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Comment by fsagx | Hacker News Reader

I humbly offer an alternate title:

"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.

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I think you're being unfair. To say Arlington and Flint differ is not to say Flint and Peoria do not differ. If anything, Flint is being used as a stand-in for similar struggling communities in the non-costal, non-urban US.

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.

The phrase "sharing in U.S. economic progress" is kind of euphemistic and misleading when you're talking about Arlington, which is basically a tumor on the federal government. I'm not saying it's inherently bad that stuff happens outside of DC proper, but northern VA didn't just inexplicably become the wealthiest area in the country through "progress"; it's obviously runoff from DC. So it makes no sense to take it as an aspirational model for less wealthy areas which aren't physically located nearby.

Agreed. When have we ever had a common lived experience? Even in purely economic terms anyone who wasn't a white male would disagree that there has ever been a time when this was true.

>Agreed. When have we ever had a common lived experience?

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 challenge the notion that there was ever a time in history in which there was more equality between every segment of society in America than there is now. Can you name a single time? If there was once a time when white men were more circumstantially equal, then the distance in circumstances between men and women was further apart, or even further apart between whites and minorities.

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.

>I challenge the notion that there was ever a time in history in which there was more equality between every segment of society in America than there is now. Can you name a single time? If there was once a time when white men were more circumstantially equal, then the distance in circumstances between men and women was further apart, or even further apart between whites and minorities.

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.

But this is precisely the sort of analysis that writes over racial minorities, women, the incarcerated, and gay people.

Yes, economic inequality is greater now. But "let's just ignore the other kinds" while lamenting the loss of shared experiences snacks of blinders.

"In eras when you couldn't as easily have news tailored to your preferences/prejudices?"

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.

> When have we ever had a common lived experience?

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.

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