Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Why social mobility matters—and income inequality does not
Why social mobility matters—and income inequality does not
Apr 4, 2025 12:50 PM

When es to household e, progressives tend to start with their intuitive understanding of fairness (i.e., some people have a lot more e than others), move to the solution (redistribution of e and wealth from those who have more to those who have less), and only then to develop a metric that justifies implementing their solution: e inequality.

Because of this roundabout approach, you rarely hear progressives argue that e inequality is a problem since for them it just is an injustice — and that wealth redistribution is the primary solution. When conservatives and libertarians disagree about whether it even is an issue we should be concerned with, we are considered heart-hearted apologists for an immoral capitalist system.

The truth, however, is that we don’t care about e inequality because relative differences in e tell us nothing about fairness or the just distribution of wealth. What we care about — what everyone should care about — is whether people have adequate opportunities to increase their household’s e, and hence, improve their standard of living. While there is no truly adequate gauge to measure such opportunities, we can get a fair estimate based on measurements of social mobility.

Social mobility is the ability of an individual or family to improve (or lower) their economic status. Since it is often measured in e, it is also called e mobility or economic mobility. (I prefer the term “social mobility” because increases in status can often be more important than e as a gauge of one’s standard of living. For instance, a person may make choose to forego greater e in order to accept a job, such a college professor, that has a high social status and increases one’s life satisfaction because of their job.)

The two main types of social mobility are intergenerational (i.e., a person is better off than their parents or grandparents) or intragenerational (i.e., e changes within a person or group’s lifetime). Both are important in determining whether social mobility is increasing or decreasing.

What increases social mobility? As a recent article in the New York Times explains, there are four broad factors that appeared to affect e mobility:

1. The size and dispersion of the local middle class,

2. Two-parent households,

3. Better elementary schools and high schools, and

4. Civic engagement, including membership in religious munity groups.

By contrast, as James Pethokoukis notes, there was little or no correlation between mobility and the sort of stuff that left-liberals might prefer to focus on: taxes (tax credits for the poor or higher taxes for the rich), college tuition rates, or the amount of extreme wealth in a region.

While e inequality has a simple solution (e.g., take money from group A and give it to group B), social mobility is plex and reliant on social and cultural factors. If we truly want to help all Americans, though, there are a few things we could do: encourage parents to stay together, improve our local schools, and get involved in munities. Doing that would improve the quality of life for millions of Americans in a way that worrying about the size of our neighbor’s paycheck can never do.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Questions about the Red Cross
The Remedy, the Claremont Institute‘s blog, links to an article in the Los Angeles Times by Richard M. Walden, head of Operation USA, that raises concerns about how the Red Cross spends the money it receives for specific disasters. Walden levels some important and serious charges against the Red Cross, and may or may not be convincing depending on if you approve of the Red Cross’ fund-raising precedents and other activities. But Walden is undeniably right is when he raises...
The nose of a camel: The federal government and education
Federal involvement in education has grown steadily throughout the nation’s history, encroaching on what is still viewed by American’s as mostly a state and local responsibility. Kevin Schmiesing looks at a new book that examines U.S. education policy, the red tape and bureaucracy that has resulted, and the opposition to federal control that arose from parochial school administrators. Read the full text here. ...
Journalism professor calls for Helter Skelter
In 1969 Charles Manson and his gang set out to ignite a race war that pitted the wealthy white establishment against underprivileged blacks. The apocalyptic battle would be called “Helter Skelter,” after the Beatles’ song written by Paul McCartney. The white Manson reasoned that America’s angry black population would eventually win this war; at which time he and his group would emerge from their Mojave Desert hideout to assume leadership over what he perceived to be an inferior race. es...
Spendthrift republicans
A wonderful piece by Deroy Murdock today on NRO. Though most fiscal conservatives understandably vote Republican, the record substantiates the theory that spending is less responsible when Congress is dominated by one party—either party—than when each party has enough votes to frustrate the other. Others have drawn attention to the problem of Republican pork, but Murdock does so in an especially devastating way. ...
CAFTA, prudence, and volleyball
After receiving some responses to a previous post (CAFTA/Culture of Life: Enemies?), I thought I would post the the exchange with my most recent dissatisfied critic. Here’s to volleying! (I have edited the emails for confidentiality.) Mr. Phelps, It was with great interest that I recently read your blog entry “CAFTA/Culture of Life: Enemies?” as for some strange reason it recently appeared on the Google Alerts. I found it amusing how you worked John Paul’s teachings in without actually quoting...
Submerged subsidiarity
Because too much has already been said about the recent gulf hurricanes, I won’t put in my two cents. I will, however, direct the reader to the most insightful take on this situation that I have yet to stumble across. As you read it, think again about the importance of the definitions of the words we use, such as ‘responsibility’ and ‘authority’ as are discussed in the mentioned article. ...
Fab labbing, Fu-Fu, and the ovine entrepreneur
The BBC reports today a great illustration of human creativity and the intersection of technology and subsidiarity. MIT has set up what they called Fab Labs (Fabrication Labs) in what many might consider the least likely places for technological invention. These Labs consist of basic tools and software than enable people in sometimes remote and rural locations to invent and fabricate the technology they need in their daily work. MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld: In a world of Fab Labs, you...
The right pass at the right time
If you haven’t heard of this story yet, read about what Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weis did this past weekend. His expression passion for a dying boy, 10-year-old Montana Mazurkiewicz, transcends sports. Weis honored a promise to Montana despite the fact that he is a first-year coach in the big business of college football, in what might be the most scrutinized and storied programs in the country. In a personal visit to the boy last week, in addition...
Hurricane relief – Small organizations to the rescue
In the wake of overwhelming need of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thankfully a number of us are voicing irritation with the inquiry, “How important do you think that faith-based organizations are to helping people”? Before ANY organization — government agency of any kind or national nonprofit — made a move, faith organizations had already moved. In San Antonio, where several Russian students were among New Orleans evacuees, Victory Fellowship, a faith-based, privately funded substance abuse treatment program, simply did the...
Breathing with one lung?
Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Vienna and Austria, the Russian Orthodox Church’s representative to the European Union, is once again urging a Roman Catholic-Orthodox alliance bat secularism, liberalism and relativism in Europe — and lands outside it. “The social and ethical teachings of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are extremely close, in many cases practically identical,” Bishop Hilarion said. “Why, then, should we not be able to reveal our unity on all these major issues urbi et orbi?” Since the election...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved