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Comment by Joeri | Hacker News Reader

Actually, upward mobility has been regressing in the US for a while now, and is much worse than in countries like germany or sweden. If you are born in the bottom fifth, your odds of making it out of there are roughly fifty/fifty. You don't have to wonder about the next generation because the current one is suffering enough already.

There's no need for nuance here. Nuance is what you apply when something has merit. The direction the US economy is headed in has no merit. The ship needs a course correction.

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> upward mobility has been regressing in the US for a while now

Do you have a source for this?

> If you are born in the bottom fifth, your odds of making it out of there are roughly fifty/fifty.

Are you sure? In a longitudinal study of US income earners during a 20 year period [1], a majority of people who started in the poorest quintile cracked the richest quintile at some point. The degree of opportunity this points to is really quite astonishing if you think about it.

This study is a little dated now (1990s). I can't imagine it's changed dramatically, but I'd love to see a new longitudinal study that went up to the present.

[1] Google Books, "Basic Economics" by Sowell: http://bit.ly/grnsDF

>> upward mobility has been regressing in the US for a while now

> Do you have a source for this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to...

This one doesn't talk very explicitly about the time trend, but it mentions studies conducted in different decades finding progressively higher levels of correlation between parents' and children's incomes; unclear if that's due to random chance or an actual trend.

This only measures relative mobility, not absolute mobility. It doesn't show at all that it's harder to move up in the world, but merely that it's harder to move up relative to someone else.

The absolute mobility measure isn't really indicative of what most people think of when they hear "social mobility". For example, in 100% rigid caste society, with any economic growth whatsoever, everyone will make more than their parents.

Relative mobility isn't indicative of people's intuitive notions of mobility either.

Consider an farmer living in a village where incomes for everyone range from 200rs/day to 250rs/day depending solely on random chance (weather, locusts, etc). Relative mobility is high - depending on your crop yield, you could go anywhere from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. And you have no chance to go anywhere besides your farm.

That's both a very short-term (years to days) and localized (in one specific sector of the economy) measurement. If you look at inter-generational mobility (as these studies do), and look at the level of mobility that you care about e.g. over a whole national economy (as these studies do), a son of such farmers who grows up to be in the same job as his father will be shown as moving around solely within the small slice of the class structure (a decile at most?) that makes up the farmers of the village. Even that much movement will only show up if his income is fairly consistently (averaged over at least a year) in a higher percentile than his father's. So yeah, I think relative mobility is a pretty good indicator.

"I can't imagine it's changed dramatically" Why can't you imagine that? It's exactly during the 80s that the reaganomics started favoring the rich, and the 90s that saw the rise of China and the new globalisation. I would completely imagine the that situation changed dramatically during the last 20 years.

The direction the US economy is headed in has no merit.

None whatsoever, when the economy continues to grow, and most personal lifestyle indicators continue to improve? The net immigration trends strongly suggest you are mistaken. You say we don't need nuance here, but discussions on Hacker News proceed best with evidence, so please provide evidence for your broad conclusion.

The net immigration trends strongly suggest you are mistaken.

Things being worse elsewhere doesn't make things good here. That's like saying the back of the Titanic was ok because so many people wanted to go there.

Things being worse elsewhere doesn't make things good here.

However, it just might suggest a reason to doubt the statement "The direction the US economy is headed in has no merit," with which I was disagreeing. If smart immigrants come here on a net basis (and they do), then maybe people who have a choice are voting with their feet to say that the direction of the United States economy is not as bad as it could be.

I note the lack of follow-up from the kind person with whom I was disagreeing, perhaps because he is busy with his real life responsibilities, just as I was for the last three hours.

Yeah, I'd like to hear your "course correction" I can guess.

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