Friday, November 28, 2014

It turns out that US income mobility is identical to Canada and Sweden

There's been a lot of very shoddy data and claims made about income inequality and intergenerational income mobility that purported to "prove" that the poor were much more likely to stay poor in America than the other two countries. I always struggle with this finding because of the counter evidence from immigration. Sweden, being a good world citizen gets a lot of refugees and  Canada aggressively discriminates against poor immigrants while the US takes all comers - if the US has such poor prospects for the poor  why don't they go elsewhere?. It's also strange that the areas of the US with lowest income mobility also tend to be places where people move to. While the highest mobility places are places people move from. Immigrants looking to get ahead should move to places like Wisconsin where mobility is "great" yet they move to Texas instead by the millions, particularly Asians of all stripes. Why? Texas isn't any closer and there's no more cultural affinity. And according to left wing economists there's no equality or opportunity in Texas. Yet they pour in in droves, bypassing Massachusetts and Iowa and all the other egalitarian meccas for the "hate and inequality" filled south.

It turns out that when you set out to understand the data rather than create agitrop, the convenient Marxist envy based conclusions evaporate like greasy Friedrich Engels Sauerbrauten belches on a windy night. Which is an inconvenient truth if I ever saw one. Scott Winship explains.

I take exception with his "early childhood education will help" line. Perhaps the single most expensive piece of social science ever done found that the highest quality early education likely to ever offered - Federal Head Start - had no, nada, nunca long term impact on educational outcomes. All improvements disappeared by third grade. The Obami buried and compsted the research despite being conducted by HHS and Education educrats who so much wanted it to show benefit.  Apparently early childhood education is the new leftist boondoggle so they can achieve "permanent rule" now that income inequality and Healthcare are in the toilet.

It would be so much better if the left veering would try a policy that the data said would work rather than the policy that maxes benefits to favored groups and government employees.

But that would be a policy of less government. And where's the left wing ROI in that?

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