Upward Mobility is Now a Myth in America

For many Americans it has been taken as gospel that upward mobility is the norm in America and that each generation can expect to achieve a higher status than that of their parents.  Perhaps that was true once upon at time, but it is no longer the case except in increasingly rare instances.  Indeed, a number of studies have found that Europe - derided as "Old Europe" by many "conservatives" - offers younger generations more chances at upward mobility than can now be anticipated in America. Now, downward mobility is what terrifies even middle class and upper middle class families. What happened?  A number of things, not the least of which has been decades of Republican warfare against labor unions, state right to work laws, and policies that enable big corporations to reap huge profits while workers are treated as disposable and easily replaceable trash.  Wages have stagnated even as the cost of living has soared.  Hardest impacted are Milennials who even with college degrees often cannot secure high paying jobs.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the growing myth of upward social mobility in today's America.  Here are some highlights:

It’s an axiom among many Americans that each future generation will live better than its predecessor. New technologies, greater efficiencies and a can-do spirit will reward us with higher living standards. There might be periodic stumbles, but the long-term trajectory is up. And the people most guaranteed to enjoy this bountiful future are the children of today’s upper-middle class.

That’s the conventional wisdom. Ditch it.

If you are an upper-middle-class parent, as I am, you must have noticed that the real world isn’t playing according to script. Among many young Americans, there is downward mobility. The children aren’t achieving what they (and their parents) expected. Even when they have (and many have), the gains could be eroded in the future. The trajectory is not inevitably up. Parents worry about their children’s fate.

Partly, this reflects the memory of the 2007-2009 Great Recession and its huge job losses. But it’s more than that. Compared with their elders, many younger Americans are doing worse. Despite today’s strong economy, they’re falling behind.

 

We know this from an important study by Raj Chetty and fellow economists from Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley.  . . . .

 

What they reported is fascinating. About 90 percent of children born in 1940 ultimately exceeded their parents’ incomes. That is, almost everybody. . . . . However, for children born in 1970, only 61 percent earned more than their parents, and for those born in 1980, only 50 percent did.

 

That’s a sea change. It suggests that we’re already at the point where many in the present and next generations of younger Americans won’t live as well as their predecessors. If current trends continue, that certainly will be true.

You can see the consequences among millennials, those born from 1981 to 1996. Their squeezed incomes have forced them to rearrange their lives. They’re marrying later, buying homes later, having children later and — to save money — living longer with their parents. What’s also surprising is that the biggest losers seem to be the children of the middle and upper-middle classes, precisely those who are supposedly most protected against adverse changes, . . . .

“This seems to have become steadily harder to achieve for those born into middle-class families in particular from 1950 onward.”

Their explanation is simple. Those in middle and upper-middle classes have more to lose than, say, the poor. The incomes of the poor can’t drop much lower; indeed, with small gains, they can pass their parents’.

The result: The higher the parents’ incomes, the less likely that their children will match them. This is even true for the richest 1 percent of families, says economist Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute.

Just what has caused the slowdown in incomes is a tangled tale with the usual suspects: poor schools that produce poor workers; income inequality that stifles consumption spending; weak housing construction; inadequate innovation;  . . . .

[T]he broad trends seem reliable. The paradox is apparent. Today’s strong economy notwithstanding, there’s an underlying worry about the future.

Economic anxiety is increasingly an equal-opportunity affliction. No one can escape it. The poor worry about staying poor. The lower-middle class worries about paying bills or losing jobs. Now upper-middle class parents have joined the crowd, because their own well-being is often judged by how well their children are doing. That is the stubborn source of their angst.

5 Signs That We Are Not Living in a Post-Racial Society

Despite the claims by some - typically white pundits who love to pontificate and hear their own voices - that America has transformed itself into a post racial society, the truth is that racism remains alive and well.  Indeed, the Republican Party and falsely named "Christian" family values organizations work diligently to keep it alive and to whip up fears among angry aging whites who are terrified of losing their so-called white privilege.  One need look no further than Ferguson, Missouri or sit a a criminal courtroom to see that minorities are not treated the same as their white counterparts.  A piece in Salon lays out additional signs that the pundit class has their heads up their proverbial ass.  Here are highlights:

In the wake of the Ferguson shooting, a recent Pew poll finds that 47 percent of whites believe that “race is getting more attention than it deserves,” with regards to the death of Michael Brown, while only 18 percent of African-Americans feel the same. Meanwhile, a similar Pew study found that whites are far less likely to see discrimination in the treatment blacks receive by the education system, the courts and hospitals. Such views are held by many Americans, who believe that “blacks are mostly responsible for their own condition.” Police killings of unarmed blacks are certainly the most visible manifestation of systemic racism, but data show that racism still manifests itself frequently in everyday life.

In America, race determines not just where someone lives and what school he or she attends, it affects the very air we breathe. Although many whites wish to believe we live in a “post-racial” society, race appears not just in overt discrimination but in subtle structural factors.

[A] cursory examination of major structural racial problems can give us a feeling for how far we still have to go

.

