Advancing social mobility—a phrase that’s shorthand for making it more likely that children will grow up to be better off financially than their parents—elicits universal approval as a virtuous endeavor. It’s a progressive cause that most people instinctively support without giving much thought to all that it signifies.
The semantics partially inhibit critical faculties—“mobility” is preferable to inertia. Also, the idea of social mobility conveys a righteous alternative to the rigidity and oppression of countries that historically were controlled by hereditary aristocratic rulers. And even in the absence of an aristocratic class, it has a particular appeal in the United States, an immigrant society, where it wasn’t unreasonable for people arriving at Ellis Island empty-handed to hope that their children would attain middle-class prosperity. Although some people got stuck on the bottom and some ethnic groups moved up more quickly than others, the Horatio Alger myth remains a reality for many immigrants.
[For more of this story, written by Neil Gilbert, go to http://www.citylab.com/politic...what-matters/512276/]
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