/chromebook-2-in-1
Domke-Damonte, D. J., Keels, J. K., & Black, J. A. (2013).
Helping undergraduates think like a CEO: The APPLE analysis
as a teaching tool for strategic management. E-Journal of
Business Education and Scholarship Teaching, 7(2), 17.
Kerr, J. (2015). Apple Inc. The Henry Fund, Henry B. Tippie
School of Management. Retrieved from
http://tippie.biz.uiowa.edu/henry/reports15/AAPL_fa15.pdf
Statista. (2017). Global Apple Mac Unit Sales from 2006 to 1st
Quarter 2017. Statista. Retrieved from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-
computers
Vanian, J. (2017). Lenovo, HP, And Dell Lead the Shrinking PC
Market. Fortune Tech. Retrieved from
http://fortune.com/2017/01/11/lenovo-hp-dell-pc-market/
3/14/2018 Higher Rates Of Hate Crimes Are Tied To Income
Inequality | FiveThirtyEight
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/higher-rates-of-hate-crimes-
are-tied-to-income-inequality/ 1/6
JAN. 23, 2017 AT 12:18 PM
Higher Rates Of Hate Crimes Are Tied To
Income Inequality

By Maimuna Majumder
Filed under Hate Crimes
Get the data on GitHub
In the 10 days after the 2016 election, nearly 900 hate incidents
were reported to the
Southern Poverty Law Center, averaging out to 90 per day. By
comparison, about 36,000
hate crimes were reported to the FBI from 2010 through 2015 —
an average of 16 per
day.
The numbers we have are tricky; the data is limited by how it’s
collected and can’t
definitively tell us whether there were more hate incidents in
the days after the election
than is typical. What we can do, however, is look for trends
within the numbers, such as
how hate crimes vary by state, as well as what factors within
those states might be tied to
hate crime rates.
An analysis of FBI and Southern Poverty Law Center data
revealed one factor that stood
out as a predictor of hate crimes and hate incidents in a given
state: income inequality.

States with more inequality were more likely to have higher
rates of hate incidents per
capita. This was true both before and after the election, and the
connection held even
after we controlled for other relevant variables.
The federal government doesn’t track hate crimes systematically
(agencies report to the
FBI voluntarily), and the Southern Poverty Law Center uses
media accounts and people’s
self-reports to assess the situation. Moreover, FBI hate crimes
data for 2016 won’t be
released for another several months, and the Southern Poverty
Law Center didn’t collect
data before the 2016 election. However, both data sources are
publicly available and easy
to navigate, which means they’re some of the best we have.
But they also have biases baked in.
The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program collects hate crime
data from law
enforcement agencies. But because the data is submitted
voluntarily, it’s unclear how
comprehensive the data set is. We don’t have data from Hawaii,
for instance. Moreover,

the UCR Program collects data on only prosecutable hate
crimes, which make up a
fraction of hate incidents (which includes non-prosecutable
offenses, such as circulation
of white nationalist recruitment materials on college campuses).
On the other hand, the Southern Poverty Law Center data —
which comes from a
combination of curated media accounts and self-reported form
entries — includes both
hate crimes and non-prosecutable hate incidents. Moreover,
heightened news coverage
of hate incidents after the election may have encouraged people
to report incidents that
they would not have otherwise reported. This is called
awareness bias — a trend that is
well-established in epidemiology, environmental health and
other fields of research that
frequently use self-reported data.
Despite these limitations, both data sets reveal that hate
incidents aren’t uniformly

distributed across the United States. In other words, a greater
number of hate incidents
were reported in some states (per 100,000 people) than in others
— both according to
the SPLC after the election and the FBI before it.
So why do some states see so many more reported hate incidents
than others?
To try to answer this question, we collected data on key
socioeconomic factors for each
state, including indicators for education (percent of adults 25
and older with at least a
high school degree, as of 2009), diversity (percent nonwhite
population and percent
noncitizen population, 2015), geographic heterogeneity (percent
population in
metropolitan areas, 2015), economic health (median household
income, 2016 seasonally
adjusted unemployment, September 2016, percent poverty

among white people. 2015,
and income inequality as measured by the Gini index, 2015),
and what percent of the
population voted for Donald Trump. (You can find the data on
GitHub here.)
We then used multivariate linear regression to figure out which
of these variables — if
any — were significant determinants of population-adjusted
hate incidents across the
country. By including a variety of socioeconomic indicators in
the model, this type of
analysis allowed us to assess how much independent impact
each had on hate incidents
per capita. (This method is essential when the determinants
themselves are correlated,
such as unemployment and income.) Finally, to determine if
there were any notable
1

shifts in determinants after the election, we ran the model twice:
once on pre-election
data from the FBI and once on post-election data from the
SPLC.
After controlling for these variables, we found that income
inequality was the most
significant determinant of population-adjusted hate crimes and
hate incidents across the
United States — for both pre-election and post-election data
sets.
Though the magnitude associated with the other determinants
varied slightly between
the two model outputs, the direction of the correlation was
consistent. Furthermore,
after conducting further analysis, only two variables remained
significant in both model
outputs: income inequality and percent population with a high
school degree.
Income inequality is a known determinant for neighborhood
violence and violence in
general, of which hate incidents may be considered a special
subset. In an economy that
increasingly demands a college degree, high-school-educated
individuals aren’t able to

earn as much as their college-educated neighbors. This —
combined with misplaced
blame on targeted minority groups — may provide sufficient
motivation for hate
incidents against them.
“It’s typically not your objective situation that makes you angry
and resentful, but rather
your situation relative to others you see around you,” said Mark
Potok, editor-in-chief of
the SPLC’s journal, the Intelligence Report. “So, where income
inequality is very high, so
is anger and resentment against those ‘other’ people who you
fear are doing better than
you.”
Our analysis has limitations, however. Although we controlled
for many potential
confounders, correlation between income inequality and hate
crimes or hate incidents
doesn’t necessarily imply causation. Socioeconomic drivers for
hate incidents at the
community level may differ from the state-level indicators that
we identified here.
Moreover, it is likely that neither data set is truly representative
of hate incidents across

the United States, and it’s possible that whether people report
or don’t report these
incidents is different among states. That could mean that states
with law enforcement
agencies and residents that are more likely to report hate crimes
and hate incidents are
overrepresented in the FBI and SPLC data sets, while those that
are less likely to report
are underrepresented.
Nevertheless, the fact that both data sets yielded similar results
suggests that the
findings are robust, and future work using additional data
sources may provide further
insight into determinants for both pre-election and post-election
hate incidents in the
2
3
4

