in terms of wealth, the distribution is a hockey stick graph. if someone goes from parents with no assets to having a million dollars in assets, i guess that is social mobility. but thats really not much compared to the truly rich.

Simply put--

I see "social mobility" as best left to the Austens and Dickenses and Fitzgeralds...

To words and books and the imagination alone--

Because from where I'm sitting, there IS no such thing, or if there is it's so intangible and so small-scale, so beyond the pall and so beyond my own reach that I'd sooner believe Oliver Twist or Jay Gatsby's stories than it actually happening for anyone I know, including myself.

If there is any mobility today, it is downward or sideways--

Born to wealthy parents, and you'll live without a care for cash.
Born to rich parents, and most likely you'll live richly.
Born to the upper-middle class, and you'll strain at the bit to make the leap--but likely won't.
Born to the middle class and, like myself, the best you can hope for is not to fall farther.
Born to the lower-middle class and, unless you're beautiful or can play ball, you're screwed.
Born to the poverty-stricken, and yours is the sidewalk-set face the above trample on.
Born to immigrants, and good luck learning the language or gaining acceptance.

The Millenial Generation is, as articles increasingly indicate, a Lost Generation--

The original Lost Generation found itself among the wreckage of a World War...

We find ourselves among the wreckage of a financial system that was set up for short-term gains by a political system built upon that most basic and assured of human qualities, namely, that immediate instinct and desire will overpower the majority and compel them towards a cliff if you place a succulent enough pie at the precipice.

We will live worse than our parents and our grandparents...

D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" famously begins with one of my favorite lines in all of literature--

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

So we'll keep living--but the sky has fallen on us, and we won't move out from under that rubble, not in my generation, so one might as well make peace with a mortgaged future and make the best of it, to whatever end they wish to do so--

Because there IS no social mobility--it was a myth in the time if Fitzgerald and Lawrence, and ours is an age in which myths and the mythic have died out...and even if they haven't, there are fewer and fewer who know or read the myths of literature and politics, and fewer and fewer still each year who know or care about them, about anything at all.

obiwan,

Thanks, but WAAYYYY too long for my thread. Seriously, I like your contributions, but we're going to disregard all this, I want it condensed to 1/3 of what you just wrote and if I like that I'll ask you for more.

Very well:

I see "social mobility" as best left to the Austens and Dickenses and Fitzgeralds...

To fantasy alone--

Because from where I'm sitting, there IS no such thing, or if there is it's beyond my own reach that I'd sooner believe Oliver Twist or Jay Gatsby's stories than it actually happening for anyone I know, including myself.

The original Lost Generation found itself among the wreckage of a World War..
We Millenials are a Lost Generation and find ourselves among the wreckage of a financial and political system that's failed its future--namely, us.

So we'll keep living--but the sky has fallen on us, and we won't move out from under that rubble, not in my generation, so one might as well make peace with a mortgaged future and make the best of it, to whatever end they wish to do so--

I and the millions like me will live worse economic lives than my parents and grandparents, will live little lives that are filled with the frustration of not living up to the standards set by those past generations, and will ultimately cling to the social ladder with dear life or slip and hope to God we don't break our necks in The Fall--

But we will, we will...that's what they'll see when they look back at this generation, a generation that fell and was felled before its time and lies broken, its livelihood gone and all myths of mobility with it, with them, with us.

(That's more like 1/2 than 1/3, but that'll have to do.)

Good job obi! Proud o'you.

Granddad: Born as one of 13 children (several others died shortly after childbirth and aren't included) in a 2 bedroom house rented in the slums of Liverpool where people still threw their excriment in the streets. Left school at 14 to work as an apprentice butcher. Retired as a joiner for the council owning his own house in Plymouth.

Dad: Born as one of three in the suburbs of Plymouth. Left School at 16 to work as a bank clerk. Moved up through the ranks to assistant manager before retiring.

Me: Born as one of two. Started off life in a small semi. Went to University to stufy physics and got an engineering job.

There is plenty of social mobility, and plenty of fools who claim there isn't in order to mask their own ineptitude.

(I'm not intending to call Obi a fool here. I think he's saying a load of tosh for the sake of being dramatic ;) )

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/millenials-lost-generation-130643180.html

I'm naturally dramatic...but that doesn't make me wrong in this case...

ESPECIALLY for those of us not looking for engineering/science/medical field-based jobs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577486623469958142.html

And it's not just we dreaming literary types...

Law school grads and the like face a tough job market as well, and a tough road up if they manage to break through at that.

Teaching jobs are severely underpaid.

And so on.

I'm not quite sure of your point here, Obi. Social mobility doesn't mean everyone has the devine right to move up the social scale to the level they percieve is above them. If someone wants to be a teacher they're not going to be a millionaire, and nor should they. That is entirely their choice. They can, however, expect a comfortable life, and they get it.

