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Socio-economic class mobility in the US.






The Pew Economic Mobility Project

Economic mobility is a huge deal for me, I just do not buy into all of the causes you cite - or most of your solutions.

It is also worth noting that California has a massive Welfare State. Again, also worth noting in passing that Cali and Florida both suffered greatly under the housing collapse that was made possible and encouraged by a combination of "progressive" lending and regulation policies, corruption in Congress regarding govt funding and treatment of GSAs ( bipartisan ), and shenanigans at the Federal Reserve.

Conservatives certainly do no get off scott clean by any stretch, ( Gingrich lobbied for Fannie/Freddie, Fed Reserve was Bushite ) but "progressive" policies also were shown to be ineffective.

I respect the fact that we will disagree on causes and solutions, and glad that you acknowledge economic mobility as a problem. I agree with you that some of progressive initiatives attempting to address this issue were/are ineffective, but at least there is an effort to dos omething. What about conservatives?

As far as conservatives go, Greenspan was one of the primary adherents to the idea that home ownership for everyone was good for society and encouraged people to put down roots and be positively engaged in society.

His intentions were not off the mark, however the results certainly were.

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.