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> How much social mobility we talking? ([...] only talking about the US) My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at leas

by dahart 5y ago

> How much social mobility we talking? ([...] only talking about the US) My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at least at the time) social mobility in the US was the same as in India. The surprise, of course, was that India has a caste system, while the US narrative is freedom; if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. I don’t remember the sources, but the rate of social mobility (up and down) we learned in class was ~20%, as defined by ending up in a different quintile than one was born in, meaning put people into 5 categories according to socioeconomic status, and see whether they ever change categories, for example going from middle class to upper middle class. Wikipedia says that overall average social mobility in the US hasn’t changed since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...

Frost1x 5y ago
Narrative is important because the language it provides frames a way of life for many who haven't framed their own perspective based on the information they have and haven't seen. It's easy to pickup a narrative, it's far more difficult to dig through and generate your own perspective. It's even more critical because childhood education relies on providing narrative frameworks because children often don't have enough information of processes yet to think critically. The reason I say this is as you point out, in the US we frame everything as being highly mobile. The illusory framing of our society in "the American dream" in K-12 education and freedoms dangles this carrot of possibility of high social mobility to children. It's not completely invalid, it is possible to make massive transitions in socioeconomic brakets, but it's just a framing of the rare exceptions, not the norms. Most of us are going to be the norms, so these narratives are a disservice to people about what their real socioeconomic mobility potential and probability is. It's fine to dream, aim high, and shoot for the moon as a society-- that promotes growth and avoids stagnation. At the same time, we should be very clear what is and isn't a moonshot that way many aren't so resentful when they later discover what they thought was reasonable was actually incredibly difficult bordering on impossible. What's possible and what's probable need to be distinguished and the American dream framing doesn't talk to probability. There's this whole lie painted to children that the US is somehow a meritocracy when it's not. Merit can help, but it isn't everything and we need people to understand this.
throwaway_2d1fv 5y ago
It's interesting how political ideology and religion has so much in common when it concerns social mobility. There are many different religions in the world, but I don't think it is a coincidence that the major religions tends to be very convenient for the top 1%. They often teach that your life situation is a result of your actions (either in this life or the previous life), and if you follow all the rules you will be rewarded in this life or the next. There's a natural order to things, and it is all part of $deity's plan Maybe people are waking up and realising that there are more to life? Edit: This is not a rant against religion as a personal choice. I don't care about what you believe, so long as you do not use your religion as a tool to control politics.
bluGill 5y ago
I've seen those reports myself. However they don't note anything about the entire class changing. Today even the lowest cast things nothing about having an entire encyclopedia in their pocket (a smart phone), 40 years ago encyclopedias were something you needed to be middle class to have one in your house, and nobody could have them in a pocket (meaning you both could afford one, and the space to store it at home) Going back farther, 120 years ago cars were the play thing of the super rich. Now the poor have much nicer cars (including options like electric start, not to mention the unheard of AC), that are fast and never break (by todays standard they break down all the time).
- ewmiller 5y ago
  I can't help but read this as a kind of "let them eat cake" argument. Sure, some cars have electric starters now... how does that matter? Plenty of poor, working class people do not own cars. They're getting priced out of the cities they've lived in their whole lives. Working class wages have been stagnant for decades. Healthcare and education costs have risen much faster than inflation. A huge percentage of Americans are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. But yes, they do have access to cell phones and refrigerators, so good for them.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Their standard of living is going up.
    - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
      I'm not so sure about this. Ask a random lower or middle class American if their quality of life has gone up in the last 20 years, I'm willing to bet most will say no. The world is far more competitive, has undergone a large amount of cultural decay and fragmentation, and certain important things like housing, education, and healthcare have gotten far more expensive.
      - ewmiller 5y ago
wutbrodo 5y ago
> My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at least at the time) social mobility in the US was the same as in India. This is flatly false, and to be honest it's a little embarrassing that you would parrot it without Googling it (which you were happy to do to pull up a tangential stat that didn't contradict the dishonest narrative you're pushing). The US is ranked 27th out of the 82 countries the World Economic Forum studied in 2020, and India is ranked _76th_.[1] On top of that, note that Denmark is ranked #1 for social mobility in the WEF study. The relevant topic to this thread is pre-transfer social mobility (ie before taxes/welfare), where the US and Denmark look almost identical![2] That doesn't suggest that Denmark's policies are useless: transfers are an effective poverty-fighting tool, and I have no doubt that the economic floor in Denmark is a much more comfortable one. I'm all for a stronger welfare state due to the human costs of poverty. But this is all irrelevant to the topic at hand, and the false claim all over this thread that the US is uniquely bad at providing opportunity and mobility to those without it. We're better than the majority of the developed world at this, partially due to the productivity incentives created by how much more precarious poverty here is compared to OECD countries with the strongest safety nets. I should be clear: I don't think we're at an optimal point on the spectrum, and I think sacrificing some economic dynamism to palliate the human costs of poverty is worthwhile. But the claim that we're uniquely socially immobile by global or even OECD standards is a flat lie, propagated by people too simple-minded to understand the concept of a trade-off. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index#Global_Social_Mobility_Index_(2020) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index... [2] When looking exclusively at wages (before taxes and transfers), Danish and American social mobility are very similar. It is only after taxes and transfers are taken into account that Danish social mobility improves, indicating that Danish economic redistribution policies are the key drivers of greater mobility. Additionally, Denmark's greater investment in public education did not improve educational mobility significantly, meaning children of non-college educated parents are still unlikely to receive college education, although this public investment did result in improved cognitive skills amongst poor Danish children compared to their American peers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
- dahart 5y ago
CountDrewku 5y ago
>social mobility in the US was the same as in India. The surprise, of course, was that India has a caste system, while the US narrative is freedom; if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. The difference is that the average standard of living ins the US far exceeds India's standard. Yes you may not make your way to billionaire high class status from the lower class but you certainly can drastically improve your circumstances by working hard. The alternative is not to work hard which definitely isn't going to make your life better. Additionally, I'd like to know how you think society should be shaped? It seems the other option would be to follow a more socialist or communist route where "equity" is the ultimate utopia... and that typically just brings everyone down to a lower status instead of raising everyone to a higher one.
- known 5y ago
  class != caste You can change class, not caste in your lifetime;
nec4b 5y ago
A milion of immigrants that come to US every year disagree with your "fact".
- dahart 5y ago
  So do hundreds of millions of Americans, which is why the statistics are surprising. But having hope doesn’t make it happen. This is partly why it’s important to understand the reality of US social mobility. US immigrants are, statistically speaking, at an even worse disadvantage than the American born lower class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States#Immigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...
  - nec4b 5y ago
    And yet they come and succeed. Their educated children move up to the middle class. The article you linked is an opinion piece of a single economist, who is critical of immigration. If human ability follows normal distribution, there is a hard physical limit of how many people can move up the ladder each year. It physically impossible for every one to be at the same highest level. The good news is all level are getting higher year by year. The pie is growing for everybody.
    - dahart 5y ago
      That’s what 20% social mobility means: that one in five actually move classes. The majority of immigrants do not change classes, just like the majority of Americans do not change classes. It’s still possible, it’s just not the average outcome. > The article you linked in an opinion pieces of a single economist, who is critical of immigration. What article? I linked to a section of Wikipedia, and that section alone has 9 different citations by as many authors. > The good news is all level are getting higher year by year. The pie is growing for everybody. Others in this thread have misunderstood my remarks as you have. The metric of moving from one class quintile to another during your lifetime is relative. It does not depend on standard of living at all. The pie can grow, and social mobility (as defined by changing class quintiles) can be stagnant, at the same time.

