People in the USA no longer share a common lived experience
larrysummers.com
larrysummers.com
"Larry Has No Common Lived Experience with People Outside His Bubble"
Comparing Arlington, VA or any of the top-earning metro areas to Flint, MI makes little sense to his argument. There are thousands of communities that he could compare to Flint and find much in common.
A more compelling argument might be: 100 million people throughout the USA similarly struggle to make ends meet. They unemployed black man in Flint has a great deal in common with the under-employed white woman working at walmart in Peoria, Larry just can't see it.
Also your "more compelling argument" is contained within Summer's argument: Flint is way worse off than Arlington, this is bad, here are some ideas to fix it. He even goes on in the last paragraph to say:
These may or may not be the best ideas for enabling people wherever they live to share in U.S. economic progress, and they are no substitute for addressing inequality more directly. But it is hard to see how we can bring about enduring improvement in the nation’s condition without addressing the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who live in places that are failing to catch up with the rest of our country.
In eras with much less inequality? In eras without so easy access to echo bubbles? In eras when you couldn't as easily have news tailored to your preferences/prejudices?
The "the world was always exactly the same" / "we never had it as good as today in any aspect" argument is getting tiresome, on top of being ahistorical.
I can’t think of a time in world history when some group of people wasn’t getting preferential treatment and some other group was getting the proverbial shaft.
There are different kinds of equality (equality between the sexes, races, economic, etc).
Economic inequality, which are talking about here, was less in decades past: "The Great Divergence is a term given to a period, starting in the late 1970s, during which income differences increased in the US and, to a lesser extent, in other countries":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence_(inequality)
>I can’t think of a time in world history when some group of people wasn’t getting preferential treatment and some other group was getting the proverbial shaft.
Which is neither here nor there. Even at that, there have been periods and societies much better than 2019 US in almost all of those aspects.
The very concern of "white" vs else is a US one, due to its "melting pot" nature (and the very recent historical baggage of slavery, segregation, etc. Other European countries for example where done with that shit for centuries, not merely until the ...70s). And of course, in more homogeneous societies (all white, all asian, all black, etc) those things weren't a concern.
Yes, economic inequality is greater now. But "let's just ignore the other kinds" while lamenting the loss of shared experiences snacks of blinders.
Well, no, not electronically. But in the early republic, political parties sponsored newspapers. In the early 1800s, southern postmasters would seize and destroy abolitionist literature. Considerably later it was easy to find one that leaned your way politically.
The obvious answer is the generation that fought in WWII. Oh, maybe not literally everyone, but a huge portion of the male population went through the military.
Baby Boomers might qualify too - white picket fence, 2.2 kids and a dog, shared culture (only a handful of TV/radio stations, national brands, etc) and more.
We need to invest in job creation; a lot of those newly "educated" people have only raised their fixed costs while competing for the same jobs (that don't require the degree)
And all of those things have been in decline, especially malls and "center street"...
I did public high school in one of the bigger cities in California's Centela Valley and in a relatively affluent suburb on the fringes of the Bay Area (and, for a brief while, a third place less than 50 miles from the second) and noticed huge differences at all three that had nothing to do with physical infrastructure or climate.
Some of that (most except the last and possibly the penultimate) probably would be attenuated (though still present) in the experience of middle class and higher white students.
On these aspects your high schools in "rural Jersey" and "Phoenix" could be more or less in the same league, the same way a Beverly Hills high school and a rich Boston area high school could be. That would not the case across high schools in general though.
The only "common" part of the experience is kids being kids, boredom, bullying, puberty and so on. But that's true for high schools in Japan, Africa, or Denmark as well...
Not knowing "how the other half lives" was always a thing, but at least back in the day was easier to see if one cared.
Now with so much of life spend in the artificial world of echo bubbles, the internet, social media, secluded communities, gentrified areas, coasts and inner states, etc, that's increasingly more difficult.