veryfunny

?

Giantaxe

It's certainly going to be interesting to see whether the US can continue to be the "land of opportunity". There was a great series a couple of years ago in WSJ (not exactly a left leaning rag...) that came to the conclusion that the US was losing the social mobility that allowed immigrants to move up the totem pole. Significant factors cited were lack of access to healthcare and ever-increasijng costs of tertiary education in relation to incomes. Since then the "false wealth" of the housing bubble has started to disappear and the bills are coming due. Otoh, I have nothing but admiration for American entrepreneurship - the question for me is whether it can be maintained in the face of so many headwinds?

veryfunny

I believe it can.

Fonseca33

No, the same cannot be said about any other economy. In W. Europe, the avg. person has to wait wait 4 months between being layed off and findig work. In the US it's only a few weeks. Immigrants do much better here economically than they do in any other part of the world, and this is due to our dynamic system that prmotes hard work. The US is the land of opportunity, and this is proven by the huge amounts of people from all over the world that come to study and live. According to the OECD, the US has more skilled immigrants than the rest of the world combined. That should tell you something.

According to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants make up only 11.7% of the U.S. population, but have started one in four of all U.S. public companies that have been venture-backed over the past 15 years, including Intel, Google, Yahoo!, Sun and eBay. This doesn't happen in other parts of the world.

Fonseca33

And how did we get out of the past 10 recessions? Every one is different. The point is that they all end. Household debt in the UK is alot worse than the US. This time, exports are booming, and this is specifically why we are not in a recession, statistically.

"Families in the UK now owe a record 173pc of their incomes in debts, official figures have shown. The ratio of debt to income is higher than any other country in the Group of Seven leading industrialised economies, and is sharply higher than the 129pc of incomes it was five years ago."

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=46902.0

anotherlimey

Nice one Bob...

anotherlimey

I think the problem is that murders are included, and - IIRC - if you're an African-American male you're more likely to end up on a slab than in university by the time you're 21. That's going to skew these numbers slightly.

Fonseca33

How can the gap be 50 years? American Americans live to 70, and Asians into their mid 80's. Where's 50?

elfman

Manc

Horse manure.

veryfunny

That was part of my point, in addition the population for Asian - Americans is about 14 million in comparison to 40 Million of African Americans.

What does Asian _ American, mean in this country does that include populations from ethnically from South East Asian of far East Asian?

The figures, just appear odd to me.

Kaffy Mintcake

I was wondering what the source of that information was as well ...

RoadWarriorFromLP

I'm sure that it's wrong.

It's most likely a typo or a transcription error. According to the CDC, as of 2005, the life expectancy of black males was 69.5 years. Add fifteen, not fifty to that figure, and you get 84.5 years.

Someone should correct the newspaper, and the fact checker should have caught this. But it's still a significant gap, and nothing for us to take pride in.

Giantaxe

Source?

It tells us that historically the US has been the land of opportunity. It tells us very little about whether the decline in social mobility in the US will make it less so down the road. I doubt the situation moving forward is as clear cut in favour of the US as you are trying to make out.

Highly skilled immigrants to the US do really well, there's really no doubt about that. The question is whether the rest - who form the large majority - will continue to do so.

AmerLisa

Maybe she hasn't commented with an opinion because she got the desired effect she was hoping for.