United States. Promising options include annual National Crime
Victimization Survey
data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and post-election hate
incident data from
Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing platform designed for data collection
during times of crisis,
which could supplement the FBI and SPLC data sets.
“A key difference is that the FBI data are based on police
records or crimes known to and
recorded by the police, while the [National Crime Victimization
Survey] is a self-report
survey asking respondents about crimes that are both reported
and not reported to the
police,” said Lynn Langton, chief of victimization statistics at
the Bureau of Justice
Statistics. Because a majority of hate crimes go unreported to
law enforcement, the
survey “casts a broader net,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ushahidi’s Document Hate project — working with
ProPublica and other
collaborators — aims to make it easier for people to report hate
incidents. By allowing
users to self-report via Twitter, text message and email, in
addition to the more
traditional form entry approach used by SPLC, Document Hate
“meets people where
they already are,” Ushahidi Chief Operating Officer Nat
Manning said. Moreover, unlike
the SPLC data — which documents only the first 10 days after
the election — Ushahidi
plans to continue collecting hate incident data. That’s
particularly useful because some

groups expect there to be hate incidents in the wake oftied to
Inauguration Day, as well.
The role that the Trump presidency may play in the future of
hate incidents in the United
States remains uncertain. While it is unclear whether hate
incidents truly increased after
the election, our preliminary analysis suggests that the same
factors that were linked to
hate incidents before the election were also linked to them
afterward. In the United
States, income inequality likely serves as a catalyzing condition
for hate incidents, and —
if economic disparity increases under Trump’s administration,
as some economists
expect — this new era may serve to enable them.
CORRECTION (Jan. 24, 7 p.m.): A previous version of this
article mischaracterized
the data used in the analysis. The analysis included eight days’
worth of post-election
data, not 10. The article has been updated with the data from all
10 days. Also, the
previous version said that a 1 percent increase in Gini index and
a 1 percent increase in
population with a high school degree were associated with more
hate crimes; both
should have said 1 percentage point.
Footnotes

We used existing literature on factors tied to neighborhood
violence to help inform our
variable choices.
2. Because state-level socioeconomic factors didn’t vary
considerably over the years studied
(2010 to 2015 for the FBI hate crime data and 2016 for the
SPLC hate incident data), the same
input data was used for both versions of the model. UCR
Program catchment populations —
the fraction of the total statewide population that is covered by
participating law enforcement
agencies — and 2010 Census data for state populations were
used to adjust the FBI and SPLC
data to crimes and incidents per 100,000 people, respectively.
3. Backward-stepwise elimination — in which variables that
aren’t significantly correlated with
hate crimes or hate incidents are removed from the model one at
a time until only significant
determinants are left — was conducted to trim the model
outputs.
4. A 1 percentage point increase in population with a high
school degree was associated with 0.31
more hate crimes per 100,000 people per year (on average from
2010 to 2015) and 0.05 more
hate incidents per 100,000 people in the 10 days after the
election. A 1 percentage point
increase in Gini index was associated with 0.64 more hate
crimes per 100,000 people per year
(on average from 2010 to 2015) and 0.09 more hate incidents
per 100,000 people in the 10

days after the election. A Gini index of 0 percent signifies
complete income equality, where
each person has the same income as the next. Differential effect
size may be attributable to
differences in population-adjustment methods used for the FBI
and SPLC data; the UCR
Program catchment population in a given state comprises a
fraction of the total population for
said state.
The Washington Post
Wonkblog
These political scientists may
have just discovered why U.S.
politics are a disaster
By By Ana SwansonAna Swanson
October 7, 2015October 7, 2015
There's a lot of disgust in America with politicians' inability to
get things done. In the race to win the Republican
presidentialThere's a lot of disgust in America with politicians'
inability to get things done. In the race to win the Republican
presidential
nomination, that disgust has so far benefited outsider
candidates. Non-career politicians Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina
and Bennomination, that disgust has so far benefited outsider
candidates. Non-career politicians Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina
and Ben

Carson have all promised to ride in and fix Washington.Carson
have all promised to ride in and fix Washington.
But new research by Nolan McCarty, a professor at Princeton
University, and other political scientists suggests this disgust —
But new research by Nolan McCarty, a professor at Princeton
University, and other political scientists suggests this disgust —
and America's political dysfunction — won't be that easy to
fix. Working with political scientist Boris Shor and
economist Johnand America's political dysfunction — won't be
that easy to fix. Working with political scientist Boris Shor and
economist John
Voorheis, Voorheis, McCarty has released a new studyMcCarty
has released a new study that shows that the growing
ideological gap between the Republican and that shows that
the growing ideological gap between the Republican and
Democratic parties — a common obstacle to getting anything
done in Washington — is not just due to politicians'
incompetenceDemocratic parties — a common obstacle to
getting anything done in Washington — is not just due to
politicians' incompetence
or their unwillingness to work together. It's due, at least in part,
to a deeper, structural problem: the widening gap between theor
their unwillingness to work together. It's due, at least in part, to
a deeper, structural problem: the widening gap between the
rich and poor.rich and poor.
McCarty says he shares some of the disgust that Americans feel
about polarized politics and gridlock in Washington. "But
IMcCarty says he shares some of the disgust that Americans feel
about polarized politics and gridlock in Washington. "But I

