21 ms·

Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individua

Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn't BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success stories, but it seems more and more people are seeing through the illusion. In my opinion, that's a good thing, as recognizing the true state of things is the first step to improving them, and this combination of consciousness and lived experience can prove to be potent immunization against bad faith actors who want to maintain the illusion of widespread social mobility.

throwaway894345 5y ago
> A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success stories, but it seems more and more people are seeing through the illusion. I don't think we can conclude that from anything. It could just as easily be that our previous optimism was warranted but we've become influenced by a more pessimistic media narrative. To be clear, I don't have a position because there doesn't seem to be enough evidence one way or another.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  It sounded like an intuition rather than a conclusion. It’s an intuition that’s very familiar to those born without a leg up. There’s always hope. This isn’t about hope. It’s about seeing things as they are, as the parent suggested.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    > It sounded like an intuition rather than a conclusion. Fair enough. > It’s an intuition that’s very familiar to those born without a leg up. I was born to a blue collar family and I lived in a trailer until I was 6. I don't share the intuition. I worked through college while my classmates skipped class, spent loads at starbucks, restaurants, etc. I double majored and graduated with a fraction of the debt of my peers, and I picked majors that are likely to pay well. I now make multiples of what my parents made together. N=1 and all that, but it's not "intuition of those born without a leg up".
    - 52-6F-62 5y ago
      If you lack the intuition, it might not be because it doesn't exist. It might be because you were not so intuitive, at least about the nature of the people around you. I don't mean that to sound negative, some people have good fortune with their intuitive sense in the same way some have good fortune to make all the "right" choices at the right time. It sounds like you made it through some trying circumstances. Good on you. It doesn't mean the rest of us who have witnessed the other side of the veil are incorrect in our own intuitions. I wish I had grown up with the worldly insight to make money out of any situation along my way without losing my sense of myself or my principles. Instead I encountered recessions and empty job markets. C'est la vie. We all get our breaks somewhere. So, to extend on that, my point was never one is more noble than the other—but pointing out that asking for datasets and conclusions about intuitions is like asking artwork to explain itself.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        No worries. Maybe it’s luck, or maybe it’s mindset. Maybe the messaging (from the press or even from one’s own community) that life is hard, that only the exceptional few escape their circumstances, etc becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I think it’s somewhere in the middle, and America needs to make some reforms so we don’t have billionaires and abject poverty at once; however, I don’t think the media narrative is helping.
        52-6F-62 5y ago
        I'm sure it's ultimately an amalgam of who you are, your hard work, and good fortune that got you where you are. I do believe you have to work to prepare yourself to make the most of whatever comes your way. If it all was so simple, and so easily digestible then we wouldn't be having a discussion at all! I can see where you're coming from when you mention a media narrative, but I disagree. But I think that's just a matter of perspective—I don't see it as some moral or other failing to decide that working hard and hoping and aiming for good fortune just to acquire capital when in the end you really just want to work a day job and smoke a joint and watch the flowers grow. I think that's the tone that's being expressed, especially in the introspective light of the recent pandemic. The big questions have come out for a lot of people all over again: what's it all for, anyway? America, the modern world, what have you, glorify financial success in itself above all else as if its representative of something deeper, more profound. I think the article(s) on the subject are pointing to the growing tendency of late to question whether it's really worth it, or in the interest of most people. Personally, I don't get the quest for money alone. Life, for me, is primarily experiential. I'm a practical person, but there's no reality I can fathom in which I'd put a raw capital value or property ownership above a wealth of experience. For instance, I rent a beautiful old century townhome in a small artist's town in Ontario from a wealthy dentist. He bought it several years ago and has probably made a killing in the increase in property values here, but somehow I feel like I'm getting the better deal here. Especially when he keeps wistfully remarking that maybe they'll move in when they retire.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
How much social mobility we talking? Statistically nobody goes from trailer park to billionare by working hard. You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments. edit: I'm only talking about the US
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  My understanding is that social mobility implies being able to climb the ladder from destitute to poor, poor to modestly wealthy, etc. and not referring to jumping to the 1% from destitution.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Exactly. And everyone seems to think that the fact that all the billionaires came from a situation of decent familial wealth enabling them to make big bets refutes the fact that most people who don't screw up too bad end their career much better than they started and that most people's kids manage to start a rung up or so. Plumber sends his kids to community college and all that.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      Why does the millionaire's kid deserve a better shot at success than the plumber's kid?
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        If the plumber's kid not successful if he goes to school, gets a white collar job and generally lives better than his parents?
