12 ms·

The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940

128 points by return0 9y ago

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Isn't this a similar effect to lifespan? We say the average lifespan is increasing, but in fact its the effect of most people reaching their normal lifespan (instead of dying early). So as income falls into a more uniform distribution (more folks have access to most common jobs) we see 'mobility' decrease. The same as 'lifespan mobility' has decreased (folks no longer living longer than their parents). Its a good thing.
- pc86 9y ago
  It's a good thing unless your entire worldview is wrapped up in having your children "do better than you," whatever that means. I think many people have a gut reaction to decreased mobility (I know I do) as being somehow anti-meritocratic. It's very possible the science doesn't back that up but I don't know that there is any research on it. I feel like high mobility in both directions means a society is more meritocratic than one in which you generally stay in the same socioeconomic strata you're born into.
  - wonderwonder 9y ago
    Sure, a growing dichotomy between rich and poor could be a sign of a meritocracy or it could be a sign of people who's parents have money have a greater chance of success. Either way in a country as rich as the United States there should never be hunger, fear of homelessness or other poverty generated afflictions we suffer here. In addition people are born with different cognitive skills, should those born with average intelligence automatically be doomed to lead lives of poverty compared to others? I'm not advocating asset seizures but we as a nation can do better.
    - pc86 9y ago
      There doesn't need to be a dichotomy, I'd love to see wealth distributed on a bell curve but I don't think that's realistic (and I don't want the government enacting policies try to enforce some arbitrary distribution of wealth). Wealth is tied up in a lot of advantages - better schools, more opportunity for leisure, etc - that themselves tend to lead to more wealth. > should those born with average intelligence automatically be doomed to lead lives of poverty compared to others? Nobody born with average intelligence is doomed to a life of poverty so I'm not sure what the point of that straw man is. I think it's a fact of life that someone of average intelligence will have a harder time amassing great wealth than someone of exceptional intelligence. I'm pretty sure my intelligence is at best slightly above average and I don't see anything wrong with that.
      - sdflkd 9y ago
        > Nobody born with average intelligence is doomed to a life of poverty. Have you ever interacted with the under-privileged? Plenty of smart people feel their lives are doomed because of the way society is structured against them.
- groby_b 9y ago
  There's a small difference: "lifespan mobility" as you call it is not something where you see changes for yourself within your life - it is measured once, when you die. Income mobility affects you your entire life, and where you are is measured constantly. So no, it's not a good thing - because it means that if you're born poor, you stay poor. Calling it a good thing is the same thing as saying "more babies dying is great, it evens out the distribution to be more uniform, it's a good thing!" And no, the distribution is not "uniform". If you bother to look at the data at all, you'll see that it approaches a pareto distribution. Awesome if you happen to be one of the few rich or well-off. Sucks if you're one of the vast majority of people who barely make ends meet, and who are now, due to decreased mobility, stuck there for the rest of their lives. Decreased income mobility is only good for people who have a good income. And those are currently significantly outnumbered by people who don't. Traditionally, situations like this tend to end in war, revolution, or dictatorships. Really not what I'd file in the "good thing" category. The only way to make it a good thing is to increase the amount of people with a liveable income. Hence all the discussion around universal basic income going on recently. But until that (or some other kind of reduction of inequality has happened), reduced mobility is really, really, really bad.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  But it's not becoming more uniform distribution -- not only is mobility decreasing, income inequality is rising (the "Great Divergence" as Krugman calls it). We are returning to a pre-20th century society where the rich are rich and the poor are poor and not much inbetween.
  - VLM 9y ago
    As sort of a general comment on the situation, its informative to consider that when American foreign policy spends centuries on gunboat diplomacy and inequality and immobility in the 3rd world, the citizen response is rah rah USA USA. But when the same policy is applied to the USA itself, suddenly lots of hand wringing about maybe massive income inequality isn't the most moral and ethical system or maybe caste based zero mobility isn't the fairest way to treat people. Well whats good for the goose is good for the gander or whatever trite saying. Its also useful to consider that the 3rd world has been kept the way it is for centuries, so claims that it could never be implemented in the USA or would never be stable/permanent state of affairs is pretty comical level unrealistic. Finally WRT apocalypse claims, you have to realize that over a long term and from far away, Central and South America look pretty messed up, especially compared to "us" where "us" is the former western civilization, rapidly intentionally self destructing. Yet, their people none the less do a lot of smiling, their reproductive success is higher than ours, their lifespan isn't that much shorter... Americas future looks a lot more like Venezuela than Venezuela's future looks like America, and that's not really all that bad. The future is going to suck, and yes it will be entirely our fault, but its hardly the end of the world. Look, you make your national political, economic, trade, immigration, frankly "all" policies to turn the USA into Brazil, don't act all surprised when USA starts looking like Brazil with Brazil reduced income, Brazil reduced public services, Brazil housing affordability, Brazil rape and murder rate, Brazil economic mobility. Brazil's got problems, but don't forget as USA dies and turns into Brazil, that Brazil's got plenty of good parts too. The powers that be want it this way and you're not stopping it but you can try to get ahead of the curve. So assuming the USA turns into Brazil what do you do today, so your kids do better in the Brazil-like USA of 2070 than some imaginary dead USA that will never exist in 2070? A cross cultural lesson is nobody ever got ahead in the world by endlessly ruminating on how unfair some awful disaster is unfolding. You can work on thriving in a Brazil-like USA of 2070 or you can feel really really bad about it, now let me know which is more likely to turn out well in the long run.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The only scenario where low mobility is obviously not a problem is when income is entirely even. If there is an uneven income distribution, to decide that low mobility is fair, you need some other explanation for why people aren't moving from say, the bottom quintile up to the other quintiles. For example, in a cartoon world where income outcomes are entirely random, you'd expect 80% mobility from each quintile.
tabeth 9y ago
I believe this is the inevitable outcome of the following: 1. The desire to maximize personal capital and assets. 2. An individualistic mindset 3. The compounding effects of (1) and (2). With all three, you get the current problem as described in the article. Suppose you removed (3), and somehow you could maximize assets, but upon death (or some other "big" event) all of your assets were given to the community. This would result in wealth not being concentrated. Here I'm also including the creation of foundations and other "charities", which in my view are just ways to keep your assets concentrated, and you have some tax advantages of doing so as well. Say you removed (2). Wealth concentration without the desire to personally benefit from it would result inevitably in the helping of others, as a healthy, prosperous world would ultimately benefit you (though, again, its not the goal). After all, what's the point of money if it doesn't benefit you? You might as well make the world you live in better. Without (1), you naturally would not see the problem described in the article. So, what's the TLDR? Basically, 1. Create a culture where people don't need to be so prosperous themselves. 2. Encourage schemes that benefit everyone instead of someone. 3. Prevent the concentration of wealth, and all of its pseudo-forms (foundations, real estate, etc.)
- pc86 9y ago
  Honestly, this seems grossly un-American at the most basic levels. A 100% tax on the estate upon one's death? Legal prohibitions against the purchase of real estate past a certain point?
  - tabeth 9y ago
    What do you define as "American"?
    - ytNumbers 9y ago
      Equal opportunity. Not equal outcomes.
      - adrianN 9y ago
        Having rich parents counts as equal opportunity?
mtdewcmu 9y ago
I would describe this as "fact-based" economics. Paul Krugman had a good column yesterday[1] pertaining to the other kind of economics, which tends to exacerbate the problems. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/zombies-of-voodoo-economics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/zombies-of-voodoo...
- icelancer 9y ago
  "Yes, the U.S. economy rebounded quickly from the slump of 1979-82. But was that the result of the Reagan tax cuts, or was it, as most economists think, the result of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve? Bill Clinton provided a clear test, by raising taxes on the rich. Republicans predicted disaster, but instead the economy boomed, creating more jobs than under Reagan." I don't know why I read Krugman columns. Yeah, Clinton raising taxes caused the boom. Not the proliferation of the Internet, drawdowns of the military, and relative global peace (as far as the US is concerned). Solid single-input machines. Krugman's columns are nothing more than political hackery, with all due respect to his very good work otherwise.
  - mtdewcmu 9y ago
    You seem to be missing the nuance. Krugman's over-arching point was that cutting taxes on the rich doesn't boost the economy. His point about Clinton wasn't to say that raising taxes boosted the economy. All else being equal, it makes no sense to assert that raising taxes would provide an economic boost. Raising taxes removes money from the economy; the expectation would be that that would slow the economy. Krugman's point was that if supply-side economics were true, only cutting taxes should boost the economy and raising taxes should cause a disaster. Clinton raised taxes and what actually happened was that the economy did great. Therefore, the prediction of disaster was clearly, indisputably wrong.
    - icelancer 9y ago
