5 ms·

The necessary condition seems to be invalidated by the “family-tradition” narrative where someone goes directly from son of a 4* general to becoming a 2* genera

The necessary condition seems to be invalidated by the “family-tradition” narrative where someone goes directly from son of a 4* general to becoming a 2* general as long as they don’t mess up too badly. For them, their default amount of status can lead to success as long as they don’t put too many chips on the wrong games. I’m not actually sure how true that is in practice, but the stickiness of income bracket and legacy enrollment in universities seems to give some credence to this type of construction.

dahfizz 6y ago
Income brackets are not as sticky as you might think[1]. If you are in the second or third quintile, you are more likely to move income quintiles than stay where you are over ten years. If you are in the bottom quintile, you only have a 64% chance of staying there. That's not incredible, but it does make you question the "inescapable poverty" narrative when a full 1/3 of impoverished people escape it every decade. Across every income quintile, you are more likely to die richer than your father[2]. [1] https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-commentary/2016-economic-commentaries/ec-201606-income-inequality-and-mobility.aspx https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/publicat... [2] https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2013/march/us-economic-mobility-dream-data/ https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Perhaps. But the trends are not encouraging. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  The "success" OP seems to be referring to is all top quintile, not a kid who stays off drugs and stays in school and goes to college and gets a good trade or a white collar job. Anyway, "dying richer than your father" is extremely different for the bottom quintile than the top, which shouldn't be equivocated. When half of people stay near where they are born in wealth, it's pretty clear that there is a massively unlevel playing field.
indigochill 6y ago
I think underlying that there is actually a similar root in both cases: the old adage "It's not what you know, but who you know" (or perhaps more precisely, who knows you). In the son-of-a-general instance, the son is born into those connections. But if you are able to associate yourself with high-level decision makers in a relevant low-status role, that can pay off. I've done this twice, once as a marketing intern at a news startup where our CEO connected me with some decision-makers in the journalism industry (though I decided I didn't like the journalism industry), and again when I got my foot in the door as a customer support rep at a tech company to leverage my software development skills into a dev job with no relevant professional experience or education.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  I’m actually a bit unsure how to think of status in a generic sense. The reason that is important is because I feel like we’re talking about the same thing, just at different resolutions. That idea is based on thinking of status as a combination of <connections, culture, wealth> or something of that nature, either accrued or inherited. One could think of the “don’t mess up too badly” as “dad’s friends will still interact with me in public”, which is just a proxy for connections as you mentioned. Going from low to high status is definitely made easier by leveraging high status individuals. Lower, but not necessarily low, status is still expected, I think, as the son of the general still goes to West Point and proves themselves in lower-status roles like being a lieutenant - the gears are just greased to keep going.

dahfizz 6y ago

Income brackets are not as sticky as you might think[1]. If you are in the second or third quintile, you are more likely to move income quintiles than stay where you are over ten years. If you are in the bottom quintile, you only have a 64% chance of staying there. That's not incredible, but it does make you question the "inescapable poverty" narrative when a full 1/3 of impoverished people escape it every decade. Across every income quintile, you are more likely to die richer than your father[2]. [1] https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-commentary/2016-economic-commentaries/ec-201606-income-inequality-and-mobility.aspx https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/publicat... [2] https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2013/march/us-economic-mobility-dream-data/ https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Perhaps. But the trends are not encouraging. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...
srtjstjsj 6y ago
The "success" OP seems to be referring to is all top quintile, not a kid who stays off drugs and stays in school and goes to college and gets a good trade or a white collar job. Anyway, "dying richer than your father" is extremely different for the bottom quintile than the top, which shouldn't be equivocated. When half of people stay near where they are born in wealth, it's pretty clear that there is a massively unlevel playing field.

indigochill 6y ago

I think underlying that there is actually a similar root in both cases: the old adage "It's not what you know, but who you know" (or perhaps more precisely, who knows you). In the son-of-a-general instance, the son is born into those connections. But if you are able to associate yourself with high-level decision makers in a relevant low-status role, that can pay off. I've done this twice, once as a marketing intern at a news startup where our CEO connected me with some decision-makers in the journalism industry (though I decided I didn't like the journalism industry), and again when I got my foot in the door as a customer support rep at a tech company to leverage my software development skills into a dev job with no relevant professional experience or education.

alextheparrot 6y ago
I’m actually a bit unsure how to think of status in a generic sense. The reason that is important is because I feel like we’re talking about the same thing, just at different resolutions. That idea is based on thinking of status as a combination of <connections, culture, wealth> or something of that nature, either accrued or inherited. One could think of the “don’t mess up too badly” as “dad’s friends will still interact with me in public”, which is just a proxy for connections as you mentioned. Going from low to high status is definitely made easier by leveraging high status individuals. Lower, but not necessarily low, status is still expected, I think, as the son of the general still goes to West Point and proves themselves in lower-status roles like being a lieutenant - the gears are just greased to keep going.