The Myth of Social Mobility in the US

code1211 said:

You haven't even played yet. Can't win with that strategery.

You made a claim that is wrong and have done nothing to support it.

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You mean you didn't like it.

“No country without a revolution or a military defeat and subsequent occupation has ever experienced such a sharp a shift in the distribution of earnings as America has in the last generation. At no other time have median wages of American men fallen for more than two decades. Never before have a majority of American workers suffered real wage reductions while the per capita domestic product was advancing."
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/79097.Lester_Carl_Thurow

late said:

You mean you didn't like it.

“No country without a revolution or a military defeat and subsequent occupation has ever experienced such a sharp a shift in the distribution of earnings as America has in the last generation. At no other time have median wages of American men fallen for more than two decades. Never before have a majority of American workers suffered real wage reductions while the per capita domestic product was advancing."
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/79097.Lester_Carl_Thurow

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And yet the median household income is at an all time high.

Go figure.

But that still has nothing to do with economic mobility.

That is an individual statistic, not a class statistic.

Where I work, I trained a guy to do some hard work about a decade ago who was from Mexico where he managed 5 warehouses. He was making more doing manual work here than he was making there.

He left for greener pastures here. Upward mobility. No Government Program. Just opportunity and hard work.

code1211 said:

That is an individual statistic, not a class statistic.

I trained a guy...

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I posted that quote for the peanut gallery.

Your median income figure tells us less nothing about income inequality. Most of the income gains to to the super rich, lump them in to get your median , and taa daa! The problems vanishes in a puff of sophistry..

ataraxia said:

What in the world are you talking about? We are talking about comparative social mobility across developed nations.

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An awful lot of Righties in this thread got an awful of lot of "hurted fee-wingzes" the moment that they read that Murrikuh ain't Nummer One in something, which caused them to fire up their outrage cannons and hurl darwinian invective all over the place.

ataraxia said:

Actually the vast majority of them are not in the communist party. They are self-made.
www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/self-made-billionaires-chinas-10-richest-billionaires.html

You know, you seem really out of the loop of current events. Start subscribing to a magazine like the Economist or something so you can get up to speed on what is happening around the world. . You sound like you are stepping out of a time warp from the 1950s or something.

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The WCH bookshelf probably consists of favorites by Steve Bonta. Just sayin

WCH said:

Whatever you say.

Is that how you would like America to be?

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I'm fed up with people who go all the way up to outright gish galloping and tu quoque, then stop short of accusing them of siding with some enemy in their imagination, and then return to take a pot shot at an accusation in the next post.
You can stuff your red-baiting, I will not need to see it anymore.

late said:

I posted that quote for the peanut gallery.

Your median income figure tells us less nothing about income inequality. Most of the income gains to to the super rich, lump them in to get your median , and taa daa! The problems vanishes in a puff of sophistry..

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Again, your chart is meaningless to this topic. I have offered this same kind of comparison regarding the growth of the economy in the US.

Obama NEVER posted a year of 3% growth. This should have been a gimme given the pit he started in. Just returning to a normal level would have done this for him. That said, the mobility of INDIVIDUALS within that time span still occurred.

The other countries you reference were bombed to rubble in WW2 and were still recovering for decades both from the damage to real estate and from the horrible death rates incurred.

Reference VW as a quirky little curiosity shop in the 50's now grown to multi name plate conglomerate of Auto giants. Same with Toyota, Honda and a variety of others around the world. There entire populations were raised as the tide lifted all boats.

In the mean time, in the US, the starting point a generation ago was pretty high. The Generation may have stagnated, but individuals rose within that generation.

THAT is income mobility. Income mobility is the movement of individuals. Lets' take a look at Bill Gates. Anyone who is a mega rich person right now who was not a genration is an example of income mobility.

When everyone becomes better off, as is happening in the US right now, that indicates an improvement of the entire economy which will "lift all boats" as JFK so famously said.

code1211 said:

Again, your chart is meaningless to this topic

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The topic is mobility, and that charts mobility...

What you mean is that you don't like it, because it puts an end to your silliness.

late said:

The topic is mobility, and that charts mobility...

What you mean is that you don't like it, because it puts an end to your silliness.

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What I mean is that a guy born to middle class parents or in a broken home in the US can become the richest guy in the world or the POTUS.

code1211 said:

What I mean is that a guy born to middle class parents or in a broken home in the US can become the richest guy in the world or the POTUS.

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Exception proves the rule.

late said:

Exception proves the rule.

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The rule being that the USA is the land of opportunity.

late said:

Exception proves the rule.

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No. Exception shows that it can be done. Your rule of stuck forever where you are is proven false over and over.

jimbo said:

No. Exception shows that it can be done. Your rule of stuck forever where you are is proven false over and over.

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The underlying problem is that the rate at which people escape poverty has been dropping for decades. It's nearly stopped.

So finding an exception doesn't change a thing...

And there are a lot of other countries where the rate is much, much, much higher. They are doing something right, that we are doing wrong.

late said:

The underlying problem is that the rate at which people escape poverty has been dropping for decades. It's nearly stopped.

So finding an exception doesn't change a thing...

And there are a lot of other countries where the rate is much, much, much higher. They are doing something right, that we are doing wrong.

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That people are escaping at a lower rate is not necessarily due to lack of opportunity but is more likely due to lack of motivation. When society tells people, especially so called disadvantaged groups that they have no shot a self fulfilling prophecy is created.

Today anyone can get a college education. Either with grants, scholarships, or loans.

Today you can easily become a published author without the benefit of an agent or publisher. All you need is a $300 dollar computer and an internet connection.

That same computer and connection will allow you to sell your newer and better widget world wide without any infrastructure.

Or become better skilled at little or no cost.
Or design your newer and better widget.

jimbo said:

That people are escaping at a lower rate is not necessarily due to lack of opportunity but is more likely due to lack of motivation.

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You were wrong, repeating it with a small variation won't change the numbers.

late said:

You were wrong, repeating it with a small variation won't change the numbers.

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Tell me why I am wrong. Lots of low income people escape poverty.

jimbo said:

Tell me why I am wrong.

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I've already done that.

Read The Price of Inequality by Stiglitz, if you want stop ignoring the obvious.

Checkerboard Strangler said:

I'm fed up with people who go all the way up to outright gish galloping and tu quoque, then stop short of accusing them of siding with some enemy in their imagination, and then return to take a pot shot at an accusation in the next post.
You can stuff your red-baiting, I will not need to see it anymore.

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I'm sick of revisionist assholes.

celticwar17 said:

That economic organization is known to be left leaning, but regardless, lets address the facts....

https://www.heritage.org/internatio...g-international-comparisons-economic-mobility

This article has some excellent rebuttals ... specifically the "The Accuracy of Economic Mobility May Be Affected by Demography and Country Size" portion.

Comparing statistics of countries with the population size of Washington DC.... to an entire country like the USA...is rather puzzling. Western Europe would be a more accurate comparison with(397 million people). Otherwise, selecting Denmark is like just cherry picking the best city in the USA for economic mobility and consider that as a valid representation of the entire USA's economic policies.

If you view Europe as an integrated marketplace, it has larger wage inequality than the USA.

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Translation: Denmark has only white people, we don't.

There, I fixed it for you.