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I think the point of the question is, that we as a society try to sell the plumber's kid on the idea that everyone gets where they are through hard work and therefore deserves what they have. But the millionaire's kid can coast into a life that the plumber's kid could likely only achieve by incredible luck combined with hard work. In light of that, the idea of the millionaire's kid deserving what they have is called into question.
tester34 5y ago
On the other hand I don't think you ever in the history had as wide opportunities as you do now You can live in some shithole where 400$/month is easily enough to live without struggle, learn hard computer stuff and then work remotely for X times more than you needed to live. How are you going to skew the odds if you aren't even trying? Internet is huge advantage, you can not only have access to good information/knowledge/tutorials/blabla about something, but also you can meet professionals with decades of experience in $something significantly easier
- watwut 5y ago
  > On the other hand I don't think you ever in the history had as wide opportunities as you do now There were periods in history with great opportunities where many people actually really richer. Economies always went up and down, where up literally means opportunities.
  - tester34 5y ago
    in US or worldwide?
    - watwut 5y ago
      Both.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Brief periods, for a few. Basically no different from now.
fullstop 5y ago
Starting conditions help tremendously, and I'm not doubting that in the least. One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education. Most of the people I know who grew up very poor but now have money had parents that valued education, and pushed their kids to learn. They didn't have shelves of books at home, but they did visit the library weekly. It has to be extremely difficult to focus on school and education when you don't know when your next meal is going to be. It's why I find news articles about lunch aids being fired for giving a kid lunch when they have no money so infuriating, and food insecurity is an enormous problem that is likely happening in your neighborhood today, and it's often overlooked. It's not easy to move upward especially when your choice is between "Do I improve myself by working hard or do I eat?"
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  What you’re not counting, and what most people miss, is that not only are you at a disadvantage due to lack of resources, but there are many people in positions of authority, power, or just plain tenure who believe that accumulated wealth is a reflection of the wealth of soul. If you are below them in birth, and didn’t chance yourself to some higher strata by the time they grace your presence, they tend to believe you belong there and treat you as such. Even in the great meritocracies of North America.
  - datapls 5y ago
    Show me the data that supports this claim. Big claim, zero citations. As an American I've never met anyone who thinks wealth reflects "wealth of the soul." In my experience people here are Christian, in which case there's that verse about heaven and wealth and the eye of the needle (Google it) or they're atheist and don't believe in souls.
    - EliRivers 5y ago
      Prosperity Theology, also known as Prosperity Gospel. Some of them say that the "eye of the needle" is actually a narrow gateway in Jerusalem - a physical gateway - which is a bit tight, but you can get a camel through it, so that's what Jesus was actually talking about, so actually it is fine to be rich; you might just have to unpack your camel a bit and carry your riches through. "The prosperity gospel (also known as the “health and wealth gospel” or by its most popular brand, the “Word of Faith” movement) is a perversion of the gospel of Jesus that claims that God rewards increases in faith with increases in health and/or wealth." - https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-you-should-know-about-the-prosperity-gospel/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-you-should-k... And so on.
bko 5y ago
Do you honestly believe this? What would you tell this to someone who wasn't born into wealth or opportunity? You're pretty much screwed, don't bother? What impact do you think teaching nihilism has on children? I don't believe its true, but even if it were, it's not a useful model for life.
- kulig 5y ago
  That's exagerated. I would tell them "dont get fooled by tales of money. Take care of your body, your relationships, because thats where your wealth is. "
- afpx 5y ago
  Why would it be nihilism? A person's purpose in life doesn't have to be tied to working hard (especially if that strategy has diminishing returns).
  - ferrumfist 5y ago
    Working smart doesn't equal working hard. You can put in 12 hours a day at work doing pointless shit like reformatting powerpoints and that would technically be considered "working hard" but that's probably not going to help you make money in the future.
  - bko 5y ago
    I was raised to believe certain truths, such as hard work and sacrifice pays off. It's guided much of my life, from pursuing education, building a career, settling down and starting a family. I couldn't imagine what my life would be if I had believed that I am incapable of changing the circumstances of my being. It would be incredibly hard to live in an arbitrary society. That would likely lead me to the idea of nihilism.