think it’s important for readers and voters to understand . . .
that these problems are not just simply because career
politiciansthink it’s important for readers and voters to
understand . . . that these problems are not just simply because
career politicians
are acting in bad faith or, as Donald Trump would say, they’re
stupid losers. They’re really deep structural problems," he
says.are acting in bad faith or, as Donald Trump would say,
they’re stupid losers. They’re really deep structural
problems," he says.
How the widening gap between the rich and poor hasHow the wi
dening gap between the rich and poor has
changed politics in Americachanged politics in America
By looking at extensive data on U.S. states over the past few
decades, the researchers show that the widening gap between
theBy looking at extensive data on U.S. states over the past few
decades, the researchers show that the widening gap between
the
rich and the poor in recent decades has moved state legislatures
toward the right overall, while also increasing the
ideologicalrich and the poor in recent decades has moved state
legislatures toward the right overall, while also increasing the
ideological
distance between those on the right and those on the
left.distance between those on the right and those on the left.
This map below shows the Gini coefficient, a measure of
income inequality, for each state going back to 1997. A lower
GiniThis map below shows the Gini coefficient, a measure of

income inequality, for each state going back to 1997. A lower
Gini
figure indicates that people in the state are earning more equal
incomes, while a higher one (marked here in darker green)figure
indicates that people in the state are earning more equal
incomes, while a higher one (marked here in darker green)
shows that incomes are more unequal. (You can disregard
the axes here — they just show latitude and longitude.)shows
that incomes are more unequal. (You can disregard the axes
here — they just show latitude and longitude.)
The paper argues that this trend has gone hand in hand with
the growing political divide. The states that have the highest
levelsThe paper argues that this trend has gone hand in hand
with the growing political divide. The states that have the
highest levels
of inequality, or the fastest growth in equality, have also tended
to see the most political polarization, the paper says.of
inequality, or the fastest growth in equality, have also tended to
see the most political polarization, the paper says.
Using a scale of state legislator ideology that looks at annual
surveys of the beliefs of candidates since the mid-1990s,
theUsing a scale of state legislator ideology that looks at annual
surveys of the beliefs of candidates since the mid-1990s, the
researchers map where Democrats have shifted to the left and
Republicans have shifted to the right at the state
level. The mapresearchers map where Democrats have shifted to
the left and Republicans have shifted to the right at the state
level. The map

below gives an ideological "score" in each state for each
chamber — in most states, a House of Representatives and
a Senate.below gives an ideological "score" in each state for
each chamber — in most states, a House of Representatives and
a Senate.
A more negative score and a deeper blue color on the map
indicate that the state chamber is more liberal, while a positive
scoreA more negative score and a deeper blue color on the map
indicate that the state chamber is more liberal, while a positive
score
and deeper red color show the state is more conservative. You
can see that blue states have become bluer and red states
redderand deeper red color show the state is more conservative.
You can see that blue states have become bluer and red states
redder
since 1997. A look at party composition in each state shows the
same trend.since 1997. A look at party composition in each
state shows the same trend.
It's not just that these two trends of inequality and polarization
are happening simultaneously. The researchers use statisticalIt's
not just that these two trends of inequality and polarization are
happening simultaneously. The researchers use statistical
methods to eliminate other factors and show that a state's
income inequality has a large, positive and methods to eliminate
other factors and show that a state's income inequality has a
large, positive and causalcausal effect on its effect on its
political polarization. Furthermore, these results have increased
in magnitude in recent years and seem to be concentrated
inpolitical polarization. Furthermore, these results have

increased in magnitude in recent years and seem to be
concentrated in
the states that are "reddest" by the end of the sample.the states
that are "reddest" by the end of the sample.
In other words, growing inequality is a strong force pushing
both parties farther from the center.In other words, growing
inequality is a strong force pushing both parties farther from the
center.
The paper doesn't specifically say why this happens, except that
politics gets more polarized with each election. It appears
thatThe paper doesn't specifically say why this happens, except
that politics gets more polarized with each election. It appears
that
people on either end of the economic spectrum have
been developing even more different political preferences and
electingpeople on either end of the economic spectrum have
been developing even more different political preferences and
electing
people to represent those preferences.people to represent those
preferences.
Interestingly, however, the study shows that inequality is
affecting the two parties in different ways.Interestingly,
however, the study shows that inequality is affecting the two
parties in different ways.
First, the researchers find that Democrats as a whole have
shifted farther to the left than the Republicans have to the right,
withFirst, the researchers find that Democrats as a whole have
shifted farther to the left than the Republicans have to the right,
with

very liberal Democrats becoming even more liberal. But at the
level of the state legislature, they find that ideology as a
wholevery liberal Democrats becoming even more liberal.
But at the level of the state legislature, they find that ideology
as a whole
has shifted slightly to the right. The reason is that there has
been a change in the partisan balance, with Republicans
winninghas shifted slightly to the right. The reason is that there
has been a change in the partisan balance, with Republicans
winning
more seats from moderate Democrats over time.more seats from
moderate Democrats over time.
"As the Democrat party has shrunk nationally over the course of
the last 15 years, the disproportionate effect has been the"As
the Democrat party has shrunk nationally over the course of the
last 15 years, the disproportionate effect has been the
replacement of moderate Democrats with Republicans, and that
has tended to happen most often in states with high levels
ofreplacement of moderate Democrats with Republicans, and
that has tended to happen most often in states with high levels
of
inequality, or where inequality is growing the fastest,” McCarty
said.inequality, or where inequality is growing the fastest,”
McCarty said.
The map below, which shows the percentage of seats held by
Republicans, illustrates how that has happened. The percentage
ofThe map below, which shows the percentage of seats held by
Republicans, illustrates how that has happened. The percentage
of

seats held by Republicans has increased, especially through the
South and middle America, since 1997:seats held by
Republicans has increased, especially through the South and
middle America, since 1997:
What this means for America's future, and for votersWhat this
means for America's future, and for voters
This study offers evidence that inequality leads to political
polarization. Though they have yet to produce definitive
findings, theThis study offers evidence that inequality leads to
political polarization. Though they have yet to produce
definitive findings, the
researchers also believe, as many others in their field do, that
political polarization also in turn produces more
inequality,researchers also believe, as many others in their field
do, that political polarization also in turn produces more
inequality,
creating a vicious feedback loop of inequality and polarized
politics.creating a vicious feedback loop of inequality and
polarized politics.
How does that work? Not only are more conservative lawmakers
less likely to favor redistribution, the political gridlock thatHow
does that work? Not only are more conservative lawmakers less
likely to favor redistribution, the political gridlock that
results from having a more polarized system makes it harder to
pass bills that might reduce income inequality, such asresults
from having a more polarized system makes it harder to pass
bills that might reduce income inequality, such as

