Social mobility in America today,
however, is lower than in any other developed country, a huge change since
the 1950–1980 decades before the Reagan revolution, when we led the
world in
social mobility. Most American children today are locked into the social and
economic class of their parents; the opportunity for advancement that union
jobs used to provide is half of what it was when Reagan became president.
Maryland, Minnesota, Delaware, Vermont, New Jersey, New York,
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Montana, and Utah have the
highest social and economic mobility in the United States; only Utah is a
“right to work for less” state, and all the rest welcome unions.
Oklahoma, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky,
Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas—all “right to work for less” states—are
the states where workers stuck in poverty are most likely to be frozen in the
social and economic class into which they were born.
