>> tell me if you think i have got it really wrong when i describe what's going on here. don't watch much television at

all. some of you probably brag about don't even have a tv anymore or you only used to watch dvds, old masterpiece theatre's. [laughter] the average american watches about 35 hours of television a week. they have distinctive reading habits. drinking habits and diets. they differ from mainstream america in the age at which they married and have children. don't believe that? geriatric parents are all over the place. hardly anybody in their '20s. they differ from mainstream america also in books they read and humor they enjoy, the way to take your their bodies, the way to decorate their homes, their leisure activities, and work environments and their child raising practices. these practices have engendered cultural separation. the new upper class is detached from the lives of majority of

americans not just by the taste and preferences anymore either, but spatially as well. members of this elite have increasingly sort themselves into hyper wealthy, zip codes that i called super zips. in 1960, the nest is already had the equivalent of super zips in the form of famously elite never such as the upper east side of new york or philadelphia's main line, or the north shore of chicago and beverly hills. but despite their prestige the people in them were not uniformly affluent or well educated. across 14 of the most elite places to live in 1960, the median family income wasn't close to affluent. it was just $84,000 in today's purchasing power. only one in four adults -- people in places like north

shore, beverly hills, scarsdale, the rest. by 2000 that diversity had dwindled to a meeting them and, had doubled in those 14 elite areas to 163,000, the percentage of adults with degrees rose to 67% from 26%. it's not just also that they became more homogeneously affluent and highly educated, they also formed larger and larger clusters. we're now in one of the largest of those clusters moving from her west and northwest, you have a couple hundred thousand people living in a contagious superset. not only super zips of the 15 or so zip codes going this direction from where we are, all but about three of them are in the top half of the top percentile in the index of education and income. the isolation is only going to get worse because increasingly

the people who run the country were born into that world unlike typical member of the elite in 1960 they had never known anything but the new upper class culture. many of them had gone through k-12, graduate school and into their careers without ever living in a zip code that wasn't a superset. so those are the problems. i have gone through them really quickly. i want to emphasize if you're single, he hasn't made his case, that explicating these points in the book took 231 pages. now to the main topics of this lecture. why do these problems matter and what happens next? the first reason that these changes matter has to do with social capital. social scientists for the hundreds of types of volunteering, charities, civic participation, religion participation from activities in the workplace and neighborly activities in the community. america's history in this regard

has been unique. and not only americans thought so. all observers agree the king and the kimberly lies in the united states is not like commend live anywhere else. many cultures after generous hospitality to strangers and guests, but widespread voluntary mutual assistance among unrelated people who happen to live alongside each other has been rare. in the united states is standard operating procedure. the second unfilled aspect of american community life has been vibrant, exuberant civil engagement and solve local problems to the voluntary associations that americans historic informed at the drop of hat. the decline of marriage, industriousness, honesty and religiosity has been associate with a near collapse of social capital in fishtown as well.

the case for the ongoing collapse of american social capital was first made a decade ago by harvard political scientist robert putnam in his best selling book, bowling alone, which he presented dozens of indicators of social capital, almost all of which showed a steep decline starting in the 1960s. the same measures has often been rising until then. drawing directly from putnam's presentation, the modal year for the beginning of the decline among the indicators was 1964. at the dawn of the great society. i find this significant, professor putnam does not. bowling alone did not explore class divisions. but we know that social capital had to decline precipitously in fishtown just by knowing the extent of the collapse in marriage and religiosity. this is obvious for marriage. some large proportion of the

webs of engagement in ordinary committee life are spun because of the environment to the parents are trying to foster for their children. unmarried fathers are seldom around to participate. single mothers are usually doing double duty already trying to be the breadwinner and an attentive parent, at the same time and they haven't much energy or time to spare for committee activities. of course social capital decline in fishtown. it is at least as great, once darling dining of "bowling alone" was the in the words of robert putnam quote, as a rough rule of thumb are evident shows no half of all association memberships or church related, half of all personal philanthropy is religious in character, and half of all volunteering occurs in a religious context. it's not just that. religious believers are also much more likely than secular people to contribute to

