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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

#261

Post by phone8675309 »

DarylZero wrote: post #256
Thorrez wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fat lot of good that does when you die from a simple infection that penicillin can fix or keel over from a heart attack that is survivable in the modern age.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#262

Post by refurb »

wahern wrote: post #260
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…

> 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…

Disagree. The biggest transfer is cash through the EITC. If you're eligible for EITC, you're likely eligible for Medicaid which has near-zero out of pocket costs for medical care.

I keep hearing how the US has a "non-existant safety net" yet can help but notice safety net programs are more than half the federal budget.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#263

Post by DarylZero »

csallen wrote: post #155
tshaddox wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more people who belong to the so-wealthy-it's-hard-to-achieve group, the better. Aren’t you just literally saying that social mobility is bad?

No, I'm saying that there's always going to be some level of wealth that's difficult to achieve. We can all pull a number out of thin air that's just super high, that's tough to imagine people in the bottom 20% commonly getting to in their lifetime. For argument's sake, let's say that number is a net worth of $500K. (Because that just so happens to be the minimum net worth to be in the top 20% of Americans[0].) What…

> What would you prefer: a world where more or fewer people were able to amass that much wealth? To me, the obvious answer is more.

Fewer. That wealth represents the obligation of other people to labor on behalf of the owner or their heirs. A world with lots of rich people is a world where the poor are born into indentured servitude. Equality allows the newborn to enter life debt free.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#264

Post by BLKNSLVR »

vitus wrote: post #221
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Globalism is something that should be reevaluated The global logistical issues caused by COVID, alongside China's recent belligerence, are seeing to the reversal of a certain amount of globalisation. >Our capital is being invested into the capabilities of rivals, and it doesn't pay dividends. Americans have been turned into buyers of cheap plastic goods, and we've lost the ability to make our own critical components…

> Isn't The Economist a US publication? "The Economist Group (legally The Economist Newspaper Limited) is a media company headquartered in London, England. It is best known as publisher of The Economist newspaper and its sister lifestyle magazine, 1843." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group

Oof, severe research fail on my side. Flaming arrows accepted.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#265

Post by klabb3 »

ipeefreely wrote: post #3

Social mobility is really hard to measure, but all else equal, I think America is the best place in the world for a poor person to become filthy rich (top 0.1%) but not the best place in the world for a poor person to simply transition to middle/upper class.

Note the denominator in this statement. The poor -> middle class transition is relevant for a huge amount of people, and the poor -> filthy rich is relevant to such a small number of people I don't even know a single soul alive who made that transition, despite billionaires being very public figures.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#266

Post by newfriend »

Jensson wrote: post #200
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and ignoring the existence of other developed nations I mean, Germany and France literally criminalized name-calling and teasing on the internet. They actively compel social media websites to delete posts and comments that make fun of people, or make them feel bad. USA doesn't exactly have the highest moral ground, but it has some higher moral ground for sure. So what exactly is USA supposed to learn from these oth…

A big difference is that USA puts you in jail for years for relatively minor things like possessing drugs. Europe might have laws banning some things USA doesn't, but the laws USA has are so much more oppressive since the American justice system and police are much less lenient.

Or maybe different populations of people value different things? If you value DUDE WEED over free speech, feel free to move to your Euro paradise.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#267

Post by jwolfe »

ianbutler wrote: post #189
theonemind wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unreachable tier of society indicates a fundamental social injustice. They're in the top 20% of wealth...not intelligence, or in any other factor making them deserving of it. Some of them did work hard, and probably deserve it if you consider hard work deserving of it...but, some people worked harder and didn't make it, so it's not a 1-to-1 equation. So there's a huge element of luck, which is kind of like a slave…

"if you consider hard work deserving of it" Do you mean to say people who do nothing deserve wealth?

It seems in context that they're saying that you may or may not consider the fact that you worked hard and then were heartily rewarded to mean that you deserved the result. Especially in the context of many many other people working just as hard and not getting the same result.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#268

Post by DarylZero »

phone8675309 wrote: post #261
DarylZero wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fat lot of good that does when you die from a simple infection that penicillin can fix or keel over from a heart attack that is survivable in the modern age.

Look, I'm not saying that everything was better in the medieval ages. But people who think that their own modern lifestyle is comparable to a medieval king are lying to themselves. They heard a dumbass meme and never thought about it critically.

Modern working class people in the wealthy nations do have better _medical care_ than medieval kings did. That doesn't justify broad statements about "lifestyle."

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#269

Post by ummonk »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #209
ummonk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even beyond that, interpreting financial mobility is a tricky thing. For example, countries that have had high levels of meritocracy in the past may exhibit less financial mobility because people are already sorted into their merited economic brackets.

How can "merited economic brackets" span generations?

Culture / upbringing tend to be passed on to some extent from one generation to the next, unless every child is raised in state boarding schools. And on the innate side, whether one hits the genetic lottery is correlated with whether one's parents and grandparents hit the genetic lottery.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#270

Post by LudwigNagasena »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #206
csallen wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying that there's always going to be some level of wealth that's difficult to achieve. We can all pull a number out of thin air that's just super high, that's tough to imagine people in the bottom 20% commonly getting to in their lifetime. For argument's sake, let's say that number is a net worth of $500K. (Because that just so happens to be the minimum net worth to be in the top 20% of Americans[0].) What…

You're totally conflating relative and absolute wealth. Society is probably better off when the median absolute wealth increases, which will be achieved by more people achieving higher wealth levels. But as is becoming increasing clear (again), society is worse off when relative wealth distinctions grow (at least, if they grow too large). If more people make it to $500k, the 5th quintile threshold will move up. That…

> But as is becoming increasing clear (again), society is worse off when relative wealth distinctions grow (at least, if they grow too large).

Why is it clear?

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