6 ms·

Shocker: the top 20% possess superior values, habits, and cultural systems for social success and upward mobility, and make choices to gear themselves and their

Shocker: the top 20% possess superior values, habits, and cultural systems for social success and upward mobility, and make choices to gear themselves and their children towards development of important skills to thrive in the modern workplace. Disappointed that 4,000 words of herd morality drivel is upvoted on HN. Guess it's en vogue everywhere, even here.

mdorazio 8y ago
And the other 80% don't possess those things because...?
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  At least partly because when the 20% try to show the 80% that they need these things, the 20% get accused of cultural imperialism for daring to suggest that their values and culture are better than others'.
  - moate 8y ago
    The majority of the 20% were born in the top. If the culture they're trying to show us is "be born rich and hoard your wealth with an iron fist" that's not extremely helpful.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      I was probably born in the top 20%. The culture I inherited was "learn in school, go to college, learn to do something that pays, get a job that pays well, don't waste your money". I definitely wasn't born rich, I haven't inherited at all (yet), and I don't hoard with an iron fist. But thanks for smearing all 20% of us with your slur. It sounds like you don't know much about the bottom of the top 20%.
      - Pfhreak 8y ago
        You don't see the inherited wealth here? The whole infrastructure you've described in your culture was built by previous wealth... > learn in school Easier in a wealthy school. May be impossible or extraordinarily difficult in a low income school. > go to college Easier if you come from a wealthy background. You may have legacy, or financial means to apply to more schools, or ability to take more test prep, etc. > Learn to do something that pays Are wealthy kids more likely to have mentors or connections in their network due to their parents? Are their parents more likely to understand which careers pay well? > don't waste your money Invest wisely? Someone taught me how to manage money beyond my immediate expenses, and compound interest works, and how different investments work, and what a mortgage rate was, and how I could evaluate a bank. Those are all skills that allow you to turn your money into more money more efficiently, and they are all skills typically associate with upper class folks. > But thanks for smearing all 20% of us with your slur. It sounds like you don't know much about the bottom of the top 20%. I am currently a member of the top 20%. I have also lived in the bottom 20% for years. At no point did I feel the parent comment was smearing anyone.
        AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        I see the inherited wealth of opportunity and culture. I don't see the "be born rich and hoard your wealth with an iron fist". I'm not trying to keep the children of factory workers from valuing college, or trying to make it impossible for them to go. I'm trying to encourage them to go, and to choose majors that will let them get decent jobs. The wealth that you're talking about, I'm trying to give away.
      - ljj1122 8y ago
        You're talking about telling people to "go to college" when food security is a daily problem they have to deal with, never mind affording SAT/ACT test prep/exam fees, and I'm not going to even bother with AP/SAT Subject Tests, probably things you took part in. And some of these people do go to college, but I very much doubt that the subset of colleges they applied to had much overlap with yours.
      - fzeroracer 8y ago
- yourapostasy 8y ago
  Simplistically, I suspect it is because they lack sufficient time. The sheer quantity of information and habits children must process to climb up the rungs of success in the developed world is quite large. I don't mean just academics, but also soft-skills areas like networking, leadership, interpersonal communications, etc. More interestingly, the sheer amount of information to evaluate and reject is also quite large. Read any Ask Reddit thread about what is common knowledge in a particular industry but isn't well-known publicly. Much of this information is passed along in many well-to-do families, but not as much in less-well-off families. Yet all of this information is either passed off as inaccurate common knowledge (you save more money per fluid ounce buying the biggest cup of Coke you can; truth: you shouldn't drink any sugar water of any kind, in any common American quantities, full stop), or is simply not known at all (insurance company tells you to use X body shop for repairs after an accident they're paying for, but fewer working class than middle-class people know you can tell them you're choosing Y body shop instead). It takes a massive amount of parental involvement time to convey this mountain of information and inculcate these habits of thought into children, starting at infancy with baby sign language to impress an early predilection to communicate thoughts, all the way through adulthood with assessing people's character and financial affairs. Since these are young developing minds, repetition is the mother skill you will turn to time and again, so many lessons are taught many times over, increasing the time commitment. If you're already time-trapped trying to hold down enough work to pay for exorbitant American urban/suburban real estate, healthcare, and education (among other expense categories), then you won't have the time to convey all this information that is definitely not taught in schools in America. Of course the issue is way more complex and nuanced than just what I've touched upon, but I see tons of parents in America spending way too little time with their children.
