Legacy Nation

American Exceptionalism has taken a few hits of late, with the country lagging in important measures of performance. We used to think America was the freest country in the world, but now the Heritage Foundation begs to disagree. It ranks America in tenth place, as "mostly free," behind a group of "free nations." We used to think that this was a country of small government, but that was before Obama. And we used to think that, more than any other country, this is a place where people can get ahead no matter where they come from. However, the Pew Economic Mobility Project 2011 tells us that that's not true either.

Income Inequality and Income Mobility

The Pew study was produced by the Pew Charitable Trusts. While one wouldn't describe them as a conservative foundation, they've co-partnered with our friends from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute on their mobility project. The table at right, from their study, measures income mobility, and reports that the U.S. is one of the least mobile societies in the first world. The study measures "intergenerational elasticity," defined as the relationship between a child's and his parent's rank on the income ladder. An elasticity of 0 denotes a highly mobile society, with no relationship between the income levels of parent and child. An elasticity of 1 describes a society with no mobility between the two generations.

Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/27/legacy-nation