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Thursday, January 05, 2012

Looking For The American Dream? Move To Canada

Concern about lack of social mobility spreads to the political right

WASHINGTON
— Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.

The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.”

National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.”

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And all those countries are more socialistic than the U.S. More protective of their trade, too? Maybe it's the combo.

No commie here, but it's something to ponder.