What Ever Happened To Upward Mobility Summary

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In her essay “What Ever Happened to Upward Mobility?” Rana Foroohar, focuses on the stalled and falling rates of upward mobility in the United States. The formal definition of upward mobility is the capacity or facility for rising to a higher social or economic position. The article generally explains how the United States was once a land of opportunity and was the leading nation of the world, but now has turned into a nation with declining mobility, social instability and morbid wealth gap. Foroohar effectively elaborates about how the idea of pursuing the “American Dream” which implies persistent hard work could get someone ahead in life now “has become bifurcated” (Foroohar), supported by in-depth credible research and sources, sophisticated …show more content…

Foroohar, previously a Deputy Editor in charge of international business and economics for Newsweek established this article with multitude of research and statistics to establish herself as an experienced reporter and the article as a credible and convincing argument. Foroohar begins the article by introducing the great tales of America’s story. The America’s story is scripted by Foroohar as “our national mythology” thus implying the idea of America being an opportunity society is untrue. She chose to begin her article with this serious statement is because she wanted to implore the reader’s attention about the harsh reality of the American country and the immense challenges that the American society has faced throughout the …show more content…

Firstly, she states that the inequality in the U.S. is tragically rising even though it was already high compared with other developed countries. Then, to form dissatisfaction, she provide the stats of the rich 1% of the country taking a whopping 21% of the country’s income and accounts for 35% of its wealth. Next, she indicates that unemployment rate is pervasively upstretched in recent years plus the fact that “For the first time in 20 years, the percentage of the population employed in the U.S. is lower than in the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands” to further support her case. After that, the article provide a finding by The Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project that says “if you were born in 1970 in the bottom one-fifth of the socioeconomic spectrum in the U.S., you had only about a 17% chance of making it into the upper two-fifths” These are some of the solid facts and statistics given in the article to grabs the reader’s attention about how the situation in America is nearing a climax of diminishing equality and stability. I believe that the author is trying to make the audience conscious about the gravity of this problem because the first big step in fixing a problem is realizing there is one. Hence providing these unpleasant

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