Forum Post: What bootstraps?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 7, 2011, 12:07 p.m. EST by OneofBillions
(22)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
For all those opposing the occupation using that ridiculous go to "you need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" here is a little hard evidence about just how difficult that is these days.
http://www.americanprogress.org/kf/hertz_mobility_analysis.pdf
One basic finding states:
Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.
Children from the lowest income families ($0-$29,000) have about a 13% chance of reaching incomes of $70,000-$98,000 while kids from the top 5% ($108,000+) have a 21% chance of making it to those levels of income.
How about the difficulty of reaching median status? What are the stats on that? I couldn't hit the link, so maybe it's there - can you post?
On bootstrapping and rich kids: Of course if you have money already, it's easier to make more. That's a very well known fact. As someone who definitely 'bootstrapped' my way up to a better living and several tax brackets higher (ouch! holy tax gods have mercy, I worked my ass off for this for over a decade!), I don't consider it bad advice. There are limits, though, to what you can pull yourself out of. I agree with that. But don't look at the top 5% as a goal - if you really want to know if an economy is ill, look at how hard it is to reach the median, and then look at what the median is - is it real poverty? Not in America. I've seen real poverty in other countries, and that's definitely not the average in the USA. I would be very worried if, say, the median could not afford basic needs (not cable TV and high speed internet, coughcough) and preventative healthcare. If, in addition to this poor median, only a fraction of a percentage below the median level could rise to it, then the 'bootstrap' advice is total bullshit. That tells us it is hard just to get to a bad position, much less make it up to a livable, decent one (but not to the top 5% - that's greedy, isn't it?). But we have to make sure to avoid glamorizing statistics - they can be made to look like anything, just like the right camera angle can make a shack look grand, or a diverse rally look like just a couple kids who can't spell 'speech' (that wouldn't happen - no child left behind here! coughcoughcough). I want the truth, without embellishment or emotion... on that, does anybody know if the median stats are listed in that pdf?
Yes, the American Dream as we know it has been on life support for quite awhile.
However our all-knowing government along with the mainstream media has been keeping it hooked up to the machines and telling us it's still alive and kickin'.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/where-are-the-calls-for-a-general-strike/