nonreligious forms of social capital. so of course social capital decline in fishtown. in the book i document that decline in terms of specific forms of social capital, but i think that the scariest data don't involve of specific kinds of social capital but instead the collapse of social trust in fishtown. social trust is the raw material that makes rich social capital possible. not trust any particular neighbor who happens to be your friend, but a generalized expectation that the people around you will do the right thing. take that away, and even the possibility of community disappears. in fishtown the percentage of people agree with the statements people are generally tried to be fair, people are generally helpful, and people can be generally trusted have all dropped by more than half since

the early 1970s, and probably a lot more than that since the beginning of the 1960s. only about 20% of people now agree people can be generally trusted. i know that this discussion of social capital and community leaving open to an accusation of nostalgia for an america that was never as rosy as i implied. it is also fact that many people in the new upper class don't particularly care about community anyway. they are happy with a professional associations and the networks and friends who are scattered all over the metropolitan area. who needs community? i grant both of those, both of those objections, but if we're talking about daily life for most americans, who don't live in places like northwest washington, the decay of social capital mix important difference in quality of life, if this is as true in archdiocese as in small dose to a neighborhood

with weak social capital is more mobile to crime. if you of high social capital you can, in fact, leave your kids to play industry because neighbors are looking out for them. if you have high social capital you can leave your door unlocked because people no when strangers are coming in the neighborhood and take care of business. i'm not making this a. these really happened in real working class communities in the trendy. a neighborhood with weak social capital must take its problems to the police or to social welfare bureaucracies because local resource for dealing with/ these problems dried up.c'c'c'c' in anybody with weak social capital, the small daily pleasures of friendly interchange with neighbors and storekeepers atrophy. the sum of is that people living in places with weak social capital generally lead a less satisfying lives than people who live in places with high social capital. they are less happy. and that brings me to the next reason why america's cultural inequality matters.

i first wrote about the nature of happiness as it relates to social policy in a book called in pursuit, published in 1980. the ideas i develop in that book have been a subtext to most of what i have written since. boil down to the essentials, here's my position. happiness does not consist of passing the time from birth to death as closely as possible. rather, a life is happy to the extent that the person living that life can take lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole. that definition is barred from aristotle, but it also very fits the western understanding of happiness. and for that matter it is consistent with definitions of happiness in every serious intellectual tradition. lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole. in one's youth, happiness is almost exclusively a process.

so what it is 20 toys or '30s doesn't look back and savor lasting and justified satisfaction. he's engaged in activities that produce them. the older one gets, the more happiness does consist in looking back and savoring, along with continuing satisfaction. doing the things you enjoy doing. not many human activities produce lasting and justified satisfaction. might claim, it's an ambitious one wanted to take the truth i've never had anybody successfully challenges so maybe this audience will be first. i argue that there are just for domains with which lasting and justified satisfaction's ocher. arthur brooks has called them institutions of meeting. he's under the impression i invented by didn't but i know will continue to use it for evermore. i do have those for institutions of meaning our family vocation, community and faith. i do have a couple of provisos.

community canterbury's people are scattered geographically. vocation can include applications or causes. and furthermore it is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four of the institutions of meaning. are happy atheist and happy single people and happy people who are not part at a community. i merely assert that those are the only for institutions to which lasting and justified satisfaction's ocher. the stuff of life occurs within those for domains. seen in this light america's falling away from marriage industriousness, religiosity and community take on great importance. we are watching decay in all four, and corresponding decay in human happiness. the evidence i find most convincing for this statement does not come from quantitative measures of happiness, but the empirical relationship of self-reported happiness and for domains worth noting.

i begin working with the general social survey which asks people, has been asking them since their 1970s, how happy you are. i'm talking about the percentage of people who answer very happy. the first point is the for institutions are all important pashtun important related individual to the probability of the person responds that he or she is very happy. for respondents ages 30-49, whites, non-latino wets, a married person is more than twice as likely to respond happy as some does not merit. people who attend church weekly or more are twice as likely to report their very happy than people who never attend church. people who score high on a six of social trust which is highly correlated with community

involvement are twice as likely to report being very happy and people who score low. now let's engage little social science. given those relationships, given what's happened to marriage and justices, religiosity and communities since 1960 what you expect the trend lines to look like? the answer is that we should expect decline in both, and tilting stabilized in belmont in the 1980s and then we will see stabilization in the percentage of people who say they're very happy because there stabilize and the rest, a in fishtown it's going to be down all the way to 1960 to present. that's exactly what happened. again based on this general social survey. self-reported happiness in fishtown dropped without arrested. from 33% in the 1970s to 18% of the most recent three surveys.

