5 ms·

I've always wondered why that is. I would guess it's a legend that persisted from previous centuries when north America was the newfound land, the country to st

by lucb1e 4y ago

I've always wondered why that is. I would guess it's a legend that persisted from previous centuries when north America was the newfound land, the country to start a new life, where you can dig for gold, with a modern legal system (even if that was only by virtue of being recently founded back then), the whole narrative around the USA is still like that. Meanwhile the actual social mobility in the USA is lower than in Europe[1], so you'd be better to stay put or go to Europe. People here don't know what they got. You say twitter, but it might just be people that have access to the internet and better information? I'd be curious if anyone looked into why the USA is seen as so ideal when various metrics are only on par with developing countries. (Of course, it's clearly beyond a developing country, it just doesn't like to admit it -- healthcare, welfare, incarceration rates, income equality, minimum wage, minimum paid time off, university costs, etc. Sources here are OWID and Wikipedia, mainly from memory but feel free to ask for a specific source) Another theory is that the USA generally sees itself as the best country, with e.g. starting every morning of primary school with this "pledge of allegiance" indoctrination (sorry, I have no other word for it and I still have a hard time believing this is real). With English being the lingua franca online, much of what you read online is likely to be written by someone who thinks this way. [1] See figure 1 on the 43rd page which has page number 40 https://docs.iza.org/dp1993.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp1993.pdf

bombcar 4y ago
Internal mobility doesn't matter as much as the one-time mobility you can get from moving to the US. If you get stuck at a moderate FAANG salary for life, it may still be better than where you started from, for example.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  I wouldn't expect an economic immigrant, evidently coming from a poorer place because (1) the USA simply has some of the most inflated incomes in the world but also (2) they wouldn't come for a better life if they were already rich, is going to fare better than someone natively born in the USA.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I would expect the opposite, as they already have the ability to leave their home country, which puts them at middle-class or so at least, and they apparently do quite well in the US.
gamblor956 4y ago
So, study from the 1990s by a European confirms self-biased conclusion that Europe has more social mobility than America, despite evidence to the contrary. Notably, all but 2 of the European countries in that study have smaller populations than Los Angeles. It's a lot easier to have social mobility for a small group than it is for a much larger group, especially when they can offload a lot of social ills (homelessness, immigration) entirely to other countries. Which is presumably why the study excluded the Mediterranean and Eastern European countries.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Why couldn't LA offload homelessness and immigration to another state, if you say that's such an effective strategy for these European states? Also I didn't hand-pick the source, it's just a piece of info I came across while reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31705542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31705542 which had a link to clearerthinking.org which had a quiz called "Political Bias Test" (wouldn't recommend it btw, at least not for the advertised purpose; it's more of a "do you know random stats about the world" quiz) which had a question about social mobility with the aforementioned source. The website seems to be made by an organisation founded in New York, but it's not clear to me whether a European made this particular quiz question.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    Most of LA's homeless are the offloaded homeless from other states; we ship as many of them back as we can but we can't legally force them to go back to their homes. At any rate, it seems the European HNers took issue with learning that their tiny homogenous countries do better than a country with a larger population than their entire continent. Which is made possible because the U.S. pays for their defense.
googlryas 4y ago
You say you've always wondered why that is, but it doesn't seem like you're prepared to consider the possibility that America, in its current state, actually is a desirable place to live for a majority of the world's population. If stats tell you one story but reality tells you a different one, then you should ask why that is, and not say the numbers are right and reality is wrong, or vice versa. There are more possibilities than just the world is getting bamboozled by brainwashed Americans online.
exolymph 4y ago
It's super simple: America is rich, and people want the opportunity to participate in our wealthy economy.

by lucb1e 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

Internal mobility doesn't matter as much as the one-time mobility you can get from moving to the US. If you get stuck at a moderate FAANG salary for life, it may still be better than where you started from, for example.

lucb1e 4y ago
I wouldn't expect an economic immigrant, evidently coming from a poorer place because (1) the USA simply has some of the most inflated incomes in the world but also (2) they wouldn't come for a better life if they were already rich, is going to fare better than someone natively born in the USA.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I would expect the opposite, as they already have the ability to leave their home country, which puts them at middle-class or so at least, and they apparently do quite well in the US.

gamblor956 4y ago

So, study from the 1990s by a European confirms self-biased conclusion that Europe has more social mobility than America, despite evidence to the contrary. Notably, all but 2 of the European countries in that study have smaller populations than Los Angeles. It's a lot easier to have social mobility for a small group than it is for a much larger group, especially when they can offload a lot of social ills (homelessness, immigration) entirely to other countries. Which is presumably why the study excluded the Mediterranean and Eastern European countries.

lucb1e 4y ago
Why couldn't LA offload homelessness and immigration to another state, if you say that's such an effective strategy for these European states? Also I didn't hand-pick the source, it's just a piece of info I came across while reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31705542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31705542 which had a link to clearerthinking.org which had a quiz called "Political Bias Test" (wouldn't recommend it btw, at least not for the advertised purpose; it's more of a "do you know random stats about the world" quiz) which had a question about social mobility with the aforementioned source. The website seems to be made by an organisation founded in New York, but it's not clear to me whether a European made this particular quiz question.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  Most of LA's homeless are the offloaded homeless from other states; we ship as many of them back as we can but we can't legally force them to go back to their homes. At any rate, it seems the European HNers took issue with learning that their tiny homogenous countries do better than a country with a larger population than their entire continent. Which is made possible because the U.S. pays for their defense.

googlryas 4y ago

You say you've always wondered why that is, but it doesn't seem like you're prepared to consider the possibility that America, in its current state, actually is a desirable place to live for a majority of the world's population. If stats tell you one story but reality tells you a different one, then you should ask why that is, and not say the numbers are right and reality is wrong, or vice versa. There are more possibilities than just the world is getting bamboozled by brainwashed Americans online.

exolymph 4y ago

It's super simple: America is rich, and people want the opportunity to participate in our wealthy economy.