Can-do, hard work, dedication are the cornerstones of the America myth of success. There is much hand-wringing about the decline of social mobility. But recent studies show that, the situation has not become worse in the last 30 or forty years. In fact, US social mobility has been relatively stable, and more rigid, than most people believe, since the 1950s. What has changed is that people are less prosperous and the “productivity” gains of technology and freer trade have gone entirely to the top 1%.

Mobility in the US is actually lower than in Europe. Society is dominated by people whose parents were rich. Only 20% of middle class people ever make it into the top quintile, and 70% of people born into the bottom quintile of income distribution never make it into the middle class. The last time US mobility was better than Britain, for instance, was in the late 19th Century. Born into the middle or working class? You made the mistake of being born to the wrong parents. (Adapted from an article by James Surowiecki, in the New Yorker, 3/3/2014)

Epicurus believed in a good, fulfilling life, a life of reasonable security and freedom from the worry of a roof over your head and sufficient food (or at least the prospect of achieving all this). If a significant part of the population is deprived of hope it eventually does the obvious thing: it changes the political system. Don’t think “it can’t happen here”; that’s what the out-of-touch have thought through history.