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Yeah, it wasn’t hard to figure out. Not sure why it was such a mystery to the OP when it’s quite obvious the poor are the least mobile, even within the country let alone trying to leave the borders.
The wealthy on the other hand have been renouncing Us citizenship at a brisk pace the last decade.
My grandparents and parents went from poverty to comfort — the most blaring common factor is their Christian faith which permeated every facet of life.
My grandparents and parents went from poverty to comfort — the most blaring common factor is their Christian faith which pretty much permeated every facet of life.
Yes, it was much easier then, But I fear those glory days they came up in are over. Even my mother has a pension from just being a secretary, and until he got sick (TBI) my father was able to buy a home and support a SAHM with 2 kids on an appliance salesman salary. Today that salary would be too low to qualify for a mortgage, and he would have to probably pay at least half his salary to procure health insurance for us. That wasn't the case in the 60's. Health care didn't bankrupt people then, jobs paid well without college degrees, there were pensions. My grandfather was able to get a loan to open an auto parts store with no credit. So many things have changed now.
In one assisted living I worked in, there were a lot of women who worked for Bell telephone as telephone operators. All of them had pensions as well as lifetime insurance. Those days are long gone, and the middle class with them. Now they hoard all the money at the top.
In the 1970's the average CEO salary was 35 times more than his average employee. Today that number has grown by 940%! While the average worker compensation has risen by less than 12%. It is causing rising inequality between the top 1% and everyone else.
We have depression-era type bread lines, people waiting 20 hours for a small box of food. There are thousands and thousands of people living in tent cities. We are beginning to look like a third world country.
If only we could go back to the days of my grandparents and parents.
A couple (the traditional goal in life...with or without kids) making say $15/hr each in America can make it with comfort. There’s a HUGE middle ground between homelessness and extreme wealth.
Is social mobility the same as financial mobility?
They're linked, but it's hard to put a figure on social mobility. I was thinking of financial mobility. OECD uses the lovely term "intergenerational earnings elasticity" - how likely is it that your income matches that of your parents. The UK, Italy (that one surprised me) and the US have a markedly lower likelihood of someone's kids leaving their parents' income bracket.
Yes, it was much easier then, But I fear those glory days they came up in are over. Even my mother has a pension from just being a secretary, and until he got sick (TBI) my father was able to buy a home and support a SAHM with 2 kids on an appliance salesman salary. Today that salary would be too low to qualify for a mortgage, and he would have to probably pay at least half his salary to procure health insurance for us. That wasn't the case in the 60's. Health care didn't bankrupt people then, jobs paid well without college degrees, there were pensions. My grandfather was able to get a loan to open an auto parts store with no credit. So many things have changed now.
In one assisted living I worked in, there were a lot of women who worked for Bell telephone as telephone operators. All of them had pensions as well as lifetime insurance. Those days are long gone, and the middle class with them. Now they hoard all the money at the top.
In the 1970's the average CEO salary was 35 times more than his average employee. Today that number has grown by 940%! While the average worker compensation has risen by less than 12%. It is causing rising inequality between the top 1% and everyone else.
We have depression-era type bread lines, people waiting 20 hours for a small box of food. There are thousands and thousands of people living in tent cities. We are beginning to look like a third world country.
If only we could go back to the days of my grandparents and parents.
My grandparents and parents never had anything like pensions. They simply worked hard and valued every dollar.
Our property is a hot commodity. Our stock market won’t slow for any force of nature.
My conclusion:
There is simply no better place on earth to live than the United States of America in 2020. There has never been anywhere better to live as far as having access to so much with such a high degree of upward mobility for even people with no skill following simple practical financial advice.
The US empire is just getting started.
It sounds like you're having a manic episode. Or else you were only in knee pants during the 3 stock market "recessions", "corrections", whatever you want to call them, in the first decade of the new millennium, so you missed all the excitement.
"Upward mobility"? "...for even people with no skill"? You're scaring me, OP. Nobody could be this out of touch with reality.
So....tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, where on the socio-economic scale was the family in which someone like yourself was raised and acquired this worldview of life in the US? Your parents went from rags to riches, you say? Where were they on the color scale? Inquiring minds need to know.
A couple (the traditional goal in life...with or without kids) making say $15/hr each in America can make it with comfort. There’s a HUGE middle ground between homelessness and extreme wealth.
It sounds like you're having a manic episode. Or else you were only in knee pants during the 3 stock market "recessions", "corrections", whatever you want to call them, in the first decade of the new millennium, so you missed all the excitement.
"Upward mobility"? "...for even people with no skill"? You're scaring me, OP. Nobody could be this out of touch with reality.
So....tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, where on the socio-economic scale was the family in which someone like yourself was raised and acquired this worldview of life in the US? Your parents went from rags to riches, you say? Where were they on the color scale? Inquiring minds need to know.
It’s entertaining but also scary how much he’s out of touch with reality like I’ve already said before.
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You're scaring me, OP. Nobody could be this out of touch with reality. 