ljj1122 8y ago
Fairly reductive to pin their success on just these things and not more structural issues that even you would probably acknowledge exist. Obviously some succeed despite that, but that's not really the point of the article or your own comment, and you seem to have arrived at this conclusion before even considering the deeper reasons for why this happens.
- daseiner1 8y ago
  Sure, there's a deeper conversation to be had. This ain't it: """ Upper middle-class parents obviously have more money to spend on their children, but there is also a social fracture. Class is not only defined in dollars, but by education, attitude, and zip code, by its way of life. America, warns Robert Putnam in Our Kids, faces “an incipient class apartheid.” The typical child born and raised in the American upper middle class is raised in a stable home by well-educated, married parents, lives in a great neighborhood, and attends the area’s best schools. They develop a wide range of skills and gain an impressive array of credentials. Upper middle-class children luck out right from the start, even though this country was founded on antihereditary principles. As part of the process of naturalization, I had to sign part 12, question 4 of Form N-400, which reads as follows: “Are you willing to give up any inherited title(s) or order(s) of nobility that you have in a foreign country?” I had none to give up, sadly, but very much enjoyed this question. Inheriting a particular position is un-American, after all. But while the inheritance of titles or positions remains forbidden, the persistence of class status across generations in the United States is very strong. Too strong, in fact, for a society that prides itself on social mobility. """ (emphasis mine). I mean, c'mon, this isn't very insightful.
  - shaki-dora 8y ago
    How is your idea, i. e. „Poor people should work harder“, more insightful than this quote, which points out the (rather uncontroversial) fact that being able to send your kids to the right prep school is a significant, and unearned, factor in success?
    - daseiner1 8y ago
SamReidHughes 8y ago
Nevertheless, there's no reason why the 20-40%, people that show up to work, shouldn't be able to live happy, comfortable lives given the state of technological development. Zoning and other regulations are the main reason why some of them don't. It's a shame the article spends so much energy talking about taxation, when taxing the wealthy doesn't make average people any better off.
- daseiner1 8y ago
  Sure. I don't have any issue with discussing how to raise up the bottom 80%. This article just isn't very good.
moate 8y ago
That's a hot take. Let's break some things down >> the top 20% possess superior values, habits, and cultural systems for social success and upward mobility Wut? The top 20% possess a disproportionate amount of the real wealth. This isn't a value or habit, it's just the money itself. You don't need upward mobility when you're already at the top. You know what they say, the easiest way to make a million dollars is to start with 2 million dollars... >>make choices to gear themselves and their children towards development of important skills to thrive in the modern workplace. Or, they then use that disproportionate level of wealth to skew the system towards benefiting them. If you're a CEO, you can create a culture that favors people like you (because hey, you're a CEO, and "logically" you should want people that resemble you since you're so successful) which creates a bias towards certain people and therefor against others. If you have huge sums of money you can afford to hire the best accountants that allow you to avoid paying as much in taxes (because the tax code was lobbied for by previous generations of extremely wealthy people). Oh, and you already have a built in network of connections to allow open (or just fully remove) doors blocking your way towards success. Getting rich is extremely hard. Staying rich, much less so. The point of this article however seemed to be that if you agree that there is a problem with the distribution of wealth (spoiler: pretty much every poll in recent years has shown this is overwhelmingly true on both sides of the political spectrum) then figuring out people who may be responsible for this would be a good way to solve it. Also, "herd morality" is just "morality" or "culture". There's no such thing as objective morality that I've encountered. At best you'll just find common cultural agreements.
shaki-dora 8y ago
60% of US wealth are inherited. But I guess laws and taxes around that vaguely fall under „cultural systems“, so you’re technically right.
- mrep 8y ago
  Source? This one [0] says "Most of these studies have found inherited wealth to be in the range of 15% to 31% of total household wealth (Menchick and David, 1983; Modigliani, 1988; Hurd and Mundaca, 1989; Gale and Scholz, 1994; Juster and Laitner, 1996)". [0]: https://www.nber.org/papers/w11767.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w11767.pdf

mdorazio 8y ago

And the other 80% don't possess those things because...?

