True enough. Brooks is a moron that loves the sound of his own ramblings and Rand-ites lack any semblance of humanity. But the complicity and reticence on the part of Democrats should not be overlooked.

Good morning all,

What’s to say about a babbling brook of running greed.

Bobo should be amply rewarded for all he’s done.

What’s missing might be a detailed examination of the mobility of individuals between the income quintiles over time, say 20 years or more.

A snapshot in time may not tell all. If mobility persists as nearly static the result is quite different than if the bottom quintile of individuals become more or less scattered through the higher four quintiles later on (with new, mostly younger entrants appearing at the bottom for awhile).

Who gets stuck abnormally long at the bottom would be more of a problem than the spread between the quintiles, themselves, at any given time.

His reward is that he’s got a job, sucking up to the rich, which he deserves.

Much of it depends on how well you choose your parents.

Said it better than I could.

Good Morning, all!

Boxturtle (I’m guessing that nobody is going to bring this up with Bobo)

Good morning, pups. Today Ms. Collins is off so Mr. Kristof is flying solo. In “Crony Capitalism Comes Home” he says Occupy Wall Street has found traction because the U.S. is now guilty of what it’s accused others of practicing: crony capitalism.

Here he is.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got apple walnut muffins that are still warm. I overslept this morning so I’ve got to turn on the afterburners to get ready for work. Have a great day.

That’s what Attaturk indicates, but a link to the data details would be useful. I’m not convinced the result is all that clear.

Intuitively a young adult with wealthy parents is likely to have a jump start. Yet by itself, that doesn’t require another young adult who enters the bottom quintile, and coming from a poor family, to be destined to remain at the bottom forever. But if that IS the case then what has failed to grease the wheels of mobility, and why?

The answers would vary geographically. No doubt the problems of economic mobility in rural Appalachia are quite different than, say, in urban settings. There are plenty of assumptions to go around, no?

I read a bio of Ayn Rand not long ago – odious creature, who lived in the cloud-cuckoo land of her novels.

But if that IS the case then what has failed to grease the wheels of mobility, and why?

1) Failure to act early. Child nutrition early is critical to developement afterward.

2) Failure to educate. There were 12 students in my first grade class, 30 is now more common. Classroom management (education euphamism for “Sit down and shut up”) time seems to be based on the square of the number of students.

3) Failure to parent. With both parents working to make ends meet, when do they have time to grow their child? Kid comes home to an empty house, makes his own meal and sits down to watch TV.

If you’ve got money, all the problems above go away. Kid gets fed properly, meaning breakfast ain’t a poptart. Kid goes to suburb or private school, where there’s money to keep class sizes smaller. And only one parent working.

Boxturtle (It’s amazing how much we could solve by investing in schools)

It’s actually odd because intergenerational mobility appears to support the position that there is no up and down and yet the studies on mobility for those 25 and over done during the 80s and 90s suggests that people from top to bottom are moving all the time.

Even odder still because folks like the Koch brothers or the Walton children clearly benefitted from their parents and don’t seem to be in any danger of “slipping down”

Anyway, here’s one of the studies I found on intergenerational mobility

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf

Good morning all.

I don’t have a link but the economic mobility data I’ve see reported over the past decade or so puts the U.S. toward the bottom end of developed countries.

Well, anecdotally a person with a more affluent upbringing has a better social safety net. If you are born into poverty then you can’t afford to make mistakes. If you don’t study hard then you don’t get a secondary education-Meanwhile W’s parents could afford to send him to school without a scholarship. Do drugs or have substance abuse issues- you wind up in jail, not some posh rehab center. Get the urge to scratch that itch we call sexuality and end up with a kid- you’ve just made your climb out of poverty that much tougher because Mommy and Daddy are too busy working to raise a child for you.

I’m sure there are a million different examples of how easy it is to make one not ideal decision and as a result end up screwing up your life when you aren’t rich. These are just ones I came up with off the top of my head.

That’s correct. The key statement from the link is:

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our income as adults.

It’s actually kind of interesting because mobility data and intergenerational mobility data seem to contradict each other. At least the cliff notes versions seem to suggest as much. The studies on mobility done from 80-90s and then 90s-2005 both suggest that there is a lot of movement(done on people 25+). Meanwhile the intergenerational mobility seems to suggest that poor children have a higher tendency of staying poor.

Year-to-year variability masks the fact that, over time, those from poor families tend to stay poor.
In other words, they’re moving along a much lower income path over time.

One of the reasons for this is that higher education has become a driver of inequality — rather than an equalizer.

Well, the first female partner of Goldman Sucks did lose all of her financial saving to Bernie Madoff.

Quite a thread on TBogg last night. Just read through it.

I’ve slid up and down the ladder a time or two. I have to wonder if the “mobility” isn’t nearly as mobile as suggested. If somehow or another one year you manage to be above poverty level by a few dollars and then the next year you’re right back where you started because the system is set to pull the rug out from under you and remove the net at the first sign that you aren’t in poverty.

