Excerpt
SUMMARY: Political scientist Robert Putnam grew up in Port Clinton, Ohio, a town where, he says, both rich and poor children grew up together and had bright opportunities. But in the past few decades, social mobility has declined and the haves and have-nots have become increasingly segregated. Economics correspondent Paul Solman offers a look at what drove Putnam to write his new book, “Our Kids.”
DAVE BRICKNER (interviewee): I am a little strong here, and I’m going to need a little elbow room.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): Dave Brickner, currently ranked 31st worldwide in the video golf betting game “Golden Tee.”
DAVE BRICKNER: Whoa.
Brickner owns and runs this bar in Port Clinton, Ohio, to supplement his first job doing maintenance on Wendy’s restaurants in the northwest part of the state.
DAVE BRICKNER: I’m working two jobs to make ends meet.
PAUL SOLMAN: Jim Cornell is a carpenter.
JIM CORNELL: There’s only part-time jobs for most people around here.
DAVE BRICKNER: The haves and have-nots is — you’re definitely seeing it.
PAUL SOLMAN: Rust Belt decline, growing inequality, a familiar tale, perhaps, but one getting a new twist from Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, who grew up in Port Clinton, returned after decades away and was stunned by what he saw, the death of social mobility.
“My hometown was, in the 1950s, a passable embodiment of the American dream,” he writes in his new book, “Our Kids,” “a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever their background,” including those who lived on the wrong side of the tracks.
No comments:
Post a Comment