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What's interesting about this is that it barely scratches the surface. Assets and money are just some of the things that people inherit from their parents. Man

What's interesting about this is that it barely scratches the surface. Assets and money are just some of the things that people inherit from their parents. Many people inherit their entire careers from their parents through social connections - These people would probably be classified as 'self made' which makes the statistics seem more benign than they actually are. I bet if you counted out all those people who were raised with a silver spoon, the percentage of real 'self made' people would probably be less than 1%.

ryanwaggoner 9y ago
Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on guesses, we have measures of economic mobility. In particular, how likely is it that someone born into a particular quintile moves to a higher (or lower) quintile? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th... Answer: it’s not great and getting worse, but not as dire as you portray.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Relevant part: > If a parent's income had no effect on a child's opportunity for future upward mobility, approximately 20% of poor children who started in the bottom quintile (in the bottom 20% of the US range of incomes) would remain there as poor adults. At the other end of income spectrum, if children were born into wealthy families in the top 20%, only 20% would stay in that top income category if their mobility opportunities were equal to every other child's in the country. > But long-term income statistics show this isn't happening. Mobility opportunities are different for poor and wealthy children in the US. Parental incomes and parental choices of home locations while raising children appear to be major factors in that difference. According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study[19] 43% of children born into the bottom quintile (bottom 20%) remain in that bottom quintile as adults. Similarly, 40% of children raised in the top quintile (top 20%) will remain there as adults. Looking at larger moves, only 4% of those raised in the bottom quintile moved up to the top quintile as adults. Around twice as many (8%) of children born into the top quintile fell to the bottom.[19] 37% of children born into the top quintile will fall below the middle. These findings have led researchers to conclude that "opportunity structures create and determine future generations' chances for success. Hence, our lot in life is at least partially determined by where we grow up, and this is partially determined by where our parents grew up, and so on."[20]
  - wycs 9y ago
    This would all be true if we were all genetically identical. However psychometrics has proven and now cognitive genomics is confirming that valuable mental characteristics have very large genetic components. Intelligence is the capacity to achieve your goals. Intelligence is highly heritable. A goal of most people is to become wealthy. So people who acquire wealth tend to be much more intelligent than average, as wealth is graded on a curve. Thus though there is regression to the mean, their children will be more intelligent than average, and so worth more as employees and more likely to succeed even if they were put up for adoption. This has unfortunate class implications, but putting cotten in our ears is not going to help. We must separate the normative from the descriptive. This is horrible and unfair. But natural selection is heartless algorithm literally running on death and suffering. We should not expect it to distribute capacities in a manner that is aligned with the prescriptions of our flimsy ideologies. Wealth distribution would not fix this. But let us seize the high-IQ alleles and distribute them to the proletariat! Such thoughts are verboten now, even as our tools for such interventions get ever sharper and assortative mating magnifies these differences to a point where it is getting difficult to ignore.
    - logicchains 9y ago
      This idea was explored over a century ago in H. G. Wells' classic "The Time Machine" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine), in which over time humanity split into two distinct species by the process you describe.
    - amateurpolymath 9y ago
      > Intelligence is the capacity to achieve your goals. Intelligence is highly heritable. A goal of most people is to become wealthy. So people who acquire wealth tend to be much more intelligent than average, as wealth is graded on a curve That is an impressive syllogism you've got there.
    - capisce 9y ago
      > Wealth distribution would not fix this. But a certain amount of wealth distribution could improve the life quality of those born with less potential.

ryanwaggoner 9y ago

Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on guesses, we have measures of economic mobility. In particular, how likely is it that someone born into a particular quintile moves to a higher (or lower) quintile? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th... Answer: it’s not great and getting worse, but not as dire as you portray.

ekianjo 9y ago
Relevant part: > If a parent's income had no effect on a child's opportunity for future upward mobility, approximately 20% of poor children who started in the bottom quintile (in the bottom 20% of the US range of incomes) would remain there as poor adults. At the other end of income spectrum, if children were born into wealthy families in the top 20%, only 20% would stay in that top income category if their mobility opportunities were equal to every other child's in the country. > But long-term income statistics show this isn't happening. Mobility opportunities are different for poor and wealthy children in the US. Parental incomes and parental choices of home locations while raising children appear to be major factors in that difference. According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study[19] 43% of children born into the bottom quintile (bottom 20%) remain in that bottom quintile as adults. Similarly, 40% of children raised in the top quintile (top 20%) will remain there as adults. Looking at larger moves, only 4% of those raised in the bottom quintile moved up to the top quintile as adults. Around twice as many (8%) of children born into the top quintile fell to the bottom.[19] 37% of children born into the top quintile will fall below the middle. These findings have led researchers to conclude that "opportunity structures create and determine future generations' chances for success. Hence, our lot in life is at least partially determined by where we grow up, and this is partially determined by where our parents grew up, and so on."[20]
- wycs 9y ago
  This would all be true if we were all genetically identical. However psychometrics has proven and now cognitive genomics is confirming that valuable mental characteristics have very large genetic components. Intelligence is the capacity to achieve your goals. Intelligence is highly heritable. A goal of most people is to become wealthy. So people who acquire wealth tend to be much more intelligent than average, as wealth is graded on a curve. Thus though there is regression to the mean, their children will be more intelligent than average, and so worth more as employees and more likely to succeed even if they were put up for adoption. This has unfortunate class implications, but putting cotten in our ears is not going to help. We must separate the normative from the descriptive. This is horrible and unfair. But natural selection is heartless algorithm literally running on death and suffering. We should not expect it to distribute capacities in a manner that is aligned with the prescriptions of our flimsy ideologies. Wealth distribution would not fix this. But let us seize the high-IQ alleles and distribute them to the proletariat! Such thoughts are verboten now, even as our tools for such interventions get ever sharper and assortative mating magnifies these differences to a point where it is getting difficult to ignore.
  - logicchains 9y ago
    This idea was explored over a century ago in H. G. Wells' classic "The Time Machine" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine), in which over time humanity split into two distinct species by the process you describe.
  - amateurpolymath 9y ago
    > Intelligence is the capacity to achieve your goals. Intelligence is highly heritable. A goal of most people is to become wealthy. So people who acquire wealth tend to be much more intelligent than average, as wealth is graded on a curve That is an impressive syllogism you've got there.
  - capisce 9y ago
    > Wealth distribution would not fix this. But a certain amount of wealth distribution could improve the life quality of those born with less potential.