Re:Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its fo...
by pedrosorio on Sunday June 13, 2021 @04:14PM
(#27495956)
> In summary, America is good at allowing the poor to become middle class. It is less good at letting the middle class become exorbitantly rich, though not terribly so.
The common view is the opposite though: higher tax rates and lower entrepreneurship in Europe are assumed to put a damper on the middle class from amassing significant wealth. On the other hand, the US has significantly more billionaires per capita than most countries in Europe [1], and many of those are "self-made" (i.e. not generational wealth). What am I missing here?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
Re:Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its fo...
by tovej on Saturday June 12, 2021 @12:43PM
(#27485608)
"Among the worst" is a bad qualifier, I'll admit. Not least because it is vague. However, the US is still worse than Europe when it comes to social mobility.
Going back to the original argument that something in the US's tax policy or job markets makes the US perform better when it comes to upwards social mobility, I think we can definitely debunk that.
Compared with the cohort of European countries, America fairs poorly (though not excessively so).
The original claim, however, was that it fares "among the worst in the world." This is incorrect; it's roughly middle of the pack [1][2].
On the measure of the "number of generations it would take...those born to...the bottom 10% of the income distribution...to approach the mean in their society," America ties with Ireland, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Italy, Austria and Switzerland. It is ahead of France, Germany and Hungary. In summary, America is good at allowing the poor to become middle class. It is less good at letting the middle class become exorbitantly rich, though not terribly so.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-s...
[2] https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/1-5%20generations.png