If there is one thing to be disappointed by in Barak Obama’s US presidential election victory it is that a lot of people who previously despised America are now happily declaring the US to be likeable again. To fall out of love with America because of electoral accidents and occasional egregious foreign policy mistakes, or to believe in some glib caricature of the crass American, ignores the enduring value of the US to the rest of the world. And when I think of the US, its primary virtue invariably seems to be that it’s a country of rejects. I wonder sometimes whether those who do the most loathing of the US might well have been the types the average American ancestor would have had to run away from some decade or century earlier at the point of a bayonet.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Ellis Island Immigration Museum with my two children: both newly minted US citizens. They had themselves been through a kind of virtual Ellis Island a couple of days before in the Federal Building near City Hall; after a nearly four-hour wait, they swore allegiance and in return received a certificate and letter from George Dubbya himself. As a special treat–because they were the last and seemingly the only children processed that day–they both got a little flag.

Ellis Island, October 2008

For the forebears of about 100 million Americans, a five-hour wait at Ellis Island itself was often the final chapter in an escape from famine, humiliation, hopelessness, religious intolerance or full-scale pogrom. The facility closed in 1954, and–if the account of the museum is to be believed–it was a pretty humane place, all things considered, especially compared with other places of mass human transit the world has seen over the past century. While 12 million entered through Ellis Island, only 2 per cent were turned away.

Of course, if you were really posh your immigration details would be processed on board ship; only the cattle class passed through Ellis Island (including the likes of Bob Hope, Irving Berlin, Isaac Asimov and Max Factor). And today, one of the central arguments of our current politics is income inequality. I like to have my cake and eat it on the subject: on the one hand, it never bothers me what others earn, and I certainly believe there need to be good incentives for the creative and entrepreneurial to take risk; on the other, when it starts to be a hot potato you may surmise that something has started to get out of hand–as it has done on Wall Street and among senior executives over the past few years. All reward and no risk. The fuss was perhaps a leading indicator.

Pay differentials are a much less important determinant of long-term economic success (and health), as far as I can tell, than the uneven distribution of grandmothers. Obama, until the beginning of this week, had both grandmothers extant: extraordinary for a man of 47. He was mostly raised by one (his mother’s mother), confirming how important they are in loco parentis. The immigrant experience is not always so fortunate; a limiting factor on economic, entrepreneurial, academic or even sporting achievement can be the availability of extended family to provide logistical (let alone moral) support, especially in a childcare situation. In aggregate, this holds up the progress of the immigrant group. Of course, things may vary in individual cases, and there were indeed a few babushki apparent from the pictures at Ellis Island, along with touching stories of adult children being reunited with their parents.

Well, the youngest Chip Off the Old Hack is not so lucky. Both his grandmothers were carried away by cancer and were thus denied the opportunity to coo over his crib. But such is the wisdom of the US immigration authorities that, a few years ago, they decided that they will naturalize a child through his US grandparent, provided the grandparent meets (or met when living) the necessary residency qualification. So, there are now a couple of extra Obama supporters in the citizenry–not that he needs them at the moment, of course.

A lot of people have been getting worked up recently about income inequality. If you read the financial press you are regularly bombarded with advertisements for the management of what is being termed “sudden wealth”: more people are winning life’s lottery. But in English-speaking countries one source of emergent income inequality that needs to be watched arises from the difficulty of learning the English language, even for native speakers.

The Guardian today has a report on another experiment that is improving literacy rates using synthetic phonics, similar to the Direct Instruction or DISTAR method which has achieved controversial success in the US. Although not all literacy authorities accept the research demonstrating that synthetic phonics is a superior method of learning to read, it is now government policy to promote it. And it seems to be filtering through, albeit quite slowly.

The path-dependent nature of illiteracy should not be underestimated. The report highlights Continue reading ‘why the rich get richer – read all about it’