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Comment by anindyabd | Hacker News Reader

> "We like to boast of America as a land of opportunity, and historically there is truth to that"

I keep hearing this, but where is the evidence? Was there any objective research done to figure out whether at any point there was really some sort of magnificent economic mobility in the U.S.? There's lots of anecdotal evidence, sure -- stories of people who immigrated here with nothing and made it big, movies, novels, etc... but how do we know we're not just hearing about the exceptions, and that in the vast majority of cases, which do not capture people's imaginations, the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich?

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One aspect is that well into the 19th century, perhaps even in the early 20th century, people in the US could participate in the massive land grab in the west. Basically, whenever the social framework got too bad, people could leave and at least go farm somewhere, giving them a living standard not too much below, and perhaps even higher, than that in larger cities.

The land grab is over now, but attitudes take some time to catch up.

This is particular interesting in comparison to Europe, where land grabs of this style have not happened in the last 1000 years or so. When the social framework got too bad, some people might have left to the Americas, but the people who stayed fought to solve those social problems.

I suspect that this is a large part of what drives the difference in perception of welfare spending between Europe and the US. It is also compatible with attitudes slowly shifting in the US to be more European.

Another perspective: while Americans were building a prosperous society of free men, the Europeans were continuously slaughtering each other, first for dynastic power, and then to impose their top-down "solutions" to the social problems you're talking about. Today the Europeans have so saddled themselves with taxation and regulation that they underperform economically. Their welfare systems have not solved poverty, but have fostered a culture of dependency on the state. In the pursuit of economic equality, they have succeeded mostly in raising the cost of living and creating a hostile environment for business. Because it's impossible to fire someone, firms are wary to hire, contributing to staggering youth unemployment. Minorities and immigrants are much more poorly integrated than in the US. Europe exerts little influence on world politics outside of the EU. Yes, I'm presenting just one side of the picture, but it's the side that's consistently ignored when the American left is clamoring for European-style socialism.

You surely mean "while European-Americans were slaughtering native Americans and profiting from the slave labor of black-Americans..."

you're not presenting one side of picture, what you are stating is plain wrong in many cases. Each sentence contains a lie or half-truth (ie something valid for few states out of 30 ain't universal europe-broad truth). I ain't lowering myself to your level, but let's say your comment is subpar for this site. Strive for better next time, I am sure you easily can ;)

Germany, for example, had officially recognized nobility till 1919. There were official classes and you could not become military officer or government bureaucrat if you was not born in the right family. First German experiment with democracy and equality under law was after WWI and failed spectacularly.

America, with democracy and no nobility laws was rightfully called land of opportunity compared to that.

Not sure why parent is downvoted; it's true. A century ago, the US really was the land of opportunity to many. Especially to people from rigid, class-based countries. And now the US has basically become similarly rigid, with what's looking like an unofficial aristocracy.

that's 100 years old history, and true. now let's talk about these times...

Well, let's stop at 70-year-old history on the way. At the end of WWII, the US had not been bombed nearly into oblivion, had not had large fractions of its population killed off, and had not been occupied (or ruled) by psychopaths trying to kill off everyone who wasn't like them. In the US, you could spend your time trying to build the future instead of trying to rebuild from the damage of the past. You also could live your life with less fear of a return of the days of killing. So, yeah, that looked a lot like opportunity in those days.

Today? That's less clear cut, I agree.

Trends in economic mobility are difficult to prove because mobility itself is a long-term phenomenon. But for example, college tuition has increased dramatically, and a college education is one of the main ways to attain upward mobility.[1] Poor people are not able to enter profitable jobs (e.g. medicine, management, programming) because it requires training they cannot obtain, so they are instead stuck in e.g. minimum-wage retail work.

Economic inequality is easier to measure, and definitely correlates with (lack of) mobility.[2] Higher inequality means that there is a greater divide between the poor and the rich, so that it is more difficult to become rich if you are poor. Here, the statistics are clear: essentially all measures of inequality are increasing in the United States.[3]

America in the 1940s was mostly middle class: blue-collar jobs provided a livable wage, and income inequality was much lower.[4] In the past 50 years, middle-class wages have barely increased,[5] while college graduates[6] and CEOs earn much more.

[1] http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/06/13-facts-h...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...

[3] http://www.newyorker.com/rational-irrationality/american-ine...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

[5] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor...

[6] http://www.census.gov/library/infographics/sci_eng_majors.ht...

Since Castro's communist regime came to power in Cuba, Cubans have been fleeing the island for freedom and opportunity in the US. With the exception of a minority that was lucky enough to have foreign bank accounts and land-holdings, they all came to the US with nothing. At the airport in Havana, the Cuban army emptied your wallet and purse, took all of your jewelry, and left you with essentially the clothes on your back. Fast forward to today and the 2 million Cubans in the US are the wealthiest hispanic immigrant group, and American-born descendants of Cuban immigrants are actually wealthier than non-hispanics whites (what most people call "white people"). There's no other place in the world where such a feat would be possible.

" There's no other place in the world where such a feat would be possible."

Oh? Based on your extensive research into immigration outcomes for all of the countries in the world? I happen to know for a fact, that many very poor Greek and Italian families migrated to Australia after World War II, and their families are doing very nicely now, thank you very much. The same story repeated a quarter of a century later as Australia dealt with a large Vietnamese intake during the Vietnam war and it's immediate aftermath - their community has also integrated well and is doing just fine economically.

I'm sure this is equally true of many countries in Europe. There is nothing exceptional about the US in this regard.

The evidence is in the scores of millions who came to America with nothing and rose into the middle class and beyond. If this was exceptional, you wouldn't see mile upon mile of suburban homes, cars jamming the roads, etc.

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