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Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It
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 more 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 more 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 more equitable 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 more 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 more 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 more equitable society.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published May 23, 2017
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6248 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 383 reviews
July 1, 2017
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".
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/op...
I 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 promoting more equality while making social mobility more difficult.
"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."
This is a well researched book, Reeves documents meticulously, and cites his work while promoting original thought -- not only admiring the problem in the first several chapters, but also makes some pragmatic policy recommendations (housing/zoning/internships/birth control) in the last few. The challenge? Persuading the Upper Middle Class to give up their privilege and accept that some of their offspring might fall out of the top quintile. No small feat. I'm not sure I'm willing to do it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/op...
I 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 promoting more equality while making social mobility more difficult.
"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."
This is a well researched book, Reeves documents meticulously, and cites his work while promoting original thought -- not only admiring the problem in the first several chapters, but also makes some pragmatic policy recommendations (housing/zoning/internships/birth control) in the last few. The challenge? Persuading the Upper Middle Class to give up their privilege and accept that some of their offspring might fall out of the top quintile. No small feat. I'm not sure I'm willing to do it.
June 20, 2017
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, or more importantly, our children. Using beneficial social and tax structures to advantage our children and perpetuate class division may ultimately work to their detriment, and is certainly skewing the competitiveness of a large proportion of our working class, and therefore our nation as a whole.
First, Reeves posits that real advancement for most people in our society is predicated on access to knowledge and information, i.e., “knowledge is power.” Right away we realize that access to information has never been equally distributed in this country, and that many of us have considered attainment of an IV-league education for ourselves and our children the highest goal. Virtuous in itself, one could say. But, Reeves points out, who is actually able to attend the IV-league is skewed by a few factors which can ultimately taint the achievement: access is unequal and not as competitive as touted. One reason is inequality in preparing for admission, and another is legacy admissions for relatives of graduates.
Reeves suggests we protest legacy admissions until they are denounced publicly as discriminatory like they were in a strongly class-based society like Britain in the middle of the last century. Inherited admissions clearly work for the benefit of the landed class alone, and are therefore something which perpetuates inequality. For greater equality of opportunity, one has to look at lower schools, and who has access to the best schools.
The best schools often go along with the best neighborhoods, the most nourishing family environments, opportunities for exposure to both nature and culture, music, art, etc.…and these are circumscribed, Reeves tells us, by zoning restrictions disallowing multi-family dwellings, low(er)-income high(er)-rises in desirable suburbs.
I had a harder time reconciling this argument of his. In the United States, despite laws forbidding discrimination in real estate, there was demonstrable race-based discrimination in real estate throughout the twentieth century. Races were segregated beyond what would occur naturally—that is, races seeking to live with others of their culture. The idea is to allow access to desirable suburbs with good schools, nature, etc. If we stop discrimination on the basis of race, that will take care of some of the problem. Then, if we can add low(er)-income high(er)-rise buildings without changing the essential benefit of desirable suburbs (leafy, green, quiet, beautiful), I’m all for it. Let’s do it everywhere.
For those that cannot escape poor schools in the inner-city, Reeves suggests we offer our best teachers the hardest jobs: teaching in low-income neighborhoods downtown. These excellent teachers would be offered the best salaries. I have no objection to this, but I fear it will not produce the outpouring of talent that Reeves is anticipating. Teaching is a profession, and we have learned anything about professions, it is that money is not always the strongest motivator. At the margins, a certain amount of money can induce some individuals to take on difficult jobs, but the inducements must quickly become exponential after a certain level of difficulty, saying nothing about the kinds of returns one would be expected to produce annually. But big challenges can be an inducement and the money will help make sense of it. It’s absolutely worth trying. Let’s do it everywhere.
Among other things that would flatten the playing field is to eliminate our most beloved tax breaks which, Reeves explains, are in effect subsidies for the wealthiest among us: College savings 529 tax havens, and the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners. Eliminating these two loopholes would add hundred of billions to government coffers, while disadvantaging those in the upper 20% income bracket very little indeed and flattening the playing field for the rest of us.
Lastly, Reeves suggests that internships during college are often distributed not on merit, but on the basis of class, familiarity, or favored status. Since jobs to which many of us aspire are often awarded on the basis of experience, internships, which deliver a certain level of confidence to applicants, can be extremely useful in bridging the gap from childhood to adulthood within the target job area. While favored distribution of internships seemed somewhat trivial to me and other critics Reeves mentions, he counters with “If it is trivial, you won’t mind then if we eliminate/outlaw it.” So be it. All “merit” all the time, if we can be reasonably expected to perfect that little measure.
It is not going to surprise me when liberals discover status and wealth do not necessarily translate into greater life satisfaction or happiness and therefore decide to voluntarily give up certain advantages that perpetuate their inherently unequal class ranking for the greater benefit of the society in which they live. It is conservatives in the ranks of the well-to-do that may hold back progress. According to Nancy MacLean’s new book called Democracy in Chains, which paid some attention to the basis of far right conservative thinking, the wealthy feel they deserve their wealth, even if it is inherited, or even if it is made on the backs of exploited labor. It may be more difficult to get past this barrier to change.
On the basis of the statistics Reeves shares about the stickiness of class status among the top 20% of income earners, he writes persuasively about different individual things we can do to alleviate huge class disparities in opportunity. Reeves addresses the experience of J.D. Vance (author of Hillbilly Elegy) explicitly in the book, and indirectly in the first of the short video links given below. It is difficult and uncomfortable to move up the ladder but people with exceptional skills are not going to be discriminated against: “The labor market is not a snob.”
Two very short videos posted on my blog quickly and easily explain the concepts Reeves is trying to get across. Check it out.
First, Reeves posits that real advancement for most people in our society is predicated on access to knowledge and information, i.e., “knowledge is power.” Right away we realize that access to information has never been equally distributed in this country, and that many of us have considered attainment of an IV-league education for ourselves and our children the highest goal. Virtuous in itself, one could say. But, Reeves points out, who is actually able to attend the IV-league is skewed by a few factors which can ultimately taint the achievement: access is unequal and not as competitive as touted. One reason is inequality in preparing for admission, and another is legacy admissions for relatives of graduates.
Reeves suggests we protest legacy admissions until they are denounced publicly as discriminatory like they were in a strongly class-based society like Britain in the middle of the last century. Inherited admissions clearly work for the benefit of the landed class alone, and are therefore something which perpetuates inequality. For greater equality of opportunity, one has to look at lower schools, and who has access to the best schools.
The best schools often go along with the best neighborhoods, the most nourishing family environments, opportunities for exposure to both nature and culture, music, art, etc.…and these are circumscribed, Reeves tells us, by zoning restrictions disallowing multi-family dwellings, low(er)-income high(er)-rises in desirable suburbs.
