This is a must must read. This is a great paper by Alberto and Stefanie. Coming to grips with what generates this may be the most important question in political economy today: Alberto Alesina and Stefanie Stantcheva: Americans Regard Their Economic Prospects More Optimistically than Europeans https://www.city-journal.org/economic-mobility: 'Americans, by and large, view the market economy as fair: if one works hard, poverty can be left behind; and wealth is generally deserved by those who have accumulated it.... Europeans, by contrast, believe that the poor will remain stuck in poverty, no matter how hard they try, and that many of the rich don’t deserve their wealth, which originated mostly from birth and connections in an “unfair” economy, based upon privileges. They believe that social mobility is low and that something like an American dream in their country is an illusion.... A key difference in the responses of Europeans and Americans is... European respondents are more pessimistic than Americans, though their statistical chances now look better.... Individuals more pessimistic about social mobility favored government spending on programs designed to equalize opportunities and favored a progressive tax system. Interestingly, the respondents who believed that social mobility is low seem to favor equal-opportunity policies more than ex-post-redistribution of income. American respondents showed a distinctive—and counterintuitive—geographical pattern. In areas such as the South and the Southeast, where upward mobility is relatively low, Americans were overly optimistic about prospects of upward mobility. The opposite was the case in areas where mobility is higher, as in the North and Northwest. This is an intriguing pattern that will require more study to understand...
#noted #2020-02-07
