The economic historian Richard F. Muth has estimated that median income in American cities rises by 8 percent for every mile one moves away from downtown. Ten miles out, it has doubled. For decades, the deteriorating brick hulks of public housing projects have broadcast the despair of inner-city poverty to suburban commuters. But the top end of the country’s wealth spectrum has grown more and more obscure. Today, segregation by income has become the dominant ordering force in American settlement. “If poor people knew how rich rich people are,” Chris Rock quipped last month, “there would be riots in the streets.” After touring the United States in the 1830s, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville discerned the “love of well-being” to be the “national and dominant taste.” “I did not encounter a citizen in America so poor that he did not cast a glance of hope and longing on the enjoyments of the rich,” he wrote. But de Tocqueville also believed that democracy tended to ward off the ostentatious display of riches; that the tastes of the wealthy did not reflect their holdings but instead conformed to a more broadly accessible idea of success. Surely the Frenchman would change his tune if he could visit some of Los Angeles’ 21st-century homes. One has five swimming pools and a cantilevered tennis court. Another has a Turkish hammam and a ballroom that fits 250. A third has an operating room in the basement. But Americans don’t see that on their way to work.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 22:40:30 +0000
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