JOURNAL;Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

By JASON DePARLE



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." Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican

who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that

"mobility from the very bottom up" is "where the United States lags

behind."



Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on

the right is largely new.



"It's becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much

mobility as most other advanced countries," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an

economist at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think you'll find too

many people who will argue with that."



One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty,

which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may

be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for

college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents'

educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of

family background and stymies people with less schooling.



At least five large studies in recent years have found the United

States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by

Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42

percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay

there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much

higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a

country famous for its class constraints.



Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the

top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent

of the Danes.



Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless

society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the

top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research

by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom

two-fifths.



By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not

only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about

inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has

unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the

system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can

climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only

less equal, but also less mobile.



John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped

start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he

was "shocked" by the international comparisons. "Republicans will not

feel compelled to talk about income inequality," Mr. Bridgeland said.

"But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility — a lack

of access to the American Dream."



While Europe differs from the United States in culture and

demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor

with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the

University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men

raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared

with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men

raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of

Canadians.



"Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most

comparable countries," Professor Corak said in an interview.



Skeptics caution that the studies measure "relative mobility" — how

likely children are to move from their parents' place in the income

distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more

money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because

the country has grown richer.



Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a

better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of

Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for

family size). There is no comparable data on other countries.



Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit

immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American

strength. "If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone

should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.," said

Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.



The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more

mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review

Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th

percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings,

while an American family would need an additional $93,000.



Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid.

About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as

adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move

down, according to Pew research. The "stickiness" appears at the top

and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor

families stay trapped.



While Americans have boasted of casting off class since Poor Richard's

Almanac, until recently there has been little data.



Pioneering work in the early 1980s by Gary S. Becker, a Nobel laureate

in economics, found only a mild relationship between fathers' earnings

and those of their sons. But when better data became available a

decade later, another prominent economist, Gary Solon, found the bond

twice as strong. Most researchers now estimate the "elasticity" of

father-son earnings at 0.5, which means that for every 1 percent

increase in a father's income, his sons' income can be expected to

increase by about 0.5 percent.



In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine

countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most

mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other

extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.



The causes of America's mobility problem are a topic of dispute —

starting with the debates over poverty. The United States maintains a

thinner safety net than other rich countries, leaving more children

vulnerable to debilitating hardships.



Poor Americans are also more likely than foreign peers to grow up with

single mothers. That places them at an elevated risk of experiencing

poverty and related problems, a point frequently made by Mr. Santorum,

who surged into contention in the Iowa caucuses. The United States

also has uniquely high incarceration rates, and a longer history of

racial stratification than its peers.



"The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom

fifth in other countries," said Scott Winship, a researcher at the

Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review.

"Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor."



A second distinguishing American trait is the pay tilt toward educated

workers. While in theory that could help poor children rise — good

learners can become high earners — more often it favors the children

of the educated and affluent, who have access to better schools and

arrive in them more prepared to learn.



"Upper-income families can invest more in their children's education

and they may have a better understanding of what it takes to get a

good education," said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage

Foundation, which gives grants to social scientists.



The United States is also less unionized than many of its peers, which

may lower wages among the least skilled, and has public health

problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and

employment.



Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of

the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall

Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to

protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have

less mobility.



Mr. Salam recently wrote that relative mobility "is overrated as a

social policy goal" compared with raising incomes across the board.

Parents naturally try to help their children, and a completely mobile

society would mean complete insecurity: anyone could tumble any time.



But he finds the stagnation at the bottom alarming and warns that it

will worsen. Most of the studies end with people born before 1970,

while wage gaps, single motherhood and incarceration increased later.

Until more recent data arrives, he said, "we don't know the half of

it."

JOURNAL;Wall Street Is An Illegal Cartel That Needs To Be Busted Up: William Cohan

The big Wall Street banks have achieved so much control over their industry that they amount to an illegal cartel, says William Cohan, a former banker and the author of many books and articles about Wall Street, including "Money And Power," a book about Goldman Sachs.

The pricing power and profits that the big banks have is similar to that of Standard Oil, Cohan argues, referring to the gigantic oil monopoly owned by John Rockefeller that was broken up a century ago.

Cohan observes that prices of transactions like IPOs and M&A deals are basically fixed across the industry and produce humongous profits. And smaller "boutique" firms are not able to compete on price because they lack the distribution and influence of the biggest banks.

Cohan believes that the government should intervene, breaking the cartel's stranglehold. He notes, however, that a prior case brought against the industry 60 years ago failed. And even if the government were to successfully intervene, the specific remedy is not clear.

JOURNAL:What the Top 1% of Earners Majored In

What the Top 1% of Earners Majored In

By ROBERT GEBELOFF and SHAILA DEWAN



12:21 p.m. | Updated to add a fuller list of majors at the bottom of the post.



We got an interesting question from an academic adviser at a Texas

university: could we tell what the top 1 percent of earners majored

in?



The writer, sly dog, was probably trying to make a point, because he

wrote from a biology department, and it turns out that biology majors

make up nearly 7 percent of college graduates who live in households

in the top 1 percent.



According to the Census Bureau's 2010 American Community Survey, the

majors that give you the best chance of reaching the 1 percent are

pre-med, economics, biochemistry, zoology and, yes, biology, in that

order.



The 1 Percent



Looking at the top of the economic strata.



Below is a chart showing the majors most likely to get into the 1

percent (excluding majors held by fewer than 50,000 people in 2010

census data). The third column shows the percentage of degree holders

with that major who make it into the 1 percent. The fourth column

shows the percent of the 1 percent (among college grads) that hold

that major. In other words, more than one in 10 people with a pre-med

degree make it into the 1 percent, and about 1 in 100 of the 1

percenters with degrees majored in pre-med.



Of course, choice of major is not the only way to increase your

chances of reaching the 1 percent, if that is your goal. There is also

the sector you choose.



A separate analysis of census data on occupations showed that one in

eight lawyers, for example, are in the 1 percent — unless they work

for a Wall Street firm, when their chances increase to one in three.

Among chief executives, fewer than one in five rank among the 1

percent, but their chances increase if the company produces medical

supplies (one in four) or drugs (two in five). Hollywood writers? One

in nine are 1 percenters. Television or radio writers? One in 14.

Newspaper writers and editors? One in 62.

Undergraduate Degree Total % Who Are 1 Percenters Share of All 1 Percenters

Health and Medical Preparatory Programs 142,345 11.8% 0.9%

Economics 1,237,863 8.2% 5.4%

Biochemical Sciences 193,769 7.2% 0.7%

Zoology 159,935 6.9% 0.6%

Biology 1,864,666 6.7% 6.6%

International Relations 146,781 6.7% 0.5%

Political Science and Government 1,427,224 6.2% 4.7%

Physiology 98,181 6.0% 0.3%

Art History and Criticism 137,357 5.9% 0.4%

Chemistry 780,783 5.7% 2.4%

Molecular Biology 64,951 5.6% 0.2%

Area, Ethnic and Civilization Studies 184,906 5.2% 0.5%

Finance 1,071,812 4.8% 2.7%

History 1,351,368 4.7% 3.3%

Business Economics 108,146 4.6% 0.3%

Miscellaneous Psychology 61,257 4.3% 0.1%

Philosophy and Religious Studies 448,095 4.3% 1.0%

Microbiology 147,954 4.2% 0.3%

Chemical Engineering 347,959 4.1% 0.8%

Physics 346,455 4.1% 0.7%

Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration 334,016 3.9% 0.7%

Accounting 2,296,601 3.9% 4.7%

Mathematics 840,137 3.9% 1.7%

English Language and Literature 1,938,988 3.8% 3.8%

Miscellaneous Biology 52,895 3.7% 0.1%

Source: 2010 American Communty Survey, via ipums.org



DV.load('http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/284289-all-degrees-sheet1c.js',

{ width: 480, height: 600, sidebar: false, text: false, container:

"#DV-viewer-284289-all-degrees-sheet1c" });

THOUGHTS/JOURNAL: RELATIONSHIP INVENTORY

Relationship Inventory:

1-What I like about the relationship

-someone to watch movies with

-someone to cook for me

-someone to do my laundry

-someone to have sex with

-someone to have meals with

-someone to come home to

2-Positive Qualities:

-sometimes she was nice

-when i was sick she cared

3-5 things that she did special for me

1-My back

2-dinner for anniver

3-customs for sex

4-massage during vacation

4-List of things that my family liked 

-sister like when she listen to her

5-Family didn't like

-she was fake

-talk about things that were inapproiate.