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
At least partly because when the 20% try to show the 80% that they need these things, the 20% get accused of cultural imperialism for daring to suggest that their values and culture are better than others'.
- moate 8y ago
  The majority of the 20% were born in the top. If the culture they're trying to show us is "be born rich and hoard your wealth with an iron fist" that's not extremely helpful.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    I was probably born in the top 20%. The culture I inherited was "learn in school, go to college, learn to do something that pays, get a job that pays well, don't waste your money". I definitely wasn't born rich, I haven't inherited at all (yet), and I don't hoard with an iron fist. But thanks for smearing all 20% of us with your slur. It sounds like you don't know much about the bottom of the top 20%.
    - Pfhreak 8y ago
      You don't see the inherited wealth here? The whole infrastructure you've described in your culture was built by previous wealth... > learn in school Easier in a wealthy school. May be impossible or extraordinarily difficult in a low income school. > go to college Easier if you come from a wealthy background. You may have legacy, or financial means to apply to more schools, or ability to take more test prep, etc. > Learn to do something that pays Are wealthy kids more likely to have mentors or connections in their network due to their parents? Are their parents more likely to understand which careers pay well? > don't waste your money Invest wisely? Someone taught me how to manage money beyond my immediate expenses, and compound interest works, and how different investments work, and what a mortgage rate was, and how I could evaluate a bank. Those are all skills that allow you to turn your money into more money more efficiently, and they are all skills typically associate with upper class folks. > But thanks for smearing all 20% of us with your slur. It sounds like you don't know much about the bottom of the top 20%. I am currently a member of the top 20%. I have also lived in the bottom 20% for years. At no point did I feel the parent comment was smearing anyone.
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        I see the inherited wealth of opportunity and culture. I don't see the "be born rich and hoard your wealth with an iron fist". I'm not trying to keep the children of factory workers from valuing college, or trying to make it impossible for them to go. I'm trying to encourage them to go, and to choose majors that will let them get decent jobs. The wealth that you're talking about, I'm trying to give away.
    - ljj1122 8y ago
      You're talking about telling people to "go to college" when food security is a daily problem they have to deal with, never mind affording SAT/ACT test prep/exam fees, and I'm not going to even bother with AP/SAT Subject Tests, probably things you took part in. And some of these people do go to college, but I very much doubt that the subset of colleges they applied to had much overlap with yours.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
yourapostasy 8y ago
Simplistically, I suspect it is because they lack sufficient time. The sheer quantity of information and habits children must process to climb up the rungs of success in the developed world is quite large. I don't mean just academics, but also soft-skills areas like networking, leadership, interpersonal communications, etc. More interestingly, the sheer amount of information to evaluate and reject is also quite large. Read any Ask Reddit thread about what is common knowledge in a particular industry but isn't well-known publicly. Much of this information is passed along in many well-to-do families, but not as much in less-well-off families. Yet all of this information is either passed off as inaccurate common knowledge (you save more money per fluid ounce buying the biggest cup of Coke you can; truth: you shouldn't drink any sugar water of any kind, in any common American quantities, full stop), or is simply not known at all (insurance company tells you to use X body shop for repairs after an accident they're paying for, but fewer working class than middle-class people know you can tell them you're choosing Y body shop instead). It takes a massive amount of parental involvement time to convey this mountain of information and inculcate these habits of thought into children, starting at infancy with baby sign language to impress an early predilection to communicate thoughts, all the way through adulthood with assessing people's character and financial affairs. Since these are young developing minds, repetition is the mother skill you will turn to time and again, so many lessons are taught many times over, increasing the time commitment. If you're already time-trapped trying to hold down enough work to pay for exorbitant American urban/suburban real estate, healthcare, and education (among other expense categories), then you won't have the time to convey all this information that is definitely not taught in schools in America. Of course the issue is way more complex and nuanced than just what I've touched upon, but I see tons of parents in America spending way too little time with their children.