    - gjulianm 5y ago
      > such as hard work and sacrifice pays off Most don't disagree with that. The point is that the rate is different for different people. For some people, a decent live (house, bed, food) will take a lot of effort. For others, they might be born already into that. What's important is that this is a discussion about policy and systemic problems. You can't address systemic issues with individual solutions (such as "poverty would be solved if people worked hard"), it's nonsense the same way it is to address individual problems with systemic solutions ("if you're homeless, ask the government to enact affordable housing policies).
agumonkey 5y ago
society is an extremely thick swamp hard work is only one small ingredient I'm a hard worker, I love it.. if the task suits me, i won't leave.. why did I fail ? people are jealous of your performance (inferiority), feel guilty of not being fast enough, are afraid of being thrown out because of you, and more and more politics (faster performance will be exploited by managers to pressure others in sad ways so people assemble/unionize and will restrict performance as leverage). Unless you value yourself enough, society will drag you down to its level
nxmnxm99 5y ago
You're right. If you're lucky enough to be born in the US, you're going to have a better life than 90% of people in the world and 90% of people who have ever existed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nightski 5y ago
Maybe starting conditions are heavily predictive. Does it matter that much? The fact is mobility has never been more available. The problem is the "work hard" narrative. It's about working smart, not hard (that is a boomer mentality). I think the real reason people struggle is because they just don't know how to take advantage of the opportunity available. It used to be easy - get some basic knowledge and find a hard working 9-5. Now that isn't the best path and while there is a lot more opportunity it is more open ended and one needs to find their own way.
karencarits 5y ago
Well, it depends. This short tedxoslo had some nice points ("Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?" Hint: not the US): https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU He's talking about social mobility from 8:30
nexus_dave 5y ago
In 2019, immigrant entrepreneurs made up 21.7 percent of all business owners in the United States, despite making up just over 13.6 percent of the population and 17.1 percent of the U.S. labor force. As an immigrant I can assure you that my starting position was not that great. It is super sad to see the west being turned into an epicurean type world.
- ferrumfist 5y ago
  It's because immigrants proactively make their lives better while average Americans reactively complain about why their lives aren't perfect
  - Jotra7 5y ago
    Your comments sound like something an angsty teen would say.
  - nexus_dave 5y ago
    Yeah, it's real simple, there is no stuff unless you make stuff.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    Or it’s because a fraction of immigrants does do with means and for the express purpose of this, essentially self-selecting for the task? Immigrants also make up a disproportionate portion of poverty population.
    - sershe 5y ago
      But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American? And if it's smth like ability, then how is it not well deserved? :)
      - masklinn 5y ago
        > But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American? They did not. They self-selected from largely good opportunities at home which they leveraged into good opportunities in the US. Successful indian-americans are not generally dalit. In fact relatively few indian americans originate from lower-caste families. And there are too many different kinds of american poor to average them. Who is the "average poor american"? A black american? A native american? A resource or industry-cursed white? An invalid vet? The opportunities, or lack thereof, are different for all of them.
slibhb 5y ago
> Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future Where do you think these "starting conditions" come from? We've lost interest in the long game. The system looks much fairer if you think about your family rather than yourself. And sure enough, immigrants continue to come to the US looking for economic opportunities, which often take the form of small businesses, and then their kids become doctors and lawyers.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  The immigrants who come to the US are, by and large, already relatively wealthy. Especially if they come here with the capital to start a small business, or to send their children to medical school.
  - jacob2484 5y ago
    Can you provide stats to back this up? Many come here as refugees or cross the border illegally from very poor countries.
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      Are those the immigrants whose kids have a good chance of becoming doctors and lawyers?
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      > > immigrants continue to come to the US looking for economic opportunities, which often take the form of small businesses, and then their kids become doctors and lawyers > Especially if they come here with the capital to start a small business, or to send their children to medical school. I'm not sure what part of my comment or its parent made you think anyone was talking about refugees or illegal immigrants.
lettergram 5y ago
I think we need more studies and evidence to create meaningful predictions. Now, I’m going to remove any moral or emotional thoughts for a moment. Sure there may be a correlation between wealth and future success, but hasn’t that always been the case - it’s a fact of nature. The most successful genes are able to procreate leading to success. What we did is say “all humans need to have the same vindication’s” and ensure infant mortality was near zero. As a consequence even the least able to produce can (a) survive but importantly (b) reproduce. If you want maximal improvement to society, reduce the points subsidies. Quickly, only those helping society will procreate. All of our poor, all of them. Are a creation of our society. Historically, the weak and unfit didn’t survive. Those hardy enough to survive the system procreated and made a stronger society over time. today, we have the weak and unfit leading more weak and unfit. Eventually, this system will collapse.
- vharuck 5y ago
  Appeals to "survival of the fittest" piss me off, because they necessarily give up on the idea of improving society. I don't want to replace my ethics and hopes for the world with a barbaric version of pre-history. As a person who wouldn't be alive without corrective glasses and modern medicine, who also considers himself fairly productive, I'm might be a bit biased. Besides, if you really want the end result of human nature, you'd just get what we have today. Humans are, overall, compassionate for fellow humans. It's why we tend to the sick. Hell, our compassionate nature is so strong we sympathize with sick or disabled animals.
