social mobility in the class system

Is upward (or downward) mobility possible? This is a question referring to societies with a capitalist basis, otherwise it would be kind of silly. Of course, there are success stories of somebody coming out of the poorest of poor places and rising up and inventing 'sliced bread' for instance, but is this really characteristic or is it just a means of control to keep the working class working, a fantasy of making it to the 'top'? The success stories, I think, are simply outliers that naturally happen based on the probability of how any given person will end up coming out of any given class. A way of visualizing this could be seen at

http://www.symynet.com/educational_software/teaching_resources/Statistic
s/normal_distribution/intro.htm#

about half way down is a picture of the standard normal distribution. I'm not saying that we follow this graph exactly, but something like it where the graph represents a given class, the x-axis represents the class they end up in, and the y-axis represents the amount of people who end up there. I think that this idea is fairly obvious, but I also think that a LOT of people buy into the "American dream" of upward mobility. What are your thoughts??

The ideal capitalist society would normally have lots of mobility both ways. I think the mobility we have now is fairly good. There are plenty of stories of rich aristocratic families turning into poorer ones (well there aren't many rich aristocrats left).
One issue is that it seems to take far too many generations for immigrants to move up the social ladder. Idealy after 1 or 2 generations of being in their new country, immigrants should be be moving up. However, as we know, immigrants form the main part of the poor classes of America.
Though this is perhaps because America is still receiving many immigrants, and first generation immigrants are going to be lower class no matter what.

The problem is perhaps more blatant in France, we aren't getting very many new arab immigrants, many arabs are 2 or 3rd generation, and yet the majority of them are lower class.

For ultimate mobility, there would need to be an education system based on merit. High grades = good edu. Granted we already have that partially, but its all a matter of degree.

i do buy into the american dream. the bell curve applies to nearly everything, altho im not exactly sure why. i think the reason why people do not rise or fall in class very often is because it is imprinted in their mind at an early age what class they do in fact fall under. altho people may feel that they have the mentality of "i can do anything" i dont think this is truly the case. in order for a person to rise or fall, they must truly believe that they belong where ever it is that they go.

early generations of immigrants naturally feel out of place and thus end up in the lower class more often than not.

DumbTeen:
The argument you have for aristocrats falling coupled with the argument of the immigrants taking far too many generations to move up (which I believe is not only immigrants, but generations of current citizens) is showing how the middle class is being cut out and the cliche saying of "the rich get richer and the poor stay poor" is coming into play. I do agree however that better education = overall better society (don't mean to put words in your mouth, but i think you were saying that kind of)

Wyote:
You said, "I think the reason why people do not rise of fall in class very often is because it is imprinted in their mind at an early age what class they do in fact fall under." I do agree, but I think it is not only their self-image, but also their family's financial situation. Some people say that "poor people are are just lazy" and that's why they don't move up. I would say that poor people don't move up because, in a lot of cases, they have to work 2 full time jobs just to stay alive.

While there is a problem, I find the problem to be slight. If a person really wants to be wealthy in this (mostly capitalistic country), they can be. Why would a rich man or wonan want to be poor, but this happening by accident or chance would be very rare. However, it is more difficult for a person to become wealthy today then it was many years ago. But this is not because of Capitalism. This is because there is so much money, or should I say, so much debt a people is willing to bare. What people don't realize is that for one person to become more wealthy another must become more poor. That's just simple math. There is only so much to go around. They don't teach this in school. As a matter of fact, I've heard nobody teach this.

