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Income Mobility Discussion Incomplete without Immigration

By Joseph Lawler on 10.28.11 @ 4:53PM

Rep. Paul Ryan’s Heritage Foundation speech on Wednesday criticizing President Obama for “divisive rhetoric” has sparked a web war over whether America has high income mobility — Ryan suggested that it does, prompting vitriolic pushback from a number of liberal commentators who argue that income mobility in the U.S. is less than in other developed nations.

The back-and-forth over income mobility has been disappointing, because neither side, left or right, has defined either their terms or their purposes. As far as I’m concerned, the relevant question is whether poor people are able to make their way up the income ladder with ease in the U.S. I’m not at odds with anyone, including liberals, when I say that making it easier to go from poor to rich in America is a goal.

Now, progressives are right to state, as Brian Beutler did in initially contradicting Ryan, that there is a metric of relative income mobility by which America fares worse than a number of European countries. But it’s important to distinguish this statistic from measurements of absolute mobility — the frequency with which people move from lower- to higher-income brackets, or whether kids do better economically than their parents. This is different from relative mobility, which measures the likelihood that kids will end up near the same income percentile as their parents. To make a long story short, the U.S. has low relative mobility, but, as Rep. Ryan implied, high absolute income mobility.

While that would seem to be a contradiction, it’s not. And the reason is that the U.S. constantly adds immigrants at the bottom of the distribution.

Before going any further, ask yourself this question: would you rather start out poor in the U.S., or anywhere else in the world, including one of the large European social democracies? Rep. Ryan would choose the U.S., and I would too. Perhaps Beutler et al. would choose otherwise, but it’s worth noting that millions of immigrants from all over the world, not just Mexico, have, in fact, chosen the U.S. Of course, there are a million other considerations of history, immigration laws, de-colonialization, etc., to take in account. But the fact that so many Koreans, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, and Lebanese, to name a few other than our neighboring Mexicans at random, migrate to America suggests, at the very least, that the U.S does not have a totally inescapable caste system.

For an article on income mobility last year, I interviewed Dr. Nathan Grawe, a professor of economics at Carleton College and the author of one of the reports published by the Economic Mobility Project, the source cited by Beutler in his criticism of Ryan. Grawe explained that immigration explains how absolute income mobility can be fine even in the face of bad news about prospects for people born into a particular class:

How can this generation earn less than their parents’ generation and yet kids consistently out earn their parents? The answer is interesting and illuminating: immigration…. Because new immigrants earn less (on average) than others, their inclusion makes it look like things are heading toward less opportunity when in reality nearly all kids from lower-income families (and 2/3s of all kids) are doing better than their parents.

This is really important news. It helps us to reconcile many Americans’ sense that their families have made progress…with the average earnings data we hear every year.

Grawe also noted that “this is a uniquely North American reality.” While some European countries also have high rates of immigration, the U.S. have a disproportionate amount of immigrants from developing, and poor countries. Around half, or fewer than half, of migrants to countries like Norway, Sweden, and France, come from other European or North American countries. A much higher percentage — closer to 80 — of U.S. and Canadian immigrants come from poorer countries.

So while the U.S. may not look as good as some European countries by some relative income mobility statistics, Ryan is not wrong to portray the U.S. as a country of opportunity in which it’s relatively easy to move up in economic status.

In my estimation, it’s less important to ask whether people shift around class levels frequently, with some rising and others falling, than it is to ask whether it’s easy to move from poor to rich. By this standard, Ryan is right that America is an upwardly mobile society.

