[throwawaydizjsj]

But it's not the case, it sounds good on paper but it has been a long time since the USA was a good place to lift yourself up by your bootstraps, there are so many things that hold you down on the way up that do not exist in other countries (really just the medical situation alone). That said I'm very glad you're happy and it has worked out well for you.

However, my only regret was that I did not leave sooner, it did not work out for well for me on the balance, IE I did make money, but my quality of life was less than middle class people have where I live now.

Edit : loving the battle with the down and upvotes but seriously I'd rather have more back and forth with actual data.

Sources:

0. Growing up very poor in the USA, immigrating somewhere else.

1. The change over time https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-decline-of-upward-mobil...

2. Comparisons globally https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/social-mo...

[mfitton]

As far as the change over time goes, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you that social mobility used to be higher. I think part of the reasoning for that was an incredibly strong domestic economy compared to the rest of the world, as well as a lower baseline (strides in standard of living and pay get harder and harder to increase the further you increase them).

As far as the comparisons globally, they're ranking countries based on "education, access to technology, healthcare, social protection and employment opportunities" which has the implicit assumption baked in that those 5 metrics are proxies for social mobility. They might be, but why not actually measure the thing you care about? Social mobility to me means changing social classes based on income. Something like moving from a 25k/yr household to a 75k/yr household, or moving from a 75k/yr household to a 200k/yr household, maybe another jump up to 500k or a million/yr.

It seems to me that there is a much more equal distribution of incomes and outcomes in the countries you linked. That makes me think it would be much harder to go from being middle class to upper class in those countries than in the US, simply because almost everybody is part of the middle class. Thus, I think if you measured what most immigrants (and what I) actually care about when we hear about "social mobility," then the countries you mentioned would have great social mobility into the middle class, and basically no other social mobility.

[throwawaydizjsj]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/13/americ...

Actually the data I've seen states one is way more likely to go from the bottom 20% to the top 20% in many other countries than if you were doing it in the USA.

I'm open to any counter data, but I've read these same numbers in several sources and you can tease it out of my first link.

[jandrewrogers]

This effectively defines social mobility as wages being compressed around the median. Small changes in income will create large changes in percentile since it is a relative measure in these cases. For countries where wages are not compressed around the median, like the US, large absolute increases in income produce small increases in percentile.

To put it another way, it is much easier to increase your income in the US but harder to increase your income ranking. I think most people would prefer to have more money than a higher ranking given a choice between the two.

[throwawaydizjsj]

So this is just moving goal posts IMO. End of day it's harder to go from the poorest to the richest. Speaking as someone that was born below the poverty line and but later was earning in the top 1% in the USA, going from sub 14k to 36k was gigantically huge...going from 50k to 250k in as short of a span didnt affect me very much, but moving to France and not worrying about medical bills or insurance companies again was a game changer ... YMMV and everyone is different

[ch4s3]

On a per capita basis Gen X and Millennials in the US are now doing better than their parents at the same age[1]. A lot of studies showing the opposite use raw numbers and share of total GDP, but don't account for the wildly large size of the Baby Boom generation.

And anecdotally, pretty much anyone I know who isn't the child of a doctor or lawyer is doing better than their parents.

[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/millennials-just-wealthy-pare...

[throwawaydizjsj]

The statement being "but if I had to choose a country to get ahead in life with the most opportunities possible as an immigrant, US is still the country to be at".

I don't think your rebuttal addresses the data I linked at all or supports the parent point at all

Upward mobility is definitely down and the USA is no longer the world leader by some measurements. I get that won't persuade everyone but I'm happy to debate on that data instead of an unrelated discussion point even if it is interesting.

[ch4s3]

If you measure mobility by the ability to rise from the lowest quintile to the highest, yes other countries do better. But the top quintile in the US is just leaps and bounds past anywhere else. Rising from the lowest to the 4th quintile is quite common, about 1 in 10. If you look at the 2nd quintile about 35% of their children end up in the top 2 quintiles. Reaching the 4th quintile means a median income of more than $120k, which by global standards is pretty amazing.

The median income of the lowest quintile has done slightly better than inflation since 1967, but the 5th quintile has as we all know gone up precipitously. The 4th quintile has beaten inflation by something like 30k. So rising from the 1st to the 4th quintile is still quite a lot of mobility.

[mensetmanusman]

Upward mobility is doing fine for people with parents at home, but this accounts for fewer people these days.