Honestly, this should be surprising to basically nobody who's actually paying attention.
Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
231–240 of 391 posts
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. That's if you also had a healthy learning environment at school and home, can afford college, and have a healthy early development to be able to grow up into an sufficiently smart child. A lot of people in the bottom 20% don't have those initial conditions.
or go into one of the many trades that pay north of $100k with no college education and just provided on the job training. trades right now that are struggling to find applicants.
The trades are oversold in the US. Many of them are physically demanding if not dangerous. Many of them are dominated by smaller businesses that are practically exempt from labor law enforcement. Many are strongly dependent on the housing cycle. Since many of those businesses are also family-owned, a person without the right connections can face an uphill battle getting a decent job.
I believe that the opioid epidemic started out as a pain epidemic, with a population of people suffering chronic pain that they acquired from their jobs. I've hired people to work at my house, and the ones who are my age tend to be hobbling and broken.
I'd be more enthusiastic about the trades if I lived in a country with better unions, labor laws, health care, and safety net.
Now, some of the better trades are medicine and nursing related. Those tend to be indoors, in a better regulated workplace. Or computer programming.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#233I think the first step is to admit we have a problem. People don’t like the United States being labeled as anything less than exceptional. If you look at the Amazon workers, Uber drivers, door dashers, etc in this country it’s amazing how hard people can work and not get ahead. 2nd and 3rd jobs can be necessary to just make ends meet. The story that hard work is all it takes in America does need to be questioned.
> it’s amazing how hard people can work and not get ahead It's not how hard one works, it's how smart one works. The second aspect is what does one do with the income one has, which has a crucial impact on the person's future.
With so much income inequality, differences in savings rates cannot possibly be that important.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd just like to point out one thing I've noticed quite a bit and would love Europeans to chime in - that is - European exceptionalism. We, Americans, were known for American exceptionalism but that has eroded to a point where I haven't heard a single good thing about America in the last decade or so. We're shameful and contemptful of our nation. Slightest positive thing is considered nationalistic and right-wing, so…
To be honest, as a european, I don't really understand all this fuss about exceptionalism, being the biggest economy in the world, having the highest amount of billionaires in the world, etc. I know that it is all a big deal in US and the Americans I speak with every now and then all proudly always talk that greatness, but I would just care about being able to live a life with dignity with socialised services, govern…
What do you think about mega corps in Europe? VW, Siemens, etc?
I was just trying to get some perspective, so thanks! I’d like US to adopt some of the EU bits but without losing the entrepreneural drive and atmosphere. I believe some of them are mutually-exclusive.
Also worth noting corporate policies in EU:
> Sometimes European integration is a byproduct of American policy. Stubbornly national elements of policymaking, such as corporation tax, are slowly being mangled into EU matters thanks to American action. A recent American-led push to set a global minimum tax rate for big business has done more to shunt the EU towards a common tax policy than years of nagging and legal tricks by Brussels. Within the EU, low-tax countries such as Ireland and Hungary wield a veto on its tax affairs. Diplomatic force majeure by America overcame that.
Source: https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/06/17/the-eu-made-in-a...
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean... that doesn't detract from the problem at all. That just says there's a massive wealth divide and that moving up to the mere top 20% (the group 1 out of 5 people belong to) should be considered a ridiculous proposition unless you're born into it. Why should 1 out of 5 people belong to a group so wealthy that saying mobility is difficult should be considered problematic?
56% of Americans spend at least one year in the top 10%, and 73% spend one year in the top 20% [1]. [1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/evidence-shows-significant-in... American mobility isn't bad because people can't make it to the top - you can, more so than almost anywhere in the world. It's bad because a significant portion of people at the bottom stay stuck at the bottom their whole life. Compared to countries in…
That's laughably twisted. Just because someone makes a ton of money in a year (i.e. from inheritance, life insurance, or something else) means absolutely nothing about their wealth.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, #5 is kind of trolling. Taxes are not 'charity'. Also, the 'money talk' thing - that's Anglo, not American, and it's nothing to do with not understanding low income, it's basically avoidance of blunt status bragging, it's considered a bit crude. Which is why you'd have to talk about your investments in order to humble brag.
> To be fair, #5 is kind of trolling. Taxes are not 'charity'. The point of #5 is that in a number of other countries, people believe that taxes should pay for the social services required by the unfortunate, the sick, the indigent, and so forth. Charity plays a minor role, because it is the job of the state to take care of its citizens.
There are always needs that go far beyond what the government will and should pay for.
Social justice, animal shelters, basic needs for foreign citizens etc..
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the actual study. The people who did the study are knowledgeable about the topic. If a non expert can think of a problem with the paper after a few moments of thinking about it then it is highly likely that person’s objections are not valid and are accounted for in the study. A person should not read the study or the article and think, “The reason this is nonsense is X.” Rather the thought should be, “I wonder h…
Plenty of knowledgeable people have very motivated reasoning
Yes. Also, people who know a lot in one area have a tendency to think their 5 minutes of thought on a study in a area they know virtually nothing about is on par with those performing said study. This is especially so on this site. So many people chime in thinking they’ve spotted a fatal flaw without contemplating that those who did the study have almost certainly thought if all the easy potential objections.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not convinced. Serious illness can happen to anyone at any time, especially under the stress of running a business, and America has one of the weakest safety nets for a developed country. US is at the top of the rung amongst OECD health index. The middle class is not too badly positioned. For the poor, there is Medicare: https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/health/ > The First Amendment is a great thing, but…
I feel like it’s hard to describe America as being at the “top rung” of health care with the stats linked. Those being 28/40 life expectancy 3/40 reported health 18/40 social inequality I can’t help but feel that that “reported health” is skewed with such a low life expectancy. For clarity within these rankings the lower the number the better.
Good points, also to keep in mind that US is massive. State to state differences are presumably wide.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is it a bad thing that so many people are so wealthy? To be pedantic, exactly 20% are that wealthy. > The more people who belong to the so-wealthy-it's-hard-to-achieve group, the better. So-wealthy-it's-hard-to-achieve can only be defined compared to people who can't achieve it. Medieval kings were in that category but lived worse that we do.
Medieval kings definitely lived better than you do.
Did they have good heating or air conditioning or medical care? Running water or plumbing or lighting? Travel was also much much harder.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#240Again, 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…
I read about another study relatively recently (maybe it was HN? Not sure.) that talked about some of the fundamental flaws when looking at these types of economic mobility studies (i.e. change of moving from bottom quintile to top quintile, etc.) because they usually only look at income and ignore social class . That is, suppose Bob is a rich banker. His kid Frank goes to private school and on to an Ivy League colle…
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