that's a very large drop in something as basic as being able to say that one is very happy. i want to repeat that i do not hang my hat on purely quantitative measures of happiness in the book. i have a long chapter that reports on the qualities of what happened to the lives of real people in the real fishtown and it is a depressing story indeed. but whether the data are quantitative or narrative, the bottom line is the same. the data i described for marriage, and duchesses, honesty and community were not nearly showing changes in social institutions and norms. they were saying things about the deterioration in life in fishtown at the level of human happiness. and that is one of the ultimate regions wide the growing cultural inequality matters. the of the ultimate reason is the survival of the american project as i've been calling it.

thomas jefferson in his first inaugural had a wonderful summary of what the american project was. what he said that the sum of good government is one which shall restrain men and into one another and shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improve. at this point in our history, more and more people, including academics, the leadership of the democratic party, and some large proportion of the american electorate, believe that history has overtaken that original conception. attracted by the idea of a large enough a state that smooths over the rough patches of people's lives and stage managers help people interact in elaborate ways for the own benefit of course. more than ever before in our history, we have a major political push for a transform america that implicitly with pdas the continued validity of the american project. what happens next?

i promise not to talk about contender politics, and i won't, so you are to longer terms. one pessimistic and one optimistic. we will start with the pessimistic. the first alternative is that the new upper class is in just as much trouble as the new lower-class, albeit in different ways, and the american project is doomed. in mid-20th century arnold study of history identified 26 civilizations, and -- the man was a poet men on grand scale. a theory that explained their trajectories of growth and decline. in 2001 i was working on a book about human a congressman and i knew he was considered old hat now, but i thought i better consult a source that was as rich immature as that. so i eventually reached a

chapter entitled -- i experienced shock in recogniti recognition. in that chapter, he took up the processes that lead to disintegration of civilizations. his argument went like this. i'm going to using some of his language year. the growth phase of a civilization is led by a creative minority that has a strong self-confidence sense of style for purpose. the ungraded majority falls along. then at some point in every civilizations journey, the creative minority degenerates into a dominant minority. its members still run the show but they are no longer confident and no longer set the example. among other reactions our rejection of the obligation of citizenship, and non-coding directly our first to appear in the ranks of the and spread from there to the ranks of the atomic minority, which usually succumbs

to the sickness of community. the shock of recognition that i experienced in 2001 came because of the adoption by the middle class and the upper middle class behaviors that used to be distinctly lower-class. when tipper gore, the wife of the center, later vice president al gore attached rap lyrics, why was she so scolded by someone for social and political peers? why were four letter words which were formerly considered by the upper middle class to be déclasse, appearing in glossy upscale magazines? op-ed the hooker looks become a fashion trend among nice girls in the suburbs? how have tattoos, which boast for my age know, was the absolute certain sure mark that you were a member of the lower-class unless it was a military tattoo, back when we were growing up?

how had that become chic? toynbee would've shrugged and said that's what happens when civilizations are headed downhill. america's creative minority has -- and there are many reasons, some of which i agree with. but the signs that america's new upper class has suffered a collapse of self-confidence are hard to ignore. there is, for example, a collapse of confidence and codes of honorable behavior. codes of behavior exist in every note of society and they are powerful determinants of the social order within that node. doctors have a code and cops have a code. teenagers have a code of prisoners have a code. the difference between the elites code and the others is the breadth of its influence or its potential influence.

the history of equity in the last half of the 19th century can be seen as a victorian elites success and propagandizing the entire british population to accepting its code of morals. in keeping with his democratic tradition, america did not have different codes for different socioeconomic classes are to be a decent person in the united states was to adhere to a code that applies to all rich and poor alike. if you want to know what the code was, go to google books and read a selection of stories that you can find their combat areas to teach america's children of all socioeconomic classes for the mid-1850s to the early 20th centuries. in today's new upper class the code that has taken its place is a set of mushy in junctions to be nice. top of the code of niceness.

