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Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

economist.com

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Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#161

Post by JaimeThompson »

TuringNYC wrote: post #152
thepasswordis wrote: post #119

Regardless of how much money I make, none of my friends went to Stanford, I grew up in a boring town in a boring part of the world, and I made my money in an “unglamorous” industry. I could make $10B. I still wouldn’t reach the top level of class. Maybe my kids kids will. Here’s an attempt to say something positive about this: you guys should try to seek out those unglamorous industries, usually in unglamorous parts…

>> I could make $10B. I still wouldn’t reach the top level of class. Maybe my kids kids will. Is there really anyone wrong with this? If you and your family are happy, and your needs are met, and clearly you have options -- does anyone else's definition of class really matter?

When our elected leaders and law enforces listen to the upper class(s) instead of everyone equally then yes, it matters.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#162

Post by marcusverus »

VictorPath wrote: post #18
hhs wrote: post #5

This gives more context: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20162015

> redistribution Of course the real redistribution is the expropriation of the fruits of surplus labor time by those who work to heirs who do not. Redistribution in this context is giving value back to the workers who created that value.

It seems odd to couch redistribution of income within capitalist systems in Marxist terms like “redistribution in this context is giving value back to the workers who created that value”, as though the funds being redistributed will have been taken exclusively from the owners of the means of production. They’re not. The vast majority of net contributors to the system are workers. These policies just take money from some workers and give them to other workers.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#163

Post by brandonmenc »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #15

I think perhaps the US makes it hard for a single person to move from bottom to top quintile. But I bet that the US is the country that makes it the easiest for you to be in the bottom quintile and have grandchildren in the top quintile. Basically, I think the US is likely the best for generational family mobility. I have seen this story many times with immigrants. The immigrants come over and work often very menial…

It's hard to convince large swathes of progressive America of this fact.

Lots of possible cause/effect: child-free lifestyles, exalting the even modestly well-off who choose to leave their children nothing, long-established families who have lost a living connection to their immigrant forebears, etc.

"Families are always rising and falling in America."

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#164

Post by pmorici »

endisneigh wrote: post #45
rpmisms wrote: post #23

Social mobility is very different than economic mobility. It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. Heck, I did it without any college. Social mobility is a different story. I was raised in a rural area, which is essentially a social class of its own. Since becoming an adult, I've found myself gravitating towards working-class people. I like the blu…

> Americans overestimate social mobility in their country (economist.com) >> HOW likely is someone to move up the economic ladder? > It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. > https://personalfinancedata.com/income-percentile-calculator... >> An income of $100,000 for ages 40 to 100 ranks at the 89.82% good to see evidence the article is correct in…

Why are you citing individual income instead of house hold income? A household income of 100k puts you in the 66th percentile.

https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#165

Post by notacoward »

twoodfin wrote: post #36
jackcosgrove wrote: post #14

The article measures mobility based on one's percentile movement across the income distribution. There are more rungs to climb in the US because there's a wider income range, whereas in Europe income differences are compressed. The same income increase in absolute terms gets you more social mobility in Europe than in the US. I'm initially skeptical of studies that imply large-scale misunderstanding among the public a…

This comment is 100% correct but somehow got shuffled to the bottom and greyed. It doesn’t make sense to measure income mobility in anything but absolute terms: Would you rather move one quintile in a wide income distribution or two within a much narrower one?

That's a totally disingenuous comparison because it ignores both prices and the actual shape of the distribution. Don't perseverate over big numbers. If everyone's income doubled overnight we'd have a wider range ... but it would be utterly meaningless if prices also doubled. Likewise, if a trillionaire magically appeared the total range would increase but that would have zero effect on what a quintile difference meant to anyone else. Absolute numbers are useless. Percentiles matter because they're intrinsically tied to the other things that give differences any meaning.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#166

Post by Mountain_Skies »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #110

The overestimation of social mobility is what explains the people at the bottom voting for governments that promote policies like trickle-down economics that only ever benefit the people at the top. This is my experience in Australia, which isn't as far along in the progression towards uber-capitalism as the US.

Voting is a package deal and it's quite obvious that westerners outside of the US have close to zero understanding of cultural issues, especially abortion. They'll whine about it but they never understand that for quite a large segment of the group they keep calling stupid, abortion is the wholesale slaughter of millions of babies year after year. This is not a shallow belief. It is deeply held for these people. If you don't view abortion that way, you'll just call them stupid and add it to your list of things you feel superior to them about and continue to not understand them in the slightest. Which leads people to make statements such as the one you did about people making irrational fiscal related votes when that might not have even been in their top five issues. Until you can understand the abortion issue beyond the glib dismissive "they want to control women's bodies" you will continue to not understand the people you are talking about. That understanding might not be important to you but if it is, then you must not reduce them to whatever single variable judgement you want to extrapolate into matching your viewpoint, especially when that single variable might not be of high importance to them.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#167

Post by niels_olson »

refurb wrote: post #58

Again, it's highly problematic defining mobility as "moving from bottom quintile to top quintile". - Moving from bottom quintile to 2nd highest is significant mobility and completely ignored in this analysis. - The analysis ignores the fact that the highest quintile in the US is higher in absolute terms than other countries. So moving from bottom to 4th may give more income than bottom to 5th in other countries. - Th…

You should probably read the actual analysis (free, 40+ page paper), they accounted for all sorts of things. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20162015

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#168

Post by AvocadoPanic »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #29
echelon wrote: post #8

America is being attacked by pervasive narratives like this. News rags the whole world over are shitting on us, meanwhile authoritarian regimes are rising to power. It's a narrative dismantling, and we're being played like fools. America is still the best country in the world to start a business and take risks. America still has more freedoms (speech especially) than most of the world. (Side note: The left wants to p…

But I think for the Americans at the lower classes NATO, and regimes are worthless, if you are a guy who is going to die in a warehouse because you're going to be forced to work during a weather emergency, then a change of master is just a change of your master. American middle class is shrinking, it has less financial power, workers have less contractual power and less rights, so maybe instead of these useless Holly…

As much as the administration and media seem set on pointlessness in Taiwan and Ukraine, I've yet to find anyone I actually know who thinks it's good idea.

China is not our friend, we would do well to be wary as recent counter intelligence activities have shown.

The enemies in congress and corporations are two sides of the same coin. It's often all the same people moving back and forth between government, NGO, corporations, lobbying, media and then back again.

Corporations use their access to capital to capture market share often at the expense of a local / small business. While 'value engineering' everything until it's shitty.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#170

Post by nuclearnice1 »

inetknght wrote: post #126
csallen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12% of Americans struggle from food insecurity. By definition, 20% of Americans are in the top quintile. I'm with you, I want that first number to be as close to 0% as possible. But it's mathematically untrue that there are dozens of Americans starving for every American in the top 20%. In fact, there are barely half as many.

I count myself to be lucky in the top 20% of earners in America and have friends who also fit in the range. I've met a lot of people who struggle to put food on the table whose income is in the middle 50%. A lot of them have the same complaint: they don't qualify for help because they make too much . But they also struggle to pay their bills because they don't make enough. I don't know where you think 12% of American…

The 12% is close to the USDA ERS survey finding that 10.5% U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2020.

That might be a place to begin investigating the difference between your lived experience and more systematic data collection efforts.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...

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