      The problem is that I agree largely with Krugman, not disagree. I think taxes should go up. I think rhetoric that is found in his columns does it very little justice, however.
mac01021 9y ago
The authors define "Absolute Income Mobility" as the fraction of people who earn more than their parents. They observe that income mobility, under this definition, has been declining since 1940. They seem to regard this as a problem, which reflects a diminishing level of opportunity for each subsequent generation. The data they present are interesting and worth further study, but I do not think I agree with their subjective assessment (that this is a problem to solve). On seeing the data, my first hypothesis is that a major driver here is the fraction of a birth cohort that is more educated than their parents. People born in the 1940s and 1950s are much more likely to have more education (and more income) than their parents, compared to people born in the 70s and 80s. But if you're born later then it is more likely that your parents are "fully educated", in which case why should you expect to be able to out-earn them?
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  You are asserting that there is a ceiling on the effect of education on income. Agreed, but only 2.7% of the population has doctorate level education, and there is regression-toward-the-mean as well (many high-attainment folks have kids who are stocking shelves).
- SomewhatLikely 9y ago
  The measure seems problematic at best. Even in a society where every child remains at exactly the same percentile of wealth of their parents this measure could be anywhere from 0% to 100% depending on changes in productivity growth.
clavalle 9y ago
The most interesting graph is the 'Child Income Percentile vs the Parent Income Percentile' compared between 1980 and 1940 [Graph D]. The rest can be explained away by a general stagnation of real wages. This graph, however, shows clearly a stratification taking shape. There are a two ways to explain this: 1: The wealthy are enjoying artificial advantages to income generation that the less wealthy don't have access to. This would be an erosion of meritocracy in the US between 1940 and 1980 2: In 1940 the more 'naturally' gifted as far as income generation potential were somehow mixed more thoroughly with the rest of the population. The 1980 data simply shows that families are finding their ingrained strata in society. The meritocracy exists but those with more merit are simply rising to the top. Occam's razor would suggest that explanation 1 is more likely since it doesn't require a whole population of people who would be naturally more apt to high income generation to be evenly mixed into almost every other income level than the one where they would rightly belong like oil being inexplicably emulsified and evenly distributed in a cup of water. There is a growing and pervasive trend to believe that explanation 2 is the case. It may be possible but I don't think we can accept that without evidence. The American Dream isn't just a feel good notion. If people are more or less biologically the same as they were in 1940 and there was no unnatural mixing occurring at the time and income can be used as a rough proxy for value creation then the income stratification represents artificial barriers to full productivity that hurts every single one of us. There are people out there -- a huge majority of people according to that graph -- that are not creating their full value potential. That is a picture of a society in decline. [1] https://d2ufo47lrtsv5s.cloudfront.net/content/sci/early/2017/04/21/science.aal4617/F2.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1 https://d2ufo47lrtsv5s.cloudfront.net/content/sci/early/2017...
justforFranz 9y ago
Look. Let's face the fact that there's been a class war since the 70's and the rich have won. The recent attempt to overturn Obamacare (which would take healthcare from poor people and give tax breaks to rich people) is only the most brazen, recent, visible thing that people can understand. We are losing, they are winning. Infrastructure is losing, offshore tax havens are winning. People's healthcare is under threat, corporate earnings (especially after Trump's proposed tax breaks) are rising. America doesn't miss manufacturing, it misses unions.
- ashark 9y ago
  > America doesn't miss manufacturing, it misses unions. A friend of mine has the idea that American politics is about what amount to kaiju fighting on the sides of different factions. Yeah, none of them are great, and your giant monster might step on someone's house every now and then, which sucks, but at least it's keeping the other one from burning down the neighborhood. Traditionally the ultrawealthy were strong enough to practically be their own monsters, massive corporations had their lobbies, "trade associations" and various means of wielding significant influence, and the working class had... unions, and even the nasty old "political machines" to an extent. Now the working class has no effective kaiju. We've been convinced to give them up. So it's just the rich and corporate giant monsters running around smashing everything in sight, with different factions of them more-or-less running the two viable parties (which is not a "they're both the same" claim—though I wouldn't say that Democrats have a monopoly on pro-working-class or pro-poor policies, either, just a majority). Meanwhile we're to believe everything's fine because we can still vote. But we have no kaiju on our side, while everyone else retained theirs, and in this system that matters a lot.

