So basically your whole argument boils down to you are right because you say you are? You do have a nicely cutting way to turn a phrase but I think in this case you are just using it to deflect attention from your unwillingness or inability to put forth a substantive argument. I’ve given several reasons to support my position, from what evidence springs your belief that America is a great meritocracy?
I think it’s fair to say that it’s more meritocratic than most places. It’s hard to imagine a system where money and influence aren’t able to rest a pretty heavy hand on the scales. Given that, I think only a few countries allow for better social mobility than the US.
A society isn’t more meritocratic than another because a greater percentage of its children make more than their parents - it’s a statistic that’s not even relevant unless the cause for that movement (or failure to progress) is merit. Otherwise you’re just comparing relative economic mobility over a time period, and not even starting with consistent standards of living, which can be attributed to many factors: natural resource development, poor or expensive schools, weaker parenting, a better baseline standard of living, cultural values, work ethic, beneficial macroeconomic developments in the region, regional trade disparities, availability of labour, industrial or technological improvements, better infrastructure, etc.
This shit is complicated, but it’s just goofy to suggest that you can’t progress on merit in the US, and need to get lucky. Being born in the US is already winning the jackpot.
Magnet:
Do you read the links you provide?
I decided to check your “Harvard Study”. Did you realize that your quote is not found anywhere within that text? That the article has nothing to do with comparisons between the United States and other, western counties?
It really is an interesting article if you actually read it. The hypothesis of the research was that opportunities for economic growth of the underprivileged should be dropping. However, upon the investigation of data, this was shown to be not the case.
I would say that misrepresenting your “facts” is much more offensive than presenting no facts at all.
That phrasing seems to come from the gray old lady. A paper of record. You can find it here. Talks about the same thing. Google FU!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/upward-mobility-has-not-declined-study-says.html?_
That all being said, it does seem like Europe is quickly eclipsing the US in the land of Opportunity, while we a sliding back to a time of landed gentry, although land is replaced with patents and stocks.
Interesting that you extrapolate that. If only we could have the opportunity of the Spanish, like the OECD Study lauds, with its persistent 25% unemployment and economy on the verge of total collapse.
Well, that was not something I extropated. That was in the first paragraph of the article I posted.
But hey, if you dont think free higher education and a federally subsided Primary education ( as opposed to primarily paid by property taxes) makes a difference, well thats on you
Hey, Spain’s economy is fucked (trust me, I know), but the economy is far from total collapse (its backbone is based on tourism, in which local unemployment has little to do). But still, the unemployment problem is really bad.
Going back to the subject matter. Anybody here read Piketty’s book? There’s a lot of data in there, and regarding meritocracy, it seems a moving target. Pre- WW2, the US was by far the most meritocratic country out there. After WW2 (and the depression before it) it became even more meritocratic, but Europe became even more so (because there was nothing to inherit/social classes where wiped out because of the war). Still it was very good on both continents. Then, since the 80s both continents have become far less meritocratic, to the point it’s pretty similar (although the US presents somewhat more inequality between classes/segments).
Picketty data and analisys is considered very reliable (the criticism is mostly directed towards his suggestions), with the most comprehensive attacks on it having been defended from with even more data.
I think it was on this thread where I presented a graph (the US graph) with commentary?
(Meritocracy is this context being described here as the statistical possibility of becoming part of the 10% (or the 1%) through labor income, instead of through inheritance/accrued capital. It does not measure social background (you could make the point many high-paid jobs are maybe obtained through connections/class and not through merit. I have not seen data about this). That is, the data measures the upper limit of meritocracy on the societies -under a perfectly meritocratic job market-. You could have less meritocracy than shown on the data, but never more (since it measures labor income versus non-labor -and therefore non meritocratic by definition- income).)
Teiman
5089
Human rights include freedom of expression, but customers rights don’t include the right.
So people that talk his mind and cause others to get angry are bad for business.
Its a fight of human rights vs customers rights, I think. People is internalizing the customer role.
magnet
5090
Yes, as I indicated all the quotes come from summaries rather than the linked primary sources. Third party reporting tends to be more concise, and I wanted to avoid an even bigger wall of quote-text.
For the fourth source, the quote is attributed to Emmanuel Saez (one of the authors of the referenced work). I accidentally linked to one of his other papers with a similar title; this has now been corrected.
In short, it may be relevant. And, in fact, social mobility is one of the main macro-level indicators used to compare the degree of meritocracy in different countries. Of course it’s flawed, like pretty much every other indicator. But unless you have a better indicator, it’s the best available evidence. Certainly, it’s better than simply making unsupported assertions.
