Student Loan Forgivness Program Becoming Out Of Control
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You are not being totally honest, and your selective use of stats betrays you. The bottom 20% - those who are in poverty and need the most help - have the least mobility. Movement between the 2nd and 3rd quintiles is unsurprising since beyond about the 30th percentile there is a pretty steady "plateau" of income, and those who have at least a modest household income can save some money; those who don't can't save a dime (thus decreasing their opportunities for job growth, moves, etc...). Same with the 4th and top quintiles: the income of someone at the 70th percentile and 85th percentile isn't that far apart, but at the top of the top quintile (top 5% especially) the gap increases exponentially. Indeed, the gap between the top 10% (roughly 110k) and top 1% (roughly 388k) is necessarily much larger than the entire gap from 1% to 90%.
Wealth mobility is even lower. But in any case, what you said is plainly wrong.
Indeed, not only is upward mobility poor here, but it HAS BEEN worse than other nations for three generations.
Source?
Neither of your links remotely say that. The first one simply says that parental wealth is a factor, which everyone knows. The question is how much of a factor? Apparently it's similar to German and Sweden
Second link shows just how easy movement is. If you're at the bottom 20% in one of the more progressive parts of the country, you have a 10% chance of ending up in the top 20%. That isn't bad. You do have a lower chance than someone already in the top 20%, but obviously only 20% can end up in the top 20%. Of the middle quintile, the odds are 19%. The bottom two quintiles it's less likely, the top quintiles more likely. That's uncontrolled for any outside factors such as high-income parents tending to be better educated and place more value on education. Numbers are for San Francisco, one of the more mobile places in the country.
You are not being totally honest, and your selective use of stats betrays you. The bottom 20% - those who are in poverty and need the most help - have the least mobility. Movement between the 2nd and 3rd quintiles is unsurprising since beyond about the 30th percentile there is a pretty steady "plateau" of income, and those who have at least a modest household income can save some money; those who don't can't save a dime (thus decreasing their opportunities for job growth, moves, etc...). Same with the 4th and top quintiles: the income of someone at the 70th percentile and 85th percentile isn't that far apart, but at the top of the top quintile (top 5% especially) the gap increases exponentially. Indeed, the gap between the top 10% (roughly 110k) and top 1% (roughly 388k) is necessarily much larger than the entire gap from 1% to 90%.
Wealth mobility is even lower. But in any case, what you said is plainly wrong.
Indeed, not only is upward mobility poor here, but it HAS BEEN worse than other nations for three generations.
The data you cite are not credible.
Note that the author of the Michigan study is NOT an economist. He is a sociologist, which speaks volumes. Note further the author is "...the organizer of an international conference on inequality..." which speaks volumes.
He directly benefits financially from the result - so he is not unbiased. His answer is pre-determined, and he seeks data to support it.
As for Emmanuel Saez, he is discredited as a whack-job who also starts with his desired outcome -- his policy recommendation is to raise marginal tax rates to between 70% and 90% on "the wealthy".
In both cases, they focus on their biased view of the world - that it is hard for people to move up.
In both cases, they ignore just how easy it is to move down. See for example U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created which implies there is quite a bit of downward movement among the affluent - and when one person moves down a quintile, by definition another person moves up.
Asking progressive left-wing redistributionists to talk about movement is about like asking the IRS to investigate itself regarding targeting conservative organizations. The answer is predetermined, data that support the desired result are included, and data that do not are rejected as "outliers."
Note that the author of the Michigan study is NOT an economist. He is a sociologist, which speaks volumes. Note further the author is "...the organizer of an international conference on inequality..." which speaks volumes.
He directly benefits financially from the result - so he is not unbiased. His answer is pre-determined, and he seeks data to support it.
As for Emmanuel Saez, he is discredited as a whack-job who also starts with his desired outcome -- his policy recommendation is to raise marginal tax rates to between 70% and 90% on "the wealthy".
In both cases, they focus on their biased view of the world - that it is hard for people to move up.
In both cases, they ignore just how easy it is to move down. See for example U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created which implies there is quite a bit of downward movement among the affluent - and when one person moves down a quintile, by definition another person moves up.
Asking progressive left-wing redistributionists to talk about movement is about like asking the IRS to investigate itself regarding targeting conservative organizations. The answer is predetermined, data that support the desired result are included, and data that do not are rejected as "outliers."
