myth of upward mobility

[Patrick Ellis]

At 05:04 PM 3/27/01 -0800, John Gulick wrote:
>Do you/we really want to make the argument that Society A is better
>than Society B b/c there is a higher degree of inter-generational mobility in
>Society A ? Both Society A and Society B have a persistent and tenacious
>social class structure, one grounded in unfreedom and exploitation, but in
>Society A there is more upward (and hence downward) mobility.

The point in Denmark being the #1 country for social mobility versus the US 
being the worst among the countries studied is that in Denmark there isn't 
a hell of a difference between the top & the bottom, while in the US there 
is.  If someone moves from one quartile to another in Denmark they're not 
really moving all that far, which of course makes it easier to make such a 
move.  In other words, the reason they have mobility is precisely because 
they don't have a "persistent and tenacious social class structure."

Patrick