7 ms·

Unstacking the deck

52 points by fern12 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jackfrodo 9y ago
I think that the popular idea of inherited or generational wealth is getting a fat 6 figure check when a grandparent dies, which doesn't really happen to most of us. Rather, it looks like what the author describes -- a safety net that allows upper middle class kids to do things that their peers can't afford. As someone in the top quintile, you may not feel that much richer than the people in the next neighborhood over, but for a lot of folks, that dad could have said, "I'm sorry son, but I need to pay rent too." Instead, it was more of an annoyance at his son needing a handout. But these things accumulate over time, and this kid from a top-quintile family gets a better resume than his neighbor who washed dishes over the summer.
- maroonblazer 9y ago
  Agree. This review and the ideas behind this book are really interesting (I've not yet read it). I'm surprised though that the reviewer discounts legacy preferences at universities. Given the degree to which a well-qualified school can open up opportunities for someone this seems like a perfectly valid and effective policy proposal.
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    Only a tiny minority of even people in the top quintile were admitted to top schools as legacies.
    - yborg 9y ago
      Agree, we're talking about a few hundred people a year if you're focusing on the marquee schools, the issue is lifting up millions of kids. Improving existing public schooling and colleges/universities would do far more to providing mobility opportunities than eliminating legacy admissions at Harvard. For one thing, where will the next generation of lobbyists come from if we can't supply law firms with well-connected dullards whose parents went to an Ivy League school?
      - maroonblazer 9y ago
        I didn't take him to mean only Ivy League schools, but rather universities broadly.
        umanwizard 9y ago
        Are people really getting into random mediocre universities by being legacies?
        maroonblazer 9y ago
        "random mediocre universities" like Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt, UVA, U of Michigan, UC Berkeley, Notre Dame...
        dorchadas 9y ago
        Yep. I went to Notre Dame as a non-legacy. I knew several people who got in off the wait list simply because they were legacy.
- ccalvert 9y ago
  I think the gift that some upper-middle-class kids get that others don't always get is a belief in their ability to succeed. You also need a strong work ethic, but I'm not sure there is such a thing as a work ethic if a person has no faith in their ability to succeed. Perhaps it looks a bit like this: - Some people you can't keep down no matter what you do. These people do things like work full time, go to school in the evenings, and graduate from college in four years. - Some people will succeed if given the opportunity to succeed. That is, if you give them a scholarship or financial aid or if their parents pay for their education. - Some people will succeed if you give them a big push. Take them to the financial aid office and help them fill out the form, ply them with encouraging words when they want to give up at midterms or finals, etc. - Some people won't succeed no matter what you do. Usually, because they have so little faith in themselves that they give up even when success is all but guaranteed. So yes, government programs are needed to get enough citizens across the finish line. But I don't think this is really about class, I think it is about motivating people -- helping them learn to believe in themselves.
  - calt 9y ago
    Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more. My belief in my ability to succeed was briefly shattered by my dad's employment situation. He was a well qualified engineer laid off from manufacturing. That made us struggle. I was always thinking about money and feeling the need to optimize for $2 meals instead of $4 meals, and wondering if my car would hold in long enough to be able to get me to school in a week. These are things that only your first, most motivated, category of people will overcome. I didn't overcome these obstacles. I temporarily dropped out. Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more. My story only has a happy ending because state schools are cheap and engineering internships are paid.
    - pwinnski 9y ago
      I didn't read a "just" in the previous poster. I do believe that belief or trust is a necessary but inadequate precondition to success. Believing in yourself is not enough to help you succeed, but not believing in yourself is enough to help you not succeed. As a society, we do a very poor job giving people that trust or belief.
calt 9y ago
The author's story makes me incredibly grateful for the current situation for developing engineers. I went to a cheap state school and had paid internships. Also, we have a long way to go on sexism and discrimination, but there are countless fields that are far more closed.
- sudosteph 9y ago
