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>Sure, Europe does better in these statistics, but in the real world, US gives its workers way better odds at getting to the top and that's coming from an Europ

by bb123 6y ago

>Sure, Europe does better in these statistics, but in the real world, US gives its workers way better odds at getting to the top and that's coming from an European. This quote screams brainwashing by American media to me. Americans (and those that consume their media) are told from childhood that they are the only country where it is possible to move from the bottom to the top. Outside observers can clearly see that this is not the case, but when presented with hard evidence to the contrary it is simply dismissed as some untruth without any critical thought.

JackFr 6y ago
Proud American here. I don’t love that WEF study and I could spend a lot of time picking nits with its methodology, but for the sake of argument, let’s accept it as broadly true. Why do Americans believe what we do? It is partial brainwashing by the media. But it is also a very real national story of immigration for economic activity. The foreign born population of the United States is currently around 40-50 million the majority of whom are citizens or permanent residents. That’s a lot. New York is a representative gateway city. The percent of the population of New York City which is foreign born was 36% in 1900. It was also 36% in 2000. These are people who came here for economic opportunity. Their lived experience is that the US afforded this opportunity. Now certainly the US isn’t the only country that offers such an opportunity, but we’ve been doing it for a while. We’ve had waves of immigration come from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Ireland and the U.K., East Asia, South Asia and Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. My grandmother came as an immigrant from Germany, off a farm with a grade school education and worked as a nanny on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I now live on the Upper West Side and my kids nanny from Guyana got her citizenship about five years ago. (And she literally lives on the same block in Queens my Scottish grandmother did when her family came over.) And there’s nothing special about my story. It’s fairly typical. That report cited in the parent shows a statistic that it would take on average 5 generations to move from the lowest income group to the median. I have no reason to doubt it. But I believe that largely is a story of slavery, racism, Jim Crow and the economic backwardness (until they 1970’s) of the American south. It’s shameful. You can understand why we might not want to celebrate it, preferring to look at the voluntary immigrant story.
d1zzy 6y ago
As someone that grew up in Europe and immigrated to the US I can tell that at least from what I see this is largely true (that economic mobility is much smaller in Europe vs US). I do not know if that's the case statistically but simply comparing the attitude, ambitions and how much their financial situation improved of most of the people I knew back in Europe vs the people I met in the US it's obviously a large difference. And ironically I think it has a lot to do with the "brainwashing" you're talking about, if you tell people often enough that they can become anyone and do anything then a higher percentage of those people will try to get above their means which (likely?) means a higher percentage will actually manage to do so vs societies where they grow up being told that they should just aim for a government job (since it's stable and you can hold such a job for the entire life). Of course most people will still fail and of course not having a good social blanket means many people in the US needlessly suffer. But that said I still think there are a lot more people here that believe they can make it to the top and do their best to get there. It's a different mentality. And another observation that makes this obvious to me is the sheer amount of options/companies here for every little product and service vs back in Europe. Which was quite overwhelming when moving to the US but it is a good problem to have, more options and choices is always good IMO.

by bb123 6y ago

JackFr 6y ago

Proud American here. I don’t love that WEF study and I could spend a lot of time picking nits with its methodology, but for the sake of argument, let’s accept it as broadly true. Why do Americans believe what we do? It is partial brainwashing by the media. But it is also a very real national story of immigration for economic activity. The foreign born population of the United States is currently around 40-50 million the majority of whom are citizens or permanent residents. That’s a lot. New York is a representative gateway city. The percent of the population of New York City which is foreign born was 36% in 1900. It was also 36% in 2000. These are people who came here for economic opportunity. Their lived experience is that the US afforded this opportunity. Now certainly the US isn’t the only country that offers such an opportunity, but we’ve been doing it for a while. We’ve had waves of immigration come from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Ireland and the U.K., East Asia, South Asia and Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. My grandmother came as an immigrant from Germany, off a farm with a grade school education and worked as a nanny on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I now live on the Upper West Side and my kids nanny from Guyana got her citizenship about five years ago. (And she literally lives on the same block in Queens my Scottish grandmother did when her family came over.) And there’s nothing special about my story. It’s fairly typical. That report cited in the parent shows a statistic that it would take on average 5 generations to move from the lowest income group to the median. I have no reason to doubt it. But I believe that largely is a story of slavery, racism, Jim Crow and the economic backwardness (until they 1970’s) of the American south. It’s shameful. You can understand why we might not want to celebrate it, preferring to look at the voluntary immigrant story.

d1zzy 6y ago

As someone that grew up in Europe and immigrated to the US I can tell that at least from what I see this is largely true (that economic mobility is much smaller in Europe vs US). I do not know if that's the case statistically but simply comparing the attitude, ambitions and how much their financial situation improved of most of the people I knew back in Europe vs the people I met in the US it's obviously a large difference. And ironically I think it has a lot to do with the "brainwashing" you're talking about, if you tell people often enough that they can become anyone and do anything then a higher percentage of those people will try to get above their means which (likely?) means a higher percentage will actually manage to do so vs societies where they grow up being told that they should just aim for a government job (since it's stable and you can hold such a job for the entire life). Of course most people will still fail and of course not having a good social blanket means many people in the US needlessly suffer. But that said I still think there are a lot more people here that believe they can make it to the top and do their best to get there. It's a different mentality. And another observation that makes this obvious to me is the sheer amount of options/companies here for every little product and service vs back in Europe. Which was quite overwhelming when moving to the US but it is a good problem to have, more options and choices is always good IMO.