Blog of Q's

“Technology, globalization and
unfettered markets tend to erode wages at the bottom and lift wages at
the top. But Americans have elected politicians who oppose using the
muscle of government to restrain the forces of widening inequality.
These politicians argue that lifting the minimum wage or requiring
employers to offer health insurance would do unacceptably large damage
to economic growth.

Despite the widespread belief that the U.S. remains a more mobile
society than Europe, economists and sociologists say that in recent
decades the typical child starting out in poverty in continental Europe
(or in Canada) has had a better chance at prosperity. Miles Corak, an
economist for Canada’s national statistical agency who edited a recent
Cambridge University Press book on mobility in Europe and North
America, tweaked dozens of studies of the U.S., Canada and European
countries to make them comparable. ‘The U.S. and Britain appear to
stand out as the least mobile societies among the rich countries
studied,’ he finds. France and Germany are somewhat more mobile than
the U.S.; Canada and the Nordic countries are much more so.

Even the University of Chicago’s Prof. Becker is changing his mind,
reluctantly. ‘I do believe that it’s still true if you come from a
modest background it’s easier to move ahead in the U.S. than
elsewhere,’ he says, ‘but the more data we get that doesn’t show that,
the more we have to accept the conclusions.'”