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To: RealMuLan who wrote (8333)	1/22/2003 12:36:29 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Whether a relatively poor person can still become the top 25% of the rich in the US. The answer, according to the guest, is NO. Yet when you interview rich people you find a lot who came from modest means or whose parents and grand parents came from modest means. It's not a great question. If it's true that people think they can get rich you'd never know it from reading what people write here. I've never seen so many people who think of themselves as poor as I have on SI. I'd rather be poor and think I was rich than be rich and still think of myself as poor. One would have to conclude that having more money makes people feel worse. If you really want to examine economic mobility in this country what you have to examine is can a person in the lower 20% move to the top half of income earners or how easy is it to move to the top third. Whenever someone talks about how the rich got richer and the poor got poorer they always forget that the people in each group change over time, that people can and do switch groups. I've lost track of the friends I have that grew up in impoverished families that are solidly middle class and upper middle class (myself and my husband included). Meanwhile I know more than a few who grew up in relatively wealthy families who have dropped down. What isn't surprising is that it's this group that most of the complaining about the economic decline comes from. The complaints I get from my friends who grew up poor and are now upper middle class are mostly about the enormous tax payments they have to make.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (8333)	1/22/2003 2:09:54 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Whether a relatively poor person can still become the top 25% of the rich in the US. The answer, according to the guest, is NO. I will do a search on NPR, but really quickly, did the guest include the wealth effects of the 90s stock market bubble or did he conclude that was an anomaly and exclude the period? Because the 90s really fly in the face of the entire "rich get richer" argument. I am a fan of NPR, but I remember Robert Reich was a frequent guest a few years ago. Reich has a habit of saying things like "these tax cuts... (and anything related to capital gains)... will serve one purpose- to make the rich- much, much, much richer". To hear Reich tell it, you'd think the DuPont's were the founders and early employees of msft and cisco. I never heard an opposing viewpoint.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (8333)	1/23/2003 2:26:52 AM
From: Oblomov	Respond to of 306849

>>a private/independent organization paid by whom? >>Whether a relatively poor person can still become the top 25% of the rich in the US. The answer, according to the guest, is NO. And I agree. LOL! I moved from the bottom to the top income quintile in the last 8 years, and so have many of my friends. Are we outliers? Mobility is the norm, not the exception - except maybe in the caste system of the university economy. >If you are really interested in the detail, go to www.npr.org do a search. Detail? My questions are not detail, they are the only way to tell if the survey interpretation is fact or fiction. You posted it as fact. It's your obligation to corroborate, not mine.