I think that's what he meant too, but it's not a very good metric since it's only sampling from the maxima. Immigrants are typically either at the extreme high or low end of social strata. The bulk of people in the middle are neither desperate nor socially mobile enough to immigrate.
The fact that the perceived cost of moving (or the benefits of staying) exceeds the perceived benefit from moving does not imply that the perceived benefits don't exist.
Note also that the benefits and costs may be on entirely different dimensions. It's not uncommon for folks to stay because of friends and family yet consider moving because of "opportunity".
I think that that example captures something interesting. The benefits from moving are typically far more speculative than the benefits of staying put.
I do think that folks who move are somewhat different, albeit not different enough to argue that their choices are useless in determining what non-movers actually prefer.
However, I put in the "smart people" question because people aren't fungible.
Note that the headline claim is that "more equal societies do better", suggesting that "do better" depends on "more equal". Maybe that's true, but it's not the only factor. A less equal society that attracts more productive people could easily do better than more equal societies which lose said people.
The question can easily come down to envy vs greed - do you care what other people have or do you care what you have. Me, I care about what I have.
I find it interesting that the envy-driven folks go to such lengths to argue that equality has no costs. That would be a very surprising result, as everything else seems to have tradeoffs. (In engineer-speak, "good, fast, cheap, pick two",)
That's not to say that the benefits of a particular level of equality don't exceed the costs, but to point out that "it's all good" usually indicates a position that isn't as strong as asserted.
Right. I agree mostly. I believe that the US being "the land of opportunity" is more than a euphemism for patriotic babble. Extending it, with a cynical slant, I think you could almost call it the "land of opportunism".
The "equality" spoken of certainly isn't a zero sum game. I don't think that you wind up with US like polarization -- which drives its innovation -- in a more "equal" society. That's why a lot of the European efforts to duplicate a Silicon Valley sort of culture seem to fail. It's just not part of the social fabric.
I think it's exactly that sort of zero-to-rich mobility that makes the US attractive for people on both ends of the social spectrum, but is also connected to it lagging behind other developed nations nearer to the median.
The original article doesn't claim income equality is the only factor in wellbeing.
A less equal society that attracts more productive people could easily do better than more equal societies which lose said people.
That assumes, amongst other things, that productive people will flock to where they are best paid regardless of other factors, and that more unequal societies will pay them best, and that the impact of such migrations is an overriding factor in the overall productivity of a nation. For you that's probably common sense, in my experience it's utter BS. That's why studies like the OP are necessary.
Actually, it just assumed some difference along those lines.
> more unequal societies will pay them best
Nope. I just assumed that more unequal societies that do pay them better would have a better chance of attracting them.
All other factors are never the same, but it seems absurd to think that productive people place no weight on being paid better. After all, non-productive people place weight on being paid better.
> That's why studies like the OP are necessary.
I don't see how such studies can find anything non-trivial.
Note that there are specialization and globalization effects. For example, suppose that country A attracts the inventors and is unequal and country B is equal and attracts the drones. (This isn't far-fetched - there's little benefit to being a "tall-poppy" in B and being a drone in A really sucks.) If country B builds the stuff that country A invents, both benefit and have a better standard of living than either by itself.
Suppose further that concentrating inventors has some effect on their productivity.
Note that A could easily end up worse off than B, despite being crucial to B's success.
2) had equal opportunity to go to any country in the world (geographical distance, need for immigrant labour, language issues, already established colonies),
3) had health and quality of life as first priority (as opposed to raw moneymaking potential).
