Category: Class

The excellent Pew Economic Mobility Project is out with its latest numbers on US social mobility. This chart sums up the current state of US social mobility the best: For those unacquainted with the terminology, the chart reads like this: The left column details the eventual economic outcomes of children born into the bottom 20%… Continue reading US social mobility in one chart

About this time last year, I wrote a post about the groundbreaking Medicaid study going on in Oregon right now. Oregon ran a health insurance lottery for some of its impoverished adult population, giving the winners access to Medicaid, and the losers nothing. This admittedly disgusting and embarrassing process created a natural experiment that has… Continue reading In a stunner, researchers find health insurance is good

Chris Hayes has an excellent piece in The Nation about the slipperiness of meritocracy in the United States. In it, Hayes establishes what he calls the Iron Law of Meritocracy: The Iron Law of Meritocracy states that eventually the inequality produced by a meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility.… Continue reading All the merit money can buy

Noah Smith has a post today arguing that belief in skill is socially beneficial. For any given entrepreneurial venture, its success or failure will be the result of luck, skill, or a combination of the two. Smith argues that individuals who believe in the primacy of skill will be more likely to undertake the kinds… Continue reading Meritocratic delusions and inequality

According to a recent Gallup poll, Most Americans think that the United States benefits from having a rich class of people: Despite the rise in inequality and recent movements highlighting said rise, the broad views of Americans do not appear to have changed. A shift towards a radically egalitarian society is probably not in the… Continue reading Americans still big fans of the rich