by dahart 5y ago

Frost1x 5y ago

Narrative is important because the language it provides frames a way of life for many who haven't framed their own perspective based on the information they have and haven't seen. It's easy to pickup a narrative, it's far more difficult to dig through and generate your own perspective. It's even more critical because childhood education relies on providing narrative frameworks because children often don't have enough information of processes yet to think critically. The reason I say this is as you point out, in the US we frame everything as being highly mobile. The illusory framing of our society in "the American dream" in K-12 education and freedoms dangles this carrot of possibility of high social mobility to children. It's not completely invalid, it is possible to make massive transitions in socioeconomic brakets, but it's just a framing of the rare exceptions, not the norms. Most of us are going to be the norms, so these narratives are a disservice to people about what their real socioeconomic mobility potential and probability is. It's fine to dream, aim high, and shoot for the moon as a society-- that promotes growth and avoids stagnation. At the same time, we should be very clear what is and isn't a moonshot that way many aren't so resentful when they later discover what they thought was reasonable was actually incredibly difficult bordering on impossible. What's possible and what's probable need to be distinguished and the American dream framing doesn't talk to probability. There's this whole lie painted to children that the US is somehow a meritocracy when it's not. Merit can help, but it isn't everything and we need people to understand this.

throwaway_2d1fv 5y ago

It's interesting how political ideology and religion has so much in common when it concerns social mobility. There are many different religions in the world, but I don't think it is a coincidence that the major religions tends to be very convenient for the top 1%. They often teach that your life situation is a result of your actions (either in this life or the previous life), and if you follow all the rules you will be rewarded in this life or the next. There's a natural order to things, and it is all part of $deity's plan Maybe people are waking up and realising that there are more to life? Edit: This is not a rant against religion as a personal choice. I don't care about what you believe, so long as you do not use your religion as a tool to control politics.

bluGill 5y ago

I've seen those reports myself. However they don't note anything about the entire class changing. Today even the lowest cast things nothing about having an entire encyclopedia in their pocket (a smart phone), 40 years ago encyclopedias were something you needed to be middle class to have one in your house, and nobody could have them in a pocket (meaning you both could afford one, and the space to store it at home) Going back farther, 120 years ago cars were the play thing of the super rich. Now the poor have much nicer cars (including options like electric start, not to mention the unheard of AC), that are fast and never break (by todays standard they break down all the time).

