Comments on: The myth of upward mobility

By: Sam

Sam — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:24:04 +0000

If you sell your labour you are a worker. If you exploit others’ you are a capitalist. If you exploit your own you are a member of the petit-bourgeois class.

But by all means, be arrogant and dismissive of things you have no idea about. Keep it up.

By: vto

vto — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:21:55 +0000

I mean Felix such mobility as allows people to move between deciles pretty much at will (or with only work etc being the barriers, not social position, wealth, or lack of, etc). Then everyone would want to go to the top decile, and get there, if mobility was simple.

But I see this whole post has moved on now. I’m a day late.

By: Herodotus

Herodotus — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:01:34 +0000

I am glad you mentioned “ompensating for the fact that we no longer have any notion of a living wage”. I have long been thinking about this topic. I can see no comment regarding this anywhere. I believe based on first principles hat this subject needs to be brought up, as andy assistance from govt,tax policy, superannuation, min wage etc needs this as its foundation. What quality of life do we wish as a base level for all of us? I think it was stats NZ reported that the average household outgoings were about $950/week

By: prism

prism — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:43:38 +0000

Olwyn you know your stuff. These are the realities but the GAS group don’t want to know these. (GAS Gripe and Sneer). People don’t get easily onto welfare, but then because of the bias against welfare by many and particularly politicians, they make it hard to get off again.
They do this by cutting back on grants and supplements that enable beneficiaries to manage life plus get out to work, study etc. So if you are poor, get a job, but an entry-level or part-time one not paying well, the withdrawal of supplementary benefits can mean that you end up with less money than before, so you are money poorer and time poorer. And time to look for cheap and second hand things enables a better level of living than just surviving. So less time and less money can make the move to get a good job, better income and welfare independence near kaput.

By: Olwyn

Olwyn — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:12:07 +0000

I like the smugocracy remark prism. While people rail against welfare, in fact it cushions everyone from deeper and harder questions. Firstly, just about 100% of welfare payments end up in the hands of businesses, having briefly prevented starvation along the way. And a huge part of the welfare bill goes to compensating for the fact that we no longer have any notion of a living wage, along with property prices that bear no relation to the real money generated in this country. If you were to take welfare out of the equation, those howling about it now would be howling even louder. This extension of welfare, however, contributes to the lack of social mobility – one has to be way above the storm to really be above the storm. If you earn a bit more, your accommodation supplement goes down and you find yourself in debt to working for families – to get lucky you have to get very lucky indeed. Meanwhile the smugocracy pockets its indirect welfare payments and pens another letter to the editor about the scourge of the beneficiary.

By: prism

prism — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:51:27 +0000

Perhaps smugocracy is what you get when you no longer have aristocracy and meritocracry.

By: burt

burt — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:31:50 +0000

roger

One of the concepts that I have been led to believe is that part of the ‘Scandinavian’ concept of welfare is a degree of entitlement attributed to contributions made. Fir example a big tax payer might get a bigger benefit for unemployment than a perpetual beneficiary. Can you start to see where equity of income also becomes a factor in welfare systems when the two are intrinsically linked via an ideology? Are you comfortable with that?

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:22:32 +0000

The proportional columns idea doesn’t work. There are always 10% of people in each decile — that’s what decile means.

What this graph shows is how the people in each decile moved from period to period. Did they change decile or not? As the big bubbles are on the diagonal, the answer is that most people did not change decile.

Your suggested method doesn’t seem to show this information.

By: roger nome

roger nome — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:47:11 +0000

Burt – as someone pointed out further up the thread, the social democratic, high-tax, large welfare state Scandinavian countries have the highest social mobility, and the low-tax, relatively free market countries (Eng, US), have the lowest.

No surprise that you missed that.

By: Gosman

Gosman — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:59:09 +0000

‘”class confusion’ that many of the Middle Class suffer from ‘

Classic piece of leftist thinking there!

I have a question for you.

I work as an It Contractor for a NZ Bank. Does that mean I am a worker?

However My wife and I run an own a small business. Does that mean I am a Capitalist?

Then again my Wife does all the work in the business so we aren’t oppressing anyone except ourselves.

Oh the dilemmas that people on the left face. How do you make it through the day?

By: Draco T Bastard

Draco T Bastard — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:04:17 +0000

Actually, the anecdotal evidence is that upward mobility is less now than before. Most of the people today are worse off than they were in 1984 which kind of puts a crimp in any sort economic activity.

By: Malcolm

Malcolm — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:40:19 +0000

Who said a meritocracy should equate with social mobility?

Perhaps lower social mobility just means that people are getting to their natural level earlier in their lives. Or a lot of people are condemning their own kids by the example they set. Or more people are wealthier than ever and choosing to do other things with their time, than climb the ladder. So many options.

And none of them point to a fundamental failing of capitalism.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:14:20 +0000

I also find this confusing and not the way I would present this data.

I actually think the chart is flawed, a simple method of presenting this data would be by two proprtional columns showing change is segments over the two time periods. All you are trying to achieve is a delta from two time periods.

Also that would enable you to expand and increase the number of time periods, so you could see the % change in segments over many time periods. It would present a much better view on segment size and change.

By: burt

burt — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:05:21 +0000

Classic

I didn’t think you would have the balls to say that the policies de-jour don’t have an impact but you are too myopic to consider the govt de-jour when the study was done as being a factor in the stats.

Wimp.

By: Bright Red

Bright Red — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:53:02 +0000

“So it’s the fault of the failed policies of the 90′s then .” no. It’s inherent in capitalism.

And contrary to this: “might as well say it is human nature and just accept it as “it is what it is’ (which i see in the post marty predicted you would say) capitalism isn’t a state of nature, it is a socio/economic/political construct

In the case of income mobility the policies of the government of the day (short of radical reform) are likely to have little effect. However (and bookmark this) obviously a government’s policies can and do influence the difference in wealth between deciles.

national undermined unions and let the minimum wage fall in the 1990s, and the poor got poorer while the rich got richer. Labour reversed that to some extent. That’s a different issue to income mobility.

I think that’s pretty clearly explained. Naturally, you will attempt to misconstrue it, because that’s what you do.