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That's not all there is to it. Germany has the lowest social mobility of all Europe, despite having all three of your points.

by kharak 8y ago

Novashi 8y ago
And America falls below Germany for social mobility, precisely because it doesn't have those things: https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi...
geezerjay 8y ago
Truth be told, social mobility and poverty are two separate concepts.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Usually the ruling class wants the masses to be content with whatever their predicament is. That's why the focus is always on making subsisting at your present level bearable (social safety nets, minimum wage, etc) and not on mobility. Edit: I don't literally believe this. I'm just saying that most people who have made it are not interested in everyone else making it to their level (that would be impossible, economics aren't zero sum but we can't all be Bill Gates). They're interested in making everyone else content.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    It's massively cheaper just to distract people and lie to them than to go to the trouble of trying to set up social safety nets, etc.
  - shaki-dora 8y ago
    Usually the "ruling class" does not actually think of itself as the "ruling class". And even those that do consider their success correlated with that of the society they life in. Just about nobody gets far in capitalism subscribing to the the sort of zero-sum theory you allude to[1]. And even if: it'd be idiotic for them to base their decisions on such a theory, considering the "ruling class" tends to be rather old, while social mobility only has effects over several generations. If you require empirical proof, look no further than the super-rich' historically preferred mode of philanthropy: the scholarship. Scholarships are pure social mobility: take promising young people with limited means and allow them to attend elite schools. Surely the Rhodes Scholarship, Gates Scholarship, Schwarzman Scholarship, New York Times Scholarship, or any of the thousands of these programs would not exist in the cynical world you describe. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzman_Scholars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzman_Scholars [1]: I had a quip about current presidents being the exception here. But as it turns out, the Miss America Scholarship is among the largest in the US.
  - pinioux 8y ago
    I actually think that the economy is sort of a zerosum game. I think previous economists upon whom we base these ideas subconciously bought into the idea that resources are practically unilimited. And until now we have managed to get everything we need from the earth and the sun. But I think that the limits are aproaching quickly and even things like becoming multiplanetary will not fix things in the short run. It might save is when the third world war breaks loose. Which is innevitability to me, because of the depleting resources. De west VS the east. Technologically the east will first catch up, but the power won't be yielded so easily by the west. Russia and China know this.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > Usually the ruling class wants the masses to be content with whatever their predicament is. That conspiracy theory is immaterial to the discussion. The point is that social mobility and poverty are orthogonal concepts. You can have zero poverty but no social mobility, or high poverty and high social mobility. To put it differently, the reason why being born in a middle class family is a strong indicator that an individual will live a middle class life, with a low probability of becoming either upper class or lowe class, is not poverty. > I'm just saying that most people who have made it are not interested in everyone else making it to their level (that would be impossible, economics aren't zero sum but we can't all be Bill Gates). They're interested in making everyone else content. The assertion about "not being interested" is meaningless. I'm not interested in anyone winning the lottery, but that does not mean I don't want anyone to win or even that I intend to take any sort of action to stop anyone from ever having a chance of winning a prize. It just mean that I don't spend any time thinking about others winning lotteries because I have far more interesting and engaging things to do. That's what we all do. How much time do we collectively spend doing anything to actually tackle a hard problem such as hunger and war? Is that an indicator we want everyone to die from a combination of starvation and violence? Of course not. So, why is this vague notion of caring about somethong being conflated with being actively engaged in causing a problem?
poulsbohemian 8y ago
I suspect one could find data that would say if you can receive an education, health care, and have supportive work, then at some point you don't need to be "rich" to be content with life. Thus social mobility is moot. Compare to the US, where the base quality of life difference is considerable between median income earners and the top ten %, to say nothing of the top 1%.

That's not all there is to it. Germany has the lowest social mobility of all Europe, despite having all three of your points.

by kharak 8y ago

That's not all there is to it. Germany has the lowest social mobility of all Europe, despite having all three of your points.

Novashi 8y ago

And America falls below Germany for social mobility, precisely because it doesn't have those things: https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi...

geezerjay 8y ago

Truth be told, social mobility and poverty are two separate concepts.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Usually the ruling class wants the masses to be content with whatever their predicament is. That's why the focus is always on making subsisting at your present level bearable (social safety nets, minimum wage, etc) and not on mobility. Edit: I don't literally believe this. I'm just saying that most people who have made it are not interested in everyone else making it to their level (that would be impossible, economics aren't zero sum but we can't all be Bill Gates). They're interested in making everyone else content.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  It's massively cheaper just to distract people and lie to them than to go to the trouble of trying to set up social safety nets, etc.
- shaki-dora 8y ago
  Usually the "ruling class" does not actually think of itself as the "ruling class". And even those that do consider their success correlated with that of the society they life in. Just about nobody gets far in capitalism subscribing to the the sort of zero-sum theory you allude to[1]. And even if: it'd be idiotic for them to base their decisions on such a theory, considering the "ruling class" tends to be rather old, while social mobility only has effects over several generations. If you require empirical proof, look no further than the super-rich' historically preferred mode of philanthropy: the scholarship. Scholarships are pure social mobility: take promising young people with limited means and allow them to attend elite schools. Surely the Rhodes Scholarship, Gates Scholarship, Schwarzman Scholarship, New York Times Scholarship, or any of the thousands of these programs would not exist in the cynical world you describe. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzman_Scholars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzman_Scholars [1]: I had a quip about current presidents being the exception here. But as it turns out, the Miss America Scholarship is among the largest in the US.
- pinioux 8y ago
  I actually think that the economy is sort of a zerosum game. I think previous economists upon whom we base these ideas subconciously bought into the idea that resources are practically unilimited. And until now we have managed to get everything we need from the earth and the sun. But I think that the limits are aproaching quickly and even things like becoming multiplanetary will not fix things in the short run. It might save is when the third world war breaks loose. Which is innevitability to me, because of the depleting resources. De west VS the east. Technologically the east will first catch up, but the power won't be yielded so easily by the west. Russia and China know this.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > Usually the ruling class wants the masses to be content with whatever their predicament is. That conspiracy theory is immaterial to the discussion. The point is that social mobility and poverty are orthogonal concepts. You can have zero poverty but no social mobility, or high poverty and high social mobility. To put it differently, the reason why being born in a middle class family is a strong indicator that an individual will live a middle class life, with a low probability of becoming either upper class or lowe class, is not poverty. > I'm just saying that most people who have made it are not interested in everyone else making it to their level (that would be impossible, economics aren't zero sum but we can't all be Bill Gates). They're interested in making everyone else content. The assertion about "not being interested" is meaningless. I'm not interested in anyone winning the lottery, but that does not mean I don't want anyone to win or even that I intend to take any sort of action to stop anyone from ever having a chance of winning a prize. It just mean that I don't spend any time thinking about others winning lotteries because I have far more interesting and engaging things to do. That's what we all do. How much time do we collectively spend doing anything to actually tackle a hard problem such as hunger and war? Is that an indicator we want everyone to die from a combination of starvation and violence? Of course not. So, why is this vague notion of caring about somethong being conflated with being actively engaged in causing a problem?

poulsbohemian 8y ago

I suspect one could find data that would say if you can receive an education, health care, and have supportive work, then at some point you don't need to be "rich" to be content with life. Thus social mobility is moot. Compare to the US, where the base quality of life difference is considerable between median income earners and the top ten %, to say nothing of the top 1%.