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“Although the United States occupies a middle ground in international comparisons of occupational mobility, its ranking in terms of income mobility is lower. Both the United States and Great Britain have significantly less economic mobility than Canada, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and possibly Germany; and the United States may be a less economically mobile society than Great Britain. Much of the higher intergenerational elasticity in the United States is due to greater income immobility at the top and bottom of the earnings distribution; the mobility of middle earners looks more similar to that in the other countries.”
The myth? It's a reality and mobility isn't the problem, only a symptom.
What we have now in America, is a rent-seeking policy (google that term) that alllows weak and ineffective non-producing groups to not only demand subsidies (money, benefits, etc) without contributing but get them!
Flashback to hordes of illegal aliens taking to American streets, signs and Mexican flags in tow, DEMANDING rights. And rights they have gotten, due to the rent-seeking policy supporting socialists who love to tax and spend. Working Americans are supporting those who do not and in 2007, to the ridiculous extent that we are now required to support foreign nationals.
Okay, now think if there was a North American Union or North & South American Unioin combined. Suddenly, American's would be competing on the same level for jobs as anyone on the entire continent, including those that will work for next to nothing. Now, tell me this doesn't spread out the divide between rich and poor even further. Unfortunately, I see it getting worse in this country as time goes on, regardless of whether an NAU materializes in my lifetime. Just look at CEO pay. Some of these clowns get paid incredible amounts of money, 800 times that of an average employee, and this even occurs when a company goes downhill and their stock takes a dive. What is happening in this country? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Even though the economy is doing 'well', the average american's wage has gone down since 2000. This doesn't seem to be consistent with a rising midle class, but rather one that is slowing sinking into the world of debt and bills.
In countries like Finland, Sweden, Norway and Canada, taxation is established in such a way that no one can be too far on the rich-poor axis. It is called Social Democracy.
Germany is struggling with an imbalance in the same way, or at least as much as the US.
In a social democracy no one can earn a salary as high as some we hear about in large corporations or on the stock market and if they do, they are taxed more heavily on that salary.
This perhaps enhances what you are calling mobility.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fishmonger
“Although the United States occupies a middle ground in international comparisons of occupational mobility, its ranking in terms of income mobility is lower. Both the United States and Great Britain have significantly less economic mobility than Canada, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and possibly Germany; and the United States may be a less economically mobile society than Great Britain. Much of the higher intergenerational elasticity in the United States is due to greater income immobility at the top and bottom of the earnings distribution; the mobility of middle earners looks more similar to that in the other countries.”
The myth? It's a reality and mobility isn't the problem, only a symptom.
What we have now in America, is a rent-seeking policy (google that term) that alllows weak and ineffective non-producing groups to not only demand subsidies (money, benefits, etc) without contributing but get them!
The economic definition of rent-seeking is the practice of taking advantage of economic inefficiencies rather than taking advantage of generous social policies.
A good example of a rent-seeker, in the true sense of the word, would be a currency trader who profits on arbitrage, not a welfare queen.
The folks you mention above -- people who demand benefits without contributing value -- aren't rent seekers. They're leeches.
The myth? It's a reality and mobility isn't the problem, only a symptom.
What we have now in America, is a rent-seeking policy (google that term) that alllows weak and ineffective non-producing groups to not only demand subsidies (money, benefits, etc) without contributing but get them!
Flashback to hordes of illegal aliens taking to American streets, signs and Mexican flags in tow, DEMANDING rights. And rights they have gotten, due to the rent-seeking policy supporting socialists who love to tax and spend. Working Americans are supporting those who do not and in 2007, to the ridiculous extent that we are now required to support foreign nationals.
Or at least the more right-leaning varieties...France is too much. English teacher, I think you missed the point of my post... that the effect of the "rent-seeking policy" you describe keeps people stuck in poverty is largely mythologized. Societies in Europe that are more "classist" than what we have here tend to have more "upward mobility" among the poor, despite their relatively socialist policies. The concept of the "welfare queen" who spends her life on the government dole, pumping out kids to keep the benefits coming is largely mythologized. Even before welfare reform was implemented, most people on AFDC (Welfare) were on and off in 2 years or less and had 2 or fewer kids... the problem with welfare in the U.S. isn't that it's too generous, as conservatives believe, but that it isn't implemented well. Canada, for example, doesn't spend much more on social programs than we do but has a considerably lower poverty rate.
Personally, I think the problem with Welfare in the U.S. is that it's only provided for people who are well below the poverty line and keeps them below it when they get it. There's more incentive to go out and get a better job when you have a safety net provided for if you fail, and there's less incentive to "stay poor" because you don't lose as many benefits by becoming lower-middle class, while in the U.S. you can get kicked off parts of the system just for getting a job in the service industry, for example. It's true that there needs to be a balance so that people aren't too "comfortable in poverty" (France or other heavily socialized nations might be examples of this), but the U.S. system is set up so that people can become effectively poorer by making more money. We need real welfare reform, not welfare reduction (which is basically what the last form of "Welfare Reform" enacted during the Clinton era was...)
Quote:
Originally Posted by english_teacher
The myth? It's a reality and mobility isn't the problem, only a symptom.
What we have now in America, is a rent-seeking policy (google that term) that alllows weak and ineffective non-producing groups to not only demand subsidies (money, benefits, etc) without contributing but get them!
Flashback to hordes of illegal aliens taking to American streets, signs and Mexican flags in tow, DEMANDING rights. And rights they have gotten, due to the rent-seeking policy supporting socialists who love to tax and spend. Working Americans are supporting those who do not and in 2007, to the ridiculous extent that we are now required to support foreign nationals.
In countries like Finland, Sweden, Norway and Canada, taxation is established in such a way that no one can be too far on the rich-poor axis. It is called Social Democracy.
Germany is struggling with an imbalance in the same way, or at least as much as the US.
In a social democracy no one can earn a salary as high as some we hear about in large corporations or on the stock market and if they do, they are taxed more heavily on that salary.
This perhaps enhances what you are calling mobility.
At least in Finland, the parity in incomes is more a result of prevailing salaries than the income tax rate. The rate is high, sure, but if you look at pre-tax income you'll still see a much tighter distribution of salaries than you'd see in other countries. I think it's because there is a well-established wage table that state employees are paid, and private businesses tend to use that to formulate their salary schemes.
If you take a doctor and a bus driver, you'd find their salaries to be closer together than in, say, the US. But on the flipside, university education is completely subsidised, so doctors graduate med school with no debt and no need to buy malpractice insurance. So in the end, salaries are low, but so are expenses. But is the salary fair for doctors? Beats me, but given that Finland has enough doctors and one of the very best healthcare systems in the world, one would assume they do OK.
And actually, in Finland there is a flat 28% tax on capital gains. The tax isn't progressive.
Sorry to take a Finland tangent, it's just a place I'm familiar with!
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Mobility is just a symptom...
