"Shorter vacations, longer work weeks and skimpy sick leave for Americans
add up -- not to greater upward mobility, but to a burned-out workforce
earning less than preceding generations."

"In theory, all this hard work is supposed to spark a more robust economy
that is, in turn, an engine of greater upward mobility than what is found in
the supposedly coddled precincts of, say, the European Union. But lately, it
hasn't. An ongoing, bipartisan study of intergenerational economic mobility
conducted jointly by conservative and liberal-leaning researchers for the
Pew Charitable Trusts has found the myth of superior American mobility to
be--a myth.
Researchers for the Economic Mobility Project studied the relationship of
adult children's incomes to those of their parents and found that the United
States now lags behind France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and
Denmark in this measure of upward mobility. "There is little available
evidence that the United States has more relative mobility than other
advanced nations," the group reported in May. "If anything, the data seem to
suggest the opposite."

Comparing the incomes of American men who were in their 30s in 2004 with
males who were in their 30s in 1974, the researchers found that today's men
actually earn about 12 percent less, after inflation, than their fathers'
generation did. "There has been no progress at all for the youngest
generation," the group reported. The American family stays afloat because
its total income has been swelled by women's paychecks.

The sober statistics should lead toward saner economic policies. Europe,
Canada and the rest of the industrialized world are doing just fine with
guaranteed health insurance, pensions, maternity leave and sick tim