  That was my path as well. Pretty much every smart, working class or middle class student at my high school picked engineering or science routes. Unfortunately many of the science routes led to academia, which everyone I've talked to seems to hate from a financial perspective. Of about 5 people I know personally, all but one has dropped out and picked up a mostly unrelated jobs or research gig. I went back and checked LinkedIn for some of my old HS people, and it's interesting how different that patterns are. The children of doctors are doctors or lawyers. Some of the really motivated children of first-generation immigrants ended up equally successful though. Both groups tended to go to private institutions though. I wonder if the difference is how risk is evaluated. Middle classes see hard sciences and engineering as reliable, accessible, career paths that minimize risks of joblessness and allow them to leverage existing connections by staying in state while studying (since most working and middle class folks have a family support structure local to the area, also in-state discount) without burdening their family more by picking a field where paid internships are rare. Meanwhile, richer folks are not worried about needing to work while studying, and they don't need to stay in any one place, especially if the careers of their parents gives them connections to in-demand places for jobs and study (or maybe money just makes connections unnecesary).
rbcgerard 9y ago
At the end of the day I think very few people want to actually "pay" the price that a more equal society would entail, but are very happy to have others bear the burdens of "paying" for a redistribution of "opportunity".
- jimbokun 9y ago
  Education and health care. These two items are huge economic burdens, even for those in the top %20. But radically reducing their cost would also do wonders for improving economic opportunities.
quantumofmalice 9y ago
This is a decent article on a true problem, but there are two things I would mention that add context to the situation: Genetics do matter. Adult intelligence appears to be somewhere between 50 and 80% determined by genetics. Thus we should expect over time in a meritocracy for smart kids to come from the same families. This is compounded by assortative mating by IQ, which has become far more widespread in the last forty years. So things are going to look nepotistic (and they always will be to some extent, see my second point below) when, in fact, this is a natural phenomena. So, what? Just let the people who lose the genetic lottery rot? No. Instead, we might want to focus on having a more balanced economy where, rather than everyone striving to become part of the elite, a working class person can have a perfectly reasonable life. Jordan Peterson discusses this problem in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0 Secondly, it is not immoral for parents to make large investments in their own children's lives. This behavior is no doubt somewhat driven by genetics (nearly everything appears to be at least 40% genetic) but it is also a learned behavior. Government programs that replace parental investment have been catastrophic for minorities in the united states: for example 73% of non-hispanic blacks are born out of wedlock. So delegating parental investment in children to the state, in the name of ending nepotism, may have some very detrimental effects that are difficult to predict. All of this is to add context and suggest a different solution: making middle class non-elite life paths more attractive, not to deny that there is a problem.
- icebraining 9y ago
  assortative mating by IQ, which has become far more widespread in the last forty years That's curious. Is there any explanation why? Naively, I would assume the opposite, although I can imagine some factors that would point in that direction. for example 73% of non-hispanic blacks are born out of wedlock. Why is that catastrophic? Is there good evidence¹ that the kids would have been better off otherwise? ¹ (by good evidence, I'm discounting simple comparisons between children born into and out of wedlock, since it's pretty easy to see why many confounding variables might play into that.)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
tunesmith 9y ago
Articles like these make me wonder about one metric. What "percentage" do you need to be in (top 20%, top 50%, top 1%), in the US, to be confident in having a secure retirement? And how has that changed over the decades? Because when I see the top 20% as being described as making $112,000 or more, I don't see that as even close to feeling confident you'll have a secure retirement. Until that improves, I have a hard time criticizing a 20%-er or a 19%-er for having somewhat of an "every man for himself" attitude in getting ahead.
RickJWag 9y ago
Raising a privileged family takes just one generation to sacrifice. As numerous financial books will testify, if you are frugal (no matter the income) and invest wisely, it is possible to accumulate some measure of fortune. If you teach your children to do the same (as they grow up in a frugal household), they will become the next tier of the pyramid. I really, truly believe this. I was raised in a large family and inherited nothing of worth. I'm not done working yet, but I'm encouraged by the way things are progressing and have hopes all of my kids will go to college and emerge without a mountain of debt. In America, the dream can be obtained. It will take time, though.