I had a harder time reconciling this argument of his. In the United States, despite laws forbidding discrimination in real estate, there was demonstrable race-based discrimination in real estate throughout the twentieth century. Races were segregated beyond what would occur naturally—that is, races seeking to live with others of their culture. The idea is to allow access to desirable suburbs with good schools, nature, etc. If we stop discrimination on the basis of race, that will take care of some of the problem. Then, if we can add low(er)-income high(er)-rise buildings without changing the essential benefit of desirable suburbs (leafy, green, quiet, beautiful), I’m all for it. Let’s do it everywhere.
For those that cannot escape poor schools in the inner-city, Reeves suggests we offer our best teachers the hardest jobs: teaching in low-income neighborhoods downtown. These excellent teachers would be offered the best salaries. I have no objection to this, but I fear it will not produce the outpouring of talent that Reeves is anticipating. Teaching is a profession, and we have learned anything about professions, it is that money is not always the strongest motivator. At the margins, a certain amount of money can induce some individuals to take on difficult jobs, but the inducements must quickly become exponential after a certain level of difficulty, saying nothing about the kinds of returns one would be expected to produce annually. But big challenges can be an inducement and the money will help make sense of it. It’s absolutely worth trying. Let’s do it everywhere.
Among other things that would flatten the playing field is to eliminate our most beloved tax breaks which, Reeves explains, are in effect subsidies for the wealthiest among us: College savings 529 tax havens, and the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners. Eliminating these two loopholes would add hundred of billions to government coffers, while disadvantaging those in the upper 20% income bracket very little indeed and flattening the playing field for the rest of us.
Lastly, Reeves suggests that internships during college are often distributed not on merit, but on the basis of class, familiarity, or favored status. Since jobs to which many of us aspire are often awarded on the basis of experience, internships, which deliver a certain level of confidence to applicants, can be extremely useful in bridging the gap from childhood to adulthood within the target job area. While favored distribution of internships seemed somewhat trivial to me and other critics Reeves mentions, he counters with “If it is trivial, you won’t mind then if we eliminate/outlaw it.” So be it. All “merit” all the time, if we can be reasonably expected to perfect that little measure.
It is not going to surprise me when liberals discover status and wealth do not necessarily translate into greater life satisfaction or happiness and therefore decide to voluntarily give up certain advantages that perpetuate their inherently unequal class ranking for the greater benefit of the society in which they live. It is conservatives in the ranks of the well-to-do that may hold back progress. According to Nancy MacLean’s new book called Democracy in Chains, which paid some attention to the basis of far right conservative thinking, the wealthy feel they deserve their wealth, even if it is inherited, or even if it is made on the backs of exploited labor. It may be more difficult to get past this barrier to change.
On the basis of the statistics Reeves shares about the stickiness of class status among the top 20% of income earners, he writes persuasively about different individual things we can do to alleviate huge class disparities in opportunity. Reeves addresses the experience of J.D. Vance (author of Hillbilly Elegy) explicitly in the book, and indirectly in the first of the short video links given below. It is difficult and uncomfortable to move up the ladder but people with exceptional skills are not going to be discriminated against: “The labor market is not a snob.”
Two very short videos posted on my blog quickly and easily explain the concepts Reeves is trying to get across. Check it out.
July 18, 2017
Placeholder review
Some good observations and awful conclusions. I will write more later. 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 college admissions are upper middle class, and in which parents should consider not reading to their children so as to ensure the proper amount of class self-flagellation. I was disappointed in this book.
Also, edited to add this important fact: He never once mentions health care costs or the ways that a serious illness or injury can absolutely bankrupt people even among the "dream hoarding" class. He never mentions that downward mobility via medical bankruptcy is basically a threat for everyone in America except the 1%. Even with the ACA, many people still face outrageous health care costs, especially if they require long-term care late in life. This is a fact he conveniently ignores in his quest to shame people with a certain combination of income, financial planning acumen / privilege, and personal values that happen to include education. He conflates the 1% with the "upper middle class" so often it's deceitful.
Some good observations and awful conclusions. I will write more later. 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 college admissions are upper middle class, and in which parents should consider not reading to their children so as to ensure the proper amount of class self-flagellation. I was disappointed in this book.
Also, edited to add this important fact: He never once mentions health care costs or the ways that a serious illness or injury can absolutely bankrupt people even among the "dream hoarding" class. He never mentions that downward mobility via medical bankruptcy is basically a threat for everyone in America except the 1%. Even with the ACA, many people still face outrageous health care costs, especially if they require long-term care late in life. This is a fact he conveniently ignores in his quest to shame people with a certain combination of income, financial planning acumen / privilege, and personal values that happen to include education. He conflates the 1% with the "upper middle class" so often it's deceitful.
March 11, 2018
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, more influential) class of Americans, he is able to offer a more salient 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” of the American Dream is accomplished through zoning laws, elite educational systems, assortative mating, and some general rigging of our mythical meritocracy.
Contrary to popular belief, Reeves does not believe in doing away with income inequality, but rather making it a fair competition for Americans born into lower income quartiles. I’m not entirely sure it matters that he is a member of the class he studies, but it definitely helped me relate to him as someone who detests these injustices, but at the end of the day, would prefer to be on “the winning side.”
This, in a way, is my main problem with the book—despite Reeves understanding on a personal level why it is advantageous for his own family to be members of the upper-middle class, he underestimates others' resistance to changing this to this system. Many of his solutions felt rather idealistic, especially the ones that required taking away quality teachers from affluent school districts, and having them prove their worth in higher-need schools. It’s not that these aren’t wonderful suggestions, it’s just obvious that no suburban parents will actually vote for them!
For me, his strongest point is found midway through, when he states that only when children in the upper-quartile are at risk of downward mobility will our parents support social safety nets for all. A stronger recommendation section would’ve proposed solutions in this vein of thought, which asks a much harder, but more effective question: how will the upper-middle class be incentivized, not shamed, into dream sharing?
I think anyone who is passionate or even curious about economic inequality will find this book to be enlightening on a macro-level. If, like me, you're looking for tangible, start-today actions you can take to personally stop dream hoarding, you won’t find much here. Regardless, Reeves begins an important discussion those of us with more economic privilege must stop avoiding. To actually end this dream hoarding, however, we’ll need to look for some more realistic resolutions.
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, more influential) class of Americans, he is able to offer a more salient 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” of the American Dream is accomplished through zoning laws, elite educational systems, assortative mating, and some general rigging of our mythical meritocracy.
Contrary to popular belief, Reeves does not believe in doing away with income inequality, but rather making it a fair competition for Americans born into lower income quartiles. I’m not entirely sure it matters that he is a member of the class he studies, but it definitely helped me relate to him as someone who detests these injustices, but at the end of the day, would prefer to be on “the winning side.”
This, in a way, is my main problem with the book—despite Reeves understanding on a personal level why it is advantageous for his own family to be members of the upper-middle class, he underestimates others' resistance to changing this to this system. Many of his solutions felt rather idealistic, especially the ones that required taking away quality teachers from affluent school districts, and having them prove their worth in higher-need schools. It’s not that these aren’t wonderful suggestions, it’s just obvious that no suburban parents will actually vote for them!
