My query is does the same apply to individual behavior that is well known for causing downward mobility and is that not just as important a caution as his thesis? Not finishing school, doing drugs, having children out of wedlock have all shown to be deleterious to social advancement and even social stability.
My second query would be about how is he measuring and against what status? We have emphatic real-world demonstrations from legal and illegal immigration as to the desirability of American society over other nations. We have multiple testimony from Europeans as to how they moved here in order to live better.
In short, I'm suspicious that this is a form a Marxian argument that you cannot better yourself, so why try?
My American dream is to be paid $750k to teach 2 courses, have a three month vacation and write nonsense like this.
My father was a VERY bad man and his brothers smashed his head in and cut him to ribbons when I was 9. My mother became a hard-core IV drug addict. I was running the streets unsupervised starting at age 10. I made uncountable trillions of mistakes. America, being the closest thing to heaven you could possibly dream of, short of heaven itself, saved me. AMERICA saved me. Had I been born ANYWHERE else, I’d have been dead, in the joint, or living on the street, eating out of garbage cans.
I have a magnificent home, wife, kids, wealth, security, happiness, retirement funds. I live in a manner that Louis the Fourteenth could only dream of. I have heat and AC, and fresh food from all corners of the globe in every season of the year, and it is so cheap as to be scarecly believed. I have interests and hobbies and the time and money to indulge them. I can effortlessly and cheaply summon to my fingertips in mere seconds any one of 10,000,000 of the worlds’s books, and I could go on for the next 10 days writing of Americas magnificence and not even scratch the surface.
The American dream is STILL heaven here on Earth, though many are indeed trying to destroy it.
The American Dream is much harder with dimoKKKRATS in charge.
And, hopefully, it will be said, “There Is No Marxist Dream”, in the very near future.
(Maybe all these Progressive psychos will move to Cuba to get their dose of utopia.)
IMHO
Message: it’s hopeless to better yourself, so best to suck off the government teat. Then we’d have the ideal society with everybody in poverty except the apparatchiks who lord over us.
Seems to me that system has been tried many times in many places with the same predictable outcome.
It’s an American dream
Includes Indians too.
100 years of no American dream?
This fool has sat around pontificating for years and will soon enjoy a well-paid retirement, what’s his beef, considering he’s an underpaid teacher?
How did my father emigrate from Italy with nothing at the age of 11, learn English, fight a war, get a degree, start a business at 27 and become successful?
And how did I go from living on peanut butter in a slum at 30 to retiring in financial independence at 60?
How did some of my friends do the same thing in different areas of work? They all did it on their own, by busting their asses for years, that’s how.
My family has lived the American dream for two generations. This professor doesn’t know how it works.
A UC Davis economics professorhas determined there is no American Dream.
Certainly, not after being taught by you.
I thank God my life is an example against this conclusion.
I think a much more important question than the socioeconomic mobility question, is the question of whether the spirituality and meaningfulness of people's lives, and the kindness and morality of society progress from generation to generation.
I think there is a direction to history, and we are making progress - but in fits and starts, with many occasions when we lose part of what we've gained. There is less barbarism in the world than 4 centuries ago, but there is still barbarism in the world.
We have a world in which people work in soup kitchens, give charitably to those less fortunate, adopt children, and in which the concepts of self-determinism/freedom, and equality under God (or the law) are widely accepted (unfortunately far from universally accepted).
We also, however, live in a world in which people still behead other people, in which slavery still exists, in which moral relativism is in many places eroding the spirit, and in which we are still only a few events away from a world-wide conflagration that could kill billions. IMHO, whether or not our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will successively live in a world with less of these destructive things is the more important question, far beyond whether or not they will have a superior personal economic status.
1) “closely related”. Well, of course! Is “related” mean “causes”? Why, even Professor DingleBerry won’t go that far.
2) What did Dr. DingleBerry’s parents do? His grandparents? Funny that he didn’t bring up his own background to prove his point...
1) “closely related”. Well, of course! Is “related” mean “causes”? Why, even Professor DingleBerry won’t go that far.
2) What did Dr. DingleBerry’s parents do? His grandparents? Funny that he didn’t bring up his own background to prove his point...
Contrary to the article, Clark’s work looked at more than the last 100 years and in several countries.
He found that both upward and downward mobility occur, but only very slowly, and that public policy and social institutions don’t have much affect. It’s very solid stuff.
What else do you expect from another academic whore?
There’s been too much social mobility instead of mobility from useful production, useful production having been outlawed with regulations by the social mobile. “Social,” although commonly preferred in hiring, doesn’t produce. The result is eventual default.
UC Davis is a second rate university that no one would even know existed if it wasn’t for its Ag department and veterinarian school.
Is the professor’s a “bell curve” based point?
Who wants to bet the ‘professor’ is a white liberal elite or a black shill for white liberal elites?
This 2 min. youtube video is profound.
It compares the behavior of Black Friday shoppers from 1983 to today.
Imagine what life will be like in thirty years, God help us.
Black Friday 1983 vs. Today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=623Oga9NPvE
I believe that:
1. being a military veteran,
2. taking what I learned in the military, and having advanced myself using that education, training and knowledge, to have been: an assistant shop chief for an aircraft radar maintenance shop; an R&D-Production Tech for a ship-mounted defense system; a DoD Quality guy at an aerospace manufacturer when Shuttle parts were being produced; the Office Administrator for the Census2000 - the FIRST totally automated Census program,
3. being a ‘guest columnist’ for 6 years for the regional newspaper,
are all portions of my american Dream realized.
Now, another portion or two are about to be realized, and they are:
1. to rid the nation of a Communist, muslim alimentary canal kisser,
2. to rid the education system of such inbred morons, as the original author of this piece about the American Dream.
Long Live The Republic!