The data actually shows it's possible to move up. Again, for San Francisco, the majority born in the bottom 20% do move up. The majority born in the top 20% also move down. The rate is actually pretty similar. 31% of people born into the top 20% remain there. 32% born into the bottom 20% remain there. Rich or poor, you're most likely to remain in the income bracket you were born, but it's still only about 1/3 that do. The other 2/3rds move either up or down.
The data actually shows it's possible to move up. Again, for San Francisco, the majority born in the bottom 20% do move up. The majority born in the top 20% also move down. The rate is actually pretty similar. 31% of people born into the top 20% remain there. 32% born into the bottom 20% remain there. Rich or poor, you're most likely to remain in the income bracket you were born, but it's still only about 1/3 that do. The other 2/3rds move either up or down.
San Francisco also has very high mobility. Several of the cities listed show about 5% of those born into the bottom quintile ever reaching the top 20%. Also, why should I care if there is "some movement"? Equality of opportunity would mean perfect mobility. That's likely impossible, but moving towards greater equality is not. I also don't see the value in the "losers" falling so low as they do in our widely unequal society. But some of the mobility isn't that meaningful anyway, especially given that the bottom two quintiles have no assets, no job stability, no benefits, no vacation, etc... and so moving from the bottom to (say) the middle of the 2nd quintile is pretty much of no value that I can tell.
As to SportyandMisty? Saez is a "whack-job" because he detailed why empirical evidence shows that a 70% top marginal rate creates the largest revenue streams for the government? He doesn't "start with that" as a baseline, he came to that conclusion from research.
You know it is amazing, because I linked to Saez because he is much more positive about the U.S. in terms of mobility than most scholars in the last two decades, but even he admits that we are at the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of intergenerational "stickiness". Nevertheless, his modest, neoliberal, pro-capitalist, "let's find moderate solutions" worldview is seen as radical.
It's equally amazing the degree to which you will try to discredit research based on the idea that whole fields of study must be bogus. Academia as a whole, and even economic academics for the most part, lean center-left or left. Facts lean left. The perception of intellectual heavyweights on the far right is bogus. There are nearly as many Marxist economists from UMass as there are unreconstructed Chicago Schoolers.
Meaning simply that you refuse to accept them. Or any other data not consistent with the declarations of the masters. But no matter what gyrations you engage in, the fact will remain that far from following the lore and Madison Avenue hype of being some great land of opportunity where anyone can start at the bottom and climb to the top on the basis of his own talent, grit, and determination, the US along with the UK are bottom-of-the-barrel countries when it comes to inter-generational mobility.
This is where you are supposed to start posting the rags-to-riches anecdotes, by the way.
It equals "some post-secondary education". It's a standard measure in this area. A person familiar with the field would have known that.
How helpful is that data? Would graduation rates be exponentially more meaningful? A country could be 5-10% behind in "some secondary" and 80% behind in graduation rates
San Francisco also has very high mobility. Several of the cities listed show about 5% of those born into the bottom quintile ever reaching the top 20%. Also, why should I care if there is "some movement"? Equality of opportunity would mean perfect mobility. That's likely impossible, but moving towards greater equality is not. I also don't see the value in the "losers" falling so low as they do in our widely unequal society. But some of the mobility isn't that meaningful anyway, especially given that the bottom two quintiles have no assets, no job stability, no benefits, no vacation, etc... and so moving from the bottom to (say) the middle of the 2nd quintile is pretty much of no value that I can tell.
No, it wouldn't. That would be equality of outcome, which is completely different. Equality of opportunity is doing things like making sure that low-income students can access college. Equality of outcome is doing things like using racial discrimination such as affirmative action such that racial minorities are given priority over better qualified students on the basis of race. The interesting thing is we're at the highest rates of racial segregation in higher education we've been at in quite some time despite affirmative action.
Under equality of opportunity, which is far from perfect, you still would never expect perfect mobility. For one, kids born from those in the lower socioeconomic spectrum have lower intelligence; kids born from those in higher socioeconomic spectrum have higher intelligence. Intelligence is highly variable based on genetics but it is there. If you take a less intelligent group in the hypothetical scenario of perfect equality of opportunity, you would still never expect them to do as well as a more intelligent group.
The end goal should be meritocracy, which is completely different than equality of outcome.
The welfare state creating a situation where there really isn't much economic advantage to moving up the socioeconomic ladder is more a criticism of welfare's adverse effects than it is of mobility.
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