Income Mobility Quotes

Especially for the young and the lowest-skilled, minimum wage becomes a toll that prevents many from entering the work force and gaining the skills that can make a low income or middle class worker a high income worker. This is so obvious that one wonders why liberals keep championing the minimum wage cause.

What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms.

There was a time, a few decades ago, when the cost of living did not vary all that much from city to city. Since then, as places like New York, San Francisco and Seattle have been hit with skyrocketing rents and home prices, the regional disparity in housing costs has altered how Americans of different incomes pursue opportunity.

Part of the magic of economic growth is how you educate people, and the leading economies have to stay in front of that. From an economic point of view, it affects competitiveness and creates jobs. Or from a social justice point of view, you can take someone in the bottom tier of income and let him compete to be a doctor or lawyer. The education system is the only reason the dream of equal opportunity has a chance of being delivered - and we're not running a good education system.

Cities that tend of have better schools for middle-income families, they tend to have much better prospects for kids moving up in the income distribution.

The vast majority of Americans want a government that creates the conditions for them to have a chance to get into the middle class, the kind of growth and the kind of educational opportunities. Most people would - the vast majority of Americans would much rather have a job that pays more than a welfare check.

We have this kind of revolving door, we don't have a permanent class of millionaires in America like a lot of other countries.

Turning back the inequality revolution may be difficult. But that would certainly help more families - at almost all income levels - than turning back the gender revolution.

America being behind France in upward mobility is a little bit like France being behind America in Croissants and Afternoon Sex.

The important issue is not how much inequality there is but how much opportunity there is for individuals to get out of the bottom classes and into the top. If there is enough movement upward, people will accept the efficiency of the markets. If you have opportunity, there is a great tolerance for inequality. That has been the saving grace of the American system.