Who You Callin' a Slumdog?

America sees its future in Oscar-winning film

Slumdog Millionaire is much more than a breakout film with $150 million (and counting) in box-office earnings and eight Academy Awards: Interestingly, given the heart-rending poverty central to its plot, its success happens to coincide with the growth of U.S. tent cities -- a phenomenon that reveals not only deep undercurrents of material instability among middle-class Americans, but also points towards a future where slums may become a prominent feature of contemporary American life.

Since the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and the onset of a full-blown economic crisis in October 2008, the number of unemployed, homeless, and hungry in the U.S. is expanding quickly (witness the dramatic rise in demand for food banks and shelter spaces), while more and more tent cities are sprouting up nationwide. Just last month, journalist Lisa Ling, special correspondent for the Oprah Winfrey Show, unveiled a recent feature story for Oprah called "Inside a Tent City."

Ling traveled to her birthplace, Sacramento, California, to document tent cities that have taken root because of the economic crisis. Now, in Sacramento, according to her piece, approximately 1,200 people, some formerly of the middle class, are living in makeshift conditions.

The enthusiastic embrace of Slumdog Millionaire may actually signify a sober recognition that growing inequality has become a permanent, unchangeable facet of U.S. society over the past 30 years. Among youth, the elderly and those with a fragile grip on a middle-class status, this recognition may include, with greater urgency, the possibility of homelessness and the precarious psychology that comes with it.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Paris-based think tank, in the two decades between 1985 and 2005, the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. -- and the rich and the middle classes -- is rising along with poverty.

New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis writes: "Slumdog Millionaire...proves to be one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable."

Could it be that because a large swathe of Americans has traveled the world during the past three decades, they feel increased empathy towards the impoverished? Yes. Could it also be that, during that same 30 years, U.S. income distribution has begun to resemble that of a developing country, with our exposure to poverty elsewhere inuring us to eroding living standards at home? Hmmm.

In Rolling Stone magazine, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writes "[U.S.] pretax incomes are now as unequally distributed as they were in the 1920s -- wiping out virtually all of the gains made by the middle class during the Great Compression."

(Economic historians refer to "the Great Compression" as the period between the late 1930s and mid-1940s when U.S. income inequality decreased.)

"These days," Krugman continues, "to find societies as unequal as the United States you have to look beyond the advanced world, to Latin America." (Okay, so Latin America isn't Mumbai, but in places it's not that far off.)

I believe that there's a barely suppressed awareness among Americans that things could get worse, horribly worse, in the state of the economic union: If so, the U.S. theatrical success of Slumdog Millionaire may revolve around its audience's sixth sense that the American Dream is verging on collapse.

With consumers overwhelmed by debt, weakened financial institutions, barriers to continued borrowing -- and, most tellingly, inadequate health insurance coverage -- falling off the cliff from relative middle-class comfort into abject poverty, chronic ill-health, or both, requires less bad luck than at any time since the Great Depression.

So, if the economic recession turns into another depression -- and the gap between the rich and the poor (and the rich and the middle classes) continues to expand -- take note: We may all be witnessing the birth of the "Century of the American Slumdog."

Comments

[Sunit Gala]

Thought provoking post, my friend ...

While inequity of income distribution in the US is utterly lopsided, while India's GINNI co-efficient is more in line with that of Europe, I would like to suggest that amenities, quality of life, disposable income of an American ghetto or poorest Appalachian town compared to what the wealthiest in a Dharavi slum can only be considered rich. Standards of poverty in Asia and Africa are very different from what's prevalent in the US. It's not the US cannot afford to feed and shelter its homeless, it simply chooses not to. India has no such luxury of ideology -- it is too poor to afford one. Having said that, India would do well to learn from America about probity in public life, and how clean leadership increases the size of the pie for all.

[Sanjay Khanna - Huffpost Blogger]

I think a lot of people are afraid, as you say "txvoodoo," about suddenly losing what they have and having to make do with very little except their own wits. On this note, I wrote a brief article last summer that may be of use since it touches on areas I think could make a real difference in the coming years. The piece is called "Nine things to consider as Arctic ice - and Wall Street - melt"; here's the link: http://www.realisticsanctuary.com/?p=52. I hope this is of use to you, SecureUndi­sclosedLib­eral, and others.

[SecureUndisclosedLiberal]

THE RECESSION CYNIC'S 9 STEPS TO SURVIVING A RECESSION:
Step (1) Irregardless of what your church says, it's every man (or women) to themselves.
Step (2) Cash used to be King.....n­ow it's God - so save your money.
Step (3) Do not Divorce - It's Cheaper to Keep Her (or him, even if he's a tool).
Step (4) Take a good second look at Self-Employment, if your gonna be livin on the edge or ridin the roller coaster, you may as well do it for yourself.
Step (5) If the Government GIVES IT, then as an American taxpayer who paid into the system for years.....­you TAKE IT...irreg­ardless of what Rush Limbaugh says, Rush ain't paying your bills Dittohead.
Step (6) Turn off the News - News Anchors are not like you, they make BIG money and wear nice clothes because of suckers like you getting psyched out from all the bad news they blast into your living room, hanging out like a dense fog inside your head.
Step (7) Recessions are local, think of the tornado that is ripping through a dusty neighborhood in Oklahoma that destroys your house, but leaves your neighbors house untouched.­.....that'­s a recession.
Step (8) Don't believe in the goodness of rich people, there is no such thing, humility is your best friend and there are very few humble rich people.
Step (9) DO THE RIGHT THINGS "RIGHT"...­recessions were created by idiots who did the WRONG things RIGHT

[txvoodoo]

This *is* scary stuff. I really wonder if a lot of people read this, and realize how close they could be to ending up in the same situation. That old saw of 'one paycheck away from homelessness' is proving very true these days.

[Sanjay Khanna - Huffpost Blogger]

Hi, WorkingClass and Chicago48. One reason for the paucity of comments may be that this isn't fun stuff, this is my first HP post, and there's understandably widespread hope among HP readers that the fiscal stimulus measures will work. I think the shift in U.S. income distribution over the past thirty years won't be transformed easily, if at all, and since, as Krugman says, "gains made by the middle class during the Great Compression" have been virtually wiped out, where's the resources to pay for necessary new social safety nets, social housing, etc.? For me, key questions include how we're going to help each other through this; the importance of, and limitations around, kindness and compassion; the limits of public policy; and the inner strength we'll need to live through even some of the short-term shifts underway.

Final point. WorkingClass: Yes, concur, it's "like...bi­rds going to roost and falling silent before a storm" Very best to you both!

[WorkingClass]

"I believe that there's a barely suppressed awareness among Americans that things could get worse, horribly worse"....­..........­.....

"We may all be witnessing the birth of the "Century of the American Slumdog."

Its kind of spooky that there are only two comments on this piece. I talk to ordinary unpolitical working people every day that express a dark foreboding about their immediate future. Its like the birds going to roost and falling silent before a storm.

[Chicago48]

Sad but true. I haven't seen tent cities in Chicago, they seem to mostly be in the south and warm climates.