For me, his strongest point is found midway through, when he states that only when children in the upper-quartile are at risk of downward mobility will our parents support social safety nets for all. A stronger recommendation section would’ve proposed solutions in this vein of thought, which asks a much harder, but more effective question: how will the upper-middle class be incentivized, not shamed, into dream sharing?
I think anyone who is passionate or even curious about economic inequality will find this book to be enlightening on a macro-level. If, like me, you're looking for tangible, start-today actions you can take to personally stop dream hoarding, you won’t find much here. Regardless, Reeves begins an important discussion those of us with more economic privilege must stop avoiding. To actually end this dream hoarding, however, we’ll need to look for some more realistic resolutions.
August 30, 2017
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 very same page, the author admits that the upper middle class have worked hard and earned the income and wealth they have accumulated. So where is the privilege? This continues as you turn the pages, time and time again throughout the book, Reeves admits that the upper middle class have done everything right to get to where they are (worked hard in school, obtained high-income jobs, encourage their kids to do the same, spend more time reading to their children, etc.) which only further waters down the validity of his premise.
Other points were weak if not contradictory. Reeves presents the argument that legacy admissions are one of the main causes for preventing entire classes of income earners below the 80th percentile from earning their place in top schools. That is almost laughable, especially when he provides no data to back it up. He then goes on to make the argument that because individuals with higher cognitive ability are within close proximity to each other (university campus), they are more likely to marry and produce future generations of children that will also have high cognitive ability; however, if legacy admissions are as rampant as he makes them out to be, then shouldn't the presence of individuals with cognitive abilities lower than what elite universities would accept through proper channels somewhat mitigate the magnitude of this phenomenon? This is left unaddressed...conveniently.
Lastly, anyone can present a dramatic picture of inequality when treating individuals as statistical categories. Statistical categories show the differences between each quintile but what it does not show is the movement of individuals from one quintile to the next over time (a failing of cross-sectional and time-series data). Reeves does a very good job at presenting other people's high quality research, unfortunately said research has been strung together to present a poor argument.
"The upper middle class is privileged"
The word "privileged" means to have special rights or immunities, often undeserved. But almost on the very same page, the author admits that the upper middle class have worked hard and earned the income and wealth they have accumulated. So where is the privilege? This continues as you turn the pages, time and time again throughout the book, Reeves admits that the upper middle class have done everything right to get to where they are (worked hard in school, obtained high-income jobs, encourage their kids to do the same, spend more time reading to their children, etc.) which only further waters down the validity of his premise.
Other points were weak if not contradictory. Reeves presents the argument that legacy admissions are one of the main causes for preventing entire classes of income earners below the 80th percentile from earning their place in top schools. That is almost laughable, especially when he provides no data to back it up. He then goes on to make the argument that because individuals with higher cognitive ability are within close proximity to each other (university campus), they are more likely to marry and produce future generations of children that will also have high cognitive ability; however, if legacy admissions are as rampant as he makes them out to be, then shouldn't the presence of individuals with cognitive abilities lower than what elite universities would accept through proper channels somewhat mitigate the magnitude of this phenomenon? This is left unaddressed...conveniently.
Lastly, anyone can present a dramatic picture of inequality when treating individuals as statistical categories. Statistical categories show the differences between each quintile but what it does not show is the movement of individuals from one quintile to the next over time (a failing of cross-sectional and time-series data). Reeves does a very good job at presenting other people's high quality research, unfortunately said research has been strung together to present a poor argument.
December 15, 2017
This is an important book. We need to talk more about the stickiness of class in America. This is a great start to that discussion. I think he could have talked a lot more about race in here because it’s actually the main example of dream hoarding—white flight and segregated schools lock in both advantage and disadvantage. It was an uncomfortable book to read too as a part of the privileged cohort. I don’t want my children to drop down a class, but apparently that’s what he says needs to happen. We could at least make the fall less consequential.
January 18, 2018
This book is provocative, in the more specific meaning that it is very liable to provoke. For example, I have a friend from the upper middle class who claims distant acquaintance with Reeves, and said that Reeves is really a “one percenter”. The implication was that Reeves is trying dishonestly to pass as a member of the u.-m. class only to better toss brickbats and hand grenades on behalf of our society's genuine villains. (I don't think the accuser is correct, but I remained silent, as I am trying not to alienate any more of the few friends I have.)
There is plenty to admire about this book, especially (not sarcasm here) it is short – my Kindle edition claimed the main text was only 157 pages long. In a short book, you can't hide shortcomings in your argument in a thicket of blather.
I thought the author spent too much time on the evils of legacy admissions and too little time on the other parts of his argument. He also failed to address the following: Legacy admissions have been in place for a long time (I know they were an important factor when I applied to university 40 years ago) and yet we only seem to be feeling the full force of their venality today. Why is that?
I guess that you don't make a best-selling and thought-provoking book by writing a lot about zoning, but nevertheless I wish the author had drilled in on this topic a little more. Specifically, I think he missed an important point: zoning is often designed with the best of intentions. However, even small cities are a maze of details, so the zoning rules and their enforcement from the get-go are so complex and idiosyncratic that they become opaque to the average citizen, and subject to manipulation by paid experts and interest groups. As a result, I don't think this is a problem that will be solved by a change in laws. Instead, there must be a more difficult, more hard-to-define, and more difficult-to-sustain change in the culture of zoning enforcement: the process must be more transparent before people will cease to see it as another scam of hypocritical and self-seeking mandarins.
Lastly, I think the author's recommendation that the upper middle class needs to act against its perceived self-interest is disingenuous. Surely he knows that appeals for one group to act for the good of all, once a fairly common occurrence in political rhetoric, will (rightly or wrongly) go absolutely nowhere in our day and age. No one wants to be the sap who, for the benefit of a group of ungrateful strangers, caused their family to move downward in society. You have to convince the entire society that we are all in this together and sacrifices by all will result in a better society for all. Even then, specific groups and classes will try to wiggle out of their end of the bargain. The improvement of society will largely depend on squabbling endlessly about seemingly trivial details (e.g., removing tax benefits from 529 college savings plans – Kindle location 47 and after) and keeping the ideal in mind even after setbacks, like the ones we are experiencing now.
There is plenty to admire about this book, especially (not sarcasm here) it is short – my Kindle edition claimed the main text was only 157 pages long. In a short book, you can't hide shortcomings in your argument in a thicket of blather.
I thought the author spent too much time on the evils of legacy admissions and too little time on the other parts of his argument. He also failed to address the following: Legacy admissions have been in place for a long time (I know they were an important factor when I applied to university 40 years ago) and yet we only seem to be feeling the full force of their venality today. Why is that?
