“As a country, our focus needs to shift away from income equality to increasing chances of social mobility.”
Eric Stubben
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His dad was a garbage man, his mom a mentor to inner city disabled children. He went to one of the worst high schools in California and “made it out.” If his 4.1 high school GPA wasn’t good enough, his 3.9 from Stanford was. Now he’s making six figures in the job of his dreams – one few thought he’d excel at.
Of course I’m talking about Richard Sherman. Isn’t everyone?
Beyond all of the trash talking, the infamous interview, and the “best in the game” talk lies a story much bigger than football. Richard Sherman epitomizes the American dream. The same American dream that has been said to have died long ago. The same American dream that is kept alive today despite all the media talk and government skepticism. But also, the same American dream that direly needs support to stay relevant.
A report released last week by five top economists, called the “Equality of Opportunity Project,” found that social mobility hasn’t actually decreased at all since 1970. In fact, for the most part, it has stayed steady.
Now what exactly is social mobility?
Social mobility is the movement between social and economic classes, measured by the difference in income percentile between adults that were born into the poorest families and adults that were born into the richest families. Today that value sits around 30 percent. In other words, a child born into the lowest economic class will grow up to have a 30 percent lower income than the income of an adult who was born into the richest economic class.
At first glance, the social mobility income gap seems like a high number: 30 percent! But put it into perspective … Two children, born into families with between an 80 percent to 100 percent income gap, could finish life only 30 percent apart. The poor child makes up anywhere between 50 percent to 70 percent of the income gap, on average. America still is the best place for the poor, the outsiders and the disadvantaged to have a real chance at success. At the very least, everybody has a chance to increase the quality of life for themselves and their children.
The report also found a very consistent economic makeup in terms of economic class. While the income gap has grown larger between the top and bottom groups, the middle class has naturally grown as well. Because of the larger middle class, the ability for lower-class citizens to jump up to the middle class has not been compromised. Ultimately, the inequality gap doesn’t affect mobility from one economic class to another.
Politically, the “Equality of Opportunity Project” doesn’t necessarily favor one side of the aisle over the other. It does, however, highlight the ineffectiveness of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or the food stamp program. The report claims the benefits of food stamps are largely negated by the lack of jobs for low-income earners.
Outsourced factory jobs, part-time work, and outdated jobs run rampant in our current economy. Bundled up with nationally-rising minimum wages and higher corporate health care costs, food stamps are temporarily bandaging the American dream, holding its existence together for now.
What will happen when we finally face our budget deficit crisis head-to-head? When the bandage falls off, what will be the safety net for the American dream?
This is where Richard Sherman’s story comes back into play. His parents raised him on the principles of education and hard work. Education came first; everything else followed. It’s clear these principles had a monumental effect on his success.
What the American dream needs is not a monetary stimulant, but a social adjustment. The values of young children should be rooted in education, hard work and determination. Parents need to get back to having children within wedlock and raising them correctly. Couples who have children out of wedlock are far less likely to stay together and raise those children than married couples. Children raised by two parents have nearly twice the odds of graduating from college as children raised by just one. A recent article from theweek.com cited parents in the Appalachian region stymieing their children’s literacy to attain $700 more per month in disability collection. We’ve become a society desperately wanting money without craving success. That’s a dangerous combination.
Staying in school and getting a high school diploma isn’t enough anymore. For the American dream to live on, students need to focus on college and beyond. Professional jobs pay more, are more secure and are much easier to attain with a college diploma than are other, high-school-diploma-only jobs. Here at Cal Poly, we push through grueling weeks of late nights, busy work and midterms knowing that when we reach the end of our four (maybe five, but hopefully not six) years of college, we’ll be well on our way to reaching our dream.
As a country, our focus needs to shift away from income equality to increasing chances of social mobility. Higher taxes and increased welfare are just poor excuses for turning our backs on cultural change. Cultural change is not easy. In fact, it can get downright nasty.
Everyone has the right to live out the American dream, but everyone has to choose whether or not they want to exercise that right. What we can do is set a cultural base to provide the best foundation possible for dreams to develop.