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I think the first step is to admit we have a problem. People don’t like the United States being labeled as anything less than exceptional. If you look at the Am

I think the first step is to admit we have a problem. People don’t like the United States being labeled as anything less than exceptional. If you look at the Amazon workers, Uber drivers, door dashers, etc in this country it’s amazing how hard people can work and not get ahead. 2nd and 3rd jobs can be necessary to just make ends meet. The story that hard work is all it takes in America does need to be questioned.

rsynnott 5y ago
> People don’t like the United States being labeled as anything less than exceptional. I mean, it _is_ exceptional. Americans, per the article, are exceptionally overly optimistic about social mobility.
vmception 5y ago
Talk with any patriotic person and you'll quickly notice that American exceptionalism relies on comparing the United States to the worst countries in the world and ignoring the existence of other developed nations. Eventually followed by "well at least we can talk about it, unlike <authoritative country where people disappear>" and so therefore all indiscretions must be absolved and ignorable since we have the "unique" ability to criticize the government at all, which isn't unique or exceptional or a well implemented vehicle of change.
- danaris 5y ago
  ...or, worse, when a comparison with another developed country is brought up, its successes are simply rejected as the result of eeeeevil socialism, which destroys freedom, don't you know.
  - vmception 5y ago
    or a generic assumption of high taxes in a completely different tax system, while not understanding their own tax system
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  "Yeah, well Liberia also rejected the metric system".
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    "Yeah, well Eritrea also taxes it's ex-patriots."
    - ngngngng 5y ago
      "Yeah well, Cops in Brazil will beat you up too"
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  > and ignoring the existence of other developed nations I mean, Germany and France literally criminalized name-calling and teasing on the internet. They actively compel social media websites to delete posts and comments that make fun of people, or make them feel bad. USA doesn't exactly have the highest moral ground, but it has some higher moral ground for sure. So what exactly is USA supposed to learn from these other developed nations?
  - Jensson 5y ago
    A big difference is that USA puts you in jail for years for relatively minor things like possessing drugs. Europe might have laws banning some things USA doesn't, but the laws USA has are so much more oppressive since the American justice system and police are much less lenient.
    - newfriend 5y ago
      Or maybe different populations of people value different things? If you value DUDE WEED over free speech, feel free to move to your Euro paradise.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        You don't have free speech in USA, your government put people behind bars who airs their dirty laundry. Governments imprisoning people who dig up evidence that they are corrupt is definitely not free speech. I have never seen or even read about anyone guard their speech against governments in my country, speech is essentially free in most of Europe, UK and German are exceptions.
  - torbTurret 5y ago
    Do you think a higher moral ground is more represented by providing free healthcare or by the allowance of insults online?
carabiner 5y ago
It's on HN too. Like most Americans here think that their government is significantly better than the CPC, but lifestyles in both countries are totalitarianism. We have prison camps just like they do.
kbenson 5y ago
There's a few ways to look at the data. One is that it's harder to move to the top quintile in America than some other countries, and people perceive it's much easier than it in in America compared to those places. The other is that it's much easier to get out of the lower quintile in America than those same countries. There's a couple reasons that might be. One is that social mobility is actually higher in America, but there's a ceiling over which it's hard to overcome unless you're born there. Whether that ceiling is immediately under the top quintile or somewhere lower is an interesting question. Edit: as pointed out, I actually misread the first graph, which is probability of remaining in lowest quintile. So, yeah, data looks like all bad news to me (unless you count those people knowing fairly accurately how fucked they are as a good thing).
- Rexxar 5y ago
  > The other is that it's much easier to get out of the lower quintile in America than those same countries. That's not what the first graph shows. What you say is true for "perceived" mobility, not for effective mobility. 33% of Americans stay in bottom quintile, much more than other countries.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Actually, yeah, that graph is for probability or "remaining" which I missed. Thanks for the heads up.
- ummonk 5y ago
  Even beyond that, interpreting financial mobility is a tricky thing. For example, countries that have had high levels of meritocracy in the past may exhibit less financial mobility because people are already sorted into their merited economic brackets.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    How can "merited economic brackets" span generations?
WalterBright 5y ago
> it’s amazing how hard people can work and not get ahead It's not how hard one works, it's how smart one works. The second aspect is what does one do with the income one has, which has a crucial impact on the person's future.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  For a lot of people, it's not about how hard or how smart one works. It's about the support networks that kick in when you screw up or when bad luck befalls you. Lots of middle class kids (like mine) get multiple chances to try and fail. Their parents' wealth and social connections gets to work and cushions their landing, and like Silicon Valley folk, they get to try again. The children of working class families do not have anything close to this level of support when things go wrong. They make a mistake, or just suffer some bad luck, and they are completely screwed. Yes, everyone can get up and try again, but the difficulty of doing this from zero with no support is routinely underestimated by people (like me and my kids) who've never had to do it.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    All those immigrants streaming over the border with nothing manage to do it. Nobody said it was easy, but it is possible.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      You've got data on how many southern-border-crossing immigrants make it into the US middle class? I couldn't find any. Most immigrants in the US do not "stream over the border", more are arriving from Asian countries than Latin American countries. Those that arrive by air from another country typically have more than "nothing" on arrival.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        So, for example, all those news stories about DACA immigrants are fake news? "With the granting of work authorization and the imminent threat of deportation removed, DACA recipients have experienced pronounced upward mobility in their socioeconomic status." https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-daca-overview https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/deferred...
seventytwo 5y ago
This is the fundamental barrier toward progress in this country: The idea that America is somehow already perfect.
flavius29663 5y ago
This kind of complaint is usually made by people who haven't lived in other, more socialist first world countries, for example in Europe. If you would have the chance to do so, you would realize how bad it is in Europe when you're stocking shelves or driving a taxi.

