A fascinating survey released Thursday by the Pew Economic Mobility Project-one of the few million research arms of the Pew Charitable Trusts-illuminates from some fresh angles the complex American attitudes toward opportunity, fairness and government likely to shape public reaction to President Obama's sweeping agenda. Full Story »
Posted by Derek Hawkins
The Pew survey here measures peoples' beliefs, but is divorced from data on what the reality is. Thus it largely measures the effectiveness of the propaganda and hopeful rhetoric they have been fed and believed rather than reflecting reality. The Horatio Alger myth is fiction stories, and the heroes always succeed by finding a rich benefactor. The long term data in the U.S. says economic mobility is decreasing. The rich are more likely to have rich offspring, the poor are more likely to have poor offspring than in previous decades.