I guess that you don't make a best-selling and thought-provoking book by writing a lot about zoning, but nevertheless I wish the author had drilled in on this topic a little more. Specifically, I think he missed an important point: zoning is often designed with the best of intentions. However, even small cities are a maze of details, so the zoning rules and their enforcement from the get-go are so complex and idiosyncratic that they become opaque to the average citizen, and subject to manipulation by paid experts and interest groups. As a result, I don't think this is a problem that will be solved by a change in laws. Instead, there must be a more difficult, more hard-to-define, and more difficult-to-sustain change in the culture of zoning enforcement: the process must be more transparent before people will cease to see it as another scam of hypocritical and self-seeking mandarins.
Lastly, I think the author's recommendation that the upper middle class needs to act against its perceived self-interest is disingenuous. Surely he knows that appeals for one group to act for the good of all, once a fairly common occurrence in political rhetoric, will (rightly or wrongly) go absolutely nowhere in our day and age. No one wants to be the sap who, for the benefit of a group of ungrateful strangers, caused their family to move downward in society. You have to convince the entire society that we are all in this together and sacrifices by all will result in a better society for all. Even then, specific groups and classes will try to wiggle out of their end of the bargain. The improvement of society will largely depend on squabbling endlessly about seemingly trivial details (e.g., removing tax benefits from 529 college savings plans – Kindle location 47 and after) and keeping the ideal in mind even after setbacks, like the ones we are experiencing now.
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January 14, 2018So 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 just upward mobility, but downward mobility (I never thought about downward mobility in this way previously).
I disagreed about many policy details (I'm a left-winger from Europe! Of course I did!) but overall this was an interesting book, even if the style was occasionally annoying. I also liked that he made it VERY clear that race is also a very major social determinant, but here he would examine class.
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
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* He is an immigrant from the UK, but he's very invested in not just America, but American-ness, and talks about it a lot. He also compares the two countries, which I found interesting - his take on class does not align with the stereotypes.
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 just upward mobility, but downward mobility (I never thought about downward mobility in this way previously).
I disagreed about many policy details (I'm a left-winger from Europe! Of course I did!) but overall this was an interesting book, even if the style was occasionally annoying. I also liked that he made it VERY clear that race is also a very major social determinant, but here he would examine class.
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
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* He is an immigrant from the UK, but he's very invested in not just America, but American-ness, and talks about it a lot. He also compares the two countries, which I found interesting - his take on class does not align with the stereotypes.
June 6, 2017
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.
July 24, 2017
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.
September 18, 2017
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 American society. My town, Lexington, Mass., is ground zero for the phenomenon Reeves dissects. Reeves has some sensible policy prescriptions I wasn't tuned into, but which I'll now research when selecting candidates to vote for.
March 6, 2018
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 help grow the upper middle class, but that such policies are often being replaced with policy that benefits the upper-middle class in lieu of lower classes. Some of those policies include tax benefits around home-ownership, capital gains, college education, and the like. Reeves contends that every time there is an attempt to reassess these, the upper-middle class vociferously demands it stay in place--often to the detriment of other classes that could benefit from that redistribution. He contrasts this with the spoken desire by many within the upper-middle class that claim they want to see more programs that help poor, working and low-middle class families. A good example is college education wherein upper-middle-class families rely on legacies, merit-based scholarship (which is largely geared towards upper-middle class students), and increased chances of admission because of the family's wealth (e.g. familiarity with a campus increases chances of admission; for schools that are far away, upper-middle-class families can spare the resources to have their child visit the school several times). Ultimately, Reeves shows that the scales are already tipped in favor of upper-middle-class but they continue to want more at the sacrifice of opportunity for poor, working, and lower-middle class.
March 11, 2019
Reeves makes a critical distinction between things like good schools and private music lessons, which are expensive but every parent should wish for, and "dream hoarding" which are opportunities that are necessarily scarce like internships and slots at top colleges. This is a valuable distinction, because otherwise he'd risk offending far too many parents who just want their kid to play the trombone and get A+s and don't see what's wrong with that. Dream hoarding is the real enemy, not just dreams.
I think the dream hoarding problem with nepotism in internships is, if anything, understated. I've worked at large publicly-traded companies where the way to get an internship was to have the same DNA as someone who already works there. I've been in the room when executives at large companies were casually discussing placing each others kids in high level internships at each other's companies. In my field most internships are actually well-paid -- so the scions of the wealthy are actually receiving tens of thousands of dollars in addition to a career boost.
The problem with really bad K-12 schools in poor neighborhoods is likewise understated. My high school quite literally had homeless adults wandering the hallways and into classrooms in the middle of lectures. Classrooms didn't have enough desks for all the students, and someone was regularly setting fire to rooms after hours. The teachers were trying their absolute best, but given that kind of extremely chaotic environment I just don't think small economic nudges are going to have much of an effect.
Finally, the private college system is much worse than Reeves imagines. Private colleges are extremely sophisticated about admitting the students who will pay the most tuition (using "scholarships", or really discount coupons), and since the entire process happens behind closed doors, there is little anyone can do to improve it. Reeves does describe this in the book but I think he underestimates how smart colleges have gotten about executing it. And this isn't just Harvard and Yale -- private colleges right on down the line to your local tiny liberal arts school are doing it too. Fortunately public universities haven't started doing tuition harvesting quite as vigorously yet, but I'm sure that's around the corner.
It is utterly scandalous that taxpayer-funded public universities engage in legacy admissions. I wasn't aware of that, and it seems to be forbidden in my state fortunately.
I think Reeves' proposed solutions to the problem of dream hoarding are, if anything, insufficiently ambitious. Nepotism needs to be illegal, schools in poor neighborhoods need to at least attempt to offer college preparatory classes, and colleges need to drop their current profit-based admission system in favor of one that's more transparent if they want to continue to receive nonprofit status. And this all needs serious government intervention to happen.
The fundamental question of dream hoarding is: do we care enough to stop it? Given that it benefits a large slice of the population with virtually all the financial resources, I don't think it's going to be solved in my lifetime. But we can at least make others aware of the problem and burst the mythology that our system is classless.
January 25, 2018
The 2017 nonfiction book, "Dream Hoarders: How the Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What To Do About It," by Richard V. Reeves, is a phenomenal read. I loved this book with such ferocious ardor, all I want to do now is hug the author for an eternity while screaming, "THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS BOOK!!" Because I feel like this book saved my life.
I needed the words in this book. All my life, I've needed the words in this book. And now I have them. Now I have them.
Privilege does not want to be seen, or heard, or even named. Privilege certainly does not want to be checked. While it's one thing for me to grapple with this in my personal life, it's another thing to read page after page of a well-informed, insightful scholar discussing all the ways the system is rigged. This book is a triumph of justice and reason. This book is America at its best.
Unfortunately, I am not as hopeful as the author is, concerning the future of the United States. I would agree more with economist Angus Deaton, who is quoted near the end of the book --
"Commenting on the 'grotesque expansions in inequality of the past 30 years,' Princeton economist Angus Deaton makes a pessimistic prediction: 'Those who are doing well will organize to protect what they have, including in ways that benefit them at the expense of the majority.'" (page 152)
Author Richard V. Reeves shares a concise list of steps the upper middle class can take to make the United States a more equitable place -- a place that is fair and impartial, and rewards people based on merit rather than whether or not they are lucky enough to be born to affluent parents.