6-List of neg about the relationship:

-I had to do everything

-clean up her mistakes

-

7-List of my wife's neg qualities:

-unreliable

-lies

-cheap

-not loving

-bad manners

-doesn't listen

8-List of my ex's positive qualities that turned neg:

-giving in the beginning with attention

-sex

-listened

9-warning sign:

-made me pay for parking in first date

-need to sleep early and she didn't give a shit

-Christmas gift

-lies

10-5 hurtful incident

1-christmas

2-want to sleep

3-her going to drink during CME

4-leaving me without telling me

5-unrelible

11-What i did wrong: 

-controlling

-being in a bad mood

-putting her down

-not trusting her

THOUGHTS: DESTINY

In our lives, certain things may lead us to believe that our lives are mapped out, are predetermined by some higher authority. Other things may make us think that our lives are decided solely by our own actions, by our own free will. In my opinion, I believe that our lives are a concoction of both. There are times in our lives when we think that the decisions we make our purely our own, but are they really? Are we ALWAYS the ones who “decide” what is best for ourselves? I think certain choices and actions are left up to us. The real question is: which ones? How do we know which choices are our own and which ones are already decided for us? That is a question that only He can really answer.

To me, our lives are mapped out, to a certain degree. We have many aspects of our lives predetermined. For example, I think that the field in which we work is already decided for us. I think that God has planned for me to become a nurse, and that He has planned for my best friend to be a psychologist. I also believe that our soul mates are already chosen for us. There is a reason people meet and marry, and there is also a reason people meet and break up. When people break up, it is God’s way of showing us that this person is not our soul mate. Let’s say that you break up with someone, and then you get back together. I can’t see why God would “let” you get back together for any other reason than to show you that this other person is, in fact, your soul mate. When it comes to moving and relocating, I believe that this is also already established. For example, I have moved three times in my life so far, since the age of eight. There has to be a reason for that. God decided this for us; these types of things happen for a reason. Sometimes these reasons don’t seem fair or just, but there is always a reason. As E.B. White once stated, “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” To me, he understands our lives are already determined for us, and that we should just respect God’s plan and not try to change things for what we think would be better for us.

When it comes to simple, everyday choices, I think that they are made by our own hopes and dreams, by our own free will. Things like which movie to see or what to eat for lunch are simple decisions that people make everyday. Choices such as whether or not to study for a final exam, or to drive or walk to school, are ones that really have no effect on your future. Decisions that we make each day, ones that hardly require any debating about, are the ones that are so minor that they could, in no way, effect the outcome of our destiny, of our future. As Sir William Osler once said “Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.” To me, he is saying that we shouldn’t live our lives thinking about the past, nor thinking about the future. Is seems to me that he knows that our lives are basically mapped out for us, and that we should make our present decisions based on today, and not based on what we think will happen due to this decision in the future. He believes that we are left to make up our own minds about these simple decisions, and that God wouldn’t let us make them if they would, in any way, effect His plan for us.

In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.” Basically, don’t dwell on what happened in the past, but try your best at whatever comes your way in the present. By doing this, you will meet your future (which seems to say that your future is already a thing, already known by God) ready and expecting. Once the time comes to meet your future, you will be prepared for whatever is handed to you. Your destiny is something that is mostly decided for you. It is something that you can’t change, no matter how hard you try. Life is full of choices you think are totally dependent on you. The truth is, the REAL choices, the life altering ones, are determined before you make them. God makes them a reality. He creates our fate.

LOVE/ THOUGHTS:SOUL MATE ARE REALLY PEOPLE TOO

 A good friend of my is divorcing her husband because she bought into the lie that God wants us to "be happy" in marriage and freed from her current spouse to find her one, true "soul mate." Like most other people, she has this fantastical, unreal notion that God brings together two lost hearts who experience true compatibility in all the deepest longings of their being. Most people think that your soul mate is someone that you never argue with and spend endless days of hand-clinching romantic walks on the beach with. No hardships, no struggles, just starry-eyed wonder for the next 80 years. The truth is, a soul mate isn't someone you find, it's someone you intentionally and prayerfully become.

Anyone in a successful marriage can tell you that "success" in marriage doesn't come from finding that one person you were meant to be with. It only comes from giving up the selfish behavior that served you while you were single, and focusing on selflessly serving your spouse instead. A happy marriage requires a completely different mindset than the 50/50 concept most couples enter into marriage with. The idea that if I do my 50% and Sabrina does her 50%, we will have a happy marriage is ridiculous. The only way to have a happy marriage is if I take the selfish focus off of myself and put 100% of my energy into serving each my partner and she does the same with me. If I am focused 100% on serving her I don't even realize when my needs and desires aren't being met, because I'm not focused on my needs and desires, but hers.

Nowhere in the Bible does God say anything about soul mates. God gives us the simple details on how to have a great marriage. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Wives, respect your husbands. Both of these are intentional acts of selfless sacrifice that will guarantee us to have a happy marriage.