Our system is so screwy because I know there are people on the bottom that turn down work hours because if they get them one month it isn’t guaranteed they’ll get them the next and they’ll lose food stamps if they make a tiny bit more.

I also remember a report that Poison Ivy League schools are getting more exclusive, i.e., student bodies with a higher percentage of legacies & full payers.

Glutton for punishment, huh.

When I saw 182 comments, I was sucked in. Pretty vitriolic.
While I think front-paging TBogg is great, there is a downside.
For him, at least.

I’m betting that has more to do with what I read today on states paying less and less to help pay for colleges. The shift has been towards families’ paying for schooling. Huge mistake IMO. Most of the cost ought to be on society as a whole. We’re the ones that are going to benefit or not from having an educated constituency.

http://articles.boston.com/2011-10-26/news/30324884_1_higher-education-pell-grants-students-graduate

proto-palin

Plenty of blame to go around: colleges, states, and the Feds.

I’m on the finance committee of a state college endowment board. Endowment has not increased at all over the last decade. It went down a lot with the stock market and has recovered, but only to where it was years ago. Most alums are teachers or other middle income so giving is constrained. Have wanted to do a major fund raising campaign, but that’s gone out the window owing to prez turnover. Besides, I think I remember a study that the only income category showing increases last year was households earning over $52 million. Hardly the target for such an entity to raise funds. Even with prez stability, a major campaign would be a failure. Besides which, endowment is tiny, since it didn’t become a focus until about 15 years ago, when it was too late.

Meanwhile NYS has continuously raised tuitions.

It’s one anecdote, but pretty representative.

Other people on the committee are smart & do their jobs but are clueless as to the macro environment they are confronting.

Most things are a joint effort. It’s just a shame because I think if we don’t get a handle on fixing it that we’re going to lose a decade or two of our youth choosing to sit out secondary learning. We’re already behind in education we were like 18th of 36 in terms of secondary education in 2008.

Well, that illustrates the inconsistencies I’ve heard before. There doesn’t seem to be a resolution there.

I didn’t mention this above (trying to avoid raising hackles) but there was a piece on Fox yesterday about those quintiles which tossed in counterintuitive claims. Apparently after a twenty year period that bottom income quintile would retain only 3% of the same people who had begun there, i.e., 3% of the entire population would not move (equivalent to about one seventh of that quintile). I didn’t hear the entire report, but immediately thought a portion of Appalachia by itself would disprove what they were saying.

Once we analyze correctly, then, in turn we would have to decide whether to enlarge existing gov’t programs or replace them — once we know the true scale of the problem and where it’s concentrated.

My pet peeve has become higher education. I don’t think students are getting their money’s worth (rather, loan’s worth) from that. It’s a sclerotic system built around its own institutional needs and perks. Artificial degree criteria are tapped to fabricate credibility. The victims are students who understandably aren’t quite ready to decide on a career path and understand what that entails — they’re easy pickings to be exploited, no?

. If you don’t study hard then you don’t get a secondary education-Meanwhile W’s parents could afford to send him to school without a scholarship. Do drugs or have substance abuse issues- you wind up in jail, not some posh rehab center

Exactly. I know of a recent case of the son of the President of a major corporation who was kicked out of Dartmouth for ‘stalking.’ À gift and some bribes got him back in. Of course, it is Timmy Geithner’s alma mater.

Fox is not what anyone in their fight mind would consider a reliable source on anything other than sports scores. You want to find out something about income mobility? Read Joe Ferrie or Thomas Piketty, who make it their life work. The census data show a huge decline in mobility since the 1960s.

I agree with you about Fox — doesn’t identify their own source, takes things out of context, incomplete data reported, agenda driven etc. In that regard not unlike a lot of media nowadays, with coffers to fill.

Thanks for Ferrie and Piketty referral.

What about the drive some people have to get money when they come from a family that had nothing? One of the greediest people I know, who works hard for as much money as he can get, came from a very poor family. His stories about no christmas presents and sleeping in a car help to motivate him. Others born with a silver spoon, but no love at home, might choose to not care so much about money and take a different life path. So many times people grow up as the flipside of their parents in a dysfunctional family. I don’t disagree with a lot of the posts, just offering this for consideration among so many variables.

Mixed Economy….Ayn Rand

You should have been there. It was just a few sane persons against a whole asylum, could have used your voice to help balance things out. I wander in there occasionally because I can’t afford hard drugs, but I thought TBogg hit a new low when he attacked me for being old (I’m all of 60). Kind of like attacking a rape victim for having a vagina, isn’t it? I would think he probably violated some kind of protocol by looking up my email address in his search for ammo to use against me, but, hey, when you have no coherent argument, you do what you can to support your ad hominem. I just hope he doesn’t stalk me now. Can’t take seriously anything that happens on that blog, but it’s fun to be in a barroom brawl every now and then. Even if you’re brawling with idiots. It makes you appreciate serious people that much more.