@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
Actually, Foofie, you're wrong. You're dealing in stereotypes and wishful thinking again. The US has become, over the course of the last three or four decades, one of the developed countries with the least upward social mobility. The UK and Denmark, to take two examples, are much more socially mobile than we have become. Thank you, Mitt Romney, and all you other one percenters.
I was also talking about the ability for a poor girl to marry "up." That is not acceptable in many societies. That might be an overlooked nuance of American society; the upward mobility of women, due to marriage. That does not happen to the same degree elsewhere; money marries money elsewhere.
That is one of the enchanting things about the U.S. to girls elsewhere; anyone can become a virtual Cinderella.
And, if there is less of the old fashioned upward mobility, it might be because there is less available innovation remaining, for lifting someone up from poverty. The problem might also be that much has already been done, before the country was filled in the post 1850 immigration explosion by illiterate masses from Europe?
But, then again, perhaps it is by design, since everyone cannot (or perhaps should not) be upwardly mobile in the classic sense. It would spoil the need for a cradle to grave socialism. How else would the masses be kept in their place? Everyone would be in some amorphous upper class? Oh, be realistic.
The best way for upwardly mobility is that poor girls marry up. That allows the upper class to become better looking. It is the way it is, because it works for the upper classes.
