News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen. Parent comment

Re:As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity ha... by jandrewrogers on Saturday June 12, 2021 @07:14PM (#27488240)
Anecdotally, it feels true. I, like many Americans, know an enormous number of immigrants and poor people that moved into the middle and upper-middle class through hard work and discipline. There is still plenty of opportunity to do that US if you apply yourself. Economic mobility is very high in the US (which is distinct from social mobility).

When I've worked in Europe, it has always been evident that this is much harder to achieve there for poor people and immigrants. The entire social system is setup to limit the ability of ambitious people to rise above whatever station they were born into in a way that isn't really a thing in the US. This contributes to why engineering wages are relatively low in Europe.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity ha... by zokula on Saturday June 12, 2021 @08:13PM (#27488576)
> Economic mobility is very high in the US

Not so much. The U.S. is not even in the top 10 of countries for Economic mobility.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity ha... by jandrewrogers on Saturday June 12, 2021 @09:39PM (#27489049)
The US ranks very high in terms of absolute mobility. Measures of relative mobility are only comparable between countries if they have similar wage compression curves, which is also partially a function of country size. US wages are much less compressed than in Europe -- see also: engineering wages -- so they aren't meaningfully comparable in relative terms.

Given two countries with the same median wage (PPP), a 20k increase in income in one country may be relatively "economically mobile" and a 40k increase in income in the other is not, even though the income increase is much larger in real terms. When average people talk about economic mobility, they mean the second case; using relative mobility is misleading.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity ha... by IggleSniggle on Saturday June 12, 2021 @07:59PM (#27488504)
“Cutting down the tall poppy”
[ Parent | on HN ]