MIT economist aims to move the inequality discussion beyond the “1 percent.”

Re:MIT economist aims to move the inequality discussion beyo... by yodsanklai on Saturday May 31, 2014 @04:36PM (#7827176)

> Income mobility in the US hasn't changed. This is the strongest counterargument to complaints about income inequality leading to unfairness I am aware of.

It's not because it hasn't changed that it's fair and can't be improved.

> America was a country where opportunity made it so you could become wealthy.

"Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_...

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Re:MIT economist aims to move the inequality discussion beyo... by mynewwork on Monday June 02, 2014 @10:54AM (#7833818)

The studies you're referencing are very misleading. Many countries have much lower variation in income than the US. Imagine two normal curves, but one (the US) is very flattened and one (northern Europe) with a sharp peak.

In the US moving from X to X+Y might only push you a few percent higher in rank, there are still a lot of people in the fat tails on both sides, while the same change in Scandinavia might represent a substantial rank change.

Perhaps the problem isn't that it's hard to move up in the US, the problem is that in northern Europe it's impossible to escape the rat race.

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