Economic Mobility

[Lord Tammerlain]

We often hear of how certain nations encourage, if not have the ideal that hard work, skill and intelligence will determine the economic well being of an individual. That a persons hard work should allow them to become succeed, not the specific economic class that they were born into.

What would it say for those countries if they had lower economic mobility then most other nations. That the economic class they were born into plays a far greater role in where they would end up economically then in more socialistic nations

http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP American Dream Report.pdf

The Economic Mobility Project is a unique nonpartisan
collaborative effort of The Pew Charitable
Trusts and respected thinkers from four leading policy
institutes — The American Enterprise Institute,
The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation
and The Urban Institute.

It is a larger document, so I just posted the think tanks that were involved in the study. Just to ensure against claims of bias

 

[Orion]

I'm interested in what you think of this subject, LT.

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

I feel that the two lowest countries in social mobility, generally have the lowest levels of social welfare.

As a childs success is often determined by the resources that are provided to them from education, health care, and nutrion, the children that find those resources lacking will not have an equal chance at success as those that have those resources in abundance.

Meaning the ideal of equal opportunity is not in fact true in those countries. What is true is that legally they do not have anything preventing success, but the childern do not have the equal opportunity at success as they do not have the same resources required to provide an equal opportunity

I would comment about how both have the same ethno centric ideals, which did lead to a rather harsh period in Ireland for a period of time

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

We often hear of how certain nations encourage, if not have the ideal that hard work, skill and intelligence will determine the economic well being of an individual. That a persons hard work should allow them to become succeed, not the specific economic class that they were born into.

What would it say for those countries if they had lower economic mobility then most other nations. That the economic class they were born into plays a far greater role in where they would end up economically then in more socialistic nations

http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP American Dream Report.pdf



It is a larger document, so I just posted the think tanks that were involved in the study. Just to ensure against claims of bias

Definitely an interesting read.

I have some ideas as to why some of this is happening.

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

I feel that the two lowest countries in social mobility, generally have the lowest levels of social welfare.

As a childs success is often determined by the resources that are provided to them from education, health care, and nutrion, the children that find those resources lacking will not have an equal chance at success as those that have those resources in abundance.

Meaning the ideal of equal opportunity is not in fact true in those countries. What is true is that legally they do not have anything preventing success, but the childern do not have the equal opportunity at success as they do not have the same resources required to provide an equal opportunity

I would comment about how both have the same ethno centric ideals, which did lead to a rather harsh period in Ireland for a period of time

We are not as interested in education as everyone makes it out to be.
That's a big bump in the road for us.

State aid for higher education (university and trade schools), is inflexible to the point where it makes it almost impossible for working people to attend.

There is also the issue with illegal labor bringing down the fair market value of wages.

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

We are not as interested in education as everyone makes it out to be.
That's a big bump in the road for us.

State aid for higher education (university and trade schools), is inflexible to the point where it makes it almost impossible for working people to attend.

There is also the issue with illegal labor bringing down the fair market value of wages.

I went to both University and trade school. University back in 1990 cost (tuition not cost of books or board) was $1400 a year for 1 st year students at the U of Calgary (it has gone up to I believe $5000)

While trade school about 7 years later cost about $1800 a year (the program I took would have cost about $8000 for the overall use of labs, chemicals, salaries and equipment facilities

Admitedly we have a far less of a problem with illegal immigrant labour ( our equivalent of the IRS forces companies to registar SIN numbers with them). It is generally fairly hard for any employer of any real size to employee illegal immigrants

 

[Orion]

Most developing nations lack proper health care or access to higher education. The U.S. is among the richest of the world's nations and these two things are on the back burner. Answering why is one of the most interesting things about the U.S. that I've tried to uncover.

