The other day Talk of the Nation on NPR discussed upward mobility and the American Dream. We encourage you listen to the broadcast or read the transcript and apply it to your experiences. The program was hosted by Lynn Neary and featured Erin Currier, director of the Economics Mobility Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Marilyn Geewax, senior business editor for NPR.
Decreasing Mobility Dampens the American Dream
In the program, Geewax said “We tolerate income inequality a great deal, but we want to know that we can move up and down based on our own efforts and not just who our parents were…But I think most studies tend to show these days that people make more than their parents, but that's because, you know, we're better educated, we're more productive…But are you moving up relative to your parents? Do you start out in one of those lower economic rungs and get to run your way up? Well, I think what we've seen in the last couple of years is that in sort of the big, broad, squishy middle, there are a lot of people who are maybe a little bit more upper class, and they slid down to middle or lower-middle class, and that's pretty darn painful because people lost jobs.”
Education is Key, but the Right Education is Mandatory
The experts continuously expressed the necessity of education to achieve upward mobility. They.
- Discussed college degrees, graduate degrees, and junior college degrees.
- Highlighted that training in the right skills were essential to moving out of the bottom twenty percent.
- Stated that factory jobs where you could learn a skill and move up would not exist
I’ve seen thousands of people with college degrees working in poverty jobs. So many get an education, but cannot get ahead. Either they got the wrong degree, or they did not learn the unwritten rules to get ahead. Too many schools offer expensive programs with cheap futures.
Wednesday we examine the new jobless reports released by the Department of Labor
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