| It's not the Democrats who divide the country by talking of class warfare. It's the Republicans who divide the country by waging class warfare. Pointing out that plutocrats have corrupted the government so that they pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than working people is not class warfare. |
| Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes. Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile. In 2006 Professor [Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa] reviewed more than 50 studies of nine countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle. Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of the gaps between rich and the rest [...]Countries with less equality generally have less mobility. Source: "Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs" By JASON DePARLE - NY Times - January 4, 2012 Last week Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, gave an important speech about income inequality, presenting a relationship he dubbed the “Great Gatsby Curve.” Highly unequal countries, he showed, have low mobility: the more unequal a society is, the greater the extent to which an individual’s economic status is determined by his or her parents’ status. And as Mr. Krueger pointed out, this relationship suggests that America in the year 2035 will have even less mobility than it has now, that it will be a place in which the economic prospects of children largely reflect the class into which they were born. That is not a development we should meekly accept. [Republican presidential candidate and heir to a multi-million dollar fortune] Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in “quiet rooms.” There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. […R]ising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place — and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams. Source: "How Fares the Dream?" By PAUL KRUGMAN - NY Times - January 15, 2012 |
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