increasing the minimum wage, strengthening union bargaining
power, or increasing redistribution through welfare,
researchersincreasing the minimum wage, strengthening union
bargaining power, or increasing redistribution through welfare,
researchers
say.say.
The research suggests that political polarization is not just a
product of gerrymandering, the way districts are drawn, or
causedThe research suggests that political polarization is not
just a product of gerrymandering, the way districts are drawn,
or caused
by features of the state political system, such as having closed
partisan primaries, McCarty says.by features of the state
political system, such as having closed partisan primaries,
McCarty says.
Instead, he argues that America's political polarization is
a reflection of bigger, broader changes in the United States,
inInstead, he argues that America's political polarization is
a reflection of bigger, broader changes in the United States, in
particular that the country has become much more diverse in
terms of its economic, racial and ethnic makeup than it was in
theparticular that the country has become much more diverse in
terms of its economic, racial and ethnic makeup than it was in
the
1950s. The diversity, unsurprisingly, has a direct impact on the
political system, and we have yet to figure out how to repair
the1950s. The diversity, unsurprisingly, has a direct impact on
the political system, and we have yet to figure out how to repair
the

system to reflect a more diverse society, McCarty says.system
to reflect a more diverse society, McCarty says.
So what does this mean for average voters in the near term? For
one, they should be skeptical of candidates who promise anSo
what does this mean for average voters in the near term? For
one, they should be skeptical of candidates who promise an
easy fix to political dysfunction in Washington.easy fix to
political dysfunction in Washington.
"These are deep, complicated problems, and people need to
think big picture about what underlies them. They weren’t
solved by"These are deep, complicated problems, and people
need to think big picture about what underlies them. They
weren’t solved by
electing Barack Obama, they’re probably not going to be solved
by electing Donald Trump," McCarty says.electing Barack
Obama, they’re probably not going to be solved by electing
Donald Trump," McCarty says.
You might also like: You might also like:
What it’s like to be a part of the world’s richest 1 percent, in 15
incredible photosWhat it’s like to be a part of the world’s
richest 1 percent, in 15 incredible photos
The growing wealth gap that nobody is talking aboutThe
growing wealth gap that nobody is talking about
What people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look
likeWhat people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look like
+ 515 Comments

Ana Swanson covers the economy, trade and the Federal Reserv
e. . Follow @anaswanson
The following article from the January 15, 2018 Issue of The
New Yorker magazine. It explores recent research findings
showing that much of the damage done by being poor comes
from feeling poor.
The Psychology of Inequality
By Elizabeth Kolbert
In 2016, the highest-paid employee of the State of California
was Jim Mora, the head coach of U.C.L.A.’s football team. (He
has since been fired.) That year, Mora pulled in $3.58 million.
Coming in second, with a salary of $2.93 million, was Cuonzo
Martin, at the time the head coach of the men’s basketball team
at the University of California, Berkeley. Victor Khalil, the
chief dentist at the Department of State Hospitals, made six
hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars; Anne Neville, the
director of the California Research Bureau, earned a hundred
and thirty-five thousand dollars; and John Smith, a seasonal
clerk at the Franchise Tax Board, earned twelve thousand nine
hundred dollars.
I learned all this from a database maintained by the Sacramento
Bee. The database, which is open to the public, is searchable by
name and by department, and contains precise salary
information for the more than three hundred thousand people
who work for California. Today, most state employees probably
know about the database. But that wasn’t the case when it was
first created, in 2008. This made possible an experiment.
The experiment, conducted by four economists, was designed to
test rival theories of inequity. According to one theory, the so-
called rational-updating model, people assess their salaries in
terms of opportunities. If they discover that they are being paid
less than their co-workers, they will “update” their projections

about future earnings and conclude that their prospects of a
raise are good. Conversely, people who learn that they earn
more than their co-workers will be discouraged by that news.
They’ll update their expectations in the opposite direction.
According to a rival theory, people respond to inequity not
rationally but emotionally. If they discover that they’re being
paid less than their colleagues, they won’t see this as a signal to
expect a raise but as evidence that they are underappreciated.
(The researchers refer to this as the “relative income” model.)
By this theory, people who learn that their salaries are at the
low end will be pissed. Those who discover that they’re at the
high end will be gratified.
The economists conducting the study sent an e-mail to
thousands of employees at three University of California
schools—Santa Cruz, San Diego, and Los Angeles—alerting
them to the existence of the Bee’s database. This nudge
produced a spike in visits to the Web site as workers, in effect,
peeked at one another’s paychecks.
A few days later, the researchers sent a follow-up e-mail, this
one with questions. “How satisfied are you with your job?” it
asked. “How satisfied are you with your wage/salary on this
job?” They also sent the survey to workers who hadn’t been
nudged toward the database. Then they compared the results.
What they found didn’t conform to either theory, exactly.
As the relative-income model predicted, those who’d learned
that they were earning less than their peers were ticked off.
Compared with the control group, they reported being less
satisfied with their jobs and more interested in finding new
ones. But the relative-income model broke down when it came
to those at the top. Workers who discovered that they were
doing better than their colleagues evinced no pleasure. They
were merely indifferent. As the economists put it in a paper that
they eventually wrote about the study, access to the database
had a “negative effect on workers paid below the median for
their unit and occupation” but “no effect on workers paid above
median.”

