Home/Recent kwiples > Issues >

socio-economic mobility

Tuesday 24th of March 2026

American Dream What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore — And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over — like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? “Harlem [2]” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
The arts When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.  Martin Amis © 2018 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say Nothing can stand in the way of you becoming a millionaire if you want it bad enough   Motivational speakers and prosperity preachers © 2018 Kwiple.com
By the numbers According to a report from the Pew Research Center, children born to 90th-percentile earners are on track to make three times as much as those born to 10th-percentile paupers. The Guardian, May 26, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Estimated portion of Americans born in 1980 who will go on to earn more than their parents did: 1/2 Of those born in 1940 who did: 9/10 Harper's Index, March 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers In 1970, 92% of American 30-year-olds earned more than their parents did at a similar age … In 2014, that number fell to 51%. — When looking only at males nationally, the decline is even starker. As of 2014, only 41% of 30-year-old men earned more tnan their fathers at a similar age. — If income distribution remains as tilted toward the wealthy as it is now, it would take sustained growth of more than 6% a year, adjusted for inflation, to return to an era where nearly all children outearned their parents. Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers One in four at Ivy League universities are legacy students. Edward Luce, Financial Times, April 27, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Change Things go wrong really quickly now, don't they? I mean they spiral very, very quickly from the point where I can be in my house, in my job, driving my car, and lose my job, not pay my bills, get repossessed, and be out and living in a hostel … it's so easy, it's so easy.  A Yorkshireman quoted in Financial Times, January 22, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Children Poor kids who do everything right don't do better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. Washington Post, October 18, 2014 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Education According to one Harvard study, more students attended America's elite universities from the top 1 per cent of income backgrounds than from the bottom 60 per cent. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Education If you are dumb and rich in America you have a higher chance of graduating than if you are smart and poor. Lawrence Summers © 2017 Kwiple.com
Higher education The ratio of effort to outcome is rising. The more people study, the lower the return to education. You always need more credentials, which most cannot afford. Instead of capital, losers accumulate frustration. Thomas Frank, Financial Times, February 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary standing still (stan'ding stil), participial phrase. Synonym for running harder and harder. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Liars say There are no limits; you can be anything you want to be © 2018 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy After seven decades of meritocracy, it's as unlikely for a lower-class child to be admitted to a top Ivy League university as it was in 1954. George Packer, Last Best Hope  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy  From each according to his abilities,  to each according to his abilities. David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or to selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: whoever says meritocracy says oligarchy. Chris Hayes, Twilight of the Elites © 2021 Kwiple.com
Revolution The revoltionary prophets of the nineteenth century, like Karl Marx, believed that the oppressed would rise up against their oppressors. In the twenty-first century, the oppressors revolt. By no means is this violent reaction against lost privilege unique to white Americans. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Selfie I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money. Rick Santorum © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind. You take somebody who has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee you, in a little while, they'll be right back up there. And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you could give them everything in the world – they'll work their way back down to the bottom. Ben Carson © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say More schooling means more success  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Affluent places are now pulling away from poorer ones … This geographical divergence has dramatic consequences. A child born in the bottom 20% in wealthy San Francisco has twice much chance as a similar child in Detroit of ending up in the top 20% as an adult. Boys born in London's Chelsea can expect to live nearly nine years longer than those born in Blackpool. Opportunities are limited for those stuck in the wrong place. The Economist, October 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Canada, in fact, is the most socially mobile developed country, says the OECD: nearly three-quarters of Canadians aged 25 to 64 were in a different social class than their parents between 2002 and 2014. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Despite our rhetoric, equal opportunity has never been the American way. For nearly all our history, affirmative action has been the prerogative of white men. Eric Foner, “Hiring Quotas for White Males Only” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility The drawbridge is rising. The gap between the self image of meritocratic openness and reality is wide. Psychologists call this “self-discrepancy”. Economists call it barriers to entry. Edward Luce, Financial Times, February 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility The First Shall Be First Title of the Introduction to Thomas Frank's Rendezvous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Immigrants are good at doing something difficult: leaving behind relatives, friends and the familiarity of home in search of prosperity. The economists found that native-born Americans who do what immigrants do — move toward opportunity — have children who are just as upwardly mobile as the children of immigrants. Peter Coy, New York Times, July 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility  [I]n countries without elite universities, it's rare for one class to capture the national heights: careers are decided more in adulthood, by which time people's trajectories depend slightly more on their achievements than on their parents. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility “Methodists are frustrated Baptists who'd like to be Episcopalians,” said Lucy Mattie Trigg. That is: They'd like to whoop and holler, but they're not deaf to the clarion call of upward mobility. Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays, Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility The more an underclass peacefully approaches economic and political equality, the more violent and resentful the overclass grows. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility [M]ost of the decline in absolute mobility is driven by the more unequal distribution of economic growth in recent decades, rather than by the slowdown in GDP growth rates. In this sense, the rise in inequality and the  decline in absolute mobility are closely linked.  Growth is an important driver of absolute mobility,  but high levels of absolute mobility require broad- based growth across the income distribution. With the current distribution of income, higher  GDP growth rates alone are insufficient to restore absolute mobility to the levels experienced by children in the 1940s and 1950s. If one wants to revive the “American dream” of high rates of absolute mobility, then one must have an interest in growth that is spread more broadly across the income distribution. Raj Chetty et. al., Science, April 24, 2017 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Pity them or not, according to taste, but be afraid of what the falling can take down with them. Janan Ganesh,  “Beware the downwardly mobile,” Financial Times, March 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Rising immobility and rising inequality aren't like two pieces of driftwood that happen to have shown up up on the beach at the same time, he [economist Alan Kreuger] noted. They wash up together on every shore. Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Since most of Washington's spending on economic mobility comes through tax expenditures – subsidies that individual filers claim via their IRS returns – there is clearly foreknowledge of the outcome. The poor do not file tax returns. The rich have accountants. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Them that's got are them that gets Ray Charles © 2015 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility There has been a relentless decline in absolute mobility from one generation to the next: from over 90 percent when Biden was born [in 1942] to around 50 percent for those who were born in the 1980s. In other words, if you were born in 1985, you are as likely to be less well off than your parents as you are to be richer. Just as the rise in mobility for Biden’s generation was virtually unique, this subsequent fall is also greater than in almost any other country. Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, January 18, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility To be clear, white Americans don't resent growing poorer. They resent losing their comparative superiority to non-white Americans. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Today it is rarer for a poor American to become rich than a poor Briton, which means the American Dream is less likely to be realised in America. The meritocratic society has given way to a hereditary meritocracy. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Liberal Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility You can have a shot at joining the one percent, money tells us, only if you are first committed to making the one percent stronger, to defending their piles in some new and imaginative way, to rationalizing and burnishing their glory, to exempting them from regulation or taxation and bowing down as they pass. Thomas Frank, Rendezvous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility You don't know a ladder has splinters until you slide down it. Bum Phillips © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union c A higher education paves the way to prosperity —————– —————– student debt and unpaid internships © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union No longer the land of opportunity © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Wearing a suit standing in line applying for a low-wage job © 2018 Kwiple.com
Success Nothing succeeds like address. Fran Lebowitz, “The Nail Bank”  © 2015 Kwiple.com
 
Unions White-collar professionals tend to appreciate what unions did for their parents. But they don't view today's janitors or nurse's aides in the same way. Andy Stern, former president, Service Employees International Union © 2017 Kwiple.com