Back before the New Deal, America was seen as the land of opportunity, where any man or woman with a dream and a willingness to work hard could get ahead. Now recent studies are showing that economic mobility is dying in this country. One wonders at the connection. Perhaps all of those social programs that started during the New Deal and have been added to so much over the years are the cause of this lack of mobility. Perhps if had not given people so many chances to claim victimhood and depend on the tax dollars of others, be it through welfare, after school programs for pregnant teens, etc. etc. etc., then we might still be seen as the land of opportunity that we were before the left wing decided to try to legislate economic equality. Perhaps free market capitalism would have done exactly what many economists predicted, had we not put so may restrictions on it. We might be living in a country where you grow up, you work your ass off, and you can succeed no matter where you started, but instead we seem to have a country where you are born, you begin to take handouts unless you are rich, and you get so used to those handouts that you never learn the value of really hard work. We'll never know for sure, but I think it's pretty obvious where I stand....