America, now behind France, Germany in opportunity...

[John Masterson]

Yes, the ruling class is becoming entrenched, and typical Americans no longer have the same ability to reach the upper classes through hard work and talent as they once did.

From the Economic Mobility Project from the Pew Center:

Quote:For more than two centuries, economic opportunity and upward mobility have formed the foundation of the American Dream and remain at the core of our nations identity.

But today, while there is widespread agreement that income inequality is higher than at any time since before World War II, too little attention has been given to the more fundamental and increasingly intriguing issue of economic mobility  the prospects for climbing up (or falling down) the economic ladder within and across generations.

Recent studies suggest that there is less economic mobility in the U.S. than researchers originally believed.  And, in sharp contrast to the view of America as the land of opportunity, we may be a less mobile society than many other nations. This suggests that the time is right for a rigorous and nonpartisan initiative designed to spark an informed national discussion of the state of economic mobility in America..

www.economicmobility.org/reports_and_research/Economic%20Mobility%20Project%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

[The Gorn]

I knew it. You hate the troops too.

There's so many of you here.

[David Cressey]

The analysis of this situation and, more importantly, the solutions urged are clouded by the fact that most people do not understand the gist of differential calculus.

What most people want is a society where upward mobility is unhampered, as it was in the 1800s,  but where downward social mobility is almost completely restrained by the social safety net.  

This is about like asking for a road that's very steep if you are going uphill, but very gradual if you are going downhill.  People want that, too, but it's easier to make them see that it's impossible.  

Liberty implies risk.  The liberty to make choices that make you rich and happy implies the liberty to make other choices, one that will make you poor and miserable.  Restrain one, and you restrain the other.  It's that simple.


This is only part of the picture.  Another part of the picture,  one that I referred to last year, I think, is that the US is really two countries in one:  a first world country with education, health care,  and everything else equal to that of European nations,   and a third world country surviving on little more than subsistence.  And the immigration problem is just the tip of this iceberg.

However, keep your eye on Europe.  Europe is rapidly becoming the same thing:  two countries in one.  The third world country inside Europe is muslim rather than Mexican,  but it's the same phenomenon.

[John Masterson]

An analysis of the situation that I heard pointed out that we  are now more like the Roaring Twenties...when the magnates of industry were reaping all the benefit of the newest technologies (telephone, radio and railroad networks), and the working class were paid little and had no education or ability to gain an education to then "move up".

That apparently changed with the New Deal after the Crash of 1929. Education was pushed hard, and everyone started going to high school, then the GI Bill allowed college, and there was health insurance available through employment.

Labor unions were strong, and blue collar workers exercised their power and won a slice of the profit back to them as wages.

Now, with the Internet and globalization, unions are weak. Jobs flow to where wages are the lowest. And where no benefits need be paid. Health insurance is not where it was.  

And...baffling to me...kids increasingly fail to take advantage of the education that is offered to them here. They drop out.

[I D Shukhov]

Quote:And...baffling to me...kids increasingly fail to take advantage of the education that is offered to them here. They drop out.

I wonder about this too.  I posted elsewhere about the percentage of foreign nationals in engineering graduate school.

What gives?

[David Randolph]

Well, ask the question differently. Why should _anyone_ deny their biological urges and delay gratification?

What are the biological urges of teenagers? What would they do when there isn't any society to guide them?

So, why should they _not_ do that and instead submit to rules that might or might not give them a better life? I think that they would need to have a vision and hope for the future to be able to live in a different way.

So, why don't our youngsters have that vision and hope? In many cases, the adults have given up on them long before. Children are warehoused in day jails (schools that don't bother to teach), turned loose to fend for themselves in the afternoons and evenings, and only periodically will an officer check the most egregious behavior. Where are the adults to care about them and give them the vision they lack?

Thus, it was written 2400 years ago "He will turn the hearts of the fathers back towards their children and the hearts of the children back towards their fathers lest I come and strike the land with a curse." Malachi 4:6

[David Cressey]

There are some similarities between now and the Roaring Twenties, but there are also many differences.

For example,  one of the things that produced the end of the Roaring Twenties was the dust bowl.  The dust bowl itself was probably the result of overfarming,  and that in turn was probably the result of public policy that was left over from WWI.  

One thing that produced the stock market build up before the crash was buying on margin.  Right now,  stocks are not purtchased on margin nearly as much as they were in the 1920s.  What is being purchased on margin these days is homes.  And,  as the market softens,  we are seeing a dramtic increase in foreclosures.

I believe the analyses you have been reading are partisan and tendentious.  I think that what really ended the great depression was WWII.  Also,  the GI Bill was a consequence of WWII. Labor Unions do as much harm as good.  Employer provided health care was the unindended consequence of wage and price freezes left over from WWII.

In short, JM,  almost everything you know is wrong.

[John Masterson]

Quote:In short, JM, almost everything you know is wrong.

Well, I guess we disagree again.

The topic at hand is not what caused the Great Depression; it is upward economic mobility... and how government policies after the Depression helped level the playing field and allowed average Americans a chance at upward mobility through education and a financial cushion provided by health insurance and Social Security.

