While not strictly zero-sum, my understanding is that in order to have upward mobility, you must also have some downward mobility.
Effectively, you can’t have upward mobility unless you let people fail (and id argue many homeless choose that life style, based on my experience working with them). She explained in North Korea there are no homeless, everyone is equally poor.
Highly recommend listening to a talk with her. Truly eye opening
meanwhile, how difficult is stability, especially in high-tech tracks?
amazingly stupid in some ways, to declare a victory with skyrocketing homelessness in modern streets
as a USA citizen I absolutely agree with this -- a rise in low-level legal cheating over money, and a marked decrease in arts and the lives of artists, are plainly visible now
Some of the richest people - Gates, Bezos, Buffett - were able to become that way because they had a safety net provided by their parents. They were able to take risks knowing they wouldn't become destitute if it didn't work out.
It's actually a misnomer, "upward mobility" -- it's all "mobility".
What's more important for the majority is how good life is at the bottom half than the top. You're far more likely to get knocked into the bottom 10%, and especially the bottom 50%, than get into the top 10%.
The odds don't say that at all necessarily. That entirely depends on you, your competency, your circumstances, the random events in your life.
Depending on who and what you are, your odds can be dramatically better that you will end up in the top 10% than that you will end up in the bottom 50%.
All people are not created equal and are obviously not born into equal circumstances. It invalidates the premise of applying detached likelihoods (detached from the person they're supposed to apply to) to such a concept entirely.
A simple example is Bill Gates. The odds were radically better that he'd end up in the top 10% than in the bottom 50%, based on his traits and circumstances growing up. The same goes for Paul Allen, even though he came from a different economic background than Gates; his attributes, circumstances growing up and chosen professional field heavily tilted the odds toward top 10% rather than bottom 50%. You have to know enough about the person you're talking about, if you want to have some glimmer of insight at the odds in question.
Sure if you're born into a family at the 85% range then you're closer to the top 10%. 85% people are not born into that range though.
If everyone makes $10 more a day there is no ""mobility"" in the percentage sense, but everyone is better off.
If you ask a hobo that makes $0 a day, he certainly perceives an upgrade
Especially if you look at bond market yield curves going negative, and consider that massively indebted governments don't have any politically viable options to solve their debt problem other than default through massive inflation.
It could totally happen. Governments don't have a good option.
You're mixing up monetary policy with macroeconomics. Though often correlated to a degree, they are not the same. The Weimar republic adding zeroes to the DM is not the same as wage increase due to economic growth
However, inflation does not derive from poor people making more money. It comes from insane government spending. Of course, if you try to achieve better life conditions through government spending you can end up with bread at $100.