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Income Inequality and Housing-Class #12-Gerald Lizzo
March 10, 2015 | Leave a Comment
After reading the articles on low income housing and zoning, I couldn’t help but to step back and think about our society as a whole. From a technological standpoint, there is no arguing that our society has progressed and advanced dramatically over the course of time. In fact, it seems the rate of technological advancement has been increasing over time, particularly in the last century or so since the Industrial Revolution. But these articles and the issue of zoning seem to call into question the level of ideological progression within our society. From them, it is clear that topics such as “separate but equal” and segregation are still extremely prevalent in our society today. These ideas are certainly not new ones and it seems everyone agrees that these problems should not exist because they are morally and ethically wrong, yet here we are still talking about them.
It seems that over time we as a society have only developed ways to mask income inequality and segregation in our society. Think about it, in response to the high cost of living, we have decided to effectively pass laws requiring low-income housing. The CNNMoney article offers a perfect example of this scenario. There are 219 expensive condos to rent and 55 low-income condos in the newly constructed building. In theory, this is great. We just gave 55 families or individuals the opportunity to live in the city, where we all agree there is a vast amount of opportunity, where they otherwise may not have been able to. But then, we exclude them from amenities provided by the complex, such as the gym. In other scenarios, it is even worse where low-income apartments are kept in separate buildings and those individuals have to use separate entrances. This is blatant segregation.
Now, I am not saying that those who pay less than others should be entitled to the same things that those who pay more get. But, we can not go through such great lengths to keep individuals separate from each other who live in the same building. Simply put, we do not like racial segregation so why do we tolerate economic segregation like this?However, I understand we live in a capitalistic society and thus, there is going to be separation of classes and that is fine. I think a lot of individuals, including myself, would like to live in a society where hard work is rewarded, but this is sort of like toying with those who are less fortunate.
I do believe the Daily News article does make a very good point when Glaeser writes, “Knowledge is the critical 21st century asset, and humans get smart from being around smart people. When young people come to Wall Street, whether they start in the mailroom or on the trading floor, they enter a maelstrom of experience that provides insights that can be the basis of future fortune.” Education is the key to allowing low-income individuals the opportunity to move up in the social ladder. And in today’s day and age much of this education will not come the formalized manner of the classroom but from experienced workers who one surrounds themselves with. In other words, we have to build up our networks because we can learn something from anyone at anytime regardless of their background. In other words, there needs to be some sort of mixture of classes some where along the line.
So, the question then becomes, we have an issue of income inequality and more troubling economic segregation, can we as a society, take a step back and look at ourselves as a whole and be pleased with where we stand? I mean we have made all of these wonderful advancements in technology that allow us to do all sorts of insane things, yet we still can not move past issues that have been plaguing our society for years. These issues are far from simple, if they weren’t, they would have been resolved already. We have to have some degree of economic classification in this society, but when are we going to say, okay, enough is enough?