These steps are straightforward and achievable, and would simply come down to a question of political will. Personally, I don't believe there is any political will to complete these steps. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to scream, "I LOVE THIS BOOK I LOVE THIS BOOK!!" Holding my copy of "Dream Hoarders," I feel like the universe is still a place of redemption and grace, because nonfiction like this is my salvation.
Recommended for everyone. This book is excellent.
I needed the words in this book. All my life, I've needed the words in this book. And now I have them. Now I have them.
Privilege does not want to be seen, or heard, or even named. Privilege certainly does not want to be checked. While it's one thing for me to grapple with this in my personal life, it's another thing to read page after page of a well-informed, insightful scholar discussing all the ways the system is rigged. This book is a triumph of justice and reason. This book is America at its best.
Unfortunately, I am not as hopeful as the author is, concerning the future of the United States. I would agree more with economist Angus Deaton, who is quoted near the end of the book --
"Commenting on the 'grotesque expansions in inequality of the past 30 years,' Princeton economist Angus Deaton makes a pessimistic prediction: 'Those who are doing well will organize to protect what they have, including in ways that benefit them at the expense of the majority.'" (page 152)
Author Richard V. Reeves shares a concise list of steps the upper middle class can take to make the United States a more equitable place -- a place that is fair and impartial, and rewards people based on merit rather than whether or not they are lucky enough to be born to affluent parents.
These steps are straightforward and achievable, and would simply come down to a question of political will. Personally, I don't believe there is any political will to complete these steps. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to scream, "I LOVE THIS BOOK I LOVE THIS BOOK!!" Holding my copy of "Dream Hoarders," I feel like the universe is still a place of redemption and grace, because nonfiction like this is my salvation.
Recommended for everyone. This book is excellent.
August 27, 2017
The value of this book is more in the introspection Reeves encourages members of the upper middle class to undertake than the information. Most of the upper middle class intuitively know they are privileged to the expense to everyone below them, but most don't do anything about it. They like their 529 college savings plans, mortgage tax deductions, legacy admissions, internships, high performing suburban schools, and economically segregated neighborhoods. It makes them feel safe, protects their place in society, and passes on their privilege to their children.
The problem is if they continue to succeed, along with the super-rich, at the expense of everyone else, then the American Dream won't exist. The meritocratic ideal of rags to riches, of the value of hard work to take you to the top, has been battered, if not rendered inexistent, by the growing inequality in this country. Social mobility is extremely hard, and if you are born at the bottom it is highly unlikely you will be able to move upwards. An obsession with capitalism to the detriment of democratic ideals has overtaken the United States.
It's time to be less selfish. People must realize that your position in the current American society really comes down to luck. You don't choose to be born to rich or poor parents. In an ideal country no one would be poor. While utopia doesn't exist, we can try a lot harder to even the playing field. That means writing to Congress, state and local governments to help the underprivileged, volunteering to help those that desperately need it, and overall thinking about what it means to be a good, civic individual in this country. Reeves encourages the upper middle class to stop hoarding the best opportunities; people should listen.
The problem is if they continue to succeed, along with the super-rich, at the expense of everyone else, then the American Dream won't exist. The meritocratic ideal of rags to riches, of the value of hard work to take you to the top, has been battered, if not rendered inexistent, by the growing inequality in this country. Social mobility is extremely hard, and if you are born at the bottom it is highly unlikely you will be able to move upwards. An obsession with capitalism to the detriment of democratic ideals has overtaken the United States.
It's time to be less selfish. People must realize that your position in the current American society really comes down to luck. You don't choose to be born to rich or poor parents. In an ideal country no one would be poor. While utopia doesn't exist, we can try a lot harder to even the playing field. That means writing to Congress, state and local governments to help the underprivileged, volunteering to help those that desperately need it, and overall thinking about what it means to be a good, civic individual in this country. Reeves encourages the upper middle class to stop hoarding the best opportunities; people should listen.
January 15, 2018
The important idea in the book is that it isn’t the 1% that’s the problem - it’s the upper 20% that are flourishing at the expense of others. I think that’s important, given the upper middle class tendency to view other people as the rich ones - it seems insane to even refer to the upper middle class in the US as a middle class of any kind, and Reeves is right that these families (our families) need to stop hoarding opportunities - we should be against exclusionary zoning, legacy admissions, unfairly acquired and unpaid/unfunded internships, etc. But much of the book is overly simplified to the point that once you grasp the main idea, I’m not sure how helpful the body of the text is. He advocates long term birth control as a solution to poverty, while (based on my first Reproductive Rights and Justice class) reproductive justice advocates could take issue with viewing motherhood (implicitly black motherhood) as the cause of poverty. He talks about strong vs. weak parenting, where the upper middle class has strong parenting and the lower 80% is lacking, without much critical evaluation about how parenting strength is assessed or how those terms are used. I’m sure he felt a need to keep the book short and simple given the political goal of reaching his specified audience (and there is a tone of appeasing an angry upper middle class who might take issue with his suggestions), but for those who already have some understanding of the inequalities present in our country, other texts might be more useful.
March 25, 2018
rich man walks into a bar and calls himself and his class out on their bullshit. good as hell up until the part where he starts spitting lukewarm legislative actions to solve the problem. when your first idea for change is to keep the Poors from having so many kids, ya blew it son. although improving access to contraception is always a good call, it does nothing to keep your friends from holing up in their gated neighborhood watched enclaves. apart from getting rid of zoning laws and legacy admissions to colleges, and his tentative little tiptoe through progressive tax reform, which was barely a fucking footnote, this does nothing to address the issue and just highlights how completely removed from financial hardship the author is. we don’t want better access to minimum wage internships and IUDs, we want to be able to feed ourselves and our damn families, we want meaningful work and community, we want stability. the more i think about it, the more stars my review drops as i realize this was a bunch of self-fellating neoliberal gunk from a fake woke think tank drone.
Read
March 16, 2018Via http://crookedtimber.org/2017/12/04/d...
I mean, yes. “My intuition is that upper middle-class adults would be more supportive of redistributive policies and institutions if they were less certain of where their own children... were going to end up.”
This book does a good job explaining my visceral revulsion about so many things in my current life: low-density suburbs, well-funded public school foundations for individual districts, tax policies that disproportionately benefit the already-privileged. Our underexamined cultural concepts of “merit.” Private schools for unexceptional, neurotypical white kids.
Only 150 pages. End notes and an index. Recommended, especially if your household income is over about $112k in 2014 dollars. (Or if you basically live that way because your family’s money left you with lower-than-average education or mortgage debt.)
I mean, yes. “My intuition is that upper middle-class adults would be more supportive of redistributive policies and institutions if they were less certain of where their own children... were going to end up.”
