Quote:
Originally Posted by Willd
The slope is twice as steep (gradient of 0.34 vs 0.17 and 0.18), that's a pretty huge difference.
You're overthinking this.
The income slope was actually .2, since I accidentally grabbed the wrong graph, and even that doesn't ultimately matter because trends are just that, trends. You're not doomed to be in the 30th percentile just because that's where you started.
Income scales differently in Denmark than it does the USA. Of course they're going to be more bunched up and thus have a lower slope. They're one of the most tightly packed groups on the planet. Good for Denmark and their relatively small population. Still, their
averages shows that children tend to stick with the parents along that more shallow sloping line.
The parental safety nets are undoubtedly stronger for those at the top so it's harder to crash, but people still do it. Conversely, your parents aren't going to be able to write checks to overcome your weaknesses or cultivate your strengths when you start in the bottom quintile, but that doesn't stop people from climbing the socio-economic ladder.
We're not arguing the same thing. I think eyebooger was complaining about overall income inequality and then trying to get me to admit that USA#1 does a poor job of letting people do better/worse than their parents. I disagree, but not because his graph is necessarily incorrect. The extremes of the income curve are more sticky than they should be in the USA, in that the tippity top tends to stay there generation after generation, as does the very lowest, but everyone else enjoys quite a bit of mobility, whether good or bad. That's what lagtight's OP alluded to, I think. That's one of America's strengths, but we're losing sight of that as people continue to demonize the rich.