Peter Temin: Economic Mobility Requires the Nearly Impossible – The Atlantic

Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years With Nearly Nothing Going Wrong

After divvying up workers like this (and perhaps he does so with too broad of strokes), Temin explains why there are such stark divisions between them. He focuses on how the construction of class and race, and racial prejudice, have created a system that keeps members of the lower classes precisely where they are.