This book does a good job explaining my visceral revulsion about so many things in my current life: low-density suburbs, well-funded public school foundations for individual districts, tax policies that disproportionately benefit the already-privileged. Our underexamined cultural concepts of “merit.” Private schools for unexceptional, neurotypical white kids.
Only 150 pages. End notes and an index. Recommended, especially if your household income is over about $112k in 2014 dollars. (Or if you basically live that way because your family’s money left you with lower-than-average education or mortgage debt.)
January 13, 2018
It is no accident that I started this book the week that I moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, with the second highest median income in the US.
Anyway, the idea is that the too 20% should voluntarily give up some of their wealth/privilege/access to those below them on the economic ladder. Fine. I'll follow your lead.
Gripes a lot about legacy college admissions without really providing any examples besides Jared Kushner (I read a book with more examples in 2015) and doesn't like unpaid internships, but not because poorer people don't have the luxury of working for free. Wants more tax reform but goes into no details. His MO seems to be to shame the rich into sharing their spoils, and again I say "after you, Buddy." I imagine most others who recognize themselves in this book will take the same position.
Anyway, the idea is that the too 20% should voluntarily give up some of their wealth/privilege/access to those below them on the economic ladder. Fine. I'll follow your lead.
Gripes a lot about legacy college admissions without really providing any examples besides Jared Kushner (I read a book with more examples in 2015) and doesn't like unpaid internships, but not because poorer people don't have the luxury of working for free. Wants more tax reform but goes into no details. His MO seems to be to shame the rich into sharing their spoils, and again I say "after you, Buddy." I imagine most others who recognize themselves in this book will take the same position.
July 3, 2017
Reeves has a good point when he talks about how the top 20% (upper middle class) of the American population are getting more benefits than they deserve, and how this should change. However many of the data he presents are not new, and the policy proposals he offers are so large and varied that it's impossible to imagine them all being enacted in the near future. I agree with almost everything he says, but the argument could probably have been made in a nice long New Yorker article, rather than requiring an entire book, especially if he stuck to outlining the problem and reduced the number of policy prescriptions to just a few initial proposals that might have a chance of actually being carried out.
April 8, 2018
An excellent compilation of studies on the widening gap between the upper quintile of Americans by income (with some attention to wealth) and the lower four. Reeves rightly moves our focus from the 1% to the 20%. His suggestions are not bold enough for my taste--he seems to think preserving capitalism as is is fine as long as there's more upward and downward mobility. Why accept the system? Why not envision better? But as far as nailing who's got privilege and how we maintain it, fascinating material.
Read
December 22, 2024My question of the year seems to be centered around the idea of “what are practices that each of us are responsible for opting out of in order to create a better society for all?”
This book adds another dimension to that question. What do the economically privileged need to give up for the sake of those less privileged?
Core argument: to reduce wealth inequality, the upper middle class/wealthy (top 20% of earners) will have to forgo certain privileges (that he terms opportunity hoarding) that reinforce social immobility (legacy admissions, exclusionary zoning, nepotism). Gonna be a tough sell. Necessary but tough.
This book adds another dimension to that question. What do the economically privileged need to give up for the sake of those less privileged?
Core argument: to reduce wealth inequality, the upper middle class/wealthy (top 20% of earners) will have to forgo certain privileges (that he terms opportunity hoarding) that reinforce social immobility (legacy admissions, exclusionary zoning, nepotism). Gonna be a tough sell. Necessary but tough.
Read
September 3, 2017Probably accurate in describing a mechanism. Acknowledges that a key driver of the greater class mobility he's espousing calls for lowering the stakes of being not-upper-middle-class, that is, greater equality in wealth distribution. Also possibly a substantial shift of labour markets to create decent, well-paying, interesting jobs at different income levels (with, say, different tradeoffs of incomes, interestingness, free time, progression ladders, prestige, geographic mobility, etc, than what is currently out there - that's me saying this, he just very slightly hints at it when discussing reform to vocational and apprenticeship education and training.) Yet he fails to pursue this topic almost entirely on the policy level. Instead he calls on a shift to be achieved through the charitable morality and goodwill of said upper-middle-class, while acknowledging at every turn that it is against their best interests to do so, especially since he appears to be just fine with poverty - so long as whoever is poor got their fairly.
Basically, it seems to me that he's getting his horse and cart backwards in a really fundamental way, possibly due to attempting to keep up a decent free-market credential against basic logic (and also decency). Change the distribution of wealth, and what's associated with wealth, and you'll get more class mobility and meritocracy of the talented, or at least the ambitious, or at least those who like to make a lot of money, at the top making a lot of money. Call on those already there to allow others to replace them without improving what it means to not be the ones not making a lot of money? Come on.
Basically, it seems to me that he's getting his horse and cart backwards in a really fundamental way, possibly due to attempting to keep up a decent free-market credential against basic logic (and also decency). Change the distribution of wealth, and what's associated with wealth, and you'll get more class mobility and meritocracy of the talented, or at least the ambitious, or at least those who like to make a lot of money, at the top making a lot of money. Call on those already there to allow others to replace them without improving what it means to not be the ones not making a lot of money? Come on.
December 15, 2017
This book is for me one of the most effective conversation starters about social mobility I’ve read in a while. It focuses on a fact that for years has been consciously overlooked by both voters and policy makers. A fact that stands in the room like a naked ogre, blocking the door to a more decent and functional society, all the while glaring at us all and only asking that we acknowledge its indecency and escort it back to where it came from. That fact is that most of our persistent socioeconomic inequality is perpetuated not just by the top 1/10 of the top 1% of society, but also (you could even say mostly) by the upper middle class.
Many many people I’ve known and associated with throughout my life fall into this class. I have heard and even felt many of the very sentiments Reeves highlights in the book, so to say it was relatable would be an understatement.
I see this op-ed style piece as a sort of “missing middle” manifesto. It talks about the missing middle ground in social mobility policies, missing middle housing policies, missing middle university and internship policies, and the missing middle temperament of civil exchange regarding our newly entrenched American classicism.
Reeves calls on the American upper middle class to check its privilege and make negligible sacrifices for the betterment of society, in what I think is a sensible, cordial, and non-partisan way without claiming to be an omniscient authority on any of the topics at hand (which I believe is something needed in our current political scrum). A short read and an engaging one. Would recommend.
Many many people I’ve known and associated with throughout my life fall into this class. I have heard and even felt many of the very sentiments Reeves highlights in the book, so to say it was relatable would be an understatement.
I see this op-ed style piece as a sort of “missing middle” manifesto. It talks about the missing middle ground in social mobility policies, missing middle housing policies, missing middle university and internship policies, and the missing middle temperament of civil exchange regarding our newly entrenched American classicism.
Reeves calls on the American upper middle class to check its privilege and make negligible sacrifices for the betterment of society, in what I think is a sensible, cordial, and non-partisan way without claiming to be an omniscient authority on any of the topics at hand (which I believe is something needed in our current political scrum). A short read and an engaging one. Would recommend.
