THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM

I knew you'd see that coming . . . i can't let up on you now, not after i invested so much of my energy belaboring you about your devoted pate . . .

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No slack !

Have you considered the possibility that you are really Scottish? The possibility has occured to me. However I notice you do punctuate your dour episodes with outbursts of real anger. Mebbee some Irish there too.

Have a good evening Set.

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You do the same, Boss, and be glad you've never seen me indulge in real anger.

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My maternal, maternal greatgrandmother was Scots . . . are you casting a slur on Jennie Monroe?

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Georgeob1, Thomas:

Thomas wrote:

You may be comparing apples to oranges in that post, nimh. George's claim was that social mobility is greater in America than in Europe, while the pieces I was quoting said that it was greater in the America of the 1970s than in the America of today. Both statements could be correct.

But I also quoted The Economist, noting - in a secondary, unspecified reference, true, but I tend to trust The Economist on not making spurious references - that:

Quote:

various studies also indicate that social mobility has weakened; indeed by some measures it may be worse than it is in crusty old Europe.

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georgeob1 wrote:

The United States is a very competitive society which rewards and punishes its members for the choices they make relatively more than does Europe. [..]

Europe employs more socialist forms of income redistribution, social safety nets, labor market regulation, etc. than do we. The U.S. pays for its system with a steep gradient of incomes and a system that rewards economically productive activity over other choices. Europe pays for its system with higher taxes, higher unemployment, slow economic growth, and greater government involvement in the lives of its people.

There is a flaw in this line of argument. If I understand it correctly, the argument here posits that social mobility in the US is larger than in Europe because the US "is a very competitive society which rewards and punishes its members for the choices they make" while Europe is more of the "socialist forms of income redistribution, social safety nets" inclination.

But here's the contradiction. Since the 1970s, in eight years of Reagan and now five years of Bush, the US has gone through a process of drastic economic change in which what did exist in terms of income redistribution and safety nets was significantly deconstructed. From tax cuts focused particularly on the richest to stringent cuts on social programmes, the competition with its rewards and punishments has drastically increased. The Republican Bush I presidency and the Clinton era with its welfare reform hardly interrupted this process; if anything, they moved it further along.

So America is now much more still the way you posit it than thirty years ago.

Yet social mobility decreased.

How do you explain this contradiction?

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In the first place I don't believe social mobility here has significantly decreased at all. We are experiencing a continuing flood of immigrants who are starting up businesses of all kinds everywhere. Moreover these immigrants are increasingly distributing themselves across the country instead of concentrating in convenient places of entry.

It is true that to some extent Reagan did here what Thatcher did in Britain - sweep out a pile of ineffective social programs that subsidized the manipulative and the chislers at the expense of all the people, and an accompanying tribe of bureaucrats who stifled productive activity, intruded on peoples lives without reason or benefit, and dragged the economy down through regulation and high taxes. In both cases what was done was not so much secular change, as it was reform of failed systems. (The evidence strongly suggests that Germany and France would be a good deal better of if they could find (and elect) the equivalent of a Reagan or a Thatcher.

Moreover the changes to which you refer are within the noise level of historical patterns - they don't constitute an historic change in pattern at all, merely the reversal of some of the prior excesses of the Roosevelt and Johnson eras.

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Thats a weaker reply than I'd expected (which, in a way, is reassuring of course).

First, in re: to my point about the economic change that took place over the last twentyfive years in the US (notably under Reagan and Bush II), you wrote:

Quote:

what was done was not so much secular change, as it was reform of failed systems. [..] Moreover the changes to which you refer are within the noise level of historical patterns - they don't constitute an historic change in pattern at all, merely the reversal of some of the prior excesses of the Roosevelt and Johnson eras.

This is rather incredible. Remember, we are discussing an argument in which you posited the virtues, in terms of social mobility, of a system in which "a very competitive society rewards and punishes its members for the choices they make relatively more than does Europe". Now in terms of the change in rewards/punishment an American can expect for the life choices he makes, these again are the numbers: "In 1979-2000, the real income of the poorest fifth of American households rose by 6.4%, while that of the top fifth rose by 70% (and of the top 1% by 184%)."

In short, in twenty years' time, the divergence in financial reward for the productivity of your work (or the evaluation thereof) has multiplied by 1,5 times or even doubled, depending on what particular subset you look at. Thats hardly just noise, hardly just a marginal tinkering with the economic system.

Now, if the difference in competition between the US and Europe, in your view, explains a significant difference in socio-economic mobility, with the US the more mobile country, then such a drastic increase of the same competition within the US should be expected to have yielded a rather striking increase of social mobility there as well, no?

