The United States has less economic mobility than Canada as revealed by comparable estimates of earnings mobility across the generations.
- American sons of top-earning fathers are more likely to remain in the top tenth of earners as adults than are Canadian sons (26 percent vs. 18 percent).
- American sons of low-earning fathers are more likely to remain in the bottom tenth of earners as adults than are Canadian sons (22 percent vs. 16 percent).
- American sons of fathers in the bottom third of the earnings distribution are less likely to make it to the top half as adults than are sons of low- earning Canadian fathers.
- For example, among sons of fathers in the bottom decile, 30 percent of American sons versus 38 percent of Canadian sons make it to the top half.
It kinda makes my head hurt trying to figure out exactly what it is the right wants. And, what kind of country we'd end up with if they ever got what they say they want.
(See "Looters & Loafers" for more on this)
If they succeeded in further gutting federal financial regulation the result should be obvious to them by now. All we'd get are more and bigger financial scams and bubbles followed by bigger and bigger fiscal crisis'.
If
they actually succeeded in repealing Obama's
health insurance reforms they'd just hand the existing for-profit
insurance
industry a green light to, not just continue, but expand their
predatory practices -- the likes of which would have made John
Gotti
blush with embarrassment. And, as the ranks of uninsured and
under-insured grew, America's emergency room waiting rooms would look
like the back streets of Calcutta.
If they succeeded in further cutting taxes and renewing the Bush tax cuts it would only drive the nation deeper into debt and closer to an inevitable catastrophic fiscal collapse. After all, if tax cuts could improve the economy and trickle down to the average Joe and Jane, the humongous Bush tax cuts should have put us all on Easy St. long ago. Instead all they did was further enrich the rich while leaving the rest of us holding the bag for the difference.
If they succeeded in disparaging the reality of and/or dangers of climate change, all they'd accomplish is to further enrich polluting industries while allowing them to degrade the natural world their grand kids and great grand kids will have to live in, -- if they even can.
If they succeeded in repealing gun laws all they'd get for their trouble are communities in which the full rich panoply of humans are walking around carry the very tool needed to instantly satisfy a temper tantrum. Road rage will go from fender benders and fists, to high-speed shoot outs. And becoming a police officer in such an America would be like becoming police chief of Juarez, Mexico. I'm all for the right to own a gun or several guns. But I find it hard to believe that turning America 2010 into Tombstone, Az, 1840, would be any kind of an improvement.
Which
brings me back to my original
questions: Do these people actually know what they want? And do any of
them wonder why the things they are told they should want are
suspiciously similar to what
America's corporations and the plutocrats who run them want? Such as:
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