How ‘Downton Abbey’ Shows
Income Inequality Doesn’t Matter
By Joe Carter
After what seemed to be an interminably long wait,Downton Abbey, a British period drama on PBS, recently returned to America. Many of us who have been hooked on the show for four seasons tune in each Sunday night to watch the new twists in the saga of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, their household, and their servants.
But as with most pop culture artifacts, this series about Victorian England is having a subversive effect on the views of modern Americans. Who would have guessed when the show premiered in the U.S. in 2011 that it would undermine liberal arguments about the significance of income inequality?
Many of those concerned about income inequality, though, don’t quite grasp that fact yet. Indeed, some even think the show proves their point. For example, Brett Arends, a columnist for MarketWatch, recently wrote an article titled, “Inequality worse now than on ‘Downton Abbey’” in which he notes,
A research paper to be presented this week at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading think tank, will confirm that the U.S. today has become as unequal as the England of the Earl of Grantham, Lady Mary, Daisy the kitchen maid and Carson the butler a hundred years ago.
The richest take home a higher share of national income in America today than did the aristocrats and superrich of 1920s England. The poor today take home a smaller share than the butlers, chauffeurs and other working folk did back then.
Peter Lindert, economics professor at the University of California in Davis, and one of the world’s leading experts in measuring income inequality, will be presenting research at the NBER this week, and he shared his thoughts with me by email. “Britain’s Downton Abbey economy of the 1920s,” Lindert says, was slightly “less unequal than…the U.S. today” (emphasis added).
Based on this information, Arends makes the spurious claim that, “Half of our country are just like Daisy the kitchen maid or Thomas the scheming footman a hundred years ago. They basically have nothing.”
Is that true? Do half of American have “basically nothing?” And are half of Americans as unfortunate as Daisy and Thomas?
No, it’s not true. But Arends’ isn’t completely incorrect either.
By Joe Carter
After what seemed to be an interminably long wait,Downton Abbey, a British period drama on PBS, recently returned to America. Many of us who have been hooked on the show for four seasons tune in each Sunday night to watch the new twists in the saga of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, their household, and their servants.
But as with most pop culture artifacts, this series about Victorian England is having a subversive effect on the views of modern Americans. Who would have guessed when the show premiered in the U.S. in 2011 that it would undermine liberal arguments about the significance of income inequality?
Many of those concerned about income inequality, though, don’t quite grasp that fact yet. Indeed, some even think the show proves their point. For example, Brett Arends, a columnist for MarketWatch, recently wrote an article titled, “Inequality worse now than on ‘Downton Abbey’” in which he notes,
A research paper to be presented this week at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading think tank, will confirm that the U.S. today has become as unequal as the England of the Earl of Grantham, Lady Mary, Daisy the kitchen maid and Carson the butler a hundred years ago.
The richest take home a higher share of national income in America today than did the aristocrats and superrich of 1920s England. The poor today take home a smaller share than the butlers, chauffeurs and other working folk did back then.
Peter Lindert, economics professor at the University of California in Davis, and one of the world’s leading experts in measuring income inequality, will be presenting research at the NBER this week, and he shared his thoughts with me by email. “Britain’s Downton Abbey economy of the 1920s,” Lindert says, was slightly “less unequal than…the U.S. today” (emphasis added).
Based on this information, Arends makes the spurious claim that, “Half of our country are just like Daisy the kitchen maid or Thomas the scheming footman a hundred years ago. They basically have nothing.”
Is that true? Do half of American have “basically nothing?” And are half of Americans as unfortunate as Daisy and Thomas?
No, it’s not true. But Arends’ isn’t completely incorrect either.
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