How I understand it, again, does that require "social mobility?"
I think it simply requires, first and foremost, wealth creation.
Google "usa social mobility decline", lots of hits, lots of studies, evidence.
household real incomes have remained stagnant for 30 years (starting with St Ronnie), while college education and health care have skyrocketed in adjusted dollars.
born poor, stay poor, born wealthy, stay wealthy sums it up pretty well (and that's for non-hispanic whites, it's worse for hispanics and blacks).
Last edited by boutons_deux; 10-21-2010 at 11:48 AM.
I have much anecdotal evidence that suggests those stats don't tell the whole story. Myself, my wife, friends, etc....
Thanks!!
Anecdotes, (the more self-congratulating and isolated, the better) always trump large-scale, multi-decade studies and stats.
"Anecdotes" are individuals who "made it"; you indicated it wasn't possible. Born Poor, stay poor, right?
You lie.
Not hardly, with the way educational, housing, and healthcare costs have risen through the roof in the trickle-down era of this country.
That's an incredibly narrow definition of social status.For instance:
There is a small business that provides a service/product that is timely and in demand. The owner of that business doubles the salary of all of his existing employees (in constant dollars) over time - and he, himself, triples his income.
Within the parameters of the company, social status hasn't changed - except there is more "disparity" between the top and the bottom, but all have more. Is that "successful", in the terms we are discussing here?
Wasn't defining them; just a parable.
You Lie.
Large scale demographic/economic studies over decades show the trend to less social/economic mobility. There is no conflict or denying that some individuals move up, but they are exceptions to the trend.
The new social mobility is now downward for non-poor people impoverished by unemployment and retirement funds losses. Poverty is moving into the suburbs, along with all those vacant, le-confused, foreclosed houses.
And how long did the trend line rise - how long in our nation's history was there profound upward mobility? I assume when you could crap on a piece of land and call it yours (as long as you killed the natives first), you were upwardly mobile. So much of the 1800's were pretty good...then the early 1900's; unionizing; war, etc...the roaring twenties; then the depression (not a whole lot of mobilization); then post war - which we have discussed; EASY to be upwardly mobile then. '60's, '70's? You have said that since "St. Ronnie" - things have been stagnating.
Well, what's the norm? When was it? On what do you base the claim that in this country we are not as upwardly (or downwardly) mobile as we ought to be right now? What do you change to make it like it ought to be? You can certainly confiscate wealth to make people downwardly mobile, but how do you make people upwardly so? What policies, specifically have caused this. Is it simply taxes? I understand how that leaves some people with more than they would otherwise have, but how does that hold anyone else down?
Please help me out; what do you want to happen?
You make people upwardly mobile by giving them schools, teachers, and support systems that aren't ty.
The US does a bad job educating poor children. The lack of a social safety net means that poor parents spend every waking hour working two or three jobs earning enough to pay for daycare and similar. "but charities will step up" doesn't fit with reality.
Our extended family has broken down because of the way we choose to live, and there is nothing to pick up the slack.
The ONLY group of people who have increased their incomes in the last 2 or 3 decades are THE richest people in the country.
To say that somehow we would be punishing them with a slightly higher marginal tax rate to help build ladders for people to pull out of poverty strikes me as disingenuous.
More social programs?
That's the problem?
We are currently spending a trillion and a half more each year than we collect in taxes; and deficits are over a $trillion as far as the eye can see.
Raising taxes specifically on the wealthy, and then turning around and spending that money on, what, more education, subsidized daycare, etc.... you think is going to work?
What evidence do you have that, in the United States, that would improve Social Mobility. There were FEWER such programs in the '50's and '60's - or they were even nonexistent, and yet we had great social mobility, relatively speaking.
The "Great Society" began in the '60's - since those programs have matured, and grown, social mobility has become more and more stagnant, ESPECIALLY among minorities. Could there be a causal relationship?
You yourself pointed out that the '50's and '60's were a boom time.
Do you think social mobility of that time was caused by that lack of programs or the booming economy?
I strongly think that things like subsidized daycare at the very least would actually allow poor parents the time to actually be parents. That, in my opinion, would go a long ways towards raising kids instead of letting them raise themselves.
Respectufully:
I assume you meant:
"That's the solution?"
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote