Free Republic

America used to be a land with great upward social mobility, but isn't anymore. America never was a land with great upward social mobility. Which do you believe? Keep in mind that your answer will have significant implications for public policy. Most politicians, of both right and left, favor the first statement. Conservatives say big government is stifling people's chances to move upward. Barack Obama says growing inequality of wealth is holding people down. But Gregory Clark, British-born economist at the University of California, Davis, says they're both wrong. The second statement is correct, he argues in his new book...

On Memorial Day, tears were shed as programs across the country honored and prayed for those men and women who sacrificed their dreams in order that we might live out our own. Some Americans who had lost a son or daughter, a spouse, or a parent never got to see their loved one reach their full potential. Those soldiers who died left their dreams in their graves. Their loss is made even worse by an administration that is doing all it can to kill the dreams of Americans they fought to preserve. President Obama's plan for creating jobs takes more...

Nick Clegg is to make an explosive attack on British universities as ‘instruments of social segregation’ as he orders them to stop taking so many middle-class students. The Deputy Prime Minister will this week insist that top institutions must ‘throw open their doors’ and lower their entrance requirements for the less well-off.

It’s easy for scholars to study statistics, and then provide solutions to change those numbers. Scholars perform massive amounts of research, but the field reporting is left to journalists. Recently, The Brookings Institution sponsored a panel to discuss policies that would aid in educating low-income children. After the panel had completed, four journalists took the stage to provide analysis on the presented ideas. The journalistic panel consisted of Adrian Wooldridge, of The Economist, Hugh Price, Senior Fellow of The Brookings Institution, Sebastian Mallaby, of The Washington Post, and David Wessel, of The Wall Street Journal; all four of whom have...

The fine people at The Brookings Institution are concerned; they are concerned with the inequality in income, the lack of opportunity in America, and the growing poverty rate. Furthermore, Isabel Sawhill, Co-Director of Center on Children and Families, is stupefied that the public doesn’t care more about these statistics, “The public in this country seems reasonably comfortable with the large degree of poverty and inequality.” Evidence? Simply, we haven’t done as much as other countries; America is just not European enough. This disinterest has led to a decline in opportunity and social mobility. Without opportunity an individual cannot secure the...

Has a fairer America also become an America with less social mobility? That is the uncomfortable question raised by John Parker's long American survey in The Economist last month. "A decline in social mobility would run counter to Americans' deepest beliefs about their country," Parker writes. "Unfortunately, that is what seems to be happening. Class is reappearing in a new form." This was the conclusion, as well, of a recent series of articles in The New York Times -- although, as the Times and Parker both note, polls show that Americans think their chances of moving up are better than...

In an earlier era, Americans who didn’t strike it rich at home could take Horace Greeley’s advice to “Go West” for new opportunities to reinvent their lives. World War II gave way to another kind of mobility. The GI Bill and an end to legal segregation ushered in “a period when people from poor backgrounds were able to get a college education, buy a home and start a business,” said New York University wealth expert Edward Wolff. These days, various new studies suggest that the recipe for financial success may depend more on having successful parents than pulling yourself up...

OP-ED COLUMNIST In his Inaugural Address President Bush embraced the grandest theme of American foreign policy - the advance of freedom around the world. Now that attention is turning to the State of the Union address, it would be nice if he would devote himself as passionately to the grandest theme of domestic policy - social mobility. The United States is a country based on the idea that a person's birth does not determine his or her destiny. Our favorite stories involve immigrants climbing from obscurity to success. Our amazing work ethic is predicated on the assumption that enterprise and...