But instead, said social mobility has stalled, even decreased - at least, apparently, according to the research of Wysong, Perrucci and Wright, to The Economist, the NYT and the Wall Street Journal.

Georgeob1 wrote:

In the first place I don't believe social mobility here has significantly decreased at all.

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BBB
The increase in mobility was a deliberate result of corporate decisions largely during the Reagan era.

Do any of you recall corporate policy changes that required upper level employees to frequently transfer to accept promotions? It was so common that it had a negative effect on the social stability of communities.

Children were uprooted from their schools and friends. Family roots were disrupted. The usual pattern was that women who worked outside the home had to give up their jobs to follow their husbands transferring to a new location of their corporate employer.

I seem to recall that this disruptive policy was a deliberate tactic by corporations. I never understood the wisdom of this policy from a management point of view. Can anyone inform me?

BBB

I just found the following information that partially speaks to my question:

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nimh wrote:

Now in terms of the change in rewards/punishment an American can expect for the life choices he makes, these again are the numbers: "In 1979-2000, the real income of the poorest fifth of American households rose by 6.4%, while that of the top fifth rose by 70% (and of the top 1% by 184%)."

Since lots of poor people have immigrated to America between 1979 and 2000, and since social mobility is still quite high there, it isn't clear at all to which extent the poorest fifth of American households in 1979 are the same as the poorest fifth of American households in 2000. As a result, your number says little about financial rewards provided by the American system.

On a related note, America's high rate of immigration biases the comparison against it. A large number of poor people is immigrating to the USA from Latin America, the Philipines, and other poor countries. Because the US are more open to immigration today than they were in the 1970s, this technically increases the poverty rate in America over that time period. I don't know exactly how European immigration policies have changed over this time period, but in Germany they have certainly tightened. So, for an apples-to-apples comparison between America and Europe, you would have to include all the Africans who want to immigrate to Europe, but are rejected by Europe's inhumane immigration policies. Poor Mexicans in the US may not be doing well, but they are doing a hell of a lot better than middle class Africans who are forced to stay in Africa, where sensitive Europeans don't have to see them.

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nimh wrote:

Thats a weaker reply than I'd expected (which, in a way, is reassuring of course).

Nicely done! But I don't think it was weak at all.

Quote:

This is rather incredible. Remember, we are discussing an argument in which you posited the virtues, in terms of social mobility, of a system in which "a very competitive society rewards and punishes its members for the choices they make relatively more than does Europe". Now in terms of the change in rewards/punishment an American can expect for the life choices he makes, these again are the numbers: "In 1979-2000, the real income of the poorest fifth of American households rose by 6.4%, while that of the top fifth rose by 70% (and of the top 1% by 184%)."

In short, in twenty years' time, the divergence in financial reward for the productivity of your work (or the evaluation thereof) has multiplied by 1,5 times or even doubled, depending on what particular subset you look at. Thats hardly just noise, hardly just a marginal tinkering with the economic system.

Thomas has already noted that there is a difference between mobility and the economic gradient of incomes. Just on basic principles one can conclude that a higher gradient of incomes across the economic spectrum is an important motivator for the behaviors that lead to mobility, particularly in a nation with high immigration.

Quote:

Now, if the difference in competition between the US and Europe, in your view, explains a significant difference in socio-economic mobility, with the US the more mobile country, then such a drastic increase of the same competition within the US should be expected to have yielded a rather striking increase of social mobility there as well, no?

The relationship between competitiveness and economic mobility is close, but complex. One does not proceed or directly create the other. In the case of the U.S., both characteristics spring from the same source in the tradition (and urgent necessities) of the first colonists - a tradition which was largely embraced by successive waves of immigrants from across the world.

Quote:

But instead, said social mobility has stalled, even decreased - at least, apparently, according to the research of Wysong, Perrucci and Wright, to The Economist, the NYT and the Wall Street Journal.

Georgeob1 wrote:
In the first place I don't believe social mobility here has significantly decreased at all.

I am not familiar with the research you cite, and I am not sure on what time scale you are placing these findings. I don't believe that on any meaningful long-term scale our social mobility has yet changed significantly. I will concede that the declining average performance of our public schools is a negative factor in this area. Education increasingly is the determinor of one's eventual econoomic status. The rites of passage into the principal universities are here (as in Europe) a key determinant of one's future possibilities. Those with poor secondary school backgrounds are seriously disabled. I believe the remedy for this is the breakup of the government's bureaucratic monopoly on education through free choice and vouchers.

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THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM

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