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Comment by snicky | Hacker News Reader

The author kinda lost me when he claimed the social mobility in USA is "shockingly low" pointing to the article showing it's just 13 percent points behind Norway. That is not a shocking difference.

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America is the 27th best country for social mobility. Who could have guessed that free access to healthcare and education matters.

https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index...

Given that the social mobility index used in the report[0] uses access to healthcare and education, along with "social protections" as part of their ranking, it should come as absolutely no surprise that wealthy welfare democracies top the charts here.

[0] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report.p...

Exactly this, there is no agreed upon standard on how to measure these sorts of things. Everyone has a bias.

America has a really high income inequality, they are 66th, they are literally up there with African countries.

The average Portuguese has a much lower income than the average black American. The EU income inequality is much higher if you you don't look within countries but across countries. This actually makes the EU more unstable than the US. Poor countries keep threatening they will leave and rich countries feel that poor countries are dragging them down. You don't have this dynamic in the States.

You don't have this dynamic in the States.

You do, there is a huge disparity between coastal states and the rest of America. You can see that in the political map. This leads to problems like we saw last week.

Protests are nasty but there is no problem of secession like in the EU. Remember that Britain already left.

You could argue that is a useful safety valve (although I think it was a mistake on our part).

> The average Portuguese has a much lower income than the average black American.

Doubt this. Especially if you consider PPP and their monthly expenses/how much they can save by month.

Income inequality isn't the same as social mobility.

I think it's a much bigger problem but many people disagree with me on that.

And the higher the inequality is (per Gini), the more immobility tends to occur:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve

* https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/20/business/wef-social-mobility-...

European social mobility is quite low in general. European countries are optimized for welfare, not social mobility. These are wildly different things.

I can't find any facts except the opposite http://reports.weforum.org/social-mobility-report-2020/socia...

I wonder how this is measured. Especially the Roma population in Central Europe seems to be stuck in endless circle of crime and misery, regardless of money and effort poured into the ghettos. Roma who escape those conditions are rare, and they almost always marry someone "white" and move as far from their original community as possible.

Yep. I would say it is even harder (and also the popular opinion here) to not be rich and become rich, in Europe. Social mobility here means that if you are born destitute you have a chance to become part of the middle-income class, where the middle-income class is significantly poorer than the American middle class.

My point exactly.

> Social mobility here means that if you are born destitute you have a chance to become part of the middle-income class

I’m inclined to say that it’s pretty much a given. It’s really hard to be unable to live a sort of comfortable life in Europe (you might not have a brand new TV, but you’ll have your own house and Netflix).

It's not a given. Lots of people with low IQ or terrible character traits end up living in poverty by constantly fucking up.

Your own house? Homeownership rates in Western Europe are ridiculously low. Here in Switzerland, many are renting for life.

Parent probably meant renting not owning. Although in Europe there is some social housing poor people can buy, while if you're middle class you're kinda screwed as you're considered too rich to be allowed to buy into social housing but are too poor to afford buying into upper class housing and middle class housing in almost a disappearing species. You either live in the nice green quiet areas where all the old money is or you'll be a renter your whole life.

Interesting to hear, in Belgium for example the homeownership rate seems high(speaking from living here for a while). The culture is very much geared towards buying a house, alone or with a spouse. It's also a small country where people don't move alot, which might mean that they don't value flexibility as much as larger countries where moving is generally over larger distances.

Also, the banks offer very good rates for these types of loans if you have a stable job and prospect.

Renting for very long periods seem like a waste for many people here.

http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/

If an Indian or Chinese person wants to migrate to a country with GSMI above 70, going by raw numbers the best bet would be the US. Per-capita rates are good for scoring feel-good points, but the US is a magnet for migrants in absolute terms in a way not many other places manage.

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