ewmiller 5y ago
I can't help but read this as a kind of "let them eat cake" argument. Sure, some cars have electric starters now... how does that matter? Plenty of poor, working class people do not own cars. They're getting priced out of the cities they've lived in their whole lives. Working class wages have been stagnant for decades. Healthcare and education costs have risen much faster than inflation. A huge percentage of Americans are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. But yes, they do have access to cell phones and refrigerators, so good for them.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Their standard of living is going up.
  - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
    I'm not so sure about this. Ask a random lower or middle class American if their quality of life has gone up in the last 20 years, I'm willing to bet most will say no. The world is far more competitive, has undergone a large amount of cultural decay and fragmentation, and certain important things like housing, education, and healthcare have gotten far more expensive.
    - ewmiller 5y ago

wutbrodo 5y ago

> My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at least at the time) social mobility in the US was the same as in India. This is flatly false, and to be honest it's a little embarrassing that you would parrot it without Googling it (which you were happy to do to pull up a tangential stat that didn't contradict the dishonest narrative you're pushing). The US is ranked 27th out of the 82 countries the World Economic Forum studied in 2020, and India is ranked _76th_.[1] On top of that, note that Denmark is ranked #1 for social mobility in the WEF study. The relevant topic to this thread is pre-transfer social mobility (ie before taxes/welfare), where the US and Denmark look almost identical![2] That doesn't suggest that Denmark's policies are useless: transfers are an effective poverty-fighting tool, and I have no doubt that the economic floor in Denmark is a much more comfortable one. I'm all for a stronger welfare state due to the human costs of poverty. But this is all irrelevant to the topic at hand, and the false claim all over this thread that the US is uniquely bad at providing opportunity and mobility to those without it. We're better than the majority of the developed world at this, partially due to the productivity incentives created by how much more precarious poverty here is compared to OECD countries with the strongest safety nets. I should be clear: I don't think we're at an optimal point on the spectrum, and I think sacrificing some economic dynamism to palliate the human costs of poverty is worthwhile. But the claim that we're uniquely socially immobile by global or even OECD standards is a flat lie, propagated by people too simple-minded to understand the concept of a trade-off. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index#Global_Social_Mobility_Index_(2020) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index... [2] When looking exclusively at wages (before taxes and transfers), Danish and American social mobility are very similar. It is only after taxes and transfers are taken into account that Danish social mobility improves, indicating that Danish economic redistribution policies are the key drivers of greater mobility. Additionally, Denmark's greater investment in public education did not improve educational mobility significantly, meaning children of non-college educated parents are still unlikely to receive college education, although this public investment did result in improved cognitive skills amongst poor Danish children compared to their American peers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

dahart 5y ago

CountDrewku 5y ago

>social mobility in the US was the same as in India. The surprise, of course, was that India has a caste system, while the US narrative is freedom; if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. The difference is that the average standard of living ins the US far exceeds India's standard. Yes you may not make your way to billionaire high class status from the lower class but you certainly can drastically improve your circumstances by working hard. The alternative is not to work hard which definitely isn't going to make your life better. Additionally, I'd like to know how you think society should be shaped? It seems the other option would be to follow a more socialist or communist route where "equity" is the ultimate utopia... and that typically just brings everyone down to a lower status instead of raising everyone to a higher one.

known 5y ago
class != caste You can change class, not caste in your lifetime;

nec4b 5y ago

A milion of immigrants that come to US every year disagree with your "fact".

dahart 5y ago
So do hundreds of millions of Americans, which is why the statistics are surprising. But having hope doesn’t make it happen. This is partly why it’s important to understand the reality of US social mobility. US immigrants are, statistically speaking, at an even worse disadvantage than the American born lower class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States#Immigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...
- nec4b 5y ago
  And yet they come and succeed. Their educated children move up to the middle class. The article you linked is an opinion piece of a single economist, who is critical of immigration. If human ability follows normal distribution, there is a hard physical limit of how many people can move up the ladder each year. It physically impossible for every one to be at the same highest level. The good news is all level are getting higher year by year. The pie is growing for everybody.
  - dahart 5y ago
    That’s what 20% social mobility means: that one in five actually move classes. The majority of immigrants do not change classes, just like the majority of Americans do not change classes. It’s still possible, it’s just not the average outcome. > The article you linked in an opinion pieces of a single economist, who is critical of immigration. What article? I linked to a section of Wikipedia, and that section alone has 9 different citations by as many authors. > The good news is all level are getting higher year by year. The pie is growing for everybody. Others in this thread have misunderstood my remarks as you have. The metric of moving from one class quintile to another during your lifetime is relative. It does not depend on standard of living at all. The pie can grow, and social mobility (as defined by changing class quintiles) can be stagnant, at the same time.