What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[Lissa]

And to add to that. The american dream only works if for every winner you have a whole bunch of losers. So yes, of course there are people climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. But for every person that clims up, several fall down.

Not really, no. This isn't a zero sum game. New wealth is created nearly every year. Someone at the mean real US income today would have been very well off in the 1910s, and downright rich in the 1820s.

This also depends on where you are in the country too. Someone making the median in New York and it's surrounding burrows is going to be hard pressed to make ends meet. Someone making the median where I and Voiceman and his brothers grew up would be considered down right rich (don't know if Voiceman remembers the Berneys or not, but it was crazy to consider what that family had with their ranch).

Also, take a look at what is being considered Middle Class now in China and what kind of daily income those people are making with respect to converting to US dollars.

Wealth is really dependant on location.

---

Well, kandrathe; FIT is right actually.

Thanks for your supporting data.

No, FIT is trolling me. There is ample evidence (such as from George Borjas) to show that social mobility is alive and well in America. To be clear, I never said there was absolute equality, only that there is a relative equality of opportunity. A young adult is certainly influenced by their parents circumstances, including that parents success in the labor market. That same young person may have negative societal pressures, such as discrimination to overcome. But, "The Law" clearly is on the side of the discriminated, and "The Law" in fact seeks to counter those discriminatory pressures by implementing EEO policies, minority business vendor preferences, and affirmative action. Is it perfect, no, and I've never claimed that every person experiences upward only social mobility. I'm limiting my view to "The American Dream", and I'll leave "The Dutch Dream" to you.

But it isn't even relative equality of opportunity either. Have you looked at any of the studies out there? There are numerous studies saying that the future generations of America are doomed to be worse off than their parent generations. That shows that there isn't equality of opportunity when the overall effect is that there will be less people doing better than their parent's generation and all it takes is looking at the present unemployment situation here in the US.

Some of the rough statistics running around right now on unemployment rates:

9% overall Unemployment

5% unemployement rate for those with a college degree and over the age of 34.

13% to 14% unemployement rate for those without a college degree over the age of 34.

High teens, low 20s percentage unemployement rate for those under the age of 34.

These numbers are not exact, but this is what has been shown over the last few months for labor statistics. You cannot tell me that there is equal opportunity when the situation is like this, especially when you are using statistics from studies that show the equality of opportunity eroding over the course of your study (take a look back at your own posts where you show that poverty is increasing, not decreasing as time has gone on).