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> The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are

> The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available. This is one of those things that is worse in Europe than in the US. Inequality is perhaps less in absolute value, but it's more sticky. The upper class of the US has plenty of immigrants and people who were born poor. Yes, being born rich still provides advantage, but it's clearly not impossible. In the EU, the upper class has zero immigrants very few people born poor (upper middle class minimum) (out of the top10 riches Frenchmen, one was born to a family with less than 100 million francs at the time they were born. One. And he wasn't poor by a reasonable definition at all)

GuiA 10y ago
I'm French. My grandparents were farmers/carpenters/etc who didn't attend school past 12 years old for the most educated one because they had to work to support themselves. My maternal grandparents had only one child, and my paternal grandparents had children 10 years apart, such that they could give the best to their progeny. My uncle became a surgeon, and my parents become engineers, through the means of a free public university, which propelled them to upper middle class. There is still much to achieve in French social mobility, but these kind of stories are plenty. Having spent some time in the US now, and seeing the stories of people who go on to go to engineering/medical/etc schools, I can't say that I see comparable things happening. Everyone I know who went to med school comes from upper middle class family AND had to take on tons of debt. You shouldn't be looking at the top 0.001%, but the top 10%, perhaps even 20-30%, and how they live/what kind of social protections they benefit from.
vidarh 10y ago
Social mobility in the US is lower than in most OECD countries [1]. Of all OECD countries, only in Slovenia, Chile, Italy and the UK are the intergenerational correlations between the earnings of fathers and sons stronger, for example. The rest of the OECD, including most of Europe, does far better in that respect. Representation of immigrants is something I haven't looked at, and it may very well be that the US does well there, but there are a number of confounding factors, and it in any case doesn't change the fact that social mobility is poor in the US. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobil...
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  Yeah, I bet parent comment was generalizing from the UK.
tweedl 10y ago
Social mobility is lower in US. Sources are easy to find, you can start at https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-social-mobility-parents-income/399311/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america...

GuiA 10y ago

I'm French. My grandparents were farmers/carpenters/etc who didn't attend school past 12 years old for the most educated one because they had to work to support themselves. My maternal grandparents had only one child, and my paternal grandparents had children 10 years apart, such that they could give the best to their progeny. My uncle became a surgeon, and my parents become engineers, through the means of a free public university, which propelled them to upper middle class. There is still much to achieve in French social mobility, but these kind of stories are plenty. Having spent some time in the US now, and seeing the stories of people who go on to go to engineering/medical/etc schools, I can't say that I see comparable things happening. Everyone I know who went to med school comes from upper middle class family AND had to take on tons of debt. You shouldn't be looking at the top 0.001%, but the top 10%, perhaps even 20-30%, and how they live/what kind of social protections they benefit from.

vidarh 10y ago

Social mobility in the US is lower than in most OECD countries [1]. Of all OECD countries, only in Slovenia, Chile, Italy and the UK are the intergenerational correlations between the earnings of fathers and sons stronger, for example. The rest of the OECD, including most of Europe, does far better in that respect. Representation of immigrants is something I haven't looked at, and it may very well be that the US does well there, but there are a number of confounding factors, and it in any case doesn't change the fact that social mobility is poor in the US. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobil...

Ericson2314 10y ago
Yeah, I bet parent comment was generalizing from the UK.

tweedl 10y ago

Social mobility is lower in US. Sources are easy to find, you can start at https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-social-mobility-parents-income/399311/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america...