Merit and Class in America
From a very compelling article in the Economist:
"Take the study carried out by Thomas Hertz, an economist at American University in Washington, DC, who studied a representative sample of 6,273 American families (both black and white) over 32 years or two generations. He found that 42% of those born into the poorest fifth ended up where they started at the bottom. Another 24% moved up slightly to the next-to-bottom group. Only 6% made it to the top fifth. Upward mobility was particularly low for black families.
On the other hand, 37% of those born into the top fifth remained there, whereas barely 7% of those born into the top 20% ended up in the bottom fifth. A person born into the top fifth is over five times as likely to end up at the top as a person born into the bottom fifth.
Jonathan Fisher and David Johnson, two economists at the Bureau of Labour Statistics, looked at inequality and social mobility using measures of both income and consumption. They found that mobility “slightly decreased” in the 1990s. In 1984-90, 56% and 54% of households changed their rankings in terms of income and consumption respectively. In 1994-99, only 52% and 49% changed their rankings." (emphasis added)
Interesting because, while social and economic mobility may not be where we would like it to be, 6% of those born to the poorest of the poor in America become the richest of the rich in their lifetime. It is incredible to assume that the poorest of the poor should be able to become the richest of the rich, and an admirable goal. However we should also remember that the richest people are also trying to stay there, and everyone in the middle are also trying to become the richest. It is not a static target, only 20% of us can be in the top 20%, and 20% of us must be in the bottom 20%, there is no way that everyone can be above average.
It is also interesting to note that social mobility decreased during the 1990s, during the Clinton years, during the golden years the media and Democrats are trying to get back to. During the Reagan year, the "me" decade when the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, social mobility went up. It is this simple, big government strives for mediocrity, it strives to make it hard to excel and "get more than your share" and now we can see the numbers to support that. High taxes don't just hurt the rich, they have an even larger income on people trying to get rich, a key point that liberals miss.
Timothy Burger
posted by Timothyb @ 5:15 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hi Timothy,
Thanks for the interest in my work. You are right that the debate about mobility will always have room for "Half empty! Half full!" Sort of like "tastes great! less filling!"
However, that 6% you are talking about are people who were born into families with incomes below about $17K (bottom fifth), and ended up above about $80K (top fifth). Not bad. But not "poorest of poor" to "richest of rich", like you say, by any stretch. Bottom 5% to top 5%? Fuggedaboudit.
Moreover, in your final paragraph you are simply swinging wildly, and making little use of the data you cite. Those data (that *intra*-generational mobility declined slightly under Clinton) are hardly proof of the virtues of Reaganomics, any more than the disasterous recession in the mid-80s can be blamed on that affable fool of a president. If you want to use numbers in your arguments, try to use them plausibly; otherwise you are just blowing smoke. And let the numbers tell you things you don't really want to hear. It happens all the time.
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