[darawk]

> We can't talk about this without talking about the inequality in wealth which is the biggest factor in economy mobility unfortunately.

That's an interesting theory. How does that work, exactly, though? How does wealth inequality squash income mobility? And if income mobility is the real goal, why are we talking about inequality, and not directly talking about mobility?

[aaomidi]

Honestly, I'm not an economist. But from what I've gathered from reading various opinions on this matter is that economic inequality is the main source of weak economic mobility in developed countries - especially in countries that don't have safety nets.

The theory essentially is that strong economic mobility requires some "base" value of economic power.

If you're born into a family with negative assets, thousands of dollars in credit card debt, bad neighborhood you're essentially starting your life with negative economic mobility and turning that positive is extremely difficult given the circumstances and in many cases you stay poor. For example, the effects of redlining is still seen to this day after nearly half a century has passed.

On the other end, if you're born into a family with a strong economic background and proper investments. You're already starting your life with positive economic mobility.

The way to think about it is, if you're on the bottom of the graph in terms of assets, you're going to be going further and further down (until where is the question?) and if you're on the top of the graph you're going to keep going up.

College, various inheritance taxes, social safety nets, etc etc try to offset these differences by essentially making the top of the graph a little "weaker" and boosting the bottom of the graph. But is it working?

[darawk]

I agree with all that, but doesn't that mostly argue for shifting the bottom up, rather the pulling the top down? What I see is people using the word "inequality", but then talking about poverty. Poverty is bad. But I don't really understand why the ratio of the top to the bottom is the important number, rather than the absolute value of the bottom.