The message the economists took from their research was that
employers “have a strong incentive” to keep salaries secret.
Assuming that California workers are representative of the
broader population, the experiment also suggests a larger, more
disturbing conclusion. In a society where economic gains are
concentrated at the top—a society, in other words, like our
own—there are no real winners and a multitude of losers.
Keith Payne, a psychologist, remembers the exact moment when
he learned he was poor. He was in fourth grade, standing in line
in the cafeteria of his elementary school, in western Kentucky.
Payne didn’t pay for meals—his family’s income was low
enough that he qualified for free school lunch—and normally
the cashier just waved him through. But on this particular day
there was someone new at the register, and she asked Payne for
a dollar twenty-five, which he didn’t have. He was mortified.
Suddenly, he realized that he was different from the other kids,
who were walking around with cash in their pockets.
“That moment changed everything for me,” Payne writes, in
“The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We
Think, Live, and Die.” Although in strictly economic terms
nothing had happened—Payne’s family had just as much (or as
little) money as it had the day before—that afternoon in the
cafeteria he became aware of which rung on the ladder he
occupied. He grew embarrassed about his clothes, his way of
talking, even his hair, which was cut at home with a bowl.
“Always a shy kid, I became almost completely silent at
school,” he recalls.
Payne is now a professor at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill. He has come to believe that what’s really damaging
about being poor, at least in a country like the United States—
where, as he notes, even most people living below the poverty
line possess TVs, microwaves, and cell phones—is the
subjective experience of feeling poor. This feeling is not limited
to those in the bottom quintile; in a world where people measure
themselves against their neighbors, it’s possible to earn good
money and still feel deprived. “Unlike the rigid columns of

numbers that make up a bank ledger, status is always a moving
target, because it is defined by ongoing comparisons to others,”
Payne writes.
Feeling poor, meanwhile, has consequences that go well beyond
feeling. People who see themselves as poor make different
decisions, and, generally, worse ones. Consider gambling.
Spending two bucks on a Powerball ticket, which has roughly a
one-in-three-hundred-million chance of paying out, is never a
good bet. It’s especially ill-advised for those struggling to make
ends meet. Yet low-income Americans buy a disproportionate
share of lottery tickets, so much so that the whole enterprise is
sometimes referred to as a “tax on the poor.”
One explanation for this is that poor people engage in riskier
behavior, which is why they are poor in the first place. By
Payne’s account, this way of thinking gets things backward. He
cites a study on gambling performed by Canadian psychologists.
After asking participants a series of probing questions about
their finances, the researchers asked them to rank themselves
along something called the Normative Discretionary Income
Index. In fact, the scale was fictitious and the scores were
manipulated. It didn’t matter what their finances actually looked
like: some of the participants were led to believe that they had
more discretionary income than their peers and some were led to
believe the opposite. Finally, participants were given twenty
dollars and the choice to either pocket it or gamble it on a
computer card game. Those who believed they ranked low on
the scale were much more likely to risk the money on the card
game. Or, as Payne puts it, “feeling poor made people more
willing to roll the dice.”
In another study, this one conducted by Payne and some
colleagues, participants were divided into two groups and asked
to make a series of bets. For each bet, they were offered a low-
risk / low-reward option (say, a hundred-per-cent chance of
winning fifteen cents) and a high-risk / high-reward option (a
ten-per-cent chance of winning a dollar-fifty). Before the
exercise began, the two groups were told different stories (once

again, fictitious) about how previous participants had fared. The
first group was informed that the spread in winnings between
the most and the least successful players was only a few cents,
the second that the gap was a lot wider. Those in the second
group went on to place much chancier bets than those in the
first. The experiment, Payne contends, “provided the first
evidence that inequality itself can cause risky behavior.”
People’s attitude toward race, too, he argues, is linked to the
experience of deprivation. Here Payne cites work done by
psychologists at N.Y.U., who offered subjects ten dollars with
which to play an online game. Some of the subjects were told
that, had they been more fortunate, they would have received a
hundred dollars. The subjects, all white, were then shown pairs
of faces and asked which looked “most black.” All the images
were composites that had been manipulated in various ways.
Subjects in the “unfortunate” group, on average, chose images
that were darker than those the control group picked. “Feeling
disadvantaged magnified their perception of racial differences,”
Payne writes.
“The Broken Ladder” is full of studies like this. Some are more
convincing than others, and, not infrequently, Payne’s
inferences seem to run ahead of the data. But the wealth of
evidence that he amasses is compelling. People who are made to
feel deprived see themselves as less competent. They are more
susceptible to conspiracy theories. And they are more likely to
have medical problems. A study of British civil servants showed
that where people ranked themselves in terms of status was a
better predictor of their health than their education level or their
actual income was.
All of which leads Payne to worry about where we’re headed. In
terms of per-capita income, the U.S. ranks near the top among
nations. But, thanks to the growing gap between the one per
cent and everyone else, the subjective effect is of widespread
impoverishment. “Inequality so mimics poverty in our minds
that the United States of America . . . has a lot of features that
better resemble a developing nation than a superpower,” he

writes.
Rachel Sherman is a professor of sociology at the New School,
and, like Payne, she studies inequality. But Sherman’s focus is
much narrower. “Although images of the wealthy proliferate in
the media, we know very little about what it is like to be
wealthy in the current historical moment,” she writes in the
introduction to “Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence.”
Sherman’s first discovery about the wealthy is that they don’t
want to talk to her. Subjects who agree to be interviewed
suddenly stop responding to her e-mails. One woman begs off,
saying she’s “swamped” with her children; Sherman
subsequently learns that the kids are at camp. After a lot of
legwork, she manages to sit down with fifty members of the
haut monde in and around Manhattan. Most have family
incomes of more than five hundred thousand dollars a year, and
about half have incomes of more than a million dollars a year or
assets of more than eight million dollars, or both. (At least, this
is what they tell Sherman; after a while, she comes to believe
that they are underreporting their earnings.) Her subjects are so
concerned about confidentiality that Sherman omits any details
that might make them identifiable to those who have visited
their brownstones or their summer places.
“I poked into bathrooms with soaking tubs or steam showers” is
as far as she goes. “I conducted interviews in open kitchens,
often outfitted with white Carrara marble or handmade tiles.”
A second finding Sherman makes, which perhaps follows from
the first, is that the privileged prefer not to think of themselves
that way. One woman, who has an apartment overlooking the
Hudson, a second home in the Hamptons, and a household
income of at least two million dollars a year, tells Sherman that
she considers herself middle class. “I feel like, no matter what
you have, somebody has about a hundred times that,” she
explains. Another woman with a similar household income,
mostly earned by her corporate-lawyer husband, describes her
family’s situation as “fine.”
“I mean, there are all the bankers that are heads and heels, you

