The problem with the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” thinking is that it ignores being born into the problem. Sure, some people can work their way out of a rut that their parents were in, but the majority can’t.
The actual discussion is about the degree of which government should handle re-distributing wealth to the lower class and to what degree the middle and upper class is responsible.
The “divide” is that politicians on both sides who’s actions don’t always match their stated positions.
The lesson of the GINI coefficient and the psychology of relative wealth, is that absolute, material well being isn't the issue. The issue is whether people think the cards are so stacked against them, that they will never win.
So the answer is no. We know that condemning those at the bottom will result in civil unrest. Everyone needs to live in dignity, or there will be violence. Psychology has pretty much determined this to be a fact of human nature.
However, this doesn't mean we should have equity. People should be rewarded, and people should also have something to strive for. It's the dignity of the common person which has been eroded over time.
This is both right and wrong. Asian immigrants are notorious for arriving on foreign shores, penniless, then winding up owning businesses and sending their kids to top tier schools. The problem isn't being born into not having money and things. The problem is being born into an environment that sets children up for future failure.
The good news, is that such cultural practices aren't attached to race or ethnicity and so can be learned and adopted. There are historical precedents for this.
The bad news, is that other cultural practices can do the opposite, and insulate groups of people against things like valuing education and a work ethic.
As someone who lived in the US for a long time and now lives in Europe, I can tell you that all of the Americans I've met over here (who are not vacationing) are incredibly driven and entrepreneurial. They do not at all reflect the average American back in the US (e.g. I don't know a single Trump supporter over here; the Democrats Abroad caucus typically goes far more liberal than any state, supporting Bernie Sanders in 2016 by a very wide margin).
Are refugees counted as immigrants? A lot of the refugees from Syria come through Turkey, so I'm curious if that's throwing off the numbers.
Refugees and immigrants aren't really comparable. The most stark difference is that refugees can (and likely will) be sent back when their country stabilizes enough. If you're a refugee, there's little point in building up a new life when you know it will all come to an end.
No, it's about immigrants from Turkey (who came mostly in the 60ies as regular working migrants to both feed Germany's hunger for workers and buy Turkey's entry into NATO). The Vietnamese on the other hand were often refugees, much poorer and with much less support.
There aren't any relevant numbers about the migrant crisis '15 yet, it's too recent to get meaningful statistics.
> The most stark difference is that refugees can (and likely will) be sent back when their country stabilizes enough.
True, but that very rarely happens in Germany. It's considered cruel to deport someone who has lived in Germany for a few years.
Deportations of asylum seekers usually only happen for so-called "safe countries", e.g. Balkan states, when the request for asylum is denied.
This is a strange observation to me because Trump did very well with the small business owner demographics.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/284396/small-business-owners-hi...
SMB owners who are US citizens abroad, however, are driven by primarily one thing, regardless of party affiliation: who will be most likely to support a rewrite of the punitive tax laws that the US places on its expatriate citizens (which no country other than Eritrea does).