children are supposed to share their toys, not hate each other, take turns to be nice. but not to be judgmental. that's what i mean by loss of self-confidence. the code of the dominant minority is supposed to set the standard for this society, but ecumenical niceness explicitly rejects that responsibility. the new upper class still does a good job of practicing many of the virtues. it has lost its self-confidence in the ripeness of its values. the members of the new upper class will not preach that the practice. the collapse of a sturdy code, acting medical niceness is not sturdy, also means that certain concepts lose their powers to strange behavior. one of those concepts is -- the random house dictionary defines unseemly as not in keeping with established standards of taste or proper form, of becoming or

indecorous and appearance in speech or conduct, et cetera, inappropriate for time or place. the ultimate source is much more concise but it means just three words to define unseemly. unbecoming, unfitting, indecent. some examples, well, unseemliness is television producer aaron spelling building a house of 56,500 square feet and 123 rooms. i'm seemingly this is harry mckenna, ceo of pfizer, getting a $99 billion golden parachute and $82 million pension after a tenure share price plunge. they did nothing illegal. pfizer paid according to the contract that he may with its ceo. aaron spelling god's own acre mission to build his 56,000 square foot house. but the outcomes were inappropriate for time or place,

not suited to the circumstances. they were unbecoming an unfitting. they were unseemly. a great deal of the public anger that lies in the occupy movement lies in the willingness of the upper new class to enforce codes of c. crony capitalism is much less often a matter of illegality and of unseemliness. a great deal of the wall street behavior that contributes a financial meltdown reflects a illegal behaviors, but unseemly once. and, of course, if you really want some egregious examples of unseemliness, you have nobody to look any five-mile radius from where we sit tonight. it's not new. the traffic of regular to my congress has always been like making sausage. but the growth in the size of the goodies that are now available means that hundreds of billions of dollars worth of dollars -- are up for grabs before the member knows the

right people, can convince the right committee chairman to insert a clause in legislation, can start regulatory bureaucrats, or secure the right appointment to key government panel. washington is in a new gilded age of influencing peddling the towards anything that has come before. unseemliness is a symptom of the collapse of codes behavior that is not a legislation but on shared understanding regarding fitness of things and upon intelligence to behave in accordance with those shared understandings. unseemliness is another symptom of hollowness of the core. yet the case i've just made for a hollow elite is completely correct and all is lost. think into the situation in 25, soon the trends i described continue. the united states at the point is stuck with a large and growing lower-class that is able to care for itself only

sporadically and inconsistently. its concentration in fishtown puts more and more pressure on the remaining fishtown families are trying to hold the line. the new upper class continues to prosper because the dollar value of the talents they bring continues to grow. the concentration of the upper new class has increased. the portion of the upper class or the second or third generation of the class has increased and with the increases come increasing ignorance of the world outside. the new laws and regulations steadily increased in america's governing regime is soon indistinguishable from that to in advance of european welfare state. all right, let's try to be a little more optimistic about the future. the alternative has a chance to the extent that for predictions about the future are actually borne out. first, we in america will be watching what happens in europe and it will not be pretty.

second, science will undermines the moral underpinnings of the welfare state. third, it will become increasingly obvious that there is a simple, affordable way to replace the entire apparatus of the welfare state. and forth, the persistence of america's allegiance to the american project will turn out to be far greater than my arguments have acknowledged so far. let's go to the first of those. the simplest way to which the advanced welfare state will lose attractiveness is a living bankruptcy of the european welfare states. it's inevitable. it's inevitable partly because the destructive nature of welfare states as publicly financed benefits grow, so does the populations who find that they need them. that's simply true everywhere. always has been. in europe you have an additional problem, which is you have fertility rates way below replacement. the problems that we see in greece, spain and portugal are only the beginning. the united states will have a

chance to watch these events unfold before our own situation becomes as critical. the implosion of the moral underpinnings of the welfare state is a very complicated topic that i won't try to elaborate a bit of simply state my position. the premise that human nature is built into the moral justification of the welfare state as a rationale for saying welfare state can't work at all. the first implication of the premise is that the welfare state can be designed in ways that would not lead people to take advantage of the incentives that the welfare state stands up. for example, generous unemployment benefits would not importantly affect how hard people try to keep old jobs or how hard they look for news. the second implication of the premise was that properly designed government intervention could change human behavior on a broadscale. social engineering is possible.

