The End of the American Dream?

하바드 대학의 니얼 혹은 나이얼 퍼거슨(Niall Ferguson) 교수가 

<뉴스위크>에 <미국의 꿈의 끝?>이란 칼럼을 실었다고 함. 

관련된 국내 뉴스는 여기: http://media.daum.net/society/others/newsview?newsid=20130704163707984

원문은 여기: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/06/26/niall-ferguson-on-the-end-of-the-american-dream.html

퍼거슨 교수의 책은 국내에도 적잖이 소개되어 있어 언제 한번 봐야겠다 싶었음...

국내 번역된 책 모음은 여기: http://www.aladin.co.kr/Search/wSearchResult.aspx?AuthorSearch=%B4%CF%BE%F3+%C6%DB%B0%C5%BD%BC@121022&BranchType=1

저 나이에 저 정도로 주목받는 열정적인 저술활동을 할 수 있다는 것은 일단 부러울 따름... -_-

이 칼럼에서 퍼거슨 교수가 제시한 몇 가지 생각은 좀 더 논의할 필요가 있겠지만

기본적으로 사회 체제가 고정되고 최상위층의 부와 교육의 대물림 현상에 대한 문제의식은 귀 기울일 필요가 있음.

이는 비단 미국 사회에만 해당되는 것은 아닐 것임. 

아래 미국 공교육 실패에 대한 지적도 주목할만한 점이고 

특히 21세기 미국 사회를 피츠제랄드 시대의 미국 사회와 비교하는 점이 흥미로움.

몇몇 대목 소개:

Let’s start with inequality. It’s now well known that in the mid-2000s the share of income going to the top 1 percent of the population returned to where it was in the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. The average income of the 1 percent was roughly 30 times higher than the average income of everyone else. The financial crisis reduced the gap, but only slightly—and temporarily. That is because the primary (and avowed) aim of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy since 2008 has been to push up the price of assets. Guess what? The rich own most of these. To be precise, the top 1 percent owns around 35 percent of the total net worth of the United States—and 42 percent of the financial wealth. (Note that in only one other developed economy does the 1 percent own such a large share of wealth: Switzerland.)

[......]

Despite a tripling of per-pupil expenditure in real terms, American secondary education is failing. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, three quarters of U.S. citizens between the ages of 17 and 24 are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have inadequate levels of education. A third of high school graduates fail the mandatory Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Two fifths of students at four-year colleges need to take remedial courses to relearn what they failed to master in high school.

[......]

But the real shocker is the differential between rich and poor kids. At the ages of 4 to 5, children from the poorest fifth of homes are already 21.6 months behind children from the richest homes in the U.S., compared with 10.6 months in Canada. The proportion of 15-year-olds who are functionally illiterate (below level 2 in PISA tests) is 10.3 percent in Canada. In the U.S. it is 17.6 percent. And students from the highest social-class groups are twice as likely to go to college than those from the lowest classes.

[......]

As a professor at Harvard, I am disquieted by such thoughts. Unlike Elon Musk, I did not come to the United States intent on making a fortune. Wealth was not my American dream. But I did come here because I believed in American meritocracy, and I was pretty sure that I would be teaching fewer beneficiaries of inherited privilege than I had encountered at Oxford.

Now I am not so sure.

위 책은 이번 슈퍼맨 논문 쓰느라 읽었던 보드리야르의 책

상상과 현실의 간극을 넘나들며 레이건 시대의 미국을 논한 대목이 재미있었음...