know, way above us,” she says. A third woman, with an even
higher household income—two and a half million dollars a
year—objects to Sherman’s use of the word “affluent.”
“ ‘Affluent’ is relative,” the woman observes. Some friends of
hers have recently flown off on vacation on a private plane.
“That’s affluence,” she says.
This sort of talk dovetails neatly with Payne’s work. If
affluence is in the eye of the beholder, then even the super-rich,
when they compare their situation with that of the ultra-rich,
can feel sorry for themselves. The woman who takes exception
to the word “affluent” makes a point of placing herself at the
“very, very bottom” of the one per cent. “The disparity between
the bottom of the 1 percent and the top of the 1 percent is
huge,” she observes.
Sherman construes things differently. Her subjects, she
believes, are reluctant to categorize themselves as affluent
because of what the label implies. “These New Yorkers are
trying to see themselves as ‘good people,’ ” she writes. “Good
people work hard. They live prudently, within their means. . . .
They don’t brag or show off.” At another point, she observes
that she was “surprised” at how often her subjects expressed
conflicted emotions about spending. “Over time, I came to see
that these were often moral conflicts about having privilege in
general.”
Whatever its source—envy or ethics—the discomfort that
Sherman documents matches the results of the University of
California study. Inequity is, apparently, asymmetrical. For all
the distress it causes those on the bottom, it brings relatively
little joy to those at the top.
As any parent knows, children watch carefully when goodies are
divvied up. A few years ago, a team of psychologists set out to
study how kids too young to wield the word “unfair” would
respond to unfairness. They recruited a bunch of preschoolers
and grouped them in pairs. The children were offered some
blocks to play with and then, after a while, were asked to put
them away. As a reward for tidying up, the kids were given

stickers. No matter how much each child had contributed to the
cleanup effort, one received four stickers and the other two.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
children shouldn’t be expected to grasp the idea of counting
before the age of four. But even three-year-olds seemed to
understand when they’d been screwed. Most of the two-sticker
recipients looked enviously at the holdings of their partners.
Some said they wanted more. A number of the four-sticker
recipients also seemed dismayed by the distribution, or perhaps
by their partners’ protests, and handed over some of their
winnings. “We can . . . be confident that these actions were
guided by an understanding of equality, because in all cases
they offered one and only one sticker, which made the outcomes
equal,” the researchers reported. The results, they concluded,
show that “the emotional response to unfairness emerges very
early.”
If this emotional response is experienced by toddlers, it
suggests that it may be hardwired—a product of evolution rather
than of culture. Scientists at the Yerkes National Primate
Research Center, outside Atlanta, work with brown capuchin
monkeys, which are native to South America. The scientists
trained the monkeys to exchange a token for a slice of
cucumber. Then they paired the monkeys up, and offered one a
better reward—a grape. The monkeys that continued to get
cucumbers, which earlier they’d munched on cheerfully, were
incensed. Some stopped handing over their tokens. Others
refused to take the cucumbers or, in a few cases, threw the
slices back at the researchers. Like humans, capuchin monkeys,
the researchers wrote, “seem to measure reward in relative
terms.”
Preschoolers, brown capuchin monkeys, California state
workers, college students recruited for psychological
experiments—everyone, it seems, resents inequity. This is true
even though what counts as being disadvantaged varies from
place to place and from year to year. As Payne points out,
Thomas Jefferson, living at Monticello without hot water or

overhead lighting, would, by the standards of contemporary
America, be considered “poorer than the poor.” No doubt
inequity, which, by many accounts, is a precondition for
civilization, has been a driving force behind the kinds of
innovations that have made indoor plumbing and electricity, not
to mention refrigeration, central heating, and Wi-Fi, come, in
the intervening centuries, to seem necessities in the U.S.
Still, there are choices to be made. The tax bill recently
approved by Congress directs, in ways both big and small, even
more gains to the country’s plutocrats. Supporters insist that the
measure will generate so much prosperity that the poor and the
middle class will also end up benefitting. But even if this
proves true—and all evidence suggests that it will not—the
measure doesn’t address the real problem. It’s not greater
wealth but greater equity that will make us all feel richer. ♦
Background: In the late 1990s, as welfare reform was forcing
many people into low-wage jobs, she left her life as a
professional writer with a PhD to work as a waitress, a maid,
and a Wal-Mart employee to see what it took to survive on
minimum wage. She discovered the ingenuity and tenacity of
the working poor—as well as the abuses heaped upon them.
This excerpt from the book she wrote about the experience
details Ehrenreich's time working for a maid service. While
Ehrenreich speaks only of her own experience, we can use it as
a case study. Think about how inequality effects Ehrenreich and
her coworkers—and what that might teach us about inequality in
general. Pay special attention to the inequality between the
maid and the wealthy homeowners. What type of relationships
does inequality produce?
"Scrubbing in Maine" (from Nickel and Dimed)
By Barbara Ehrenreich
Published in2001

Liza, a good-natured woman in her thirties who is my first team
leader, explains that we are given only so many minutes per
house, ranging from under sixty for a 1-1/2-bathroom apartment
to two hundred or more for a multi-bathroom "first timer." I'd
like to know why anybody worries about [the official] time
limits if we're being paid by the hour but hesitate to display
anything that might be interpreted as attitude. As we get to each
house, Liza assigns our tasks, and I cross my fingers to ward off
bathrooms and vacuuming. Even dusting, though, gets aerobic
under pressure, and after about an hour of it—reaching to get
door tops, crawling along floors to wipe baseboards, standing
on my bucket to attack the higher shelves—I wouldn't mind
sitting down with a tall glass of water. But as soon as you
complete your assigned task, you report to the team leader to be
assigned to help someone else. Once or twice, when the normal
process of evaporation is deemed too slow, I am assigned to dry
a scrubbed floor by putting rags under my feet and skating
around on it. Usually, by the time I get out to the car and am
dumping the dirty water used on floors and wringing out rags,
the rest of the team is already in the car with the motor running.
Liza assures me that they've never left anyone behind at a
house, not even, presumably, a very new person whom nobody
knows.
In my interview, I had been promised a thirty-minute lunch
break, but this turns out to be a five-minute pit stop at a
convenience store, if that. I bring my own sandwich—the same
turkey breast and cheese every day—as do a couple of the
others; the rest eat convenience store fare, a bagel or doughnut
salvaged from our free breakfast, or nothing at all. The two
older married women I'm teamed up with eat best-sandwiches
and fruit. Among the younger women, lunch consists of a slice
of pizza, a "pizza pocket" (a roll of dough surrounding some
pizza sauce), or a small bag of chips. Bear in mind we are not
office workers, sitting around idling at the basal metabolic rate.
A poster on the wall in the office cheerily displays the number
of calories burned per minute at our various tasks, ranging from