52 points by fern12 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

I think that the popular idea of inherited or generational wealth is getting a fat 6 figure check when a grandparent dies, which doesn't really happen to most of us. Rather, it looks like what the author describes -- a safety net that allows upper middle class kids to do things that their peers can't afford. As someone in the top quintile, you may not feel that much richer than the people in the next neighborhood over, but for a lot of folks, that dad could have said, "I'm sorry son, but I need to pay rent too." Instead, it was more of an annoyance at his son needing a handout. But these things accumulate over time, and this kid from a top-quintile family gets a better resume than his neighbor who washed dishes over the summer.

maroonblazer 9y ago
Agree. This review and the ideas behind this book are really interesting (I've not yet read it). I'm surprised though that the reviewer discounts legacy preferences at universities. Given the degree to which a well-qualified school can open up opportunities for someone this seems like a perfectly valid and effective policy proposal.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  Only a tiny minority of even people in the top quintile were admitted to top schools as legacies.
  - yborg 9y ago
    Agree, we're talking about a few hundred people a year if you're focusing on the marquee schools, the issue is lifting up millions of kids. Improving existing public schooling and colleges/universities would do far more to providing mobility opportunities than eliminating legacy admissions at Harvard. For one thing, where will the next generation of lobbyists come from if we can't supply law firms with well-connected dullards whose parents went to an Ivy League school?
    - maroonblazer 9y ago
      I didn't take him to mean only Ivy League schools, but rather universities broadly.
      - umanwizard 9y ago
        Are people really getting into random mediocre universities by being legacies?
        maroonblazer 9y ago
        "random mediocre universities" like Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt, UVA, U of Michigan, UC Berkeley, Notre Dame...
        dorchadas 9y ago
        Yep. I went to Notre Dame as a non-legacy. I knew several people who got in off the wait list simply because they were legacy.
ccalvert 9y ago
I think the gift that some upper-middle-class kids get that others don't always get is a belief in their ability to succeed. You also need a strong work ethic, but I'm not sure there is such a thing as a work ethic if a person has no faith in their ability to succeed. Perhaps it looks a bit like this: - Some people you can't keep down no matter what you do. These people do things like work full time, go to school in the evenings, and graduate from college in four years. - Some people will succeed if given the opportunity to succeed. That is, if you give them a scholarship or financial aid or if their parents pay for their education. - Some people will succeed if you give them a big push. Take them to the financial aid office and help them fill out the form, ply them with encouraging words when they want to give up at midterms or finals, etc. - Some people won't succeed no matter what you do. Usually, because they have so little faith in themselves that they give up even when success is all but guaranteed. So yes, government programs are needed to get enough citizens across the finish line. But I don't think this is really about class, I think it is about motivating people -- helping them learn to believe in themselves.
- calt 9y ago
  Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more. My belief in my ability to succeed was briefly shattered by my dad's employment situation. He was a well qualified engineer laid off from manufacturing. That made us struggle. I was always thinking about money and feeling the need to optimize for $2 meals instead of $4 meals, and wondering if my car would hold in long enough to be able to get me to school in a week. These are things that only your first, most motivated, category of people will overcome. I didn't overcome these obstacles. I temporarily dropped out. Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more. My story only has a happy ending because state schools are cheap and engineering internships are paid.
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    I didn't read a "just" in the previous poster. I do believe that belief or trust is a necessary but inadequate precondition to success. Believing in yourself is not enough to help you succeed, but not believing in yourself is enough to help you not succeed. As a society, we do a very poor job giving people that trust or belief.

calt 9y ago

The author's story makes me incredibly grateful for the current situation for developing engineers. I went to a cheap state school and had paid internships. Also, we have a long way to go on sexism and discrimination, but there are countless fields that are far more closed.