November 2, 2017
This book is fascinating--provided you're a bit of a political/policy wonk. Written by Richard V. Reeves, who is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan, century-old think tank in Washington, D.C., the book's full title says exactly what this wonkiness is all about: "Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It."
The upper middle class is defined as the top 20 percent of earners in this country, which is essentially households making at least $112,000 a year. People in this group include almost all of our policy makers, politicians, journalists, new and old media employees, managers and professionals. And Reeves, a British citizen by birth and a naturalized American citizen, claims that those who are in the upper middle class are more class-conscious and more bound and determined to keep others out so our children inherit our spots than are the titled British aristocracy!
The basic premise is that as the people in the upper middle class hold tightly to their positions there, it excludes upward mobility. He cites zoning laws, tax breaks, school quality and college legacy admissions policies as just some of the ways the upper middle class keeps its rein on who is in and who is not.
Like I said, it's a fascinating read. Very short. And very wonky! I loved it!
The upper middle class is defined as the top 20 percent of earners in this country, which is essentially households making at least $112,000 a year. People in this group include almost all of our policy makers, politicians, journalists, new and old media employees, managers and professionals. And Reeves, a British citizen by birth and a naturalized American citizen, claims that those who are in the upper middle class are more class-conscious and more bound and determined to keep others out so our children inherit our spots than are the titled British aristocracy!
The basic premise is that as the people in the upper middle class hold tightly to their positions there, it excludes upward mobility. He cites zoning laws, tax breaks, school quality and college legacy admissions policies as just some of the ways the upper middle class keeps its rein on who is in and who is not.
Like I said, it's a fascinating read. Very short. And very wonky! I loved it!
November 14, 2022
A really excellent book, which argues that class struggle isn't about the 99% vs the top 1%. It's about the top 20% versus everybody else. The upper middle class is the most powerful political force in America, and it increasingly uses that power to improve itself, while constraining opportunities for others.
Note that there are two different things going on there. Part of how the upper middle class succeeds is by, well, succeeding. Upper middle class parents spend more time with their kids, provide more opportunities for enrichment for them, teach them important bourgeois virtues, and generally prepare them well for the meritocratic competition of the marketplace. The problem here isn't what the upper middle class is doing - it's what everyone else isn't doing, often because they simply don't have the resources.
But there's another, darker side to the upper middle class's success. This is what Reeves calls "opportunity hoarding." Unlike providing opportunities for one's kids, which disadvantages others in a *relative* way but doesn't do anyone any absolute harm, dream hoarding makes others *worse* off by closing off opportunities that otherwise would have been open to them. The most pernicious example of dream hoarding involves restrictive zoning laws. These laws prohibit high density housing in suburban areas, keeping the value of homes in that area high, but doing so only by restricting supply and making it harder for others to find a home, to move closer to economic opportunity, and to move into neighborhoods with better schools for their kids.
Reeves also discusses legacy college admissions as an example of opportunity hoarding, though he himself admits that there is little data to show how much of a negative effect this has on mobility or inequality. Still, it's at the very least a symbolically offensive policy in an ostensibly meritocratic society, and one that doesn't seem to serve any positive purpose.
Reeves is a scholar at the Brookings Institute. But his concerns about inequality are ones that libertarians and conservatives should take seriously. Especially because Reeves approaches these issues in such a sensible way. Reeves recognizes and appreciates the meritocratic elements of the market. And he wisely rejects zero-sum, leveling-down approaches to dealing with inequality. The way to deal with opportunity hoarding is not to prevent the middle class from doing well for itself. It's to find ways to allow everyone to do well.
Who could argue with that?
Note that there are two different things going on there. Part of how the upper middle class succeeds is by, well, succeeding. Upper middle class parents spend more time with their kids, provide more opportunities for enrichment for them, teach them important bourgeois virtues, and generally prepare them well for the meritocratic competition of the marketplace. The problem here isn't what the upper middle class is doing - it's what everyone else isn't doing, often because they simply don't have the resources.
But there's another, darker side to the upper middle class's success. This is what Reeves calls "opportunity hoarding." Unlike providing opportunities for one's kids, which disadvantages others in a *relative* way but doesn't do anyone any absolute harm, dream hoarding makes others *worse* off by closing off opportunities that otherwise would have been open to them. The most pernicious example of dream hoarding involves restrictive zoning laws. These laws prohibit high density housing in suburban areas, keeping the value of homes in that area high, but doing so only by restricting supply and making it harder for others to find a home, to move closer to economic opportunity, and to move into neighborhoods with better schools for their kids.
Reeves also discusses legacy college admissions as an example of opportunity hoarding, though he himself admits that there is little data to show how much of a negative effect this has on mobility or inequality. Still, it's at the very least a symbolically offensive policy in an ostensibly meritocratic society, and one that doesn't seem to serve any positive purpose.
Reeves is a scholar at the Brookings Institute. But his concerns about inequality are ones that libertarians and conservatives should take seriously. Especially because Reeves approaches these issues in such a sensible way. Reeves recognizes and appreciates the meritocratic elements of the market. And he wisely rejects zero-sum, leveling-down approaches to dealing with inequality. The way to deal with opportunity hoarding is not to prevent the middle class from doing well for itself. It's to find ways to allow everyone to do well.
Who could argue with that?
March 11, 2024
So maybe I was letting the cranberry long drink talk from when I was reading this last night and wrote this was "the best book on a syllabus this year" this morning because the rest of the book was rather tepid. Like, no shit we need to reform education to make things more equitable. And why are you incapable of using the word equitable, Richard Reeves?
What I did love about the book was its self awareness. It had a bit of whit and charm that is sorely lacking in doom and gloom books (or perhaps it would be a breach of the social contract to crack a joke in a book about the prison pipeline). The decision to use we/us pronouns to the upper middle class is brilliant, as it is very likely those are the only people who will read this book, and the author himself is a part of this class.
What I did love about the book was its self awareness. It had a bit of whit and charm that is sorely lacking in doom and gloom books (or perhaps it would be a breach of the social contract to crack a joke in a book about the prison pipeline). The decision to use we/us pronouns to the upper middle class is brilliant, as it is very likely those are the only people who will read this book, and the author himself is a part of this class.
February 3, 2019
When I come across a book that purports to tell me that how well-to-do people act, I look to see whether I myself act this way. Reeves defines upper middle class to be those households with income over $120,000 per year. He then goes on to say that those “rich people” do things to ensure their kids continue to be rich people. Things like saving for college. Reading to them when they are young. Working to get them good internships. Ensuring they have good schools and teachers. This is the suburban way, if not the American way, to get your kids ahead. I now realize that I should have spent more time getting my daughters the best possible internship in college. I didn’t realize that was part of the game I was being forced to play by society. I’m also now worried that my daughters chose careers where they thought they could do a good job making the world a better place instead of focusing on getting a wage that kept them lofty in society.
