Apparently, that's not actually the case, and it's questionable if it ever was. As recently reported on Marketplace, according to research conducted by Pew's Economic Mobility Project:
What's this mean? It means that your economic future looks pretty much the same as your father's was. Whether you started at the bottom or the top of the economic ladder, you'll probably stay there.(the project) has calculated that about 60 percent of Americans whose fathers’ incomes were in the top fifth, stay in the top two-fifths themselves. And the same is true at the bottom. About 65 percent of those from the bottom fifth don't make it past the bottom two-fifths by the time they're adults.
What could be worse than that? Another researcher has compared the economic mobility, the ability to change your economic status, of Americans and citizens of other developed countries. Guess what? Our belief that we're better off than others in our ability to move up the ladder is unfounded as well
Miles Corak is an economist at the University of Ottawa. He's compared the U.S. to other rich countries, and found that Americans have less mobility across generations than Canada, Australia, and most of Europe.I find this research very disturbing, both from the standpoint that our children seem to be trapped in whatever economic rung of the ladder that their parents occupy (of course, it's not so much "trapped" if you're nearer the top rung), as well as the realization that the United States, land of opportunity, offers less economic opportunity than most of Europe.
Has our "future" changed or was it an illusion all along?
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2 comments:
No, it wasn't an illusion. In fact, the situation we have now is pretty much exactly what Jefferson and many of the "founding fathers" feared.
It's fascinating that our perception of reality and reality as it exists are so bizarrely disconnected. Americans seem to be very adept at perceiving what we wish to see...
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