during the next two decades i believe that the biological science will discredit these as thoroughly as economics has bred the conceits of economic planning. what are the genesis of the nurse scientists findings so far? nothing surprising as precisely the point. for example, sciences proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that males and females respond differently to babies. [laughter] reasons have nothing to do with the way they were raised. it's not a finding that should surprise anyone but it is at odds with the belief that any non-sexist word men and women will find caring for infants equally rewarding. so it is with many topics that their own policy issue. worst of the beginning of a very steep learning curve. my proposition is this. the more we learned about how human beings work at the deepest genetic and narrow levels, the

more old ways of us thinking, this edition surrounding marriage, vocation, committee and faith will be found to be the critical resource through which human beings lead satisfying lives. it will be found that these institutions deteriorate in the advanced welfare state are reasons that are intrinsic to the nature of the welfare state. it will be found these institutions are richest and most robust states that allow people to work out their lives on their own singly and cooperatively. my third prediction is that an alternative to the welfare state become increasing the obvious. in essence, take all the money we currently spend on income transfers and just to find its guaranteed income for all adults, 10 down the entire bureaucratic and regulatory apparatus of the welfare state. i know all of the objections that are springing into your much because after i wrote the book i heard every single one of them, and i also tried to work

through them in the book itself or what about work incentives? won't politicians just direct a new welfare state? i try to spell them out but that's not my main point or my purposes tonight. rather, at some point over the next decade or two, the finances of the welfare state must become ridiculous to everyone. to some of us it was already ridiculous what i wrote. the train is on the richest countries on of the most america's make enough money for themselves and their families that the entire welfare state could disappear tomorrow and they would do just fine. and yet we're spending on the order of two trying to figure in transfer payments and still have millions of people in need. that's what i mean by ridiculous. sooner or later, some budgetary figure, which we are rapidly approaching, it will become ridiculous to everyone but it will become obvious that

spending trillions of dollars using armies of bureaucrats to do it, we spend a lot of it on ourselves and get back a lot of it to people who don't need it, and then dole out what remains with all sorts of regulation and favoritism is really foolish and ridiculous. my fourth prediction isn't really a prediction but a hope you're the united states has a history of confounding pessimists that i take very seriously. when ever the american project has suffered a wounding blow or taken a wrong turn that looked as i if it might be fatal, thins eventually work out, more or less. can it happen again? yes, it could. i don't have a politically practical five-point plan to present replacing the entire welfare state with a guaranteed income. it's not currently a practical plan, but the first step is a recognition of among americans of all classes that a problem of

cultural inequality exists and that something can be done about it. something has to be done about it. and after a step came in second but it is been my experience that i get a really positive response, and that's not determined by political ideology. i get that same response from people on the left as well as the right who are worried, for example, about raising their children in an environment where they will become hothouse flowers. they are aware of the dangers of isolation. i think that both the problems of the new upper class and the new lower-class are in essence problems whose time has come. that is something that has to be done that i have in mind cannot consist of top down government policies. i can't even think, even if, even if i tried to stop being a libertarian for them in and tried to think of government

policy that we do some good, i really can't come up with that. do something that has to be done must be defined in terms of individual american families acting in their own interests and the interests of their children. doing that in fishtown requires work from outside. i want it to be clear that i'm not thinking of the fishtown as a community in shambles. there are lots and lots of families in fishtown in the united states you're doing everything right, holding the line, maintaining standards. they need help from outside but not in the form of government assistance. they need social validation by the larger culture of what they are doing. the best thing to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending nonjudgmental is him. where it says working hard and being married and raise her children, these work for us, of

course we are going to system that's been the the right way for other people to behave. these parents, families shouldn't hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy those moments. when it comes to marriage and work ethic, the new upper class does have to start reaching for the practices. changing life in the enclaves of new upper class requires that members of the upper-class we think their priorities. here are some propositions that might guide them. first, life sequestered from anybody not like yourself is a self-limiting. second, places to live in which the people around you have no problems tend to be sterile. third, america outside the enclaves of the new upper class is still a wonderful place. filled with smart, interesting and entertaining people. if you're not part of that

