There is an interesting blog here that I read this morning. To summarize, if you believe in social mobility, you don't believe in government-sponsored wealth distribution and vise versa. I have been thinking about this as I went through my day today, and it occurred to me to look up the income statistics of the different parties. What I found was that while those with more money were likely to vote Republican, their votes weren't likely to matter, because they were overwhelmed by the masses of poor people that live in relatively close proximity to them. This also explains why, when you look at state elections, high income areas no longer track for Democrats as closely as they do in federal elections.

    Which is interesting, but it has been analyzed, and it isn't what struck me. If we accept both premises, and also accept that Republicans are about letting people keep the money they earn, while Democrats favor social welfare programs (a position that is thrown into question by recent history, I know, but let's assume that the party rank and file still generally feel that way even if their elected representatives don't support them in it), then we come to the conclusion that Democrats, especially the more progressive wing of the party, believe that there is little social mobility in America, while Republicans, especially the anti-tax crowd, believe that there is great social mobility.

    Now, it is an established fact that some regions are blue while others are red in our country. I would be interested to see what the real social mobility index is for the different parts of the country. If it turns out that in heavily Democratic areas there is less ability to change class based on ability than in Red areas, then this would tell us that the reason an area is conservative or liberal is because of the aggregate experience of the local populace. If the opposite is true, that would tell us that something else than personal experience is causing us to form our view of the world. Either way, we could learn something about why some people are conservative while others are liberal.

    If, on the other hand, there is no statistical difference between social mobility in deep blue and bright red and any point in between, then we get to look at what the mobility factor is here in America and make a determination: Does the amount of social mobility in America warrant an aggressive, a mild, or a non-existent wealth redistribution program? Really, that is one of the central questions between conservatives and liberals these days.

    I personally expect that you would find a direct correlation between blue areas and areas of limited social mobility. The poor are the ones voting Democrat, and not only have they failed to move themselves up socially, but they have the least opportunity for themselves or their children. Their children are more likely to be stuck in bad schools, where the only second language available is gangsign, and where there aren't classes in test prep to get them ready to take the SAT or ACT, but rather tests to improve the school's NCLB score.

    Certainly, if you follow the links at the bottom of the first link at the top of the article you would see that there is a low amount of social mobility in the US, especially for blacks. He doesn't carry out enough analysis to assure me that it's true for everyone, but he does have enough evidence that it's worth looking into. I wish that he would show the error in the data, but then, I love statistical analysis. I would definitely be interested to see a state-by-state breakdown of his data.

    Also, Republicans often make the argument that social programs make minorities less socially mobile, not more. While that is clearly not true of all laws (EEO comes to mind) it may be true of others, so we should be as wise as we can when addressing the problem where it does exist, because whether it is a nation-wide problem or not, it is certainly a large problem in parts of the country.

    What to you think? Is there greater income mobility in red states? Or is it bad across all states?