The problem the author exposes is that everybody likes their offspring to be “better”, and no one wants them to be “worse”. In other words, intergenerational progress. But the author is focused on one scale, that of income. The author identifies this issue, and in the end concludes with some policy suggestions that may help to combat it. Interesting. And not very likely. Good read for the description of the issue, to cause thought around the impact this issue has on society, and to identify those areas where you should help your kids, and maybe other kids, more.
The problem the author exposes is that everybody likes their offspring to be “better”, and no one wants them to be “worse”. In other words, intergenerational progress. But the author is focused on one scale, that of income. The author identifies this issue, and in the end concludes with some policy suggestions that may help to combat it. Interesting. And not very likely. Good read for the description of the issue, to cause thought around the impact this issue has on society, and to identify those areas where you should help your kids, and maybe other kids, more.
January 2, 2026
I'm ambivalent about the normative position of Reeves' argument. Do we need to alter society from its current defaults in order to increase social mobility? I don't really think so, especially if it would be costly or unpopular. Why? Well, most of the phenomenon described here is downstream of a basic human tendency (i.e. like tends to match with like aka assortative mating) and two techno-cultural changes (i.e. women's liberation & improved peer/non-peer comparison via social media). Reeves argues these changes are due to active attempts my members of the upper middle class to pull-up the institutional ladders that were used in the past to facilitate social mobility. This is a bit of fantasy. The only thing that enabled marginally more social mobility in the mid-20th century was that American was basically half the world economy for awhile. If we always index our social theories against the American political economy of the 1950/60s, we will never be happy. The world caught up, and we have to compete now.
That said, I do think some of Reeves' suggested reforms are reasonable, and it is up to the American electorate to decide if they want to make tweaks here and there. However, the fundamental driver (that college educated individuals almost exclusively marry other college educated people in a way that also tracks along other status markers like wealth, geography, etc) is unlikely to go away anytime. In fact, it is likely to marginally increase in efficiency. Fortunately, we have continued evidence showing that whatever marginal increase in inequality this creates will not be existential for our political system. We can just focus getting the top to do more and be better, and this will help raise the absolute floor.
In the meantime, we may need to rework some of our cultural mythmaking about the American Dream, social mobility, etc. We can also improve on valuing personal traits beyond those that received outsized rewards in our market economy. It is unclear what this can or should look like, but the American way has been to leave it up to the people. Unfortunately, that right now has mostly become efforts to chase status in niche online communities or to lose oneself in the supersensorium of 21st centuries pleasure and vices.
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There's a longer review by Charles Haywood of Reeves' book that makes similar points, which I recommend (this was recommended to me by Caleb Ontiveros)--> https://theworthyhouse.com/2018/06/14...
There was also recent research that suggest sociopolitical discussions should be less concerned with relative degrees of socioeconomic inequality -> https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
That said, I do think some of Reeves' suggested reforms are reasonable, and it is up to the American electorate to decide if they want to make tweaks here and there. However, the fundamental driver (that college educated individuals almost exclusively marry other college educated people in a way that also tracks along other status markers like wealth, geography, etc) is unlikely to go away anytime. In fact, it is likely to marginally increase in efficiency. Fortunately, we have continued evidence showing that whatever marginal increase in inequality this creates will not be existential for our political system. We can just focus getting the top to do more and be better, and this will help raise the absolute floor.
In the meantime, we may need to rework some of our cultural mythmaking about the American Dream, social mobility, etc. We can also improve on valuing personal traits beyond those that received outsized rewards in our market economy. It is unclear what this can or should look like, but the American way has been to leave it up to the people. Unfortunately, that right now has mostly become efforts to chase status in niche online communities or to lose oneself in the supersensorium of 21st centuries pleasure and vices.
--
There's a longer review by Charles Haywood of Reeves' book that makes similar points, which I recommend (this was recommended to me by Caleb Ontiveros)--> https://theworthyhouse.com/2018/06/14...
There was also recent research that suggest sociopolitical discussions should be less concerned with relative degrees of socioeconomic inequality -> https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
January 3, 2018
I read this short book because Elliot recommended it. Also because I am attempting to become more informed about, and more capable of understanding, economics issues, not just because I find this stuff fascinating (which I do) but because it's so much fun for me to be able to engage in thoughtful dialogues with my kids about what is critically important to them.
This is a thoughtful book written by a thoughtful economist at Brookings. His argument is that the upper middle class in the USA (defined as the top 20% in income) has structured our society to give significant advantages to our children so that they have a more-than-equal chance of also being in the top 20% when they become adults, thus making it harder for the bottom 80% to be more economically mobile. I.e, it is not just the top 1% that's a problem: it's us! We are accomplishing the worthy goal of enabling our children to inherit our place in our society not just by being able to spend more time and money on our children's potential for success, but by structuring our society to be essentially unfair to the bottom 80% through such things as: (a) 529 plans, which help anyone who is capable of squirreling away tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to grow tax free to pay for their childrens' education, but which of course can be used essentially only by the top 20%; (b) paying for pre-K through 12 education primarily through local property taxes, which enable rich suburbs to have incredible schools and the poorer areas of this country to have mediocre to bad schools; (c) exclusionary zoning, which makes it impossible for less rich folks to move to areas with good schools; (d) legacy admissions at colleges, which somehow seem fine to many/most Americans, whereas affirmative action for blacks, etc is often considered unfair(!!?); etc., etc.
This book has inspired me to be far more aware of all of the ways that our family and all of our friends are so fortunate -- not just because we have worked hard but because we all were so incredibly smart to have chosen at birth the right parents, been rich enough to be able to live in the right school districts, etc. etc. etc.
In other words, we are a significant part of, and cause of, the persistent problem of social immobility today!
This is a thoughtful book written by a thoughtful economist at Brookings. His argument is that the upper middle class in the USA (defined as the top 20% in income) has structured our society to give significant advantages to our children so that they have a more-than-equal chance of also being in the top 20% when they become adults, thus making it harder for the bottom 80% to be more economically mobile. I.e, it is not just the top 1% that's a problem: it's us! We are accomplishing the worthy goal of enabling our children to inherit our place in our society not just by being able to spend more time and money on our children's potential for success, but by structuring our society to be essentially unfair to the bottom 80% through such things as: (a) 529 plans, which help anyone who is capable of squirreling away tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to grow tax free to pay for their childrens' education, but which of course can be used essentially only by the top 20%; (b) paying for pre-K through 12 education primarily through local property taxes, which enable rich suburbs to have incredible schools and the poorer areas of this country to have mediocre to bad schools; (c) exclusionary zoning, which makes it impossible for less rich folks to move to areas with good schools; (d) legacy admissions at colleges, which somehow seem fine to many/most Americans, whereas affirmative action for blacks, etc is often considered unfair(!!?); etc., etc.
This book has inspired me to be far more aware of all of the ways that our family and all of our friends are so fortunate -- not just because we have worked hard but because we all were so incredibly smart to have chosen at birth the right parents, been rich enough to be able to live in the right school districts, etc. etc. etc.
In other words, we are a significant part of, and cause of, the persistent problem of social immobility today!
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