128 points by return0 9y ago

Isn't this a similar effect to lifespan? We say the average lifespan is increasing, but in fact its the effect of most people reaching their normal lifespan (instead of dying early). So as income falls into a more uniform distribution (more folks have access to most common jobs) we see 'mobility' decrease. The same as 'lifespan mobility' has decreased (folks no longer living longer than their parents). Its a good thing.

pc86 9y ago
It's a good thing unless your entire worldview is wrapped up in having your children "do better than you," whatever that means. I think many people have a gut reaction to decreased mobility (I know I do) as being somehow anti-meritocratic. It's very possible the science doesn't back that up but I don't know that there is any research on it. I feel like high mobility in both directions means a society is more meritocratic than one in which you generally stay in the same socioeconomic strata you're born into.
- wonderwonder 9y ago
  Sure, a growing dichotomy between rich and poor could be a sign of a meritocracy or it could be a sign of people who's parents have money have a greater chance of success. Either way in a country as rich as the United States there should never be hunger, fear of homelessness or other poverty generated afflictions we suffer here. In addition people are born with different cognitive skills, should those born with average intelligence automatically be doomed to lead lives of poverty compared to others? I'm not advocating asset seizures but we as a nation can do better.
  - pc86 9y ago
    There doesn't need to be a dichotomy, I'd love to see wealth distributed on a bell curve but I don't think that's realistic (and I don't want the government enacting policies try to enforce some arbitrary distribution of wealth). Wealth is tied up in a lot of advantages - better schools, more opportunity for leisure, etc - that themselves tend to lead to more wealth. > should those born with average intelligence automatically be doomed to lead lives of poverty compared to others? Nobody born with average intelligence is doomed to a life of poverty so I'm not sure what the point of that straw man is. I think it's a fact of life that someone of average intelligence will have a harder time amassing great wealth than someone of exceptional intelligence. I'm pretty sure my intelligence is at best slightly above average and I don't see anything wrong with that.
    - sdflkd 9y ago
      > Nobody born with average intelligence is doomed to a life of poverty. Have you ever interacted with the under-privileged? Plenty of smart people feel their lives are doomed because of the way society is structured against them.
groby_b 9y ago
There's a small difference: "lifespan mobility" as you call it is not something where you see changes for yourself within your life - it is measured once, when you die. Income mobility affects you your entire life, and where you are is measured constantly. So no, it's not a good thing - because it means that if you're born poor, you stay poor. Calling it a good thing is the same thing as saying "more babies dying is great, it evens out the distribution to be more uniform, it's a good thing!" And no, the distribution is not "uniform". If you bother to look at the data at all, you'll see that it approaches a pareto distribution. Awesome if you happen to be one of the few rich or well-off. Sucks if you're one of the vast majority of people who barely make ends meet, and who are now, due to decreased mobility, stuck there for the rest of their lives. Decreased income mobility is only good for people who have a good income. And those are currently significantly outnumbered by people who don't. Traditionally, situations like this tend to end in war, revolution, or dictatorships. Really not what I'd file in the "good thing" category. The only way to make it a good thing is to increase the amount of people with a liveable income. Hence all the discussion around universal basic income going on recently. But until that (or some other kind of reduction of inequality has happened), reduced mobility is really, really, really bad.
jhbadger 9y ago
But it's not becoming more uniform distribution -- not only is mobility decreasing, income inequality is rising (the "Great Divergence" as Krugman calls it). We are returning to a pre-20th century society where the rich are rich and the poor are poor and not much inbetween.
- VLM 9y ago
  As sort of a general comment on the situation, its informative to consider that when American foreign policy spends centuries on gunboat diplomacy and inequality and immobility in the 3rd world, the citizen response is rah rah USA USA. But when the same policy is applied to the USA itself, suddenly lots of hand wringing about maybe massive income inequality isn't the most moral and ethical system or maybe caste based zero mobility isn't the fairest way to treat people. Well whats good for the goose is good for the gander or whatever trite saying. Its also useful to consider that the 3rd world has been kept the way it is for centuries, so claims that it could never be implemented in the USA or would never be stable/permanent state of affairs is pretty comical level unrealistic. Finally WRT apocalypse claims, you have to realize that over a long term and from far away, Central and South America look pretty messed up, especially compared to "us" where "us" is the former western civilization, rapidly intentionally self destructing. Yet, their people none the less do a lot of smiling, their reproductive success is higher than ours, their lifespan isn't that much shorter... Americas future looks a lot more like Venezuela than Venezuela's future looks like America, and that's not really all that bad. The future is going to suck, and yes it will be entirely our fault, but its hardly the end of the world. Look, you make your national political, economic, trade, immigration, frankly "all" policies to turn the USA into Brazil, don't act all surprised when USA starts looking like Brazil with Brazil reduced income, Brazil reduced public services, Brazil housing affordability, Brazil rape and murder rate, Brazil economic mobility. Brazil's got problems, but don't forget as USA dies and turns into Brazil, that Brazil's got plenty of good parts too. The powers that be want it this way and you're not stopping it but you can try to get ahead of the curve. So assuming the USA turns into Brazil what do you do today, so your kids do better in the Brazil-like USA of 2070 than some imaginary dead USA that will never exist in 2070? A cross cultural lesson is nobody ever got ahead in the world by endlessly ruminating on how unfair some awful disaster is unfolding. You can work on thriving in a Brazil-like USA of 2070 or you can feel really really bad about it, now let me know which is more likely to turn out well in the long run.
maxerickson 9y ago
The only scenario where low mobility is obviously not a problem is when income is entirely even. If there is an uneven income distribution, to decide that low mobility is fair, you need some other explanation for why people aren't moving from say, the bottom quintile up to the other quintiles. For example, in a cartoon world where income outcomes are entirely random, you'd expect 80% mobility from each quintile.