rsynnott 5y ago

> People don’t like the United States being labeled as anything less than exceptional. I mean, it _is_ exceptional. Americans, per the article, are exceptionally overly optimistic about social mobility.

vmception 5y ago

Talk with any patriotic person and you'll quickly notice that American exceptionalism relies on comparing the United States to the worst countries in the world and ignoring the existence of other developed nations. Eventually followed by "well at least we can talk about it, unlike <authoritative country where people disappear>" and so therefore all indiscretions must be absolved and ignorable since we have the "unique" ability to criticize the government at all, which isn't unique or exceptional or a well implemented vehicle of change.

danaris 5y ago
...or, worse, when a comparison with another developed country is brought up, its successes are simply rejected as the result of eeeeevil socialism, which destroys freedom, don't you know.
- vmception 5y ago
  or a generic assumption of high taxes in a completely different tax system, while not understanding their own tax system
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
"Yeah, well Liberia also rejected the metric system".
- guerrilla 5y ago
  "Yeah, well Eritrea also taxes it's ex-patriots."
  - ngngngng 5y ago
    "Yeah well, Cops in Brazil will beat you up too"
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
> and ignoring the existence of other developed nations I mean, Germany and France literally criminalized name-calling and teasing on the internet. They actively compel social media websites to delete posts and comments that make fun of people, or make them feel bad. USA doesn't exactly have the highest moral ground, but it has some higher moral ground for sure. So what exactly is USA supposed to learn from these other developed nations?
- Jensson 5y ago
  A big difference is that USA puts you in jail for years for relatively minor things like possessing drugs. Europe might have laws banning some things USA doesn't, but the laws USA has are so much more oppressive since the American justice system and police are much less lenient.
  - newfriend 5y ago
    Or maybe different populations of people value different things? If you value DUDE WEED over free speech, feel free to move to your Euro paradise.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      You don't have free speech in USA, your government put people behind bars who airs their dirty laundry. Governments imprisoning people who dig up evidence that they are corrupt is definitely not free speech. I have never seen or even read about anyone guard their speech against governments in my country, speech is essentially free in most of Europe, UK and German are exceptions.
- torbTurret 5y ago
  Do you think a higher moral ground is more represented by providing free healthcare or by the allowance of insults online?

carabiner 5y ago

It's on HN too. Like most Americans here think that their government is significantly better than the CPC, but lifestyles in both countries are totalitarianism. We have prison camps just like they do.

kbenson 5y ago

There's a few ways to look at the data. One is that it's harder to move to the top quintile in America than some other countries, and people perceive it's much easier than it in in America compared to those places. The other is that it's much easier to get out of the lower quintile in America than those same countries. There's a couple reasons that might be. One is that social mobility is actually higher in America, but there's a ceiling over which it's hard to overcome unless you're born there. Whether that ceiling is immediately under the top quintile or somewhere lower is an interesting question. Edit: as pointed out, I actually misread the first graph, which is probability of remaining in lowest quintile. So, yeah, data looks like all bad news to me (unless you count those people knowing fairly accurately how fucked they are as a good thing).

Rexxar 5y ago
> The other is that it's much easier to get out of the lower quintile in America than those same countries. That's not what the first graph shows. What you say is true for "perceived" mobility, not for effective mobility. 33% of Americans stay in bottom quintile, much more than other countries.
- kbenson 5y ago
  Actually, yeah, that graph is for probability or "remaining" which I missed. Thanks for the heads up.
ummonk 5y ago
Even beyond that, interpreting financial mobility is a tricky thing. For example, countries that have had high levels of meritocracy in the past may exhibit less financial mobility because people are already sorted into their merited economic brackets.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  How can "merited economic brackets" span generations?

WalterBright 5y ago

> it’s amazing how hard people can work and not get ahead It's not how hard one works, it's how smart one works. The second aspect is what does one do with the income one has, which has a crucial impact on the person's future.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
For a lot of people, it's not about how hard or how smart one works. It's about the support networks that kick in when you screw up or when bad luck befalls you. Lots of middle class kids (like mine) get multiple chances to try and fail. Their parents' wealth and social connections gets to work and cushions their landing, and like Silicon Valley folk, they get to try again. The children of working class families do not have anything close to this level of support when things go wrong. They make a mistake, or just suffer some bad luck, and they are completely screwed. Yes, everyone can get up and try again, but the difficulty of doing this from zero with no support is routinely underestimated by people (like me and my kids) who've never had to do it.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  All those immigrants streaming over the border with nothing manage to do it. Nobody said it was easy, but it is possible.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    You've got data on how many southern-border-crossing immigrants make it into the US middle class? I couldn't find any. Most immigrants in the US do not "stream over the border", more are arriving from Asian countries than Latin American countries. Those that arrive by air from another country typically have more than "nothing" on arrival.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      So, for example, all those news stories about DACA immigrants are fake news? "With the granting of work authorization and the imminent threat of deportation removed, DACA recipients have experienced pronounced upward mobility in their socioeconomic status." https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-daca-overview https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/deferred...

seventytwo 5y ago

This is the fundamental barrier toward progress in this country: The idea that America is somehow already perfect.

flavius29663 5y ago

This kind of complaint is usually made by people who haven't lived in other, more socialist first world countries, for example in Europe. If you would have the chance to do so, you would realize how bad it is in Europe when you're stocking shelves or driving a taxi.