Brittanicus| 10.30.11 @ 1:42PM

There is huge difference between the demonstrators exhibiting their adversity to American society and capitalism and the growing roots of the TEA PARTY. How the leftists newspapers and extremist activists can acquaint the multitudes of ordinary Americans of Senior Citizens and black, white, Hispanic, Latino, Asian people; the blue and white collar American workers is beyond me. The people who are crowding the pillars of Wall Street, think that the wealthy businessman owe them something? These people strumming their stuff are nothing like the TEA PARTY. Members of the Tea Party carry signs with them and congregate for their demonstrations, but don’t leave after departure a disgusting mess and cause the police to react with tear gas and angry retribution. The Tea Party is not George Soros anarchist, communists and people who hate America; they are Americans who want non-violent change.
The Tea Party agenda is to reduce the size of government, to earlier days, to reinvent the Tax Code, so nobody escapes paying their fair share; whether corporate giants as General Electric, Google, with exceptions, no options. Each new tax plan highlighted by the potential presidential candidates should be scrutinized such as Herman Cain’s 9-9-9. The legislators should dismantling farm subsidies, sugar and ethanol, oil, energy and thousands financial entities carefully crafted loopholes? Renegotiate fair trade agreements with foreign countries, which are deviously engineering, so we get a fair deal from countries as china. Incidentally why in the world would be giving Communist China free money, when we are paying off part of our 15 Trillion debt to their government? It really is a shame that Donald trump is not running for president, as he stated that he would place at least a import tariff of at least 25 percent on every countries products, that are playing us for stooges; like China.
Out of this internal mess caused by corruption and downright incompetence, all US government agencies that do not conform to the US Constitution, should be returned to the authorities at the state level. Throughout these last decades we have remained indifferent to the expansion of Washington, but the consequences have become unsatisfactory and a fiscal catastrophe. Our schools and education are a dismal failure, as they have been mismanaged by layers of bureaucrats, at the Department of Education.
The creation of small and large business cannot get off the ground, as America has developed into a country of out of control rules and regulations. Industrial nation as china can file documentation for a new bridge in a day and approved for the engineers to begin construction the same week. While in America to get any approval can take months, that’s if you’re lucky. An example was my Uncles family where they applied for a permit to lay gas lines, for a new construction project in Lancaster, California. The permits were not approved for 9 months by the city of Lancaster; they spent all this time in bureaucratic limbo, waiting to further advance the housing project. The whole construction project ended up in the hands of the bank, which was overshadowed by the real estate bubble bursting.
One of our greatest problems that have not been resolved yet is illegal immigration. The financial aspect is main concern that must be severed for good, that most prudent people know is costing over 100 billion dollars a year. This is not a static figure as the more people who illegal trespass here, the more money drained from each tier of government. These outlandish sums of money should be going to our old folks, homeless and sick. This welfare assistance should not be appropriated by government agencies for children of illegal families, under the misinterpretation of the 14th amendment.
Illegal immigration is no longer an issue that can be ignored, as it has literary shown up as an main contention. It’s a fallacy driven by Democratic and Liberal doctrines that these people are here just to work? Go to any Sanctuary City, such as Los Angeles, California or Nevada and determine your own views of the financial situation in those States, or any other state that has assumed these illegal policies. As I repeated many times—it’s all about copious greed and potential votes in future elections. Neither party is without blame for the ramification of this daily immigration problem. Whether it’s another drunken alien, killing a United States citizen or a person of permanent residency the occurrences are rising. Only the rural press or E-media tends to even bother printing about these terrible incidents, which is carefully concealed by the Liberal progressives. Criminal aliens have spread across the country, with their gangs and the poison they have spawned through each state. In good stead, President Obama showed great promise, with extending ICE’S authority with a commitment to end the mayhem, but that has slowed under his current directive of Obama and the reticent leftists in the Department of IN-Justice allow these less criminal blemished persons to remain on the streets. To the TEA PARTY all people who unlawfully jump the fence or arrive by airline are criminals. Everybody should be tracked and then deported or leave by their own act. The Tea Party recognizes no path to citizenship, amnesty or immigration reform or the small covert arrangements each year, importing undeserved visa holders that big companies have exploited as cheap inferior labor.
Perhaps our last chance to close the door on the unwanted poor of other countries is Lamar Smith’s ‘LEGAL WORKFORCE ACT. Bill H.R. 2885 has the empowerment to stop illegal aliens claiming the work of the 24 million American jobless. Legally known as E-Verify it is a strong tool, to disrupt foreigners from seeking work, since they cannot pass the verification barrier that I-9 audits have emplaced. New versions of E-Verify can detect fraudulent documentation, specifically with the assistance of the approval from State Departments of Motor Vehicles nationwide.
If you want to fax for fee go to NumbersUSA or please call your House Representative at the Congressional Switchboard.202-224-3121

Before the new session of Congress we need the assistance of patriotic Americans to harass, their Federal and State legislative Ways and Means Committee lead by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) to get his fellow House Representatives their reluctant backsides and sponsor Bill H.R. 2885.
Remember Congress is filled with distended corruption, whose measure of responsibility only is influenced by the wealthy donors and their special interest lobbyists. Unless full sponsorship of Bill 2885 gets to the house floor, there is little chance of success. You can learn more about the ‘Legal Workforce Act’ at the NumbersUSA website.
America should invest in its people and stop discovering new ways to subsidize foreign wars, foreign governments and make our own sovereign nation less resilient as it once was. We have judges who don’t comply with the letter of the law and interpret their Liberal ideology from the bench. We have been invaded over at least four administrations by extraordinary amounts of poverty, that our country is expected to absorb, that taxpayers are expected to be the benefactor. E-Verify will totally slow the magnitudes who come here, with their palms open. These are ECONOMIC PEOPLE well aware of America’s entitlement programs. They are not the 19th century poor, that were viewed the Statue of Liberty for the first time and expected nothing upon arrival on Ellis Island.
These new illegal aliens know before arriving here how to work the system. Family and friends are well acquainted how to get their fingers in the taxpayers pies. Supervisor Mike Antonovich stated: “The argument that illegal’s foreigners contribute more than they receive in government services is nonsense Illegal immigration has had a catastrophic economic impact on Los Angeles County Our bankrupt health care delivery system has become an HMO for the world and criminal illegal aliens are overwhelming our criminal justice system.” Nearly 100,000 children of 60,000 undocumented parents receive aid every year. Antonovich released new statistics for 2011 showing social spending for those families in his county rose to $53 million in November, putting the county government on track to spend more than $600 million on related costs for the year -- up from $570 million in 2009. Combined with public safety costs and health care costs, the City Supervisor claimed the "total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers" was more than $1.6 billion in 2010. How can taxpayers be so deluded by Democratic Governors, Mayors and officials who are parting these dollars, they should be going to our senior citizens. Many programs have been cut back in Los Angeles, but taxpayers are subsidizing foreign aliens; old people are principally hard hit. "Not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education," Undoubtedly this is a astronomical problem from the East to West coast, hat Congress prefers to leave alone, except for a few Stewart lawmakers. The TEA PARTY has a strong commitment to transform this country from a debtor nation, to once again a creditor nation that must start with the illegal alien occupation.
Remember Illegal aliens have voted in previous elections and overlooked. The Tea Party will be manning the election precincts and investigating forged registrations and irregular absentee ballots in 2012.

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