March 3, 2013

Segregation

Hi there!

Yesterday I went with my family (my parents, siblings, my partner and little son) to the "Parque Araucano", a park located in a very high-class neighborhood.

The place is big, well preserved and with many games available for free to anybody. It sounds great, but some restrictions make this place only available for certain kind of people and not to "anybody", being the main constraint, the city's segregation. This is not the direct result of any public policy but the free market applied to housing. It is not "direct" because no law establishes where people must live. Nevertheless, if you cannot pay the rent it is obvious that you cannot live there. Simple logic, of course. Neighbors end up being people that have similar acquisitive power.

But, Why does in other places this do not happen? Today I was reading an article in a very important local newspaper about the segregation in some cities within the OECD. Could you guess what was the most segregated? Is there something wrong with the other cities? Does something not work? A lot of answers could respond those questions, but the phenomenon cross the entire society. This happens with healthcare, education, housing, etc. For example, the likelihood that you have studied with people within your same social status is high, especially in the early stages (maybe universities are more diverse, but just a little). 

In this scenario, Could you imagine how is the social mobility? Tending to zero. Certainly a lot of people have improved their living standard, but they are not aware that they are on the same social scale of their parents. Everybody is better, but some more than others. Trickle-down theory.

We are in the presence of no public policy at all. In countries like USA, I have seen Obama engage with bringing the same opportunities to all the American children (as always, with the Republican opposition), but sadly here, at the end of the world, politics do not care about anything. They just care about their political career and the next election. Indeed, this is the perfect way to transfer their privileges to their offspring.

My dream is, no matter where one was born, everybody has the same opportunities.