How mobile is our society? How easy is it to go from rags to riches? An integral part of the American Dream is that American society has high degrees of social mobility. Pew's Economic Mobility Project has been studying social mobility in the United States. In a recent report, they looked at the characteristics of those who are socially mobile (and note even these are the minority as most people are not socially mobile). In the United States, the upwardly mobile are more likely to be white, married and have a college degree. Wall Street Journal coverage of this research is here.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.