Coming Apart, Charles Murray

     Few authors can match the clarity and strength of persuasive writing shown by Murray in another of his controversial books of data, numbers, stats, graphs, and analysis.  It is a joy to read difficult material presented in such a lucid fashion.  Unfortunately, he does not convince, at least not about the decline of American virtues and the fall of the “American project.”  Where he demonstrates the divergence of the new upper class from the broad class of working and non-working class, his remarkably well supported conclusions are hardly assailable.
     He believes that there are four “culprits” leading to a “new upper class that increasing lives in a world of its own.”  These are the rewards of brains, wealth, the college sorting machine, and homogamy.  Brains are valued in the market in the knowledge society and educated persons increasingly sweep up the economic chips while the diminishing middle classes slip into menial or service jobs or unemployment.  Wealth, of course, generates wealth and power too as it always has.  The college sorting machine defines our lifestyle and even sorts us into zip codes, where highly educated ivy league alumni live in super-zips while second tier neighborhoods are occupied by those who had somewhat less education or went to good private colleges but not the best, and state school folks have lesser accommodations.   The poorer classes, or those in Murray’s theoretical Fishtown have no higher education and little hope of middle class opportunities.  What is worse, is the continuation of this class sorting by homogamy, that is, like marrying like.  He shows how (and here we go to Murray’s disturbing use of IQ scores as highly heritable traits) intelligence test scores ascend with each rung of the education ladder.  Thirty years ago, those without a high school education scored 88 on IQ testing but now it is at 87.  With a high school education, the score remains steady at 99.  Associate degreed persons scored around 104 to 105, while bachelor degreed persons scored 113.  With a masters it is 117 and a PhD or MD, LLD, DDS the score is 124.  Here’s the rub:  if IQ is more or less heritable, who is a high IQ young person going to marry?  They will meet a high IQ partner in an elite school, marry and voila, high IQ kinds.  The beat goes on.
     Murray demonstrates clearly that the elite class knows nobody in the lesser classes, and know nothing of their values, entertainment, neighborhoods, or travails.  A clever test he offers can be taken here:   http://www.scribd.com/doc/77349055/Coming-Apart-by-Charles-Murray-Quiz to show the reader just how well or not so well he fits into the new class structure.  
      After this powerful demonstration of the new classes, their size, characteristics, and the forces that drive this structure, Murray goes on to Parts II and III where he makes a case for American exceptionalism as constructed by the virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion and that these traits are lacking in the fall of the middle class and rebounding in the upper, educated classes.  And also that the world is coming apart and we are doomed and so forth.  It is indeed interesting to see that in the upper and elite class that marriage, parenting, industrious work ethics and even religiosity are strong and in the lower class, these have fallen off a graph cliff.  Most people may think that religion is especially strong among the less educated and lacking in the upper class, but the opposite is true.  The rise of fundamentalism among the poor may make it look like religion is strong among many less educated persons, but this is not so.   Murray also spends some time in showing the Putnam bowling-alone syndrome and that the lack of social capital is destroying working neighborhoods. 
      Murray in the final chapters promotes his libertarian answer to wait ails America, but with the crazy tea-baggers out of the closet and a Ayn Rand resurgence out and about, it is a bad time to promote such a nutty response.  He goes into the moral hazards of welfare, noting the awful destruction of personal satisfaction from jobs and responsible parenthood, apparently believing that personal freedom and limited government (that tedious phrase) is preferable to the European social welfare model.  Being fair, he allows how socialism has its points and even gives a suggested reading list for those who disagree with him on this point.  But American fairness is a virtue that seems to me to be more important in our founding characteristics than religion or the work ethic, and fairness is a salient feature of what is most admired about us as a people. When Murray bemoans the decline of religion and promotes individual effort, it seems he forgets that to be fair in the unfair class structure that we have, it is up to government to step in to the place of the failure of traditional marriage to support and educate children and it is up to government which defines and controls the unfair economic system to alleviate the economic suffering that unfettered capitalism produces.  Finally, it is fine to describe the decline of marriage, of the economy and education, but to propose a return to virtue or even, as Murray does, a revived Great Awakening of religion, is just too little too late to preachy and its just too bad for those who suffer from economic destruction.  It is economic forces to which Murray gives little credit, but it is the economy stupid, that defines and constructs our class system, not virtue and not the lack thereof.