america, you have stripped yourself of much of what makes being an american special. such priorities can be expressed in any number of familiar decisions. a neighborhood where you buy your next him, the next school you choose for your children, what you tell your children about the fire and virtues of physical labor and military service, whether you become an active number of a religious congregation, where the become involved in life in the command as a more meaningful level than attending charity goals. i am not asking that the new upper class become social workers or move their families. they just need to think about and tweeting their decisions, and stop this obsessive search to be around others at the tp tippy top of a socioeconomic ladder. everyone in the new upper class has a monitor resources to make a wide variety of decisions that determine whether they engage themselves and their children and the rest of america or whether they isolate themselves

from the. the only question is what they prefer to do. that's it. i mean, we -- [applause] with a minute. that wasn't the end. [laughter] spent i said that's it with a question mark. if you'll bear with me, i will finish up very quickly. one applause is in a. you don't have to do it again. so that's it. we're supposed to trust a large number of parents will spontaneously voluntarily make the right choices of our country by making the right choice for themselves and their children. yeah, we are. but if i'm right that these are problems whose time has come, i don't think that's naïve. that are just too many instances in american history where the culture has turned very rapidly, what americans recognize time

has come. it's not a sure thing. i have given you a few reasons for optimism but the reality is that america is nearing a divide and things could easily go the wrong way. i am particularly what about the second and third generations of belmont. born into affluence, conscious of an guilty about the privileged position, ignorance, the vibrancy, exuberance of an american they do not know it firsthand. the second and third generations of belmont increasingly don't get america. in their heart of hearts they don't understand why america is special. but the second and third generation of belmont remains a small fraction of all americans. elsewhere, i believe from sea to shining sea there remains a broadly shared boldly deep understand that america just isn't another advanced

postindustrial state. if that's true, as i believe it to be among the mainstream democrats and republicans alike, we should be able to argue about how to legislate health care or how to legislate the debt ceiling, and still be able to agree on this. we have had something really wonderful going on for us here in america. we mustn't lose it. america is fundamentally unlike england or germany or france or sweden, or for that matter, unlike japan or china. the american project must once again be seen for what it is, a different way for people to live together, unique among nations -- nations of the earth and immeasurably precious. that's it. [laughter] [applause] >> him and thank you, charles,

for marvelous lecture. now we'll turn to questions and that's that we will adjourn to a reception in the lobby. >> we have people with microphones. right there. >> i'd like to ask about the possible influence of social media on us going forward. because although all these separations took place before facebook, we now have facebook, we now have other ways in which people interact. what do you see happening? >> the ways that social capital can be fostered by internet are absolutely fascinating. and i discussed some of them in the book. i'm talking about social capital traditionally defined, whereby true social media in our immediate family we had a case where a crisis with the teenager in florida was recognized by their online friends, and they mobilized and did an intervention. we have online resources now

that, you know how the traditional informal social capital is taking a casual to neighborhood sick or something, well, what i call lots of helping hands.com whereby again in a case involving our immediate family, a friend who suffered from cancer was able to have her friends organize a couple months worth of meals through this online resource. so there are lots of ways that social capital can be undermined by the internet, but it can also be a great force. of course, here's the stinger. all of these wonderful new forms of social capital on the internet are disproportionately in the middle class, and lisa ball by people in fishtown. so it's the case of the rich getting richer in terms of social capital, and i'm not optimistic it will do much for fishtown.

>> can we return or turn this around without going back to our religious roots, whatever the religion is, that were part of the founding of the country speak with. >> you know, self disclosure is appropriate. i've been agnostic as a wannabe believer. but i have to say that the founders were very explicit about it being absolutely necessary for a self-governing society. and to refer to a self-governing meeting at the individual level. and the fact is the jury is still out on whether secular societies can exist for a long time. europe is experimenting with that right now much more than we are, and we will know the answer. i have two thoughts. and one is i think it's really important.

i think that the role of religion in a free society is crucial for its long-term allen of survival. and i also think we are on the cusp of a revitalization of spiritual dimension of life among the new upper class of belmont and children perhaps society in general but i have said this before. very briefly here. i look upon the twin century as the adolescence of homo sapiens, where we decide as adolescence that our parents are wrong about everything. and that in the 2000 i think we're growing out of the. i see a lot of signs that i'm not the first one to see them, that probably is because baby boomers are coming to terms with her own mortality, i see lots of signs that, in fact, we may be looking at a revival in serious religious commitment, which i think would be a wonderful thing.