Today we are in a similar place, but I don't think what worked then can be done again. Universal health insurance would be a start, though.

But globalization has thrown a new curve into the entire equation.

[The Gorn]

WWII broke the back of the Depression. The economy was floundering until the US's involvement in WWII.

The New Deal helped a bit and it was the wish of Roosevelt that incentives like CCC would bootstrap the economy, but it was really WWII and the expansion of productive capacity in the US combined with enforced wartime austerity as well as post war decimation of competitors to the US, that turbocharged our economy.

I think that if World War II had not happened, we probably would have been in depression through the early 40s.

We emerged from WWII unscathed, with no real economic competitors in the world, with tremendous bottled up domestic demand for products. That's about as favorable to "populism" as you can get - ideal real world factors.

[David Cressey]

Quote:The topic at hand is not what caused the Great Depression; it is upward economic mobility... and how government policies after the Depression helped level the playing field and allowed average Americans a chance at upward mobility through education and a financial cushion provided by health insurance and Social Security.

You raised the issue of the "roaring twenties", and compared our present situation to that point in time.  

Leleing the playing field simply allowed different Americans to benefit.  Likewise social Security.  As I said before, employer provided health insurance was an unintended consequence of the wage freeze still in place at thend of WWII.  

As GB pointed out,  the real cause of so much wealth in the US after WWII was that we were the only industrial giant still standing in the world.  The best that can be said about government policies is that they didn't screw things up too bad from 1946-1960.

Quote:Today we are in a similar place, but I don't think what worked then can be done again. Universal health insurance would be a start, though.

It's just a transfer scheme.  It doesn't generate wealth.  Health care would continue to be rationed.  The rationing mechanism would be different.  That's all.

Quote:But globalization has thrown a new curve into the entire equation.

Globalization existed in the roaring twenties.  One of the factors that precipitated the great depression was the Smoot-Hawley tarriff act.

[John Masterson]

Quote:Globalization existed in the roaring twenties

Not with the effect that globalization has today. Today you can economically fly the parts on a 747 to China, have the goods assembled, and fly them back here.  You could not do that in the 1920s, which gave American workers an edge. That's been eroded today. In addition, knowledge work can be done remotely over the Internet. Score two for the offshore competition for jobs.

The entire point is: is the American Dream over? Can a poor person in America really pull themselves up by their bootstraps and out of poverty? Or have the ruling classes pulled up all the ladders, so to speak, keeping the upper regions to themselves and their friends...buying overseas labor and pocketing the profits?

Yes, WWII had a huge effect. I can see that. I also agree that social programs also helped create upward economic mobility, and fueled the American Dream.

Can we still recapture that?


I wonder.

[I D Shukhov]

William Glasser wrote a book named  The Quality School.  He is the inventor of Choice Theory

In The Quality School, Glasser applies the theory to education.

Your central thesis is correct:  a student has to buy into a vision that fits with their quality world.  Effective teachers are like effective managers:  they lead their groups to success -- in this case learning.

I believe the fix for schools, in this country, with our current culture, is vouchers and private schools.

[David Randolph]

"is the American Dream over? Can a poor person in America really pull themselves up by their bootstraps and out of poverty? Or have the ruling classes pulled up all the ladders, so to speak, keeping the upper regions to themselves and their friends...buying overseas labor and pocketing the profits?"

As in prior years, decades, and centuries, it is not the poor in this country that pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it is the poor from another country that come here and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The "American Dream" is over when someone can not come over here from another country, sleep eight to a room to save up enough money to buy a C-Store, and start making more money than they ever thought possible and go on to own a chain of stores.

From the start, it has been very rare for a poor person to grow up and make it in this country. It is almost always the poor person from another country.

So, given the problems with people trying very hard to get into this country, I would postulate that the "American Dream" is alive and well.

[codger]

Quote:From the start, it has been very rare for a poor person to grow up and make it in this country. It is almost always the poor person from another country.

Shhhh! Better not tell Stephen King. He was a poor American whe he began writing. Didn't have  a pot to pee in. Better not tell Al Schumacher. (Founder of Schumacher Electric. - battery chargers, welders, etc.) He was living in an apartment over a bowling alley before he became successful.

Want some more stories?

Oh! I forgot. How about John Edwards?  

To hear them tell it, practically every member of the House and Senate qualify as a "rags to riches story". Of course most of their stories are PR-manufactured BS.

[David Cressey]

JM,

Sure, the jetliner and the internet have changed the parameters concerning globalization.  But the fundamentals regarding international trade remain the same.  The theory of comparative marginal advantage applied then, as now.  

The question on the American Dream is one I've been asking myself.  But your analysis of what enabled the American Dream is the exact opposite of what I believe to be the truth.  It wasn't government and unions that made the America the land of opportunity.  It was precisely the fact that there was more liberty here than there was in other lands that made it possible for some people to get rich here,  and made millions of people want to come here and try.

Social programs don't "create" upward mobility.  Increased wealth does.