Social mobility typically refers to income. The gap between high income earners and the rest of the working population has been steadily growing for decades. I think it's reached the point of absurdity. It's out of control.
Hmm... that's mostly magic with numbers.
The stats represent actual incomes, actual wealth and actual growing disparity between those at the top of the heap and the rest of us.
There's different levels of income so people have differently big slices of the cake. [/QWhat has happened is that industrialization made the cake much bigger.
I don't think that anyone is complaining about higher pay for higher qualifications and responsibility, lawyers, surgeons, managers, etc.
The problem is the ratio and the gap between on the highest incomes has been growing ever wider in recent decades. The stats show that incomes of CEO"s for example have risen by multiples over average wages....which was not the case a few decades ago.
I'm no libertarian. But even I feel the need to call leftist bullshit when I see it. The fact that people are rich isn't the problem. The problem is that it tends to lead to other stuff. It's that tendency we use policy to fix.
Whatever the solution, the growing disparity between the very wealthy and ordinary workers has to be addressed at some point in the near future.
US figures for example;
Federal income data over the past 20 years show a growing divide in income among all age groups. Bankrate's analysis of the data reveals that the 65-plus age group has the widest income gap. But the income gap is growing fastest among 35- to 44-year-olds.
Average incomes in the U.S.
The yawning divide shows one-fifth of American households earning $11,490 annually on average; the next fifth earning $29,696; the middle tier earning $51,179; the next rung up, $82,098; and the top tier, $181,905. Top 5 percent of American households earn $318,052 on average.
The bigger the income gap in a group, the greater the disparity between rich and poor. The gap can grow if there's an increase in population of high earners, for example, and it can grow if there's a rise in the number of poor people. It can also be a combination of both.
''Labor unions have been eviscerated. Fifty years ago, when General Motors was the largest employer in America, the typical GM worker, backed by a strong union, earned $35 an hour in today’s dollars.
Now America’s largest employer is Wal-Mart, and the typical entry-level Wal-Mart worker, without a union, earns about $9 an hour.
More states have adopted so-called “right-to-work” laws, designed to bust unions. The National Labor Relations Board, understaffed and overburdened, has barely enforced collective bargaining.
All of these changes have resulted in higher corporate profits, higher returns for shareholders and higher pay for top corporate executives and Wall Street bankers – and lower pay and higher prices for most other Americans.
They amount to a giant pre-distribution upward to the rich. But we’re not aware of them because they’re hidden inside the market.''
