Economic Mobility and the American Dream

Via Kevin Drum… the Pew Charitable Trusts has something they call an Economic Mobility Project. They got together a few think tanks: those notorious lefties at AEI and Heritage, as well the Urban Institute and Brookings to look at “economic mobility and the American Dream.”

They just issued a report well worth a read.

The good news… “economic mobility and the American Dream” are alive and well. The bad news… not in America. Using the ratio of parent’s income to children’s income, they find that economic mobility in the US is greater by a smidge than in the United Kingdom. Its less than in every other country in the sample. And we find its particularly strong in countries like Finland, Norway, and Denmark.

They also find that American men in their thirties today have less real income than men of their father’s generation.

Now what do all of those countries that are doing better than we are not have in common? Oh yeah, Reaganomics and Supply Side economics. Maybe these right wing policies just don’t work. Which is what we’ve been saying (and backing up with data) here at Angry Bear for a very long time.