...to promote economic growth and upward mobility...
I've always thought that upward mobility is what gives hope and hope is the fuel of persistence. Persistence coupled with patience and passion makes it possible to grow economically.
I've always thought that upward mobility is what gives hope and hope is the fuel of persistence. Persistence coupled with patience and passion makes it possible to grow economically.
This is what makes "hope" so dangerous, since the risky things people are willing to do can be quite destructive to themselves and others.
If people are already content, fear tends to be stronger than hope. This comes with its own downsides, of course. People become passive, and society becomes stagnant and eventually corrupted due to lack of rejuvinating forces.
As you say, a balance is needed. Some needs must require some positive effort in order to be fulfilled. But if only the most anti social and ruthless get their needs fulfilled, society breaks down even faster.
My recent experience living in Germany gave me a real sense of what that's like. There is a cultural affinity for "progress means innovation aimed at ever more closely and efficiently adhering to a standard". So this means, for example, the beer in Germany is very consistent over decades, sometimes centuries, is cheaper than soda, and there isn't much variety. (a similar story for Ireland's Guiness, BTW). Or take the German knife maker Wüsthof, which unusually for a large knife maker uses entirely one steel, one style of blade, across the line (okay there are exceptions but these are rare). They've fixed the larger values of a boundary condition, but still find room to innovate within that space. I can't help but think that this is a healthier way to think about progress and growth, rather than the very American approach that progress always means more, but never just better.
The major notions we have inherited of economy derive from the rentier merchants of early modernity. They took to the idea of seeing a nation as a balance sheet, a tabulation of assets: men, ships, iron. From this idea we get the idea of putting more assets on the balance sheet through trade and colonization, rather than tribute. This lasted a few centuries, but by the point of transition to an industrial economy it had already become clear in the writings of Enlightenment philosphers that it was not quite as simple as possession and accounting of the raw assets, but their organization too. The gross product and employment figures we started using to measure organization generalized things, but also suffer from limited scope - if it's not a money transaction, if the work is unpaid, it's outside "the economy".
In the long 19th century it was very straightforward to devise ways to purpose inventions towards economic benefit: take an existing trade, buy up more raw materials through the canals and rails, run it through the factory, sell more product. With the second industrial revolution, another "wave" of products appeared that substituted common uses of labor: canned food instead of fresh, telecommunication instead of express mail, and an increasing number of mechanized devices.
It got much harder in the 20th century as more of the inventions relied on developing consumer habits and did not reflect a traditional trade. The dilemma was averted through marketing techniques: Everyone uses toothpaste and shampoo, watches the new television show, and desires a new car, a bigger house and a higher-paying job. Creative financing ideas took up the rest of the slack, allowing consumers to get their hands on the stuff and set lifestyle expectations that are higher than reasonable.
So, by the early 21st century everyone simultaneously has too much "stuff", is unhappy because of the marketing, and is in debt because of the financing. But GDP is higher, so the system persists, up until now.
That trend makes me think that "building" is at an end, and something more like the German system has to take hold. America's consumer economy is now developing a multitude of niches, marketed through various online storefronts, Kickstarters and viral video. Appreciation of the best stuff of past years has risen as more of that material surfaces online and rubs shoulders with "new" stuff. Where this emerging system struggles the most, it can usually be traced back to the old power structures and their large footprint on the economy. And to a great degree the measure of the economy is tied to those structures: growth and employment figures feed into the taxation and spending model. Change the measure and you have to realign what it means to tax or to spend, who is in debt to whom. It's not done so easily.
Assuming the population remains mortal, there will be a steady stream of vacant positions at the top and plenty of room for individual growth, even without overall economic growth.
About this, 86% of today’s billionaires didn’t have billionaire parents. The elites were surprisingly well renewed for our generation.
Some people would want the social elevator to work from -1 to +100 in one generation, this is unrealistic and wouldn’t even be wise because it takes a lot of knowledge to manage large groups of people. But if the top 40% can threaten the top 1% at each generation, and the bottom 60% threaten the top 40% in a single generation, then we’ve made it, we’ve given power to people who will need to keep working if they want to stay atop, and they’ll be accountable, and this is the important part.
Money is not 0-sum, but power is, and power is really the point of economic inequality.
So yes, right now some people have too little power in our society, and for them to rise, others have to fall (relatively speaking).