The Great Affluence Fallacy


David Brooks AUG. 9, 2016

A large crowd of Bernie Sanders supporters in the Bronx, N.Y. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times

In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one.

This struck them as strange. Colonial society was richer and more advanced. And yet people were voting with their feet the other way.

The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluence-fallacy.html?_r=0

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