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I'm sorry, but this is one of those articles that shows just enough statistics to support their conclusion. It misses the fact that the US has a much higher co
by torginus 4y ago
I'm sorry, but this is one of those articles that shows just enough statistics to support their conclusion.
It misses the fact that the US has a much higher concentration of wealth at the top than most European economies.
So the social mobility might be lacking in terms of quintiles, in absolute terms (income in USD or EUR/standard of living), real social mobility might still be higher.
- rsynnott 4y agoI chose this one because it highlights the _belief_ gap, but no matter what way you slice it it's difficult to produce figures showing higher mobility in the US than in many other OECD countries. I think if you were looking at, say, the top 1%, this would be a more interesting argument, but the top quintile household income in the US starts at about 100k, so you’re not talking fabulously wealthy or anything.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI think the point stands. You can look at mobility in terms of percentile, or you can look at it in terms of absolute dollars. Both have different uses. I personally would prefer to see my dollar income increase, but don't care about my income percentile.