ljj1122 8y ago

Fairly reductive to pin their success on just these things and not more structural issues that even you would probably acknowledge exist. Obviously some succeed despite that, but that's not really the point of the article or your own comment, and you seem to have arrived at this conclusion before even considering the deeper reasons for why this happens.

daseiner1 8y ago
Sure, there's a deeper conversation to be had. This ain't it: """ Upper middle-class parents obviously have more money to spend on their children, but there is also a social fracture. Class is not only defined in dollars, but by education, attitude, and zip code, by its way of life. America, warns Robert Putnam in Our Kids, faces “an incipient class apartheid.” The typical child born and raised in the American upper middle class is raised in a stable home by well-educated, married parents, lives in a great neighborhood, and attends the area’s best schools. They develop a wide range of skills and gain an impressive array of credentials. Upper middle-class children luck out right from the start, even though this country was founded on antihereditary principles. As part of the process of naturalization, I had to sign part 12, question 4 of Form N-400, which reads as follows: “Are you willing to give up any inherited title(s) or order(s) of nobility that you have in a foreign country?” I had none to give up, sadly, but very much enjoyed this question. Inheriting a particular position is un-American, after all. But while the inheritance of titles or positions remains forbidden, the persistence of class status across generations in the United States is very strong. Too strong, in fact, for a society that prides itself on social mobility. """ (emphasis mine). I mean, c'mon, this isn't very insightful.
- shaki-dora 8y ago
  How is your idea, i. e. „Poor people should work harder“, more insightful than this quote, which points out the (rather uncontroversial) fact that being able to send your kids to the right prep school is a significant, and unearned, factor in success?
  - daseiner1 8y ago

SamReidHughes 8y ago

Nevertheless, there's no reason why the 20-40%, people that show up to work, shouldn't be able to live happy, comfortable lives given the state of technological development. Zoning and other regulations are the main reason why some of them don't. It's a shame the article spends so much energy talking about taxation, when taxing the wealthy doesn't make average people any better off.

daseiner1 8y ago
Sure. I don't have any issue with discussing how to raise up the bottom 80%. This article just isn't very good.

moate 8y ago

That's a hot take. Let's break some things down >> the top 20% possess superior values, habits, and cultural systems for social success and upward mobility Wut? The top 20% possess a disproportionate amount of the real wealth. This isn't a value or habit, it's just the money itself. You don't need upward mobility when you're already at the top. You know what they say, the easiest way to make a million dollars is to start with 2 million dollars... >>make choices to gear themselves and their children towards development of important skills to thrive in the modern workplace. Or, they then use that disproportionate level of wealth to skew the system towards benefiting them. If you're a CEO, you can create a culture that favors people like you (because hey, you're a CEO, and "logically" you should want people that resemble you since you're so successful) which creates a bias towards certain people and therefor against others. If you have huge sums of money you can afford to hire the best accountants that allow you to avoid paying as much in taxes (because the tax code was lobbied for by previous generations of extremely wealthy people). Oh, and you already have a built in network of connections to allow open (or just fully remove) doors blocking your way towards success. Getting rich is extremely hard. Staying rich, much less so. The point of this article however seemed to be that if you agree that there is a problem with the distribution of wealth (spoiler: pretty much every poll in recent years has shown this is overwhelmingly true on both sides of the political spectrum) then figuring out people who may be responsible for this would be a good way to solve it. Also, "herd morality" is just "morality" or "culture". There's no such thing as objective morality that I've encountered. At best you'll just find common cultural agreements.

shaki-dora 8y ago

60% of US wealth are inherited. But I guess laws and taxes around that vaguely fall under „cultural systems“, so you’re technically right.

mrep 8y ago
Source? This one [0] says "Most of these studies have found inherited wealth to be in the range of 15% to 31% of total household wealth (Menchick and David, 1983; Modigliani, 1988; Hurd and Mundaca, 1989; Gale and Scholz, 1994; Juster and Laitner, 1996)". [0]: https://www.nber.org/papers/w11767.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w11767.pdf