Posted on 12/01/2011 1:04:28 AM PST by thecodont
There's nothing more American than going from rags to riches. Or so the image goes.
The reality, according to a recent study, is far less rosy.
The ability to go from poor to rich — or at least to climb out of poverty — has become much harder to do in the last three decades, according to an analysis by Wells Fargo Securities. The percentage of low-income people who moved up the economic ladder slowed sharply from 1980 to 2009, compared with the previous dozen years, the study found.
The drop in economic mobility, combined with recently declining government aid to the poor, has left many Americans with no way to dig themselves out of poverty.
"Those at the lower end of the income distribution are currently stuck between a rock and a hard place," the study said. "They do not have the economic mobility to improve their finances in the labor market, and government assistance helping them get by is now drying up."
[...]
The study was limited. It tracked only about 500 households, in part because of the lack of reliable data on specific households over extended periods of time. But Wells Fargo economists believe the sampling is representative of the broad population.
The study was prompted by the intense national debate over income inequality that in part spawned the Occupy Wall Street movement, with critics saying wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the richest Americans to the detriment of everyone else. A report by the Congressional Budget Office in October said after-tax income for the top 1% of U.S. households ballooned 275% from 1979 to 2007. The gain for the bottom one-fifth was 18%.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Every regulation the government piles on business, all the costs government piles on business and all the documents you must generate to comply with government makes starting your own business harder and harder year after year. If you have any success government taxes the hell out of you so instead of the money going back into the business it goes to government making it more difficult than ever to expand your business.
So in short government has been pulling up the ladder one rung at a time for decades making it harder and harder to actually succeed. And then the morons wonder why fewer people are able to breach the government gauntlet and succeed...
Econommic mobility works both ways.
It sure is becoming ever easier to slide down the ladder
welcome to obamas trickle down poverty
building up the middle class- by redistributing wealth from one upper class family at a time
.....a startling statistic isn't it?
CBO... hasn’t it been determined that they cook the books?
Then there’s slipping down from middle class to near poverty.
It’s way past time now to pull bambi and the wookie down into poverty.
Did they compare our stats to Europe, Africa, South America and the Middle East?
Fred Meijer just passed away last Friday. Head of the big box Meijer stores in the midwest. His father Hendrick came to America from Holland and started a grocery store in the ‘30’s depression. Fred died at 91 a multi-billionaire. If you read the story you realize that a business like this could not happen today. All the government regulations would prevent it.
...it would be, IF the bottom 20% of US households in 2007 were the same households that were at the bottom in 1979. I somehow doubt that is the case when one considers this country's immigration policies and (lack of) inforcement.
A far better and more enlightening statistic would be how many US households that were in the bottom 20% in 1979 had climbed up by 2007.
I call BS. The 12 years previous to 1980 were not a particularly strong economic period, and certainly not in comparison to the 80s, 90s and 2000s.
This seams like a use of selective statistics to back the idea that somehow the period of Reaganomics was not the prosperous time for our entire population. Our standards of living rose dramatically in this period. The ‘poor’ live a life in the later parts of this period that would be envious to the middle class of the 1950s and before. The income of the very tippy top grew more, but that is not relevant to the rest. It is not a zero sum game.
Did not realize that. Thanks for the information as I usually drive past a local Walmart to go to the trouble to shop at my local Meijers.
Of course, government aid does nothing to help people climb out of poverty. That, coupled with poverty-promoting attitudes reinforced from every angle--schools, government, politicians, neighborhoods--help to ensure that people have little incentive (all of their needs are provided for) to try to better their lives.
The illegal Mexicans seem to be doing well.
“The drop in economic mobility, combined with recently declining government aid to the poor, has left many Americans with no way to dig themselves out of poverty.”
So, as we have grown government, it is harder for individual prosperity. Who could have seen that coming? As a result, we should grow government to combat this problem......
With Obama there is no hope for change.
“.....a startling statistic isn’t it?”
It is a half truth. What they don’t mention is the percentag of that upper 1% that is 1st generation and the % of the bottome 5th that remained in the bottom for that full time period being discussed.
All depends what the definition of “IS”, is.
I think the study is a piece of dog dump.
The Prime Rate of interest in 1979 was as high as 15.25% and in 1980 21.50%;
The inflation for 1979 was 10.35% and 11.22% for 1980.
Major reasons for Reagan election.
All part of the plan. They want people feeling hopeless, trapped and desperate so they will then be open to extremist movements like OWS.
While this article may be factually accurate it misses the point regarding the root cause of diminished upward mobility. I contend that as we slide more and more into socialism the potential for individual opportunity diminishes with each dollar that is redistributed. Imagine having all of those dollars that the government has confiscated from enterprising people over the past thirty years back in their hands. Instead we have an almost permanent underclass that is dependent upon the money that would have or could have been the ticket out of middle class status for so many.
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