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In a sign of the fading American Dream, 92 percent of children born in 1940 earned more than their parents, but only half of those born in 1984 can say the same, researchers said Monday. Greater inequality in the distribution of growth is largely to blame, said the findings in the US journal Science. "Children's prospects of earning more than their parents have faded over the past half century in the United States," said the study, led by Raj Chetty of Stanford University. "Absolute income mobility has fallen across the entire income distribution, with the largest declines for families in the middle class."
Since little data exists linking children to their parents in terms of economic performance, researchers combined US census data with tax records, adjusting for inflation and other confounding variables. They found the sharpest declines in income in the industrial Midwest, including states like Indiana and Illinois. "The smallest declines occurred in states such as Massachusetts, New York and Montana," said the study.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:13AM (27 children)
How do you think it happened? New guy comes in and promises golden rainbows in the midst of doom-and-gloom, while the other candidate is the same as the previous guy.
PS If anybody is leaving the US, can we exchange citizenship or something? America still better than the other hellholes, by a huge margin.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:17AM (11 children)
... in the midst of doom-and-gloom
That's what I am asking though - is it actually doom and gloom in the US at the moment (moment being the last say 1-2 years or longer) or is there still that pervasive belief that it is the best place in the world? I am just curious.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:28AM
I guess it depends on your occupation, if you're blue collar, it's been doom and gloom since the 70s.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:32AM
It's been doom and terror for the past 16 years. They hate us for our freedoms to drive an Uber and be poor! Support the troops in our designated overseas warzones.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:58AM (5 children)
It is the best place in the world only if you value standard of living (not relative wealth, actual standard of living) and liberty. If those don't matter to you, you're probably better off elsewhere.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:30AM (4 children)
Yes as an American I'm aware of my standard of living. No jobs, no healthcare, crumbling roads, library hours dwindling, museum admission prices skyrocketing, bus drivers too apathetic to stop at bus stops. And wherever I go I see people spitting on the street. I hate America as much as the next American but let me tell you, the one thing I won't do is spit on the street.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:26AM (3 children)
S'funny, the jobs numbers have done nothing but increase since Obama left office and you lot were touting his "recovery" every chance you got. Oh, I get it, reality only exists when it fits your narrative.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @04:07PM
Troll troll troll, no opinions of substance, troll troll troll
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 26 2017, @04:32PM
:-) I think you're looking at last year's numbers. Not that it makes much difference since the jobs being offered are hardly what anybody would call 'upwardly mobile', or even anything close to being stable, just two of the hallmarks of a civilized society.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:05PM
The labor non-participation rate (people who want a job and can't find one) remains at 23 percent, same as it's been for years.
Anything else is numbers games.
(Thanks for the "improved" counting method, Slick Willie.)
Meanwhile, Trump has claimed to have saved jobs, but anything that has happened in the job market since January 20, 2017 had been planned for many months before that date.
Trump has made exactly zero difference in unemployment so far.
He has gotten zero legislation passed and even his anti-Proletariat executive orders have been negated by courts.
...which is not to say that the results on the job front would be any different with Hillary.
What's needed in USA is a program to turn workers into worker-owners e.g. Italy's Marcora Law. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:41PM (2 children)
The two are (surprisingly) not mutually exclusive. Americans are continuously concerned about economic issues (well, it comes and goes in waves a few times each generation), but the pervasive belief in American exceptionalism is pretty much unquestioned for many folks. Thus, while expressing belief that politicians, big business, and even the entire government, etc. are failing most people, they will fight anyone who dares to say America is no longer "the greatest country in the world." It's a very odd pairing of beliefs, but the American jingoism isn't about logic.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @03:27PM (1 child)
The constitutional freedom to speech is quite different from many other countries. Something that various other countries like Canada [wikipedia.org], Germany [wikipedia.org] etc indirectly undermines. In Britain various companies and (rich) people (ab)uses slander laws to silence criticism.
Free enterprise is perhaps also something unique and the right to bear arms. One has however to keep in mind that were important in 1788 may not be so in 2017 ..!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:27PM
Free enterprise is perhaps also something unique
You're gonna have to explain that one.
Specific examples of places to the contrary of which you are aware would be useful.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:46AM (14 children)
Bullshit false equivalence.
Democrats hold the line on inequality because that's all you can hope to do in 4 or 8 years. Then the GOP gets in there and makes things worse, every time, and people get fed up. Then Democrats get in and stem the tide of rising inequality while undoing the damage done by the previous 4 or 8 years. They can't turn the graph around because 8 years isn't enough time, so people change their minds again and elect the same people who fucked them last time. Thus we end up slowly trending downward.
Democrats do what we can, but when the rubes keep electing movie stars and game show hosts every other decade it's hard to sustain progress. Ironically the "liberal" states always weather the storm better and so blue states prosper on average while the lowest scoring states on every measure all have solid Republican governments.
Enjoying your obesity, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, diabetes, and early death, Mississippi? Elect some more Republicans, that'll cure what ails you.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:55AM (4 children)
It's truly sad to think that you actually believe that. "How do you know when a politician is lying? His lips are moving." may be a joke but it's also a statistical fact. Aside from brief moments of altruism after Thanksgiving dinner when they're too stuffed to scheme, not a one of them ever stops thinking of being reelected or scheming up more money long enough to give one single fuck about you or me.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:29AM (3 children)
Your nihilism is tedious.
Just because you are a social retard doesn't mean everybody else is.
If you have half a brain you'd realize your own ignorance and work to figure out why you so utterly suck at understanding people.
But that takes work and humility. So instead you take the easy out and just lie to yourself that you are a genius and everyone else are ignorant fools.
Despite the fact that you've never done one socially relevant thing in your life. Everybody else who has, they're the fools.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:20AM (1 child)
You should let go of all that hatred you've got festering there in yourself. It's going to make you nothing but miserable until you do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:23PM
Copypasta: TMB he has a malfunctioning brain.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:32AM
Yes, Alex, I'd like to take the assinine response for $2000!
What is "a pathetic response to a truth?"
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:19PM
Oh, come on, W wasn't a movie star or a game show host, he was a spoiled rich and powerful frat boy - just like all the rubes wish they were.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 26 2017, @03:04PM (7 children)
Democrats' main job seems to be make Republican bullshit, the new normal. For example, globalism is just wonderful, until regular people might want to use such a system. 13 Democrats who helped kill Bernie Sanders' bill to allow Americans to buy drugs in Canada: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/12/cory-booker-joins-senate-republicans-to-kill-measure-to-import-cheaper-medicine-from-canada/ [theintercept.com]
In addition, look at how it took Democrat administrations to pass Nixon's healthcare plan, excuse torture, expand and extend drone bombing with countries at which we aren't at war, get NAFTA and the slew of other trade agreements passed, unchain banksters from regulations, kill welfare, expand the prison population, give us due process free execution based on secret legal memos as an expansion of GWB's Gitmo policy -- seriously, it seems like Democrats' main job is looking at the very worst the GOP has to offer, giving it a polish and passing it, so that we start the whole process over with even crazier stuff.
You can take your nostalgia for what the Democrats might have been in the 60s and 70s, and shove it straight down your warmongering, Wall Street coddling, job crushing, Constitution destroying, lying gob. Democrats: the Effective Republicans.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @03:31PM (1 child)
Perhaps this is because Democrats has to collect funding unlike Republicans that may be rich from the start. And so whoever holds the money bag sets the agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:19PM
The maximum anyone can give to a primary campaign is $2700.
Bernie got some donors who hit the limit [google.com] but his average donation was 0.01 of that. [google.com]
In chasing mega-donors, the Elite Blues have lost their claim to being "The party of the people".
That goes back to their loss in 1972.
They have been Republican-Lite since then.
They are beholding to the rich folks they pursue to get money, so workers are left out in the cold.
...and Hillary outspent Trump 2:1 and still lost.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday April 26 2017, @03:38PM (4 children)
I agree with you more than you probably realize. The last good Democratic President IMO was Carter, who has been the victim of a massive and slanderous campaign of historical revisionism. After that the Clintons sold out this party to Wall Street and abandoned the white working class, who are natural Democrats.
But HRC was still the better choice last election.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 26 2017, @04:39PM (3 children)
No. HRC was the worst choice because it would cement the Clinton wing for decades. With her loss it has given the Democrats a chance to reform itself. Whether they'll embrace that chance remains to be seen, but it doesn't appear that they will, which will necessitate additional defeats until they get it.
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:10PM (2 children)
I understand the logic of thinking this way, I just believe the price we had to pay (Trump) is too high.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:18PM
Not only is hemocyanin correct, he's not alone. [google.com]
4 (or, $DEITY forbid, 8) more years of Democrat elites and their Neoliberalism would have done no good for Joe Average.
It's worth noting that about half of the nitwits who voted for Trump^W^W against Hillary now have buyer's remorse.
That said, the first thing the Blue Elites did after losing the presidency and a bunch of down-ticket races was elect Nancy Pelosi (a Neoliberal) as House Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer (a Neoliberal) as Senate Minority Leader, and Tom Perez (a Neoliberal) as DNC Chairman.
Clearly, the incumbent Blues have learned nothing.
The 2018 midterm elections are a chance for The Blues to take back the House and Senate.
Progressive Democrats must do what The Tea Party did and take over local congressional districts and, once inside the structure, get non-Neoliberals nominated and elected.
As he has repeatedly noted on The Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Ralph says it only takes 3 percent in a congressional district getting involved to make big changes happen.
After that threshold has been reached, folks by the dozen see the light and get on board.
If rank-and-file Blues continue to allow Neoliberals on their ticket, The Blues will continue to lose elections.
Wanna see better electoral results? BE THE CHANGE.
The alternative way to beat the Reds is to launch a third party and gain enough momentum to win in 19 months.
Five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader thinks that's a daunting task.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:54AM
Well, with any hope the Republicans will also reform themselves thanks to Trump. Whether they can do that or just continue to tear themselves apart is yet to be seen.
Electing Clinton would have changed absolutely nothing.