tabeth 9y ago

I believe this is the inevitable outcome of the following: 1. The desire to maximize personal capital and assets. 2. An individualistic mindset 3. The compounding effects of (1) and (2). With all three, you get the current problem as described in the article. Suppose you removed (3), and somehow you could maximize assets, but upon death (or some other "big" event) all of your assets were given to the community. This would result in wealth not being concentrated. Here I'm also including the creation of foundations and other "charities", which in my view are just ways to keep your assets concentrated, and you have some tax advantages of doing so as well. Say you removed (2). Wealth concentration without the desire to personally benefit from it would result inevitably in the helping of others, as a healthy, prosperous world would ultimately benefit you (though, again, its not the goal). After all, what's the point of money if it doesn't benefit you? You might as well make the world you live in better. Without (1), you naturally would not see the problem described in the article. So, what's the TLDR? Basically, 1. Create a culture where people don't need to be so prosperous themselves. 2. Encourage schemes that benefit everyone instead of someone. 3. Prevent the concentration of wealth, and all of its pseudo-forms (foundations, real estate, etc.)

pc86 9y ago
Honestly, this seems grossly un-American at the most basic levels. A 100% tax on the estate upon one's death? Legal prohibitions against the purchase of real estate past a certain point?
- tabeth 9y ago
  What do you define as "American"?
  - ytNumbers 9y ago
    Equal opportunity. Not equal outcomes.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      Having rich parents counts as equal opportunity?

mtdewcmu 9y ago

I would describe this as "fact-based" economics. Paul Krugman had a good column yesterday[1] pertaining to the other kind of economics, which tends to exacerbate the problems. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/zombies-of-voodoo-economics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/zombies-of-voodoo...

icelancer 9y ago
"Yes, the U.S. economy rebounded quickly from the slump of 1979-82. But was that the result of the Reagan tax cuts, or was it, as most economists think, the result of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve? Bill Clinton provided a clear test, by raising taxes on the rich. Republicans predicted disaster, but instead the economy boomed, creating more jobs than under Reagan." I don't know why I read Krugman columns. Yeah, Clinton raising taxes caused the boom. Not the proliferation of the Internet, drawdowns of the military, and relative global peace (as far as the US is concerned). Solid single-input machines. Krugman's columns are nothing more than political hackery, with all due respect to his very good work otherwise.
- mtdewcmu 9y ago
  You seem to be missing the nuance. Krugman's over-arching point was that cutting taxes on the rich doesn't boost the economy. His point about Clinton wasn't to say that raising taxes boosted the economy. All else being equal, it makes no sense to assert that raising taxes would provide an economic boost. Raising taxes removes money from the economy; the expectation would be that that would slow the economy. Krugman's point was that if supply-side economics were true, only cutting taxes should boost the economy and raising taxes should cause a disaster. Clinton raised taxes and what actually happened was that the economy did great. Therefore, the prediction of disaster was clearly, indisputably wrong.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    The problem is that I agree largely with Krugman, not disagree. I think taxes should go up. I think rhetoric that is found in his columns does it very little justice, however.