about 3.5 for dusting to 7 for vacuuming. If you assume an
average of 5 calories per minute in a seven-hour day (eight
hours minus time for travel between houses), you need to be
taking in 2,100 calories in addition to the resting minimum of,
say, 900 or so. I get pushy with Rosalie, who is new like me and
fresh from high school in a rural northern part of the state,
about the meagerness of her lunches, which consist solely of
Doritos—a half bag from the day before or a freshly purchased
small-sized bag. She just didn't have anything in the house, she
says (though she lives with her boyfriend and his mother), and
she certainly doesn't have any money to buy lunch, as I find out
when I offer to fetch her a soda from a Quik Mart and she has to
admit she doesn't have eighty-nine cents. I treat her to the soda,
wishing I could force her, mommylike, to take milk instead. So
how does she hold up for an eight—or even nine-hour day?
"Well," she concedes, "I get dizzy sometimes."
Cash poor
How poor are they, my coworkers? The fact that anyone is
working this job at all can be taken as prima facie evidence of
some kind of desperation or at least a history of mistakes and
disappointments, but it's not for me to ask. In the prison movies
that provide me with a mental guide to comportment, the new
guy doesn't go around shaking hands and asking, "Hi there,
what are you in for?" So I listen, in the cars and when we're
assembled in the office, and learn, first, that no one seems to be
homeless. Almost everyone is embedded in extended families or
families artificially extended with housemates. People talk
about visiting grandparents in the hospital or sending birthday
cards to a niece's husband; single mothers live with their own
mothers or share apartments with a coworker or boyfriend.
Pauline, the oldest of us, owns her own home, but she sleeps on
the living room sofa, while her four grown children and three
grandchildren fill up the bedrooms.
But although no one, apparently, is sleeping in a car, there are
signs, even at the beginning, of real difficulty if not actual

misery. Half-smoked cigarettes are returned to the pack. There
are discussions about who will come up with fifty cents for a
toll and whether Ted [their office-bound supervisor] can be
counted on for prompt reimbursement. One of my teammates
gets frantic about a painfully impacted wisdom tooth and keeps
making calls from our houses to try to locate a source of free
dental care. When my—or, I should say, Liza's—team discovers
there is not a single Dobie in our buckets, I suggest that we stop
at a convenience store and buy one rather than drive all the way
back to the office. But it turns out I haven't brought any money
with me and we cannot put together $2 among the four of us.
The Friday of my first week at The Maids is unnaturally hot for
Maine in early September—95 degrees, according to the digital
time-and-temperature displays offered by banks that we pass.
I'm teamed up with the sad-faced Rosalie and our leader,
Maddy, whose sullenness, under the circumstances, is almost a
relief after Liza's relentless good cheer. Liza, I've learned, is
the highest-ranking cleaner, a sort of supervisor really, and said
to be something of a snitch, but Maddy, a single mom of maybe
twenty-seven or so, has worked for only three months and
broods about her child care problems. Her boyfriend's sister,
she tells me on the drive to our first house, watches her
eighteen-month-old for $50 a week, which is a stretch on The
Maids' pay, plus she doesn't entirely trust the sister, but a real
day care center could be as much as $90 a week. After polishing
off the first house, no problem, we grab "lunch"—Doritos for
Rosalie and a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish for Maddy—and
head out into the exurbs for what our instruction sheet warns is
a five-bathroom spread and a first-timer to boot. Still, the size
of the place makes us pause for a moment, buckets in hand,
before searching out an appropriately humble entrance. It sits
there like a beached ocean liner, the prow cutting through
swells of green turf, windows without number. "Well, well,"
Maddy says, reading the owner's name from our instruction
sheet, "Mrs. W. and her big-ass house. I hope she's going to
give us lunch."

Mrs. W. is not in fact happy to see us, grimacing with
exasperation when the black nanny ushers us into the family
room or sunroom or den or whatever kind of specialized space
she is sitting in. After all, she already has the nanny, a cook-
like person, and a crew of men doing some sort of finishing
touches on the construction to supervise. No, she doesn't want
to take us around the house, because she already explained
everything to the office on the phone, but Maddy stands there,
with Rosalie and me behind her, until she relents. We are to
move everything on all surfaces, she instructs during the tour,
and get underneath and be sure to do every bit of the several
miles, I calculate, of baseboards. And be mindful of the baby,
who's napping and can't have cleaning fluids of any kind near
her.
Heat and Dust
Then I am let loose to dust. In a situation like this, where I
don't even know how to name the various kinds of rooms, The
Maids' special system turns out to be a lifesaver. All I have to
do is keep moving from left to right, within rooms and between
rooms, trying to identify landmarks so I don't accidentally do a
room or a hallway twice. Dusters get the most complete
biographical overview, due to the necessity of lifting each
object and tchotchke individually, and I learn that Mrs. W. is an
alumna of an important women's college, now occupying herself
by monitoring her investments and the baby's bowel movements.
I find special charts for this latter purpose, with spaces for time
of day, most recent fluid intake, consistency, and color. In the
master bedroom, I dust a whole shelf of books on pregnancy,
breastfeeding, the first six months, the first year, the first two
years—and I wonder what the child care-deprived Maddy makes
of all this. Maybe there's been some secret division of the
world's women into breeders and drones, and those at the maid
level are no longer supposed to be reproducing at all. Maybe
this is why our office manager, Tammy, who was once a maid
herself, wears inch-long fake nails and tarty little outfits—to