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

I went to both University and trade school. University back in 1990 cost (tuition not cost of books or board) was $1400 a year for 1 st year students at the U of Calgary (it has gone up to I believe $5000)

While trade school about 7 years later cost about $1800 a year (the program I took would have cost about $8000 for the overall use of labs, chemicals, salaries and equipment facilities

Admitedly we have a far less of a problem with illegal immigrant labour ( our equivalent of the IRS forces companies to registar SIN numbers with them). It is generally fairly hard for any employer of any real size to employee illegal immigrants

Our costs for secondary schooling have outpaced inflation for the last 10 years, if I'm not mistaken.
There is aid available but you have to be enrolled full time and it does cover tuition for a state school + some for expenses.

I know from my personal experiences with it that working 40+ hours a week and going to school full time is incredibly difficult, keeping up with assignments and homework when you have 2 hours tops is crazy hard.

If you look at the animal processing, seasonal farms and construction industry, they are almost completely dominated by illegal labor and those guys do it at a fraction of the cost that a native worker could afford to live with.
Manufacturing is slowly becoming that way as well.

The chicken processing plants in my area are still paying minimum wage with no annual increases, it's ridiculous.

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

Most developing nations lack proper health care or access to higher education. The U.S. is among the richest of the world's nations and these two things are on the back burner. Answering why is one of the most interesting things about the U.S. that I've tried to uncover.

Medical care for low income children is covered, there are a lot of cultural problems that we have that are similar to the U.K.

Chavs in the U.K. where being successful is banging the most chicks and stealing the most stuff from other people.
Although it isn't stuck with one particular racial group.
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav]Chav - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

Our costs for secondary schooling have outpaced inflation for the last 10 years, if I'm not mistaken.
There is aid available but you have to be enrolled full time and it does cover tuition for a state school + some for expenses.

When I went to trade school I was lucky enough to be working at Canada Safeway when they still paid rather well ( $17-18 per hour depending on shift) so working part time I was able to pay for my education without taking student loans. The annoying part was that in the field I chose Safeway paid more per hour then most of the entry level jobs that didnt require moving to remote locations

I know from my personal experiences with it that working 40+ hours a week and going to school full time is incredibly difficult, keeping up with assignments and homework when you have 2 hours tops is crazy hard.

That I believe, I am not sure if I could have gone to school full time and worked full time during the same time period, as it was my education suffered because of working p/t

If you look at the animal processing, seasonal farms and construction industry, they are almost completely dominated by illegal labor and those guys do it at a fraction of the cost that a native worker could afford to live with.
Manufacturing is slowly becoming that way as well.

The chicken processing plants in my area are still paying minimum wage with no annual increases, it's ridiculous.

The meat processing plants here are now dominated by East African immigrants and ex cons. Brooks Alberta which 20 years ago (pop around 5000 20 years ago) would perhaps have had at most 100 people of African ethnicity now has about 2000. The wages of course have gone down as well. (they have to compete with the US)

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

When I went to trade school I was lucky enough to be working at Canada Safeway when they still paid rather well ( $17-18 per hour depending on shift) so working part time I was able to pay for my education without taking student loans. The annoying part was that in the field I chose Safeway paid more per hour then most of the entry level jobs that didnt require moving to remote locations

I'm in manufacturing and I earn about $12 an hour plus benefits.
$17-18 would be dreamy. :lol:

That I believe, I am not sure if I could have gone to school full time and worked full time during the same time period, as it was my education suffered because of working p/t

It's pretty crazy, there is a couple of ways to fudge it.
As long as you pass 3 of the 4 classes you can get away with getting aid but honestly that isn't the most efficient way to allocate money for higher education.

The meat processing plants here are now dominated by East African immigrants and ex cons. Brooks Alberta which 20 years ago (pop around 5000 20 years ago) would perhaps have had at most 100 people of African ethnicity now has about 2000. The wages of course have gone down as well. (they have to compete with the US)

Most people think it's an anti immigrant rant, which for me is not true.
I value immigrants who want to stay.

On the other hand, there are a huge amount who only want to work here and send their wages home, shortly afterward they want to return.
It draws down wages significantly and add to the fact that they violate local occupancy laws (which the state doesn't enforce).
They can afford to live cheaper than anyone wanting to live here permanently.

It's a loss for anyone trying to claw their way to the top.