Why don't they say what the quintiles are in dollars?
Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
251–260 of 391 posts
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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..
Governments do all of those though. USA doesn't send a lot, true, but other governments send as up to 1% of their GDP as foreign aid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've just proved yourself that making 100k is extremely achievable in the US (1/4) for someone who even just bothers to turn up full-time.
When 3 out 4 people "fail" at something, I'm not sure that calling it "extremely achievable" is really a particularly suitable description.
Ahem, your statement assumes people even try - most do not. Especially given the "follow your passion" advice Americans are following nowadays.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It’s easy to choose the artist life if your parents can bail you out when shit happens. A little harder if you’re expected to be the bail out for your parents.
Lots of poor people live with their parents, you see that all over the world. Also lots of rich people disown their kids. That has more to do with the mentality of your parents than anything else.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mea…
I agree, the GP comment makes no sense. Prices of important things like homes are set relative to income, so it's relative income that is important, not absolute income. Most people judge their affluence in terms of evaluations like: "I make enough money to buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood".
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Instead of the conveniences of modern technology, they had servants. They lived a life of full service, comparable to the most expensive modern hotels.
They had "running water" -- as in servants would run and fetch the water. There was nothing inconvenient about the king's access to water. It would be served to him. How do you get your water?
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
California has one of the lowest divorce rates in the entire country https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with...
California is ~1 point below the national average in marriages and divorces. By comparison, Maine is 4 points over the marriage average and 3 points under the divorce average. I should have remembered my audience and not made a joke about California's differences from the rest of the country. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/12/united-states...
Now why would you mention Maine? I guess then I would say Arkansas has the worst divorce rate (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with... 2020). I assume that's the whole thing we're doing here?, blue state, red state?
I responded to your original comment because you said "and in my area the working class is very Catholic, black, or both. YMMV, not valid in California." which you say is a joke. What's the joke? Now I don't want to accuse you of contributing to this because I have no way of knowing where your beliefs about CA came from by (I'm going to go off on a tangent here) but what I've seen when it comes to California is that people now use it as a negative example for almost every comparison, often without evidence. It's done so much that there's now there's a negative connotation to the state itself that certainly isn't valid in all cases. It's so insidious how a belief / stereotype can just appear out of no where if it's just causally spread out.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 epidemi…
you are moving the goalpost here. good luck finding a job paying well that's not a trade or a technical job requiring a college degree.
grew up blue collar, still spend plenty of time with blue collar folks. just like there are fat unhealthy desk workers, there are beaten up tradesmen who didn't take care of their bodies. there are also healthy examples of both.
finally, these are required jobs that make our society function. hard to say they are oversold while most of the people on this forum make the proverbial fourteenth attempt at Uber for dogwalking. myself included.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
When 3 out 4 people "fail" at something, I'm not sure that calling it "extremely achievable" is really a particularly suitable description.
Ahem, your statement assumes people even try - most do not. Especially given the "follow your passion" advice Americans are following nowadays.
The GP was using a quote from the GGP:
> According to the 2020 census data linked below the percentage increases to around 24% for individuals who worked full time all year.
It said and implied nothing about people trying or not. GP attempted to cast this as "1/4 of people succeed, so it's easily achieveable"
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#260Again, 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…
> This analysis also ignores government transfers.
AFAIU, by dollar amount government transfers in the U.S. are roughly comparable to those in most European countries. However, a disproportionate amount of those transfers are spent on medical care, a consequence of the high cost of medical care in the U.S. Moreover, a disproportionate amount of government medical spending goes toward the elderly and small, high risk groups. IOW, even at comparable dollar amounts, government transfers in the U.S. simply don't provide the same sort of secure economic footing that people can use to get ahead in some other countries.