mac01021 9y ago

The authors define "Absolute Income Mobility" as the fraction of people who earn more than their parents. They observe that income mobility, under this definition, has been declining since 1940. They seem to regard this as a problem, which reflects a diminishing level of opportunity for each subsequent generation. The data they present are interesting and worth further study, but I do not think I agree with their subjective assessment (that this is a problem to solve). On seeing the data, my first hypothesis is that a major driver here is the fraction of a birth cohort that is more educated than their parents. People born in the 1940s and 1950s are much more likely to have more education (and more income) than their parents, compared to people born in the 70s and 80s. But if you're born later then it is more likely that your parents are "fully educated", in which case why should you expect to be able to out-earn them?

killjoywashere 9y ago
You are asserting that there is a ceiling on the effect of education on income. Agreed, but only 2.7% of the population has doctorate level education, and there is regression-toward-the-mean as well (many high-attainment folks have kids who are stocking shelves).
SomewhatLikely 9y ago
The measure seems problematic at best. Even in a society where every child remains at exactly the same percentile of wealth of their parents this measure could be anywhere from 0% to 100% depending on changes in productivity growth.

clavalle 9y ago

The most interesting graph is the 'Child Income Percentile vs the Parent Income Percentile' compared between 1980 and 1940 [Graph D]. The rest can be explained away by a general stagnation of real wages. This graph, however, shows clearly a stratification taking shape. There are a two ways to explain this: 1: The wealthy are enjoying artificial advantages to income generation that the less wealthy don't have access to. This would be an erosion of meritocracy in the US between 1940 and 1980 2: In 1940 the more 'naturally' gifted as far as income generation potential were somehow mixed more thoroughly with the rest of the population. The 1980 data simply shows that families are finding their ingrained strata in society. The meritocracy exists but those with more merit are simply rising to the top. Occam's razor would suggest that explanation 1 is more likely since it doesn't require a whole population of people who would be naturally more apt to high income generation to be evenly mixed into almost every other income level than the one where they would rightly belong like oil being inexplicably emulsified and evenly distributed in a cup of water. There is a growing and pervasive trend to believe that explanation 2 is the case. It may be possible but I don't think we can accept that without evidence. The American Dream isn't just a feel good notion. If people are more or less biologically the same as they were in 1940 and there was no unnatural mixing occurring at the time and income can be used as a rough proxy for value creation then the income stratification represents artificial barriers to full productivity that hurts every single one of us. There are people out there -- a huge majority of people according to that graph -- that are not creating their full value potential. That is a picture of a society in decline. [1] https://d2ufo47lrtsv5s.cloudfront.net/content/sci/early/2017/04/21/science.aal4617/F2.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1 https://d2ufo47lrtsv5s.cloudfront.net/content/sci/early/2017...

justforFranz 9y ago

Look. Let's face the fact that there's been a class war since the 70's and the rich have won. The recent attempt to overturn Obamacare (which would take healthcare from poor people and give tax breaks to rich people) is only the most brazen, recent, visible thing that people can understand. We are losing, they are winning. Infrastructure is losing, offshore tax havens are winning. People's healthcare is under threat, corporate earnings (especially after Trump's proposed tax breaks) are rising. America doesn't miss manufacturing, it misses unions.

ashark 9y ago
> America doesn't miss manufacturing, it misses unions. A friend of mine has the idea that American politics is about what amount to kaiju fighting on the sides of different factions. Yeah, none of them are great, and your giant monster might step on someone's house every now and then, which sucks, but at least it's keeping the other one from burning down the neighborhood. Traditionally the ultrawealthy were strong enough to practically be their own monsters, massive corporations had their lobbies, "trade associations" and various means of wielding significant influence, and the working class had... unions, and even the nasty old "political machines" to an extent. Now the working class has no effective kaiju. We've been convinced to give them up. So it's just the rich and corporate giant monsters running around smashing everything in sight, with different factions of them more-or-less running the two viable parties (which is not a "they're both the same" claim—though I wouldn't say that Democrats have a monopoly on pro-working-class or pro-poor policies, either, just a majority). Meanwhile we're to believe everything's fine because we can still vote. But we have no kaiju on our side, while everyone else retained theirs, and in this system that matters a lot.