US no longer the nation of freedom, social mobility, and classlessness

The stats are in.  We're not number one in the socioeconomic mobility league.  The news comes from a recent conference on "Billionaires and Their Impact."

As Americans, we tend to think that the U.S. is a world leader in socio-economic mobility--and that, by extension, a greater share of people reach the pinnacle of wealth by their own efforts. But this doesn't seem to be the case. Nor is it true that America is the most mobile of nations, even for those of us outside the ranks of the billionaires club.

Julia Isaacs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, showed some compelling data at the conference, noting that the class structure of the U.S. is a lot more rigid than you might think. While the proportion of people in the top quintile of income earners who stay rich is about the same in the U.S., Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and the U.K. (somewhere around 35 percent), a greater share of Americans in the lowest quintile of earners stays poor (42 percent) than in these other nations.

In other words, countries with a healthy mix of capitalism and socialism -- "capitalism on a leash" we call it here -- are doing better than the US. We're losing our freedoms.  We're losing control over our government. Now we're losing our widespread prosperity, too. 

Don't worry; go shopping.