>> your book, and the data that you use, starts with 1960. yet one of your comments as you are talking was 1964 was the seachange. why not 1951? white not 1941? what is their -- is there that the data seems to go in this direction from 1960, and might that not be necessary just political change but generational? i mean, we just -- >> well, and i'll tell you one practical consideration. first, i want a baseline measure against which to measure subsequent change. 1960 is a good time for that. because it's not as if doing the 1950s there have been huge shifts in these dimensions that i was measuring. they were still pretty much the

same to another consideration is 1960 we had in 1960 census which provided me with that kind of income data and educational data which were not as good in the 1950s, i am so satisfied with that star. it was everything started to change in the 1960s. >> i assume in order to change the ballot of the people in belmont you would have to change the educational system. i think of our system as perpetuating values. how would we change that educational process so that elmont -- belmont --

[inaudible] >> good point. if there's one thing that characterizes the upper middle class parents, it skips session at getting the kids into a handful of elite schools. it is not urban legend but silverback that wealthy neighbors in dixie parents will send their children to the preparation so they get to the right elementary school so they can go to harvard law school eventually. i don't know. the socialization that goes on in elite colleges, and i speak as someone who attended a couple of those been around a lot of others, it's a very powerful process. not only that, when you have a lot of our large universities which have on a colleges now, in effect provide atmosphere of an elite college within the university of michigan or the university of illinois, those kinds of things. so you have an expansion way

beyond harvard, princeton and yale of these environments in which there is a very strong socialization that goes on to produce a lot of problems i talk about. i haven't the least idea how one counterbalances that. >> in 1965, woodrow wilson high school in upper northwest had more national merit semifinalists in any school in the area. that's not the case today. now, how do you get the parents of today's high schoolers to send their kids to wilson rather than other schools? and just in terms of your thoughtful that we've got to get the upper movement. >> well, if you're talking about sending a child to a school that

is potentially disruptive or dangerous i simply wouldn't do it for my own children. i want a school that is safe and nurturing. however, and i guess that in my case, my wife's case, i believe the data. and the data are that it doesn't make much difference was schools you're seeing your kids to in terms of how well they develop intellectually. it's amazing how hard it is to prove that the graduates of gds have developed an election more than people who have gone to other very schools. this problem of ensuring that you get jacked up academic performance by going to fancy schools goes way back to the coleman report back in the 1960s, as a huge national survey trying to explain defenses in academic achievement and a quality of the school made almost no difference at all. and we believe that data so much that my wife and i moved out to rural maryland and syndicates to local public schools which had some really good teachers in the

occasionally but had some bad teachers which were quite pedestrian public schools, and i submit that i don't think that they are intellectually less adept in their '20s than they would've been if we'd stayed in washington and sent them here. in the country they know a lot more for having gone to brunswick high school than they would have known if they've gone to sidwell. so the answer is we need lots more upper class parents to spend a lot more time looking at the data, of the performance, and as tuitions at the fancy schools continue to rise and rise, if they are, if you look at and say there's almost no evidence that are 25 grams or 30 grams or 40 grand a year is buying us a damn thing, who knows, it might change. >> remember, you just mentioned that the report, we speak to the moynihan report on the dynamic around father absence in the

seniors, and any thought about a positive solution, not just the problem but a solution, mentoring, policy, what's involved in removing fat? >> you know, the issue of fatherlessness and its effects is one of the fascinating stories in american mores today, because essentially everybody who looks at the data except by this time from and talk about liberal scholars as well as conservatives, except that children raised in fact in two parent families do better. than kids who are born to divorce parents and a lot better, miles better than children are born to unmarried women. that's just the fact that that happens after the status and was the second thing that we find is as you evaluate mentoring programs and the rest of this, it doesn't make all that much

different than in a very few success stories. there are success stories on the cbs evening news. the are not success stories and follows done with rigorous control groups two years later, okay? we don't know how to compensate for the absence of fathers and the presence of fathers is absent enforcement do you know how much difference it would make if that's what was commonly said on news programs, and by members of the upper class in conversation and by newspapers and if you're were just taken for granted that boy, bring a child into the work if you're unmarried woman and you're a male not prepared to take care of that child is really wrong. if that were simply in the air, we wouldn't be making it up. we wouldn't be demonizing people without reason to say what you're doing here is not just a lifestyle choice, it's wrong. and yet how hard it is to say in a setting but because i want to

