Tightrope

Throughout the book, the authors note instances where systems are punitive toward the working class, while letting wealthy individuals off easy. These include the government’s response to the opioid epidemic, which levied fines, but no jail time, against the pharmaceutical companies that recklessly and mendaciously marketed their products, contrasted with the war on drugs, which has helped contribute to the United States having the largest prison population in the world, and the ways in which the IRS only audits a small fraction of the tax returns of the wealthy but rigorously scrutinizes a high proportion of those making less than $20,000 who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. By highlighting the ways in which America has two different systems for wealthy and poor people, the theme of America’s two-tier system helps explain how so many people are struggling, even as the American economy is doing well.

In Chapter 4, the authors write that “the old feudal aristocracy kept its wealth through a combination of rules and norms, and so does today’s new aristocracy” (46). As the wealthy gain power, they use that power to manipulate institutions such as the tax code to their advantage, allowing them to pay little to no income tax. Societal attitudes play an important part in creating this situation, too, as the authors note that many of the working-class people they speak to are more bothered by the idea of poor people defrauding the government for small amounts of money than they are by high-level corruption. This is partly a function of proximity, and also a reflection of societal attitudes that holds people in poverty responsible for their own suffering. Either way, the lens compounds America’s two-tier system and renders it all the harder to address: Not only are people in poverty subject to unfair policies from government, but they’re also blamed for defrauding that government (fears that are mostly unfounded—as the authors note, for instance, the fraud rate on food stamps is 1.4%).

The criminal justice system is an area in which the contradictions of America’s two-tier system are particularly prominent. A wide variety of offences related to poverty can lead to incarceration, from unpaid fines, for which the authors find 23 people imprisoned in Tulsa on one visit to the city’s jail, to inability to pay a $1 bail. Many people are also incarcerated due to drug possession as part of the tough anti-drug legislation introduced in the 1980s, which has done nothing to reduce deaths from overdoses and rates of addiction but has torn apart families and communities and contributed to America’s soaring prison population. As the authors note, this has been particularly impactful for African Americans: “The United States Sentencing Commission found that blacks get sentences 19 percent longer than whites do for the same offense, even after controlling for criminal history and other variables” (183). The existence of this kind of bias, which is replicated in other aspects of society, gives lie to the notion that involvement in the criminal justice system is a matter of personal responsibility.

The racism of American society therefore creates another kind of two-tier system, between white and Black citizens. Because of policies like the GI Bill of Rights, which helped many Americans buy homes and gain access to the middle class but excluded Black people, the median Black family now has only a fraction of the wealth of the median white family. Similarly, Black constituents have a harder time getting responses from their political representatives, Black children are more likely to attend poorly performing schools, and Black communities struggled with joblessness long before white communities began experiencing the same problem. All of this underscores how, alongside the two-tier system created by class in America, there is another hierarchy imposed by race.