1) Education

Education is an important key to fostering upward mobility and alleviating inequality. However, schools today are becoming more segregated, rather than less segregated. At the peak of integration, 44 percent of black Southern students attended majority white schools. Today, only 23 percent do. This is particularly worrying because recent research by Rucker C. Johnson finds that school desegregation benefited black students, because it “significantly increased both educational and occupational attainments, college quality and adult earnings, reduced the probability of incarceration, and improved adult health status.” . . . At the college level, the situation is little better. 

2) Wealth

There is a large racial wealth gap between blacks and whites in America, partially driven by income but exacerbated by racially biased housing policies (which will be examined below). A recent research brief by the Institution on Assets and Social Policy finds that the wealth gap between white families and African-Americans has tripled between 1984 and 2009. The recession has only exacerbated the gap, with whites losing 11 percent of their wealth between 2007 and 2010, while blacks lost 31 percent and Hispanics 44 percent.

3) Job Markets

Unemployment is particularly high among African-Americans, the result of both explicit discrimination and occupational segregation. . . . Occupational segregation, or the delegation of blacks to jobs with low upward mobility and wages, is rife.. . . . People of color are far more likely to rely on public infrastructure, and therefore suffer from cuts to public transportation. Decades of housing segregation have trapped African-Americans in jobless areas with badly understaffed schools.

4) Upward Mobility

Possibly the defining American attribute is the dream of upward mobility. Sadly, this tends to be more farce that fact — America lags behind other developed countries in measures of upward mobility. But recent research by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emmanuel Saez, shows that levels of upward mobility vary across the country — and is strongly predicted by income inequality and racial segregation. . . . . Specifically, they note the importance of segregation, “areas that are more residentially segregated by race and income have lower levels of mobility.”

5) The War on Drugs

The socioeconomic realities discussed above cannot be divorced from the war on drugs: It is a war that is primarily fought against people of color in the country. One in 12 working-age African-American men is incarcerated; and while whites and blacks use and sell drugs at similar rates, African-Americans comprise 74 percent of those imprisoned for drug possession.

The most disturbing fact is that in almost all of these areas, we have actually seen previous progress eroded, even while we proclaim ourselves a post-racial society. It’s time to take an honest look at race in America. We probably won’t enjoy it. But we need it.

What ultimately drives racism is the inability of people - usually white conservative Christians - to see anyone who is different be it in terms of skin color, national origin or sexual orientation, as equally human.

Michelle Obama's Devatating Speech

Last night, Michelle Obama's speech did a masterful job of highlighting the difference between the GOP and Democrat Party views of social justice and moving the country and all Americans forward.  What was masterful was the way that she repeatedly slammed to GOP and Mitt Romney without ever uttering Romney's name.  By the end of her speech, it was obvious how out of touch Mitt Romney - and Ann Romney - and Paul Ryan are coming from wealthy families and that the GOP wants to take the country back to a time when a handful of the very wealthy lived like kings and most everyone else struggled to merely survive.  A Washington Post column lays out how her speech was so effective.  Here are highlights:

The most devastating attack on Mitt Romney at Tuesday’s Democratic Convention came from Michelle Obama, who did not mention Romney’s name and said not a single cross thing about him.

She devastated him by implication. If Romney was the son of privilege, she and her husband were anything but. What she said directly is that Barack Obama understands people who are struggling. What she didn’t have to say is Mitt Romney doesn’t.

As a general matter, her speech was a big hit: good enough that even Fox News was kind to her. But the specific stories — about her father working through the pain of multiple sclerosis, about the debts she and her husband accumulated from college — served a powerful campaign purpose. A speech that was thoroughly apolitical on the surface carried multiple political messages, linking a very traditional message about parenting with a call for social justice.

Among the many messages here: Her dad was awesome; he was also a traditional father; and, more broadly, people who receive government aid can be, usually are, very responsible citizens.

Oh yes, and she also said that for husband, “success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” Did any other presidential candidate come to mind as perhaps having a contrasting approach? Michelle Obama was much too polite to say. She didn’t have to.

Another Washington Post carried a similar theme.  Here are a few excerpts: 

It’s not that Michelle Obama said anything about Mitt Romney. She didn’t even mention his name. Not once. But in one section of her lively and well-delivered primetime speech to the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, line after line was weighted with biting implications about Romney’s character – and his suitability to serve as president.

She argued that presidents makes hard calls by referring to their values, and Barack Obama has the ones you want. They also happen to be values that Romney isn’t widely reputed to hold,

Michelle Obama wasn’t just saying that her husband is like you. She was implying that Romney is not like you. 

Though this was just one section of a much larger address, the politics of this rhetorical ballet make some sense – polls show that one of the president’s greatest assets is that Americans like him personally, and that one of Romney’s greatest weaknesses is that Americans don’t like him so much.

Please don't think I am saying that Mitt and Ann Romney and Paul Ryan are bad people.  I just firmly believe that they are not the right people to be leading this nation.  Social mobility is dropping in America while increasing elsewhere, yet this individuals and their policies would make matters worse.  Millions of Americans are struggling and going without, yet their policies would take from the working poor and the middle class.  This isn't the America that I believe in.     Moreover, it's not consistent with the Gospel message, yet the GOP falsely wraps itself in religiosity.