backpedal and say but, of course, we all know many single mothers are doing their best in this difficult situation. of course, there are to many civil mothers raise wonderful kids. that's absolutely true, but our fear of being the bad guy we talked about the issue of what happens when marriage breaks down has led to a silence on the issue that is of desperate importance to the welfare of children. and we simply have to change the nature of that conversation. [applause] >> way in the back. >> could you address the issue of population relative to the two groups? >> defining a size of, well, fishtown, working class white america constitute about 20% of the, 30% of the white

population. the answer is there's no hard and fast rule for saying that person is the new lower-class but if you add up problematic categories, for example, if you say males who are not able to make a living, not able to make enough money to keep themselves and the spouse above the poverty line, they are problematic. women who are raising children on their own are a problematic population for a committee. social isolate us, people who live in a transit of our complete divorce from the life of that transferred by any kinds of organizational memberships or any other measures of participation, they are problematic. if you add up those populations, then we're looking at maybe about 20% of all americans, whites, ages 30-49 who are problematic in one of those ways or another. that's a really false work statement. in terms of the changing size of

fishtown and of belmont am a belmont is getting larger and fishtown is getting smaller. so that white working-class america in 1960 was a majority of the white population. and by the way, this raises the question isn't it possible the trends in fishtown i just described are -- whereby the most able people left fishtown, and i place in the book in which i can answer that question. the answer is no. but generally speaking, belmont is increasing. it is now up to 20%, just about the rate of growth is quite small. it's very slow. can go to the one in the front and then the gentleman two rows behind for the next question. >> i guess i would like to ask you to be an optimist. suppose that everybody in fishtown somehow or other open the books, crack the books and joined belmont, and everybody

was just like belmont and there's nobody in belmont to associate with this is the rest of the world lives. wouldn't that be great? >> yeah. but how do you get there is another question. >> well, i still felt that you simply had a pessimistic view of the long-term, maybe 50, you just had the numbers are that fishtown is shrinking, and i have not read your book, i can't comment on all the points you've made, but still one can say as a possibility that because we're going to robots and were going to have all of the menial jobs done, we won't have a lower-class. they will all be belmont. since i have your attention i will just add a gratuitous remark. i spent a lot of time in europe and i think most of what you say about europe is true, but doesn't take into account that the trains in europe are to make it more like the u.s.a., that if

we look over the last 150 years, over most of that time americans have been better educated, and richer than europeans. and it's my opinion that as europeans have become better educated and as rich as americans, they are becoming more like with what you think of the good qualities of americans. >> let me just quickly make a point about changing size of population. i said that fishtown is shrinking to which i do understand is i didn't talk about 80% of the whites, ages 30-49. they fall in the. all of the trendlines on talking about for that 50% of whites ages 30-49 are in between belmont and fishtown. or put it another way, the problems we see in fishtown are growing in middle america as well. and so even though the size of fishtown is shrinking, that doesn't necessarily mean their problems are going to shrink because the problems are growing in middle america.

i simplified it by 50% in the middle. but things are not looking rosy for that group as well. >> are you finding these trends of growing class divisions? emerging in other racial groups in america, or is this just beec in the watch group that just a? >> the penultimate chapter to the book i take a representative sample of the trendlines and i show what they look like if you take the entire population with the same measure. so i show two lines. i show the line i used already just for white america, ages 30-for another batch of the like it is great by all a. they are incredibly close. which surprised me because we

things like out of wedlock birth or marital breakdown, we know that those specifics have been worse in the black community than the wide country. on the other hand, some of those numbers are better in the latino community. so it sort of balances out. and that happens with a lot of other trendlines. so the message of the book is about all of america. even though the data are limited for expositional purposes to white america. >> looking at more recent data, is it your view that a certain proportion of residents in your fictional belmont, as a result of the financial crisis and the

foreclosures, et cetera, have been forced, evicted or closed out of belmont and obligated to move to fishtown? is there any data to back that up? has that had an impact on the composition of the two extremes? >> i can only give you my speculation based on what i know on collateral data. it's not clear to me that belmont has been hard hit by the recession. i mean, incomes may have gone down and certainly there are people that lost their jobs. i don't know of any indications that you have seen large populations of belmont people who have gone bankrupt and had to move to fishtown, or slower down the ladder. it's an interesting question but i have not looked