Hacker News Reader

I think this is slippery slope / weird thinking. The idea is to give those folks the actual freedom to "level up" as you put it. It's hard to do that if your working multiple minimum wage jobs, or just 60hrs a week at one. The USA is incredibly anti-worker / anti-mobility, despite the great propaganda we receive our entire lives here. Go overseas, talk to folks, and widen your viewpoint a bit. You'll realize a lot more folks are happy in places like Australia than the USA. Way cleaner and safer too, also better food! A lot of immigration as well!

A lot of the USA is setup to unfortunately keep a certain amount of folks in a perpetual system of being poor, while telling them it's way worse in other countries (we're the best!). It keeps them too busy to pay attention to anything but survival paycheck to paycheck, which is good for the ruling class.

It's also funny that you are literally degrading / belittling (while saying regulations meant to protect them are degrading) people who are in jobs that you view as below you (service), but would likely miss a great deal if folks didn't do them.

But hey, you seem big on anecdotes, here is some data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

Literally, the USA is ranked 27 in upward mobility in the world. Stop spouting propaganda and go talk to some real folks in service jobs. Ask them what their schedule is, what their home life is (are they taking care of their parents, others with chronic conditions, do _they_ have a chronic condition, etc.), and get to know them.

Go overseas if you can, and see how the rest of the world lives. You'd be surprised how good other countries have it, even the "service" class in those countries, as you would put it.

I couldn't agree more about the "Ra Ra America is the Greatest" attitude as being ignorant and unfounded - and unfortunately abundant among people who've never traveled and seen what other countries offer their citizens. And a lot of that is sustained by a propaganda machine geared toward small-minded, untraveled and ignorant people who can't differentiate.

I'm not one of those. I've been to more than forty countries and lived a year or longer in a dozen of them. I've been enmeshed in societies that are strictly founded on familiar and tribal ties, as well as ones that are strictly postmodern and corporate, and some that are socialist-leaning. Some have been communist in policy but have incredible personal ambition embedded and passed on (e.g. Vietnam). Some are essentially capitalist but yearn for work-free socialism (e.g. Argentina). All have complaints according to their own drawbacks. I've also joined left-wing rallies and still made friends with people from all sides of the spectrum in places I've lived.

As a kid who turned 21 under 9/11 and the advent of the Patriot Act and the endless wars in the middle east, I've hated America for a lot of reasons, but one thing I can't hate it for is the "propaganda machine" that tells all comers that it is possible to succeed here. As far as I've observed, there are only a few other countries where people are as free to re-invent themselves, detach themselves from their birth circumstances, and become whoever they want to be. [edit: The new American obsession with attaching your identity to your birth circumstances is anathema to me and most other children of immigrants, and smacks of "privilege" - our families view our history as a challenge and struggle to get over it]. Western Europe, Aus/NZ, Canada. But there, you still don't have the benefit of an economy that rewards achievement. You might find that a matter of personal taste, but to me, the valuing of achievement is something I've only seen in eastern cultures (Thailand, Vietnam, China) outside the US. The other Western countries besides the US seem to have lost their taste for it.

That's why I say - from my own imperfect point of view - that the US does offer a combination of personal and economic opportunity that doesn't exist in any other country.

So I apologize if you took my statement as a rehash of some propaganda, but hopefully this clarifies that it's a precise opinion I came to after a great deal of hating much about America while also admiring it.

> I happen to live in a country (the US) that provides the greatest degree of upward mobility in the world

As far as my short search has lead me this appears not to be true. US doesn't seem to be in top 20 which is dominated by Europe.

That is interesting -- can you share your sources? There are, of course, a lot of ways of measuring upward mobility:

* inter-generational upward mobility -- are you richer than your parents?

* intra-generational mobility - has the older you climbed to a higher position than the younger you?

For the above, it makes a difference whether you are talking about absolute gains or relative gains (e.g. bottom quintile to top quintile).

And also whether you are measuring income or wealth and if income, whether you are looking at after tax income or market income. With wealth, it depends very much on how you measure things like government benefits.

Finally, mobility measures need to be taken across the business cycle rather than just, this year versus 5 years ago.

It's not a simple issue, and I've seen studies that go either way on this, but I'm always interested in getting more data on this important topic.

Good post, and I have a side note that I think is universally overlooked right now. I say this as a Gen Xer and part of the first generation to know we'd have less of an easy path than our parents:

Upward mobility, richness of life, and success, has absolutely nothing to do with how much better other people did in the same time period. I went from $20k debt and dropping out of college to $300k savings. Am I supposed to be angry that someone I know went from a $3M inheritance to $300M? Why should I care? My own upward movement hasn't been hampered by theirs. I don't need anything they have, or envy it. If anything, they envy me because I earned what I have.

In real terms, I've already moved up far more than they have. This idea that an increasing divide makes upward mobility for the lower echelon less meaningful is just totally false. The difference between being able to buy a place versus the difference between how big a place you buy is only one of degree. The difference between $300k and $300M is aesthetics. But the difference between $3k and $30k is survival.

So when I'm talking about upward mobility in America, I mean getting out of debt and poverty... getting to a place where you can have a good life. Too many people think it means comparing yourself to or becoming Elon Musk. And that's a credit to America too, because they've never lived in another country where even basic survival is difficult.

Europe? Upward mobility?

Please do post your source. In my own experience and research, that is very limited in Europe.

I would argue that there are actually more disincentives than incentives for class mobility in Europe (which is where I live).

> I vote left because I consider it this type of value proposition: If people have no help and no way out of poverty, they'll revolt, and that'll be bad for me.

Wow, that's a wonderful mechanism to construct a morality. /s

I'm a fellow Yank, and I've been tipping takeout orders ~18% every time because I want my local restaurants to remain open. Life sucked when everything was closed, and since I'm (currently) in the "laptop" class I figure I can afford to add $2 to my burrito order.

Maybe that's ugly self-interest, too, but at least I think I'm being consistent with my larger beliefs, which doesn't seem true in your case.

No, I worked in the service industry for a decade, so I always tip well - and not only because I'm worried someone will spit in my drink. But really, if you want credit for being a better person I'll refer you to my original point; self-interest. The only difference is, I'm worried about a riot and you're worried about what people think of you.

[edit: not what the workers at the bar will think of you. What the other diners at the table, or the people on the internet will think, when they ask themselves whether your motives are pristine. Trying to prove the righteousness of your self-negation is, uh, not exactly self-negating is it?]