Indeed, someone from a working class background who becomes a teacher has very much moved up the social scale. As anyone who shows ability and willing to get the job can do so I don't see how teaching can not be seen as a route to social mobility for the lower classes.

One point I find particularly fascinating is the consequences of the emancipation of women (which, before the left-wing assault starts, is a very good thing). I think this means that men, more and more, will pick a woman who has their standard of education and their children, well prepared for university, will follow their tradition. I think it'll be much like the 19th century, a class society will emerge with less and less social mobility.

Also, we must distinguish two things.

1) Social mobility as a phenomenon. The simple fact that people from one layer of society move up or down to other layers.

2) Social mobility in the sense that a society is open to people making these movements.

When I say we will go to a society with less and less social mobility I'm talking about number one, that it won't happen, not that it can't happen, which is what Octavious seems to be focusing on.

I don't see how someone being comfortable with their lot in life is a problem. The best way to encourage social mobility is to keep society open to it whilst at the same time making life for those at the bottom unbearable. This I don't see as desireable.

If social mobility is open to people but they simply don't wish to exchange undemanding jobs and an exceptable lifestyle for difficult jobs and and an affluent lifestyle then I have no problem with it.

I never said it was a problem (although I might, depending on the direction of this discussion) but it's certainly interesting.

My dad was botn to very poor parents. The oldest of nine kids, he often went without food to male certain his younger siblings ate. He made it out and made something of himself becoming a middle class bordering on upper middle class engineer. I was raised during his middle.class days when both he and my mom worked to pay the bills. We were never hungry or dirty but buying a student guitar for my Christmas one year was an extravagance. I cleared 6 figures last year. My situation may not be typical (I am.sure it isn't) but it is possible.

We shall see if the Mercedes improves my jump and a bit more.

And obi - The second is how you should.post more often. Succinct and well stated. And I actually agree with it as I am of you father's generation and see that it is getting harder and harder to climb the ladder especially with an economy in ecpnomic ruin and the power int the hands of those who only want more power.

Yeah I taught him well... I'm vaguely considering changing my name to quigonjinnquigonjinn.

I finished reading.the rest of the thread and will respond more later from a PC. But in short our upward mobility issues stem from access to higher education for those willing to work hard and desire to improve themselves. Education costs way too much nowadays and so even the middle class has a hard time sending their kids off to college. But if someone does go to school and wishes to move up the social ladder, their career choice is on them. I agree with Oct in that regard. College professors will.never male what a brain surgeon makes and they shouldn't. Teachers will never make what software developers and engineers of all types make and they shouldn't. Surgeons hold peoples' lives in their hands. Engineers design things that, if poorly designed, could.kill people. Software developers make the software that the entire world depends on to do business, to run their cars, to make telecommunicatikns and mass transit possible, to connect our world.

These roles may or may not have a greater contribution that teaching young minds, but their direct impact and the risk involved if they screw up, is felt immediately and puts a certain.pressure on the people.in those fields

The accesibility of affordable education is indeed a major problem that faces any true "land of opportunity". It's also difficult to solve if there are citizens who believe that education doesn't fall within the definition of "general welfare" of a country. The result is a situation where education becomes a proxy for wealth, where the parents' level of education predicts the education of their children to a degree that is unacceptable in a first world country. Meritocracy and indeed basic civic equality suffers as well.

Salary differentiation is of course a different thing altogether. You can't have efficient division of labour and working developed society without it.

What I mean by basic civic equality is this: the Western society reached a point where it's PUBLICLY unacceptable for wealthy and powerful parents to buy political offices, immunity from law and other patrician perks for their children. Given the importance of formal education in one's life, the economy behind its distribution shouldn't open a morally acceptable way for these remnants of feudalism to gain ground again.

Going to +1 that ulytau, well said. I'm not sure if I agree (entirely) with you, but it's a well made point.

My perspective may be warped. I have willingly chosen a path that I know leads to little better than poverty in the Western context. I'm not sure if I would have been able to raise my standard of living above my parents' had I chosen some other path.

As I've got a bit older and been able to observe them though I've seen that they're actually quite wealthy or have gotten so in the last five years or so. So I doubt I could have topped that in any case.

In a lot of ways, I don't care to make more than they did. But as I say this may be because of a warped perspective. I certainly worry for my peers who may end up in a very dark place in about a decade.

Time will tell.

Ultimately I think this is a bit of a reckoning for the West, not to get too broad on you, but basically, the rest of the world's wages are rising and ours in the rich world are by necessity lowering to meet them at an equilibrium point.

That's just a description of a phenomenon - I mean neither to praise nor denounce it. It's just what I think is going on and has been going on to set up this situation. From a standard of living point of view I have believed since the mid-2000s that the decline of the West is already well underway.