Dream Hoarders

America is becoming a class based society.It is now conventional wisdom to focus on the wealth of the top 1 percent especially the top 0.01 percent and how the ultra rich are concentrating income and prosperity while incomes for most other Americans are stagnant But the most important, consequential, and widening gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else.Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society Income is not the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing, health care, and other necessary goods and services.As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility The result is not just an economic divide but a fracturing of American society along class lines Upper middle class children become upper middle class adults.These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for progressive approaches to policy Various forms of opportunity hoarding among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships Upper middle class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society.Inequality is inevitable and can even be good, within limits But Reeves argues that society can take effective action to reduce opportunity hoarding and thus promote broader opportunity This fascinating book shows how American society has become the very class defined society that earlier Americans rebelled against and what can be done to restore a equitable society. Download Dream Hoarders By Richard V. Reeves – kino-fada.fr At first Reeves argument, that the upper middle class should voluntarily give up their advantaged place in society, sounds virtuous, if a little unlikely But gradually, listening to his arguments in this slim book of charts, graphs, and statistics, we remember what we don t like about America how our segregated neighborhoods bear little resemblance to what we see on the news every night We sense a dislocation so strong we know it could come back to bite us, orimportantly, our children At first Reeves argument, that the upper middle class should voluntarily give up their advantaged place in society, sounds virtuous, if a little unlikely But gradually, listening to his arguments in this slim book of charts, graphs, and statistics, we remember what we don t like about Ame...I hated this book I knew I would hate it when I read Dr Reeves 10 Jun Sun NY Times article Stop Pretending You re Not Rich knew I would hate that Dr Reeves would call me out for my efforts at gaming the system 529s, property, investments, parenting, university admissions, job referrals networking to ensure that my daughter would not fall out of the top quintile, regardless of how many times she might fail, despite our best efforts.In all fairnes I hated this book I knew I would hate it when I read Dr Reeves 10 Jun Sun NY Times article Stop Pretending You re Not Rich knew I would hate that Dr Reeves would call me out for my efforts at gaming the system 529s, property, investments, parenting, university admissions, job referrals networking to ensure that my daughter would not fall out of the top quintile, regardless of how many times she might fail, despite our best efforts.In all fairness, Dream Hoarders is an excellent book, Reeves writes with clarity, simplicity, and brevity discussing how Upper Middle Class top 20% privileges are distorting the playing field for the bottom 80%, and promotingequality while making social mobilitydifficult Beneath a veneer of classlessness, the American class reproduction machine operates with ruthless efficiency In particular, the upper middle class is solidifying This favored fifth at the top of the income distribution, with an average annual household income of 200,000, has been separating from the 80 percent below Th...Placeholder reviewSome good observations and awful conclusions I will writelater But in the meantime I will note that this guy quotes the likes of Charles Murray of The Bell Curve fame and implies that virtually anything people do to help their children is part of a malicious economic game There s no room in his world for intrinsic values His view of the world is one in which people only value pursuits insofar as they bring profit, in which people dropping millions to secure legacy Placeholder reviewSome good observations and awful conclusions I will writelater But in the meantime I will note that this guy quotes the likes o...This book has been floating around my Twitter feed for a while, and after reading one of Kimmaytube s threads about DreamHoarding, I decided to give it a read Like most Americans, talking about class differences and inequality is an abnormal, uncomfortable experience for me However, as someone with socioeconomic privilege, it s important to address these issues, and learn how I can push for change Personally, Richard Reeves work was helpful in that it clarified some hard line facts about th This book has been floating around my Twitter feed for a while, and after reading one of Kimmaytube s threads about DreamHoarding, I decided to give it a read Like most Americans, talking about class differences and inequality is an abnormal, uncomfortable experience for me However, as someone with socioeconomic privilege, it s important to address these issues, and learn how I can push for change Personally, Richard Reeves work was helpful in that it clarified some hard line facts about the increasing gap between the upper middle class people with household incomes above 112,000 and the other 80% of American society By shifting his focus away from the one percent, and to a much larger and arguably,influential class of Americans, he is able to offer asalient economic critique than those who only focus on the uber rich He basically explains how twenty percenters have done everything within their possibility to cement their family s permanent position in the upper middle class This hoarding...So far removed from my usual things to review that I won t do a full length review of it, but it was interesting In a nutshell the author, a white, upper middle class American man , makes the argument to his fellow white upper middle class Americans that they are not dealing with their privileges appropriately This means I m also not the target audience oh well Blaming the 1% is a derailing tactic by upper middle class Americans the upper 20% I think his most persuasive argument is So far removed from my usual things to review that I won t do a full length review of it, but it was interesting In a nutshell the author, a white, upper middle class American man , makes the argument to his fellow white upper middle class Americans that they are not dealing with their privileges appropriately This means I m also not the target audience oh well Blaming the 1% is a derailing tactic by upper middle class Americans the upper 20% I think his most persuasive argument is that if you are looking at the upper 1%, you will see that in fact it is not a very stable class, but a variety of people from the upper 20% end up in it at some time as their finances shift around.I also liked that he looked at the inverse of many well worn topics in social political discourse Not just a glass ceiling that stops lower status people from ascending, but a glass floor that stops higher status people from falling too low Not...I agree with much of the argument, in particular about how the individual choices of the upper middle class contribute to opportunity hoarding However, the ways in which inequality itself and the lack of a safety net contribute to the problem is largely ignored.Eye opening Scary Brave Reeves lays out an unpopular and unvarnished truth about America s privileged class of which he and most of his readers including me are members His sincere and thorough scholarship make for an interesting if uncomfortable read.Reeves addresses something that I ve seen for a while but had trouble naming He shows in many ways how the upper middle class is essentially pulling up the ladder of opportunity in our culture just as much as the elites are in the ways they make personal choices often canceling out or undermining the opportunities that they were afforded to get to their current economic status Reeve explores how the tearing down of policies within education, finance, and public policy had been stalwarts to he Reeves addresses something that I ve seen for a while but had trouble naming He shows in many ways how the upper middle class is essentially pulling up the ladder of opportunity in our culture just as much as the el...This book is a waste of time In an attempt to write a book different from all the others on the shelf about inequality caused by the top 1%, the author presents weak arguments about why the upper middle class is the cause of inequality in the United States In fact, the arguments presented lose traction when you take a moment to question the premise The upper middle class is privileged The word privileged means to have special rights or immunities, often undeserved But almost on the ver This book is a waste of time In an attempt to write a book different from all the others on the shelf about inequality caused by the top 1%, the author presents weak arguments about why the upper middle class is the cause of inequality in the United States In fact, the arguments presented lose traction when you take a moment to question the premise The upper middle class is privileged The word privileged ...Dream Hoarders is one of those clarifying books I m lucky to read every few years or so It s not the 1% that s the problem, Reeves says, but the top 20% of society that s got most of the goodies and is barely aware of it Great neighborhoods, great schools, tax advantages, even preferential access to internships affirmative action for the advantaged, writes Reeves all are zer0 sum assets that are effectively making the upper middle class an hereditary caste and locking out the rest of Amer Dream Hoarders is one of those clarifying books I m lucky to read every few years or so It s not the 1% that s the problem, Reeves says, but the to...

• English
• 11 December 2018
Richard V. Reeves
• Hardcover
• 240 pages
• 081572912X
• Richard V. Reeves
• Dream Hoarders