Mitt Romney Would Pay 0.82 Percent in Taxes Under Paul Ryan's Plan

[Guynemer]

No you have to restore America to a land that is recognized as a land of opportunity and social mobility. That unfortunately is not the case today. Wealth inequality was always a minor cutural driver as by and large people rejected that concept in favor of the opportunity to make it themselves and put their next generation in a position to have it better than they did. That is as long as they thought they had a legit chance to do so if they put in the work and had the persistence.

How would we restore the social mobility that used to define America? The manufacturing sector is rebounding slightly, but it is still decimated compared to where it was when our parents were young.

[Hauldren Collider]

Why do we need manufacturing to have social mobility? What about the software sector in California, or the new auto manufacturers in the South? What about the booming tech industry in Texas? To a Rust Belt resident such as yourself, you may look at all the crumbling union shops and think mobility is in decline, but down south it's springing back up.

[Guynemer]

We have significantly less social mobility in the US than in many European nations. In large part because we don't make **** anymore.

[Jon Miller]

My understanding is that statistically it is on the decline, and that this is based on data and not anecdotal evidence.

I would be glad to be wrong.

I don't think that social mobility is tied to manufacturing, however it is difficult to have a trade balance without manufacturing. It says something that higher education (where we have a lot of government support/activity).

JM

[Hauldren Collider]

1. Where's your evidence that we don't make ****? Do services and intellectual property not count, or do you only care about stuff that comes in boxes?
2. Where's your evidence that we have less social mobility? The Economist?

xpost

If I may share an anecdote, I can name a number of friends who started with nothing and have made some serious bank out in silicon valley, where all it takes to make it is brains and hard work.

[Guynemer]

Anecdotes = Evidence

[Hauldren Collider]

You want data? Take a quick count of all the silicon valley startups that are valued in the millions that didn't exist just five years ago. Every one of those is an example of someone starting with very little and ending out with a lot, requiring nothing but ingenuity.

[Jon Miller]

JM

[Guynemer]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17036544

Emily Beller and Michael Hout examine trends in U.S. social mobility, especially as it relates to the degree to which a person's income or occupation depends on his or her parents' background and to the independent contribution of economic growth. They also compare U.S. social mobility with that in other countries. They conclude that slower economic growth since 1975 and the concentration of that growth among the wealthy have slowed the pace of U.S. social mobility. In measuring mobility, economists tend to look at income and sociologists, occupation. The consensus among those measuring occupational mobility is that the average correlation between the occupations of fathers and sons today ranges from 0.30 to 0.40, meaning that most variation in the ranking of occupations is independent of social origins. Those measuring income mobility tend to agree that the elasticity between fathers' and sons' earnings in the United States today is about 0.4, meaning that 40 percent of the difference in incomes between families in the parents' generation also shows up in differences in incomes in the sons' generation. Beller and Hout show that occupational mobility increased during the 1970s, compared with the 1940s-1960s, but there is some evidence to suggest that by the 1980s and 1990s it had declined to past levels. Existing data on income mobility show no clear trends over time, but increases in economic inequality during the 1980s made mobility more consequential by making economic differences between families persist for a longer time. In international comparisons, the United States occupies a middle ground in occupational mobility but ranks lower in income mobility. Researchers have used the variation in mobility to study whether aspects of a country's policy regime, such as the educational or social welfare systems, might be driving these results. There is as yet, however, no scholarly consensus about the sources of cross-national differences in mobility.

[Hauldren Collider]

JM

What's so funny? Why don't you pull some ridiculous socialist principal out of a left wing blog to show us all how it's better in Sweden, then tell us about the injustice of inequality and ****?

[Wezil]

What about the ditch diggers HC? They might be alright making widgets on an assembly line but not so good at computer code.

[Hauldren Collider]

What about the ditch diggers HC? They might be alright making widgets on an assembly line but not so good at computer code.

What about horse drivers? What happens to them when we make cars to replace them? Let's take this a step further. With all this new farming equipment, what's gonna happen to all the farmers? You think they can just up and become skilled laborers?

[Wezil]

Horse drivers became Teamsters.

No, I don't think all the unskilled can suddenly become skilled. Two reasons:

1) The US education system isn't up to the task
2) Some people are just plain dumb and there isn't a cure for that

I'm sure others can come up with other reasons.

[Wezil]

Going somewhat more OT - Even truck driving is reaching the point of regulation/technology that many can no longer do the job.

[Hauldren Collider]

And when they finish the robotic drivers we won't need them anymore, just like the combine harvester forced farmers to learn a new trade.