Economic mobility and income inequality are very different issues.

The downward trend in economic mobility was apparent and reported on in the early 2000's. While the housing collapse may have exacerbated the problem, the trend was well established previously. Further, current low economic mobility is analyzed in the context of being low compared toward other western countries (sans Japan) instead of being low in the absolute sense. The crux of the issue is that America, the land of opportunity, is increasingly less so.

Contributing factors:
- High cost of college locks out many from the lower strata from getting an education. Not an issue in Europe.

- This high cost creates a lot of student debt. A student saddled with debt cannot take risks to get a "dream job," therefor under-utilizing their skill set.

- Depressed wages for skilled labor in America.

- Rapidly decreasing locational mobility. The rate of people moving from one state to the next is much lower than historically. While it may not sound like a big deal, many economist site being able to move for the best job as a great economic good. The unification of the Euro presumably had the opposite effect.

- Golden parachutes and extreme capitalization reward failure, which prevents downward mobility.

Others. Solutions? I guess start with education.

Last edited by TurkeyJ; 12/15/12 11:36 PM.