sudosteph 9y ago
That was my path as well. Pretty much every smart, working class or middle class student at my high school picked engineering or science routes. Unfortunately many of the science routes led to academia, which everyone I've talked to seems to hate from a financial perspective. Of about 5 people I know personally, all but one has dropped out and picked up a mostly unrelated jobs or research gig. I went back and checked LinkedIn for some of my old HS people, and it's interesting how different that patterns are. The children of doctors are doctors or lawyers. Some of the really motivated children of first-generation immigrants ended up equally successful though. Both groups tended to go to private institutions though. I wonder if the difference is how risk is evaluated. Middle classes see hard sciences and engineering as reliable, accessible, career paths that minimize risks of joblessness and allow them to leverage existing connections by staying in state while studying (since most working and middle class folks have a family support structure local to the area, also in-state discount) without burdening their family more by picking a field where paid internships are rare. Meanwhile, richer folks are not worried about needing to work while studying, and they don't need to stay in any one place, especially if the careers of their parents gives them connections to in-demand places for jobs and study (or maybe money just makes connections unnecesary).

rbcgerard 9y ago

At the end of the day I think very few people want to actually "pay" the price that a more equal society would entail, but are very happy to have others bear the burdens of "paying" for a redistribution of "opportunity".

jimbokun 9y ago
Education and health care. These two items are huge economic burdens, even for those in the top %20. But radically reducing their cost would also do wonders for improving economic opportunities.

quantumofmalice 9y ago

This is a decent article on a true problem, but there are two things I would mention that add context to the situation: Genetics do matter. Adult intelligence appears to be somewhere between 50 and 80% determined by genetics. Thus we should expect over time in a meritocracy for smart kids to come from the same families. This is compounded by assortative mating by IQ, which has become far more widespread in the last forty years. So things are going to look nepotistic (and they always will be to some extent, see my second point below) when, in fact, this is a natural phenomena. So, what? Just let the people who lose the genetic lottery rot? No. Instead, we might want to focus on having a more balanced economy where, rather than everyone striving to become part of the elite, a working class person can have a perfectly reasonable life. Jordan Peterson discusses this problem in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0 Secondly, it is not immoral for parents to make large investments in their own children's lives. This behavior is no doubt somewhat driven by genetics (nearly everything appears to be at least 40% genetic) but it is also a learned behavior. Government programs that replace parental investment have been catastrophic for minorities in the united states: for example 73% of non-hispanic blacks are born out of wedlock. So delegating parental investment in children to the state, in the name of ending nepotism, may have some very detrimental effects that are difficult to predict. All of this is to add context and suggest a different solution: making middle class non-elite life paths more attractive, not to deny that there is a problem.

icebraining 9y ago
assortative mating by IQ, which has become far more widespread in the last forty years That's curious. Is there any explanation why? Naively, I would assume the opposite, although I can imagine some factors that would point in that direction. for example 73% of non-hispanic blacks are born out of wedlock. Why is that catastrophic? Is there good evidence¹ that the kids would have been better off otherwise? ¹ (by good evidence, I'm discounting simple comparisons between children born into and out of wedlock, since it's pretty easy to see why many confounding variables might play into that.)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

tunesmith 9y ago

Articles like these make me wonder about one metric. What "percentage" do you need to be in (top 20%, top 50%, top 1%), in the US, to be confident in having a secure retirement? And how has that changed over the decades? Because when I see the top 20% as being described as making $112,000 or more, I don't see that as even close to feeling confident you'll have a secure retirement. Until that improves, I have a hard time criticizing a 20%-er or a 19%-er for having somewhat of an "every man for himself" attitude in getting ahead.

RickJWag 9y ago

Raising a privileged family takes just one generation to sacrifice. As numerous financial books will testify, if you are frugal (no matter the income) and invest wisely, it is possible to accumulate some measure of fortune. If you teach your children to do the same (as they grow up in a frugal household), they will become the next tier of the pyramid. I really, truly believe this. I was raised in a large family and inherited nothing of worth. I'm not done working yet, but I'm encouraged by the way things are progressing and have hopes all of my kids will go to college and emerge without a mountain of debt. In America, the dream can be obtained. It will take time, though.