New Social Justice Index Places U.S. Near Bottom

[dajoki]

New Social Justice Index Places U.S. Near Bottom
First Posted: 10/27/11 01:43 PM ET Updated: 10/27/11 02:54 PM ET
Dan Froomkin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/social-justice_n_1035363.html

WASHINGTON--A central concern for those in the Occupy movement -- that the economic system in the U.S. is rigged in favor of the well-off -- has been corroborated by a major new survey of developed nations.

When it comes to social justice -- defined here as the ability each individual has to participate in the market society, regardless of their social status -- the United States ranks near the bottom of 31 developed countries, the Thursday report from Bertelsmann Foundation found.

It's one thing if you live in a market economy where everyone has the same shot at success. It's quite another if fortune favors the fortunate. And the new survey found that when it comes to "equal opportunities for self-realization," the U.S. ranks 27 out of 31 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member states, well behind not just Northern European countries like Norway and Denmark, but even countries like Hungary, Poland, Italy and France. The only countries whose citizens fare even worse are Greece, Chile, Mexico and Turkey.

The new report comes just a day after the Congressional Budget Office validated another key precept of Occupy protesters: The income gap between the rich and poor in the U.S. grew precipitously from 1979 to 2007, the report found, with the top 1 percent of earners seeing their incomes spike by 275 percent.

The new survey on the developed countries also echoes the findings of OECD's own 2010 report on social mobility, which found that, contrary to America's reputation as the "land of opportunity," it is now much harder to climb the socioeconomic ladder between generations in the U.S. than in many other developed countries.

LOOK to see where the U.S. ranks on social justice, and read more about the report below:


The social justice index measured six indicators of "socially responsible" capitalism. In all of them, the U.S. was ranked in the lower half of the countries examined. It fared particularly poorly in four.