show she's advanced to the breeder caste and can't be sent out to
clean anymore.
It is hotter inside than out, un-air-conditioned for the benefit of
the baby, I suppose, but I do all right until I encounter the
banks of glass doors that line the side and back of the ground
floor. Each one has to be Windexed, wiped, and buffed—inside
and out, top to bottom, left to right, until it's as streak-less and
invisible as a material substance can be. Outside, I can see the
construction guys knocking back Gatorade, but the rule is that
no fluid or food item can touch a maid's lips when she's inside a
house. Now, sweat, even in unseemly quantities, is nothing new
to me. I live in a subtropical area where even the inactive can
expect to be moist nine months out of the year. I work out, too,
in my normal life and take a certain macho pride in the Vs of
sweat that form on my T-shirt after ten minutes or more on the
StairMaster. But in normal life, fluids lost are immediately
replaced. Everyone in yuppie-land—airports, for example—
looks like a nursing baby these days, inseparable from their
plastic bottles of water. Here, however, I sweat without
replacement or pause, not in individual drops but in continuous
sheets of fluid soaking through my polo shirt, pouring down the
backs of my legs. The eyeliner I put on in the morning—vain
twit that I am—has long since streaked down onto my cheeks,
and I could wring my braid out if I wanted to. Working my way
through the living room(s), I wonder if Mrs. W. will ever have
occasion to realize that every single doodad and objet through
which she expresses her unique, individual self is, from another
vantage point, only an obstacle between some thirsty person and
a glass of water.
Hands and Knees
When I can find no more surfaces to wipe and have finally
exhausted the supply of rooms, Maddy assigns me to do the
kitchen floor. OK, except that Mrs. W. is in the kitchen, so I

have to go down on my hands and knees practically at her feet.
No, we don't have sponge mops like the one I use in my own
house; the hands-and-knees approach is a definite selling point
for corporate cleaning services like The Maids. "We clean
floors the old-fashioned way—on our hands and knees", the
brochure for a competing firm boasts. In fact, whatever
advantages there may be to the hands-and-knees approach—
you're closer to your work, of course, and less likely to miss a
grimy patch—are undermined by the artificial drought imposed
by The Maids' cleaning system. We are instructed to use less
than half a small bucket of lukewarm water for a kitchen and all
adjacent scrubbable floors (breakfast nooks and other dining
areas), meaning that within a few minutes we are doing nothing
more than redistributing the dirt evenly around the floor. There
are occasional customer complaints about the cleanliness of our
floors—for example, from a man who wiped up a spill on his
freshly "cleaned" floor only to find the paper towel he employed
for this purpose had turned gray. A mop and a full bucket of hot
soapy water would not only get a floor cleaner but would be a
lot more dignified for the person who does the cleaning. But it
is this primal posture of submission that seems to gratify the
consumers of maid services.
PAGE
71
Essay #3 Instructions: Argument Synthesis
_
Topic: Class, Inequality, and the American Dream Required
length: 4-5 pages (about 1400 words).
Background:Throughout English 110, we've been working to
think critically about the structures and ideologies that surround
us. We've examined the true impact of the popular
entertainment we often take for granted. We've investigated the

actual value of higher education, an institution we are all deeply
invested in. Now we turn toward perhaps the most brutal—and
often overlooked—[it’s on people’s mind right now but it’s
little understood]fact of life in the contemporary U.S. A few
people at the top of society have become extraordinarily rich,
while the wealth of others has steadily declined. Since the
1980s, inequality has increased, the middle class has shrunk,
and the poor have ever-fewer resources to rely on. The
cornerstone of the American Dream is that regardless of where
we start out in life, we can work our way toward prosperity. But
for many, this dream seems to be withering away. These are
facts we may be aware of, but in this upcoming unit, we will
work to push that awareness further. Focusing on how exactly
this state of affairs affects us individually and collectively
9maybe include the bit in the slide on schema about how we’re
not doing this, we are doing that)
Main Task:Write an essay that makes a claim about the effects
ofinequality in the United States and persuades the reader this
claim is valid. To support your position, employ strong
argumentation strategies and synthesize ideas from three texts
as well as details from the "class profile" assignment you or a
classmate completes.
Focus Questions: Your essay should address one of the
following. It may also address more than one in a unified
argument.
· What are important ways in which inequality affects
individuals and society?
· Individually
· Collectively
· Psychologically, emotionally
· Materially, health, food, housing
·
Evidence: Four quotations are required. Quote and correctly cite
resources from this unit at least four times in this essay. Your
quoted or paraphrased sources should include, at minimum, the
following: 1) An assigned reading; 2) A second, different

assigned reading; 3) A third assigned reading or a source you've
found independently (an article, video, etc.); 4) The "class
profile" you complete or information from another student's
profile.*Other very useful forms of evidence include your own
observations and experiences as well as ideas generated in class
discussion and group work.
Essay Three Goals:These goals will be incorporated into the
grading criteria for the essay.
1. The introduction engages and prepares the reader,establishing
the context or general debate you are entering into.
2. The thesis clearly communicates your contribution to that
debate, providing a clear, compelling argument and previewing
the support for that argument.
3. The essay synthesizes the ideas of published authors, as well
as a student-generated “class profile,” in order to successfully
prove the claim made in the thesis.
4. All of the proof paragraphs have a clear connection to the
thesis, creating a unified essay.
5. Each of the proof paragraphs has a topic sentence that
previews the content of the paragraph and evidence that proves
the claim made in the topic sentence. Each proof paragraph also
includes analysis of the evidence and an explanation ofhow the
evidence proves the point made in the topic sentence. (Effective
use of the P.I.E strategy.)
6. The essay engages and refutes a position that opposes your
own.
7. The conclusion answers the question, “so what?” It explains
the “big picture” implications of your argument.
8. The essay is carefully proofread and edited. Itis mostly free
of grammatical and mechanical errors, and employs the sentence
writing and editing strategies covered in class.
9. The essay demonstrates your thorough understanding of at
least three published texts.
10. The essay uses MLA-style in-text citations and a Works

Cited page.
11. The essay integrates at least four quotations with rhetorical
effectiveness.
12. The essay is original, creative, and thoughtful,
demonstrating the critical reading and thinking skills practiced
throughout the unit. It effectively persuades the reader.
PAGE
50

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