  - Geee 5y ago
    That's not what it means. Corrective glasses and modern medicine are exactly the kind of improvement that results from universal darwinism, when incentives are correctly aligned. Darwinism also applies to groups of people and ideas, not just individuals and genes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lumost 5y ago
There was an odd period of time between roughly 1820 and 1970 where economic and industrial growth outpaced loans and other passive financial products in both stability of returns and rate of returns. This period minted many wealthy individuals as well as a large middle class as starting position matters less if GDP is growing at 5-10% consistently. This isn't to say that starting position doesn't matter, I'm sure most of the vanderbuilts are still doing reasonably well. When interest rates and returns on labor are low it becomes difficult to get ahead by either working smart or hard for the majority of individuals. Even in the tech sector, the most lucrative approach is to simply work with a dominant firm. Founders/Employees give up too much equity and have too little cash flow to compete. Taken to the extreme this economy looks more like a feudal economy of court jesters, peasants, and lords then the proto-industrial economies Adam Smith wrote about.
- imtringued 5y ago
  This might be what happens when inflation is too low. You can get away with a lot of money shuffling games and end up ahead without doing anything productive. If there was 5% inflation you would actually have to make sure that you are doing something useful, otherwise inflation would eat away at your wealth but workers can just switch jobs to get a raise. Low interest rates are an indicator that something is going wrong. Companies stopped hiring people and they already have done all the investments they could possibly do. The quick hack is to just let the government "steal" all the low interest money and spend it to generate inflation. What we are seeing during this pandemic is that businesses are waking up. They are realizing that they actually have to work or else their paper wealth is going to disappear into nothing. Fundamentally the problem is that cash is a low risk asset and the risk of actually doing work is too high compared to risk free money.
Siira 5y ago
Starting conditions are also heavily correlated with the qualities that lead to them, which are both culturally and genetically hereditable. There is also a chilling effect where even the people who have the qualities needed to succeed, judge their own chances by the median of their peers, and thus don’t bother in the first place. This is one of the reasons I advocate for big-population standardized tests just a self-assessment tool for students. It won’t help most underprivileged people, but it will at least help the best of them, and get a positive feedback loop going. I myself probably would not have worked hard enough if I did not consistently place high in these tests, as I was from a rather small city, and born with an under-confidence bias.
nr2x 5y ago
“False consciousness is a term used by some to describe ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation intrinsic to the social relations between classes.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wpietri 5y ago
Yup. There is no doubt individual effort matters. But the extent to which it matters is sharply constrained by systemic factors. And escape from those factors is often about luck, not effort. I'll use myself as an example. Going by parents, I do way better than one would expect. But I was lucky to be born into a time where my neuroatypicality was suddenly useful in an industry big enough that it created social upheaval and space for some to rise. Lucky indeed; 50 years earlier I would have made a mediocre car mechanic, somebody who only worked hard on the rare car problem that was interesting. And timing aside, two other lucky items pointed me at tech. One was getting an early computer (TRS-80 CoCo) as a gift from a well-off friend of my mom's. The other was my dad being a software developer himself. Which only happened because in the mid 1960s his dad was an exec at an insurance company that had just rented one of these newfangled minicomputers but didn't know what to do with it. My dad didn't have any training, but he was a) smart and b) a bad student in college, so my grandfather used his connections to try him out on computing. Something that was only possible because they were white; Milwaukee had no black insurance executives in 1965. Have I worked hard at points? Sure. Have I worked half as hard as a restaurant prep cook or a single mom who cleans offices at night? Nope. Indeed, the hardest times I worked were at the shittiest, lowest-paying jobs. Working the grill at McDonald's. Running an injection molding press to make mirror rims for cars I couldn't possibly afford. Since getting into tech my life has been comparatively cushy, and getting cushier. Way better than what my middle-school automated career counseling service suggested I was destined for: bowling pin machine mechanic.
sobriquet9 5y ago
Starting conditions are not orthogonal to hard work. Educated parents are more likely to teach their kids work ethics, and once you are hired your parents are not helping you with your job. It's not enough to be lucky. Most people still need to work hard to get ahead.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
>Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Starting conditions are a factor, but a terrible predictor. If you look at income by the quintile you are born into, it is closer to random than 1:1 predictive. It is most true for the poor, where those born into the bottom 20% have about 45% chance of ending up in the same quintile. This means most people born into the bottom 20% improