At the risk of being called "Unamerican" I have no desire to be rich.

The prospect of devoting copious amounts of my brief time on the planet chasing after another dollar, toiling at some company at subsistence wages making some rich pig richer while chasing the Dream of one day rising to CEO and running the whole joint seems like an absurd fairy tale.

Many people choose to chase the Dream. In fantasy worlds many people live lives of wealth and comfort with the admiration and respect of all, drive faster cars, live in great mansions and are impossibly slim, good looking and sexy as hell.

But here in the real world, you can play by the rules, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, put your nose to the grindstone (dumbest. cliche. EVER.) and fail anyway. Fail spectacularly. Fall so far of the mark it's as if you had not even tried.

But hey, that's the breaks of the game. Next time try harder. Fail better. Thanks for playing.

I'm not trying to hear that noise.

If is what drives upward mobility and status and success in this society then most of are destined to come up just a bit short of achieving our goals.
We will exchange our dreams for a certain amount of assured comfort. We'll be satisfied with a gold American Express card because the black AmEx is beyond our ways and means.

If there is class division in America (and I believe that there is) then it's directed from the top down rather than the bottom up. We are thankful for the poor and the less successful members of society because they remind us of where we don't want to be or go back to.

Bucket said earlier that a previous statement of mine reeked of "populism." The definition of populism is A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite , so thanks for the compliment!

Populism is infinitely preferable than that of "elitism" which is defined as
The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.

And frankly, all this looking down our noses at people who work for McDonald's or other service economy gigs smacks of elitism at its worst. America would work far better with fewer millionaires and more fairly compensated workers. Don't knock McDonald's. Yeah, there's a LOT wrong with their business practices and Mickey D's has contributed quite a bit to the obesity epidemic, but it's a job that almost anyone can get, if not necessarily do.

Even at McDonald's there are some basic skills required. If you took a white collar professional and told him or her to spend a week working the lunch hour rush at a fast food joint many of them wouldn't last a day.

I see nothing wrong with someone who walks in a McDonald's and works there for the next 25 years. Some people here would call that a lack of ambition. I see it as somebody who may have found serenity with their place in the world. The nobility is in the work that you do, not how much it pays or how much "status" the job has. The guy who is happy and satisfied in doing simple and unappreciated work can often be a much better human being than the successful executive who hates his job and loses himself in shiny toys, dope, drink and decadence.

When did the Salt of the Earth become the Scum of the Earth? At what point is being content with one's lot in life a worrying sign of a lack of ambition? Whatever happened to opting out of running the rat race because even if you win you're still a rat?

Money is nice. You need a lot of it to afford the life of a wealthy person. You don't need it to be a successful person. Too many seem to confuse this.

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing,
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin,
When I say that I'm o.k. they look at me kind of strange,
Surely your not happy now you no longer play the game,

People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away,
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me,
When I tell that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall,
Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball?

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go,

http://www.geocities.com/lyrics_archive/jo..._the_Wheels.htm

Which of these contrasting rationales accounts best for your perceptions of social mobility, or its lack, in American society?

I think that America has true social mobility. I think what we do have is a seriously distorted distribution of income. Want social mobility?, win a lottery and win a 9 figure fortune, no hard work needed.

I think that problem is that the ratio between the highest income earners and the average laborer has gotten horribly skewed. We look at labor costs as something that must be driven down but seem okay when executives routinely receive eight figure gains.

Do you agree with Julian, that America is less socially mobile than other comparable nations, and that class, income and race count for more than personal talent and effort?

I think that who one knows and a familiarity with the ways of making the big bucks in this country help one if that is their pursuit. I can't speak for Europe.

Or, do you agree with Carlitoswhey that America offers limitless opportunity if you apply yourself, work hard, and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.

I think many more Americans work hard and take advantage of opportunities and don't end up a mansion and yacht owning millionaires than those that do and become very wealthy.

I think that today the capital class has a much better chance of staying put but that all Americans are a big gamble and one big lucky break away from being the next dot-com style billionaire.

I don;t think it is a sign of a healthy economy or society. So, unlike Nighttimer, I do want to be rich, but many would consider me un-American in the sense that I think that the system gives way too high a reward at the top and not enough credit more evenly distributed.

I'm not sure why I'm being branded an elitist, a snob, whatever, but I have never said there's anything wrong with working for McDonald's for 25 years. What I HAVE said is that expecting to make a middle-class wage working a job which requires little if any skills is unrealistic.

I am a secretary, and have never made much money. Like you, I live simply and have no desire to land some high-pressure job or chase prestige. However, I also realize that my worth in the market is based on my skills and abilities, and so I've done all I can to increase them as the years have passed. That is the ONLY point I have tried to make in my posts. It's nothing to do with people's class or worth as humans -- it's just plain economic facts.

I think, strangely, I agree. However this debate is specifically about rags to riches and has stemmed into upward mobility. You hit some great points about materialism and Americans, which probably is why we're such a debt and stress based society. Think about this; heart disease is the number one killer in America, while stress and diet are the number one and two contributors to heart disease. Many Americans see the new TV, shoes, cars, or _____ and have to have it... which leads to credit based purchases, over-extension, bankruptcy, etc.

I've always said that financial prowess doesn't dictate success, but we're talking about "rags to riches". The fact is that most Americans aren't happy at minimum wage, mostly because it's hard to make ends meet. Your point probably could've been about being the best darn shift-manager or bus driver in the world and loving what you do... or at least being content.

A man named George Dawson called "life is so good". He was a black man that didn't read until he was 98, but raised 4 college bound kids and had a wonderful life (or so his autobiography would lead us to believe...afterall, it's HIS story!).

Who's to say what's simple and what"s not? However, our economy is based upon capitalism and supply-demand balances. If simple work garners a lower wage, it's probably less likely to bring a "rags to riches" story as we're discussing. Also, if perpetual poverty is wraught with independence, who's to say who's poor? However, once the line of social dependence is crossed then it becomes a problem. I would have to say that many min wage employees would have a hard time rubbing nickels at the end of paychecks.

However- the overall tone of your post is correct- and I'd drink a cold one w/ you over it. Heck, I feel like I do ok and drive an older truck because I like it, live in a neighborhood because the people are cool, and surround myself with jeans and boots kinda people. There's a certain satisfaction in a Saturday night spent in a ball cap... but it doesn't necessarily prove whether there are true "rags to riches stories" in America.

Interesting points all. Please let's not get sidetracked in who's a "loser" and who isn't. My point was whether success is attainable in the US. However you define it, if you are born at a certain level can you rise to another level. Were the Horatio Alger stories "myths" or is it really possible to succeed.

nighttimer, I also don't know where you're getting the attitude. If "Salt of the Earth" is success to you, fine. However, even you've noted that scoring an AMEX gold card is attainable for most - not exactly the type of thing associated with abject poverty.

But your post did remind me of another song ... Sir Mick said it well.

Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

-------------------

Two further observations if I may:

I developed this theory when I was in grad school and I think it's mostly accurate. How many generations your family has been in the USA is a great influencer of where you fall on the socioeconomic food chain. Immigrants come poor, word hard, send their kids to school, hopefully the kids do better than their parents and so on. This is a generality, but still mostly true. You can trace city neighborhoods that have changed from Irish to German to Polish to Mexican over 4 generations. Those 4th-Generation Germans or Irish are now regular suburban white folks, who are very likely to be in the upper-middle income bracket. Was their family history a leg up? No doubt. But you can't exactly call it "old money" or compare them to George Bush or Steve Forbes.

(I'm also curious how the African-American posters interpret my theory above, because obviously it's a "whites only" model given slavery, Jim Crow, racism and on and on)

My second point - There is definitely a perception difference of optimism vs. pessimism through which we view these things. Some are convinced that that the economy is bad, there is no opportunity, no hope for the future. Some think this even if they are doing OK. Reminds me of Reagan asking "are you better off now than you were 4 years ago." Just over the weekend, I was speaking with a friend who was extremely down on the economy. He has a great job, plenty of free time for hobbies, a nice house in a good neighborhood, and had just told me about his new plasma TV. I asked him how this was possible if things were so bad, and he started going off on George Bush. I couldn't convince him about "rags to riches" despite the fact that his parents were pretty poor, and he is doing just fine.

America definitely does have a "rags to riches" mythology, which is not born out by the typical American's experience. If the myth were true, then the typical American would experience an immense social/economic advancement in this society from where they started to where they end up, regardless of where they started. The myth's not true.

Not that there are many lifetime jobs anymore in America, but take the example of the typical all American workplace like the automobile plant. It used to be that when a man or woman got a job in such a place, they had a job for life. How many of these people, though, in 20-25 year "carriers" at such a company advanced any place too far from the place they started?

The typical American experience when it comes to "rags to riches" is that in every field and in every way, that experience works like a lottery: a few win, but most don't. Just like the lottery, maybe anybody could potentially be a winner, but not everybody can be. That's the nature of a lottery.

Everyone in america thinks that they are going to be "the lucky winner", you know wether it be actually winning the literal lottery, or becoming the next superstar, or being the one poor kid on the block to go to harvard etc.... The truth is there are these stories too. It does happen. The secret is though, is that it's meant to happen just enough to keep everyone hoping they'll be next. It's the same function lotto winners serve for everyone else. Still the lottery principle is what's at work, not individual ambition.

So that's what I think it is. American success is a lottery where anybody can win, but the secret the myth hides is that not everyone can. America is a place where success primarily isn't about individual ambition and talents. You have to have those, but they aren't the deciding factor. Who "makes it and who doesn't" is as arbitrary as the winners and losers of any lottery. BTW when I say "lottery", I also mean to include one's family background and such, for which nobody gets to decide.

The truth is not everyone can win, but some have to, or everyone wouldn't keep believing it's gonna be them, and that belief gets exploited more than any other too.

It's like anybody can get a college education, but not everyone can. The honest to god truth is someone has to hold the fort so others can go off to school and learn, and that's exactly how it works. Most young men and women are stuck in lousy jobs just dreaming of "going back to school" and all thinking they will too, because they've been indoctrinated into thinking the decision is up to them.

The truth is the American economy just as much demands that some don't get a college degree, as it demands that some do, and for those who do, they wouldn't be able to if it weren't for all those who don't. It's reciprocal. It also demands that for those who don't, that they not be so much notified of it, which also goes for those who do too, so they don't feel guilty about it. I mean the system works as it actually does because the myth is intact.

Which of these contrasting rationales accounts best for your perceptions of social mobility, or its lack, in American society?

Do you agree with Julian, that America is less socially mobile than other comparable nations, and that class, income and race count for more than personal talent and effort?

Or, do you agree with Carlitoswhey that America offers limitless opportunity if you apply yourself, work hard, and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.

I'm somewhere between Carlitos and Julian on this. Throughout most of the 20th century, America was a place where a poor immigrant could come and work his way up to middle class. I feel that possibility is gradually disappearing from America. The people immigrating to America today from Mexico and Latin America are fools for doing so.

Today, the American education diplomas have far less weight than they did a generation ago. Today, a high school diploma can only offer a middle class graduate 3 choices: Work at McDonalds, go to college, or join the Army. More practical job training has to take place at the High School level so that poor young people don't have to choose between McDonalds and the Army. The costs of college education has to reigned in as well.

Also, American manufacturing is disappearing, along with those steady lifetime jobs that go with it. America has become a "service economy" trying to build prosperity on fast food joints and retail stores. Nowadays, too many grown adults are working at the Walmart hoping to get that assistant management job. America has to do better than that.

As far as the Consumer luxuries is concerned, cell phones and big TVs are great. But we need to look at the bread and butter items like healthcare, education, and apartment rent. Those things have gotten too expensive. What good is a portable CD player when you're sleeping under a bridge or sharing a studio apartment with 5 other people?

Upward mobility is still there, but with America's economy being propped up by astronomical debt, we're on pretty shaky ground right now. If America can seriously address its foreign debts, as well as the cost of bread and butter things, America can become that "Land of Opportunity" again for everyone.

I have trouble with this sort of explanation -- the "truth" is that there's a "secret" function that successful people are "meant" to serve: duping the proles into thinking they'll get rich, too (I paraphrase).


I think there's some truth in this part, though, especially if "family background" is read to include genetic contributions from both parents. Increasingly, the highest paying jobs require greater cognitive skills. Education can unlock people's potential to master these skills, but that potential is unequally distributed, and strongly heritable.

Given these premises, it's clear to me that there's some upper limit on intergenerational economic mobility. Some poor parents will give birth to geniuses or natural salesmen, who then go on to the upper income brackets. Some rich parents will give birth to dullards or self-destructive addicts who end up on the street. Time and chance happen to us all. But in the more common case, the apple doesn't fall so far the tree. Children inherit talents and aptitudes (and social and business connections) from their parents, so it's not surprising that they end up similar in economic status.

Is this socially unjust? Perhaps... I'm not claiming the birth lottery is "fair". But efforts to increase mobility beyond its natural level wouldn't necessarily be morally superior. For instance, here's a sure-fire way to increase mobility: nationalize the top 100 corporations. Fire half the management, and blacklist them from future employment. Replace them with government-appointed managers from historically disadvantaged groups. Repeat every five years with the new 100 biggest companies (the old ones having been run into the ground). Call it the "committee on the permanent revolution."

A silly example, but not so silly that it hasn't been tried.

One strategy everyone should agree on is removing artificial barriers that prevent people from reaching their potential. If the US had an uptick in mobility in the 1970s (as some studies suggest), a likely cause was the civil rights movement and the end of legal, institutionalized racism. Black people who were excluded from well-paying jobs before, now found them more available. This ought to increase economic mobility in the short term.

The bad news is, these things are one-time gains. Once the barriers are removed, people sort themselves into different income groups, and the next generation will again be close to where their parents ended up.

Hard work is not arbitrary. Yes, of course, you can 'get by' in America without hard work, and there is nothing wrong with that. You can even play the lottery. "Arbitrary" is just the wrong word here. As someone once said "the harder I work, the luckier I get." If you ditch school, hang around drinking all day and playing videogames with your friends, you are less likely to "win the lottery" than is your friend who is going to college and working part-time. No matter whether your parents are rich or poor.


This is an interesting point. When we have lowered taxes in the past, these gains did indeed stimulate the economy - "one time" gains or not, a bigger economy is ... bigger so if it grows at "only" 3% the next year, that's still a bigger gain due to last year's "one time" gain, no? As for the one-time "uptick" in mobility due to civil rights legislation, I hadn't thought of that. If you believe this to be the case, what would you say about the one-time downtick in black economic progress due to the implementation of Davis-Bacon and minimum wage laws in the first place? Taking away entry-level jobs (by over-pricing them) hurt the poor and unskilled most of all.

As for removing artificial barriers to prevent people from reaching their potential, I think we all agree on that.

I agree with that, but I think I misstated my point earlier. Removing barriers to advancement provides more than a one-time gain. When barriers to advancement exist, they clearly suppress economic mobility, so removing them will cause a lasting increase in mobility.

The point I should have made was that removing barriers can produce a temporary increase of economic mobility beyond its natural level, as the most "buoyant" (economically speaking) quickly rise to find their level. A slight decline in mobility after such an event is not necessarily cause for alarm.


That's an interesting sort of barrier: the state is essentially saying "If your labor isn't worth $X an hour, you don't get to have a job." Of course, that's not the intention of people who want to raise the minimum wage today, but it's a predictable consequence.

Turning from minimum wage laws to more overtly racist Jim Crow laws, I can imagine a situation where putting up these barriers actually increased "economic mobility" in the short term. Remember, economic mobility is measured by how many people move from one segment (quintile?) of the income distribution to another. If you suddenly take all the black people from the upper segments, and push them into the lower ones, you're going to increase measured mobility!

And that's what Jim Crow laws did. Do you think that the bus company in Montgomery wanted segregation? Heck no. They wanted to sell bus tickets. Jim Crow hurt their business directly (via the strike) and indirectly (by government regulation telling them what to do with seating). That's not to say that other business like hotels and restaurants didn't apply discrimination in order to please their white customers, but still Jim Crow was anti-capitalism.

I don't know that America is the land of 'rags to riches' so much as 'rags to well-off.' America is becoming the land of the middle-class, and this is due to a couple of factors.

Since the decline of the factory industry, other jobs are opening up, and these jobs come with advancement opportunities. Whereas, as has been stated, with the factory job the worker was stuck there; at a corporation or business, the employees have a chance to advance.

I think to really understand whether a rags-to-riches story is possible, we have to take a look at inflation. This site explains a lot about the way the dollar has changed. As an example, let's look at the Presidential wages.



While they may have earned less, by today's dollar standard, they were paid a lot more. But, by the same token, everything they had cost a lot more, because they were not as technologically advanced, so they were unable to afford the kind of lifestyle we have today.

There is also a growing middle class (see the above graph in above post) as people leave the poverty level and rise to the middle class. The middle class simply rises to a higher middle class.

While it may take a college degree to earn the kind of money it did not used to take-- this is necessary because American jobs are becoming more specialized. Since we got rid of the factory-based economy, we rely on more specialized job skills, which require training-- and often a degree.

And as to the idea that it is a lottery, and some people 'win' the college degree and others don't-- that is precisely what the rags-to-riches story means. Those that don't get the degree didn't miss out on the success lottery because they were 'unlucky', but because they didn't work hard enough. (I know people who just gave up, and it wasn't because they couldn't have done it, they just didn't want to work at it.)

It is possible for the average person to become rich. Theoretically, all they would have to do is get a degree in law, and join the millions of lawyers in the country and contribute to the swelling number of lawsuits.

Take a look at the music industry-- many of the performers have a rags-to-riches story. Obviously there are many more who do not make it, but the point is that there are people who do, so it is possible.

I personally am not interested in becoming a top level CEO. I would far prefer a semblance of a life than a 70-80 hour workweek. But that's just me.

I would like to reiterate a statement I've made here at AD more than once. The idea that everyone MUST get a college degree is part of the problem. Too many people look down on the trades -- mechanics, plumbers, electricians, etc. -- when in fact such vocations actually provide greater freedom for their practitioners. Someone who knows a trade can go into business for him or herself. Not all college grads have the specialized skills to do that.

Also, trades will ALWAYS be needed. Even a Ph.D. needs his house rewired or his toilet fixed now and then. LOL

I apologize if this is off topic, but I felt it needed to be said. I think part of the reason the job market is so bad for college grads is that there are just too many of them -- and some would have been better off learning a trade in the first place.

This is a largely values based statement, but has a thread of truth to it. Emphasis on the word "thread".

If a skilled labor position that requires training garners a higher salary than a college graduate w/ an "English" degree, lets say... of course being a Plumber or Welder is more lucrative and makes more sense. Frankly, this trend doesn't transcend all college degree programs and arguments with validity can be made on both sides.

However, if there wasn't an engineer to make the wiring that the electricians put into houses, or designers to design the automobiles that the mechanics worked on, etc... how on earth would the "blue collar" traded be sustained? These skilled labor positions are necessary and important, just as are college graduates with training in specific fields.

I believe that colleges often don't train graduates to be prepared for the emerging world-market economy, stuck in a thought process two-decades old.

Think about this in reference to higher learning. How often are professors Doctors of another man's ideas, without much (if any) practical real-world experience in their trades? In the business field this is often the case. The hierarchy of Universities in America is often laden with omnipotence and liberally driven ideology, of which has no bearing in a capitalist market.

To bring this full circle, the American workforce, like most of our economy, follows demand. If plumbers were in complete national short supply, we'd probably see an influx of plumbers into the trade. Open the yellow-pages, and just as I believe there are people with Business Degrees waiting tables, there are probably just as many electricians with little work...

Please note that I have not made any statement that college degrees across the board are worthless. Nor have I said that no one should get one.

I have merely stated that rather than getting a college degree that may not prove useful (your example of an English degree would be one that comes to mind), a young person might consider a trade instead, which would provide greater opportunity for him or her to succeed.

I am the daughter of a brickmason who also did work as a junior draftsman. I certainly did not mean to imply that engineers are not needed -- only that if EVERYONE trains to be an engineer but nobody wants to build the house ...