Sure, and when they lie and state the exact opposite of what the study evidenced, all the more reason. That’s the NYT though. Even Jon Stewart is ripping it apart now: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/jon-stewart-savages-new-york-times-reporting-on-marco-rubios-finances-118867.html
In short, it may be relevant. And, in fact, social mobility is one of the main macro-level indicators used to compare the degree of meritocracy in different countries. Of course it’s flawed, like pretty much every other indicator. But unless you have a better indicator, it’s the best available evidence.
Jesus. An overly simplistic indicator manufactured by progressives to fit a thesis they’ve already determined they need to adopt, which is dependent upon ignoring all regional and historical data, cherry-picking a time range, hiding the baseline for comparison and relative living standards, conflating urban and rural/intra-nation diversity in countries several times bigger than each other, ignoring the homogeneity disparity in populations, ignoring sources of national wealth and industry and global effects on those sources in the time period measured - in short, all economic causes and history - yep, good to go.
It’s no “better” evidence than overall GNP of a nation. Or overall unemployment. Or the decline of farming within the nation. Or the movement towards inheritance taxes. Or the age of the average employee. Overall economic freedom or amount of income inequality would be better indicators if someone was legitimately interested in determining the ability of merit to influence success, but it’s all an artificial agenda-driven political exercise that is dependent upon obfuscating reality in furtherance or your chosen polemic.
magnet
5092
What are you talking about? They quoted one of the study authors, who stated exactly what their study evidenced.
Quite the opposite. You are the one who needs to defend the thesis that the US is a shining example of meritocracy, despite the inability to provide any sort of evidence apart from your own gut feelings. Normally, when one lacks any evidence at all it’s best to profess ambivalence about a subject.
In fact, that’s why academicians focus on measures that are more easily quantified, such as social mobility. The results speak for themselves:
“the odds of escaping poverty appear to be only about half as high in the United States as in the most mobile countries like Denmark”
You can contort that as much as you like to avoid the obvious cognitive dissonance in your worldview (It must be the rural Danish economy! Or their unique demography!) Just don’t pretend you’re convincing anyone.
An abominable statistic and indication of deep problems in the U.S. that amply demonstrates the horrifying effects of years of Democrat run policies in cities like Baltimore and Detroit but no more related to whether an individual can succeed in the US based upon merit than the price of potatoes.
You can contort that as much as you like to avoid the obvious cognitive dissonance in your worldview (It must be the rural Danish economy! Or their unique demography!) Just don’t pretend you’re convincing anyone.
You can’t be convinced by reason because you didn’t arrive at your positions through reason and you’re antagonistic towards reason because it’s antithetical to the distorted narrative that you prefer. The far left doesn’t disagree with the right - it disagrees with reality. You can’t argue with people offended by reality and who construct narratives to rationalize something they’d prefer, regardless of how absurd their mental gymnastics become. When someone cites Spain as a land of opportunity compared to the U.S. you just have to realize how far down the rabbit hole some people are willing to go.
Those poverty numbers are just the same in Dixie Bumblerstans as they are in the big cities, if not worse. It’s not a problem that is caused on the local level, but mostly the state level , and a legacy of failed Reagan/Clinton era policies.
If you want a land of opportunity- it’s Canada, Norway, Germany, Scandanavia these days. Places that have the material advantages of the US or close to it, and better policies.
To me, social mobility is less important if the poor are better off. When you have low social mobility+ increasing inequality, there is a problem. If you have just one, it’s not ideal, but it’s not necessarily bad.
Also, increasing inequality does hurt the economy due to velocity of money factors (all money ends up invested, the more it is spent before invested, the more people it benefits)
This is exactly the data I posted further up the thread (the data Picketty collected). It does not look good, at all, specially compared with the 50-70s in Europe (and the US, to a lesser but still significant extent).
AlanQ
5096
Says the guy who has not provided a single jot of evidence in support of his position. The bloviation may be personally satisfying but it is not even a little convincing.
I find it very telling that when everyone challenges you with evidence you retreat to handwaving off all evidence. Because, you know, distorted worldview or some nonsense.
If you are so self evidently right, then it ought to be easy to prove, no?
Timex
5099
I believe the most clear support of the notion of meritocratic aspects of American society are cases where individuals have enjoyed immense, unprecedented success as a direct result of their own efforts and ideas.
For instance, someone like zuckerberg, who while certainly not from an underprivileged background, became one of the wealthiest people in the entire world as a direct result of his own efforts.
There are numerous other examples of people achieving this kind of success, not because they were given it, but because they worked hard, or had a great idea.
LOL. He certainly didn’t come from an underprivileged background. He went to Phillips Exeter and Harvard. That’s about as privileged as it gets.
