Anything that increases social mobility would be good.
America is doing quite poorly in terms of social mobility, compared to other top-tier countries.
America is doing quite poorly in terms of social mobility, compared to other top-tier countries.
For example, Scandinavian countries are famous as exemplars for how to be a developed country with high income mobility. But a recent paper focused on Denmark (the most income-mobile country in the group) in order to study the effectiveness of the Scandinavian model. It found that pre-tax, pre-transfer income mobility was the same as the US! Needless to say, this is a pretty shocking find, as it belies years of assumptions about equality of opportunity and its effect on achievement (as measured by income). Even the addition of Denmark's much heavier investment in all levels of schooling does nothing to budge the level of educational attainment among the poor, relative to the US.
From the Atlantic article linked in my footnotes:
> Low-income Danish kids are not much more likely to earn a middle-class wage than their American counterparts. What’s more, the children of non-college graduates in Denmark are about as unlikely to attend college as their American counterparts.
IMO, Denmark's generous redistribution is worth the impact on outcomes, but it's fascinating to see redistribution have almost ZERO impact on one of its most positive-sum, universally appealing benefits (moving more towards equality of opportunity).
[1] http://voxeu.org/article/intergenerational-mobility-denmark-... [2] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-amer...
What could make a difference though is the relative difference between poverty in US and poverty in DK. I am pretty sure that you are better of as poor in Denmark than you are as poor in the US. We probably have a better safety-net. And in the other end of the spectrum I'm pretty sure that there is a smaller percentage of mega-rich in Danish terms even. So while I agree that there is still a problem in Denmark I don't think our problem is as big as the US.
My main point being that you can't just look at Denmark through this lens and say - Hey! They haven't solved it. And you also can't say that we have. As I see it, it is as always; a lot more complicated.
Social mobility in Europe is also really not great especially once you adjust for the immigration, you also need to account for the fact that social mobility studies in Europe are based on the income level of parents and grandparents, both WW2/Eastern Block and immigration from Africa, Asia and the Middle east inflate the social mobility figures considerably.
Source?
The US poverty line household income is $22,541, this is more than the median income in Poland, and not that far from the median household income in developed countries like Belgium.
This holds true even for low income jobs, McDonalds pays nearly 10$ an hour in the US vs 4.35 GBP in the UK, or 6.50 EUR in Germany (there are comming minimum wage changes in Germany so it will increase to about 8 EUR in 2017) and US those workers are taxed at considerably lower rates.
There is a better 'safety net' in most European countries, but there is a lot more opportunity in America. It's 100% true that 'anyone can make it' - as long as 'making it' means having a job, owning a home, in a regular place like Cleveland or Pittsburg or whatever.
Europe has a much, much stronger class system than the US.
American companies have tons of workers and professionals who came from poor situations. Europe is not like that at all.
A lot of what would be a college degree in the US is done though trade schools in Europe. I also think there are much stricter requirements on what the degree is in most countries, as in the won't fund a lot of arts degrees.
That's not saying there are rivers of milk and honey flowing in the EU either. But over there, at least you still have access to decent health care even if you're at the rock bottom, and at least your kids could get decent education so they achieve escape velocity.
But here? Once you're below a certain level, society just throws you on the dung heap. Leaves you to your own proverbial "bootstraps", however stupid that meme may sound when you see how things could be handled differently in a civilized world.
I think this is a myth.
Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland all do pretty well on the 'gini coefficient' - but they are tiny, relatively homogeneous societies. They are ethnic groups - and they are each smaller than Los Angeles.
What would the gini coefficient look like for 'The entire EU' for example - which would be a better direct comparison to America.
It would be terrible.
Why? Because Greeks grow up mostly to live in Greece, and much poorer than Swedes, who grow up to be Swedes, generally much richer than Greeks.
Poor Greeks, Sardinians, and Bulgarians kids mostly do not grow up to reach the level of wealth of middle class Scandinavians - not even close.
From Slovenia to London ... the gap is really quite huge.