The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits

Author:Daniel Markovits
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three: The Coming Class War

sumptuary codes: See, e.g., Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996).

mostly did not: The poor provided an exception to this rule, even at midcentury—and indeed more so at midcentury than they do today. For more on the recent history of poverty in America, see Chapter 4.

Jerry Garcia settled in Palo Alto: See “The Grateful Dead: Making the Scene in Palo Alto,” Palo Alto History, accessed July 18, 2018, www.paloaltohistory.org/the-grateful-dead.php.

Bob Seger played the Crow’s Nest: See, for instance, “Crow’s Nest East,” The Concert Database, accessed July 18, 2018, http://theconcertdatabase.com/venues/crows-nest-east.

were similar in both towns: In 1960, the median family income in St. Clair Shores was only about one-seventh lower than in Palo Alto, and median house prices were only about one-third to one-half lower. For incomes, see U.S. Census Bureau, “General Social and Economic Characteristics: Michigan,” in 1960 Census of Population, 182, Table 33, www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1960/population-volume-1/37722966v1p24ch4.pdf, and U.S. Census Bureau, “General Social and Economic Characteristics: California,” in 1960 Census of Population, 224, Table 33, www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1960/population-volume-1/vol-01-06-f.pdf. For house prices, the one-third figure comes from the Census Bureau. See U.S. Census Bureau, “Michigan,” in 1960 Census of Housing, 6, Table 1, https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1960/housing-volume-1/41962442v1p5ch2.pdf, and U.S. Census Bureau, “California,” in 1960 Census of Housing, 5, Table 1, https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1960/housing-volume-1/41962442v1p2ch4.pdf. The one-half figure comes from comparing the median prices of the sixty-two houses in Palo Alto listed for sale in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1960 and the median prices of the sixty houses in St. Clair Shores listed for sale in the Detroit Free Press in 1960.

places to shop: Brian Edwards, University Architecture (Milton Park: Taylor & Francis, 2014), 19.

places to live in St. Clair Shores: “Groundbreaking Today: 750 Apartments in Shores Project,” Detroit Free Press, July 31, 1962, A3, and Proctor Homer Warren, Inc., “With Every Great Apartment and Sky House, We’ll Throw in a Great Lake Free,” advertisement, Detroit Free Press, November 19, 1970.

converged between 1950 and 1970: Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), 130. Hereafter cited as Bishop, The Big Sort. See also Christopher Berry and Edward Glaeser, “The Divergence of Human Capital Levels Across Cities,” Papers in Regional Science 84, no. 3 (2005): 407–44, accessed July 26, 2018, www.nber.org/papers/w11617. Hereafter cited as Berry and Glaeser, “The Divergence of Human Capital.”

even within cities: See also Berry and Glaeser, “The Divergence of Human Capital.”

Americans bought 90 percent: In 1965, Americans bought 90.7 percent of their cars from these three companies. See Figure B: Percent of total U.S. auto industry market share, by automaker, 1961–2014, in Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Dan Brooks, and Martin Mulloy, The Decline and Resurgence of the U.S. Auto Industry (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2015), accessed July 18, 2018, www.epi.org/publication/the-decline-and-resurgence-of-the-u-s-auto-industry/. General Motors’ Corvette sold for about $3,000 in 1956. See Richard Prince, Corvette Buyers Guide, 1953–1967 (Minneapolis: Motorbooks International, 2002), 39. See also “How Much Cars Cost in the 60s,” The People History, accessed October 7, 2018, www.

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