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Mobility

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Make sure to read Ezra’s post on income mobility in the United States. The fantasy that the US has greater income mobility than other Western countries is really quite critical to the conservative economic project in America, because it’s one of the only threads tying the libertarian and religious halves of the party together. If hard work can be intellectually tied to success, then economic success can be turned into a moral issue. If it can be turned into a moral issue, then measures designed to alleviate poverty and mitigate income inequality can be attacked as morally degenerate. For the conservatarian the road is much straighter; rich people are rich because they’re smarter, harder working, etc. To redistribute wealth (or even to engage in progressive taxation) is wrong because, in a fair system, it means taking from the deserving and giving to the undeserving.

Both of these are premised on the notion that the US system is fair and rewards the smart and hard working. If the idea of income mobility in the US is challenged, the the fairness of the entire system comes into question, and the edifices on both sides collapse.

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