I do not want to be rich. My goal is to be successful, to me, to be successful, one must be happy with what they have and not want for more. You see, from the rich to the poor, we all want for more, but a successful man is a happy man who wants for nothing, and that is my goal, it is an atitude I must master.

when i was very young (five or six) i had a conversation with one of my parents friends who happend to be Hindu. he told me "you are a man of many properties" ... i didnt understand the implications of this statement for a very long time (im still learning new aspects of it as of this day) but it has stuck with me and helped me realise that money/objects cant give you happiness. of course, it may also be keeping me from rising above the middle class

mikeh - i agree totally, i almost went in to what you are saying but i didnt know quite how to word it effectively. their parents financial problems/lack of usually help swing them in the same direction. its very hard to break out of the class that you were born in to.

mikeh - Yeah, I was basically saying that education makes better societies. But also that we shouldn't educate everyone equally (and often can't anyway). Education would be different depending on your work. Then those who work and are motivated are educated.
Thus a motivated kid from a working class family can get education for higher work just as easily as anyone else.

okcitykid,
i don't understand what you mean when you say the reason it is harder today than it was years ago to break into a higher class is not because of capitalism. you site debt and the fact that people become richer means others losing money, to me, this is pure economics used in the very essence of capitalistic thought. in this light, to me, capitalism is all about "getting to the top", hopefully in the name of progress and not just in padding the pockets (i.e. bumping somebody else out of that position and downward).

so if you were to look at it as a trend and see how it is harder today than it was a long time ago, which i definitely agree with, then where are we headed? and isn't it all about capitalism? (i'm not a communist or socialist necessarily, i don't really think any of them a good ideas, i just think it's interesting to look at)

also, i definitely agree with what you're saying about money is not happiness and to desire more is unhappy...etc. this post was intended to be more about the extreme high and extreme low ends of the class systems, the billionaires vs. the people who do work as much as possible just to stay alive and still fall behind, and the injustices of what that brings.

I don't see why its harder to become rich today. What with things like affirmative action (which I don't entirely agree with), it should be easier for some poor to get rich.
And what is your definition of wealthy anyway? Relative wealth is obviously going to be limited to a minority. But what about wealthy in services and goods rather then in cash, wealthy as in having a car, a house, good food and going on exotic holidays.

More in more people have concrete wealth in more goods and services, even if we assume relative moves of classes up and down are slowing.

i say it was easier then than now to move up because for some time now, the middle class has been slowly evaporating. thre trends just simply support it. i've read books on it, i'll see if i can find well-sourced web-sites with this sort of data. as far as definition of wealth, i agree it's not just cash (and this isn't about happiness as stated in an earlier post, this is monitary wealth), the form could be in land, or any other assets, but whaver form they are in is indicative to the class you currently exist in. in other words, you have these given things because you are in a given class (i.e. hopefully nobody on welfare is driving a ferrari).

If the middle class (which is fundamental for a trully stable democracy) is vanishing, well there's something wrong.

Not to bring up a sore subject, wouldn't the window dude fall into the catagory?
Then there are all those lucky lotto winners but then a mil. doesn't actly put the middle class into the upper does it.
Ya, the rich get richer & the poor get poorer & the world grows smaller, putting the squeeze on the bulge in the middle.

as far as the lotto winners go, the already poor people will generally just blow all the money and simply become poor again, while the rich dont need the extra wealth, so it really doesnt affect their status when they blow the money. there are exceptions tho, as goes with everything.

What I meant about the past is - believe it or not - there was a time once when most people owned their property. They didn't pay a morgage. That is imposible today. Today it is impossible to not be a part of the capitalist world. We must join inorder to live. We all have to pay a mortgage, or a rent.

But in our own world, if we will just be happy with what we have, we will do ok. We should learn not to gage success by measured capital. I can't say I have mastered that.

quote:

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as far as the lotto winners go, the already poor people will generally just blow all the money and simply become poor again

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of course they will that is why it is only a sham, a faint ray of hope of material wealth for them to snatch at. Should by some stroke of luck they win, they will end up letting it slip through their fingers. Should they be diligent with it, they will still probably be in the same (class) boat as before. The school system which was suppose to reap the return, only found that those dollars (if they materialized) were deducted from the tax based funds they were to suppliment (Gads these capitalist are genius at conning the people aren't they)