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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

#281

Post by Jensson »

DarylZero wrote: post #268
phone8675309 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> But people who think that their own modern lifestyle is comparable to a medieval king are lying to themselves.

Medieval kings still ate poor food, you can see it on their teeth, they often had gravel etc in the bread wearing down the teeths etc. The houses, food and clothing, sanitation etc the kings had back then would be illegal to even offer to poor people toady.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#282

Post by wreath »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #140
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #91

Earlier 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…

Can you elaborate or share any studies that show Europe has better mobility opportunities than the US? Also what part of Europe are we talking, Germany? Romania? Portugal or maybe Poland?

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#283

Post by WalterBright »

Swizec wrote: post #213
WalterBright wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Talking about money with upper middle class people is impolite. They have never had money problems and do not understand why anyone would ever talk about money That isn't the reason at all. My parents struggled in the Depression, but they never ever talked about their money. The Depression taught them to be very, very frugal, a lifelong habit. (My family tended to keep cars for 30 years, for example.) I had no idea…

Money talk might be an american thing then, not a class thing? Where I’m from everyone is safely broke together so complaining about lack of money is almost used as small talk like weather. But once you climb out of that, suddenly you stop talking about money. Figured US was the same

Talking about money just makes you a target for every charity, scam, people wanting loans, people wanting you to invest in their startup, groupies, and on and on.

I bet it would be really, really hard to become an actual friend of Bill Gates, for an extreme example. I once was at a conference, where he was a speaker, and sat at the lunch table he sat at, along with 7 other people. It was sickening how they fawned all over him. He pretended not to notice, but can you imagine going through life with that happening all the time?

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#284

Post by bawolff »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #270
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Eventually, if the wealth divide becomes too great and ossified, the logical thing for the poor to do is have a violent revolution (since there is no other way to advance their station in life).

This sucks for basically everyone, rich or poor. I think we all have a selfish interest in making sure it doesn't come to that.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#285

Post by WalterBright »

DarylZero wrote: post #233
WalterBright wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What you do with the savings makes all the difference. For example, you could invest it to upgrade your job skills, making for a much higher income level. Investing it at the current negative 4% or so is not much better than setting it on fire.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#286

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ummonk wrote: post #269
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For all of its problems, the core concept of a meritocracy is that you don't get positions in life simply based on ancestry.

If the children of an astronomer really do turn out to be the best astronomers, then a meritocracy should theoretically allow them to become the best astronomers in the next generation.

But they do not get to be the astronomers JUST because they had a parent who was good at that. Every generation gets a reset; if genetics really do predict merit, then sure, the arrangement will look a bit like ancestry.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#288

Post by Jensson »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #248
Jensson wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genes. Of course people like you don't believe in genes, but it explains most things we see here. It is really hard to make poor people successful even if you give them resources, a top 10% childhood is extremely cheap compared to how much society derives from those, if it was that easy then Governments would already mass produce those. 70 years ago college was only for the elite. Today close to half of young adults…

What's a "person like me" ? What do I believe? Or not believe?

The answer to your comment is obviously genes, so the only reason anyone would write in such a comment is that they reject that explanation. Blank slate people are always everywhere in threads like this.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#289

Post by WalterBright »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #212
WalterBright wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For a lot of people, it's not about how hard or how smart one works. It's about the support networks that kick in when you screw up or when bad luck befalls you. Lots of middle class kids (like mine) get multiple chances to try and fail. Their parents' wealth and social connections gets to work and cushions their landing, and like Silicon Valley folk, they get to try again. The children of working class families do n…

All those immigrants streaming over the border with nothing manage to do it. Nobody said it was easy, but it is possible.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#290

Post by bertil »

atlgator wrote: post #251

Why don't they say what the quintiles are in dollars?

The information is in the original papers. If they wanted to give relevant information, they’d have to give twenty to forty numbers: one for each country, upper and lower bar, for previous generation and the current one, in currency (and the Euro has been introduced in several countries) for and likely offer inflation-corrected, purchase-power index, etc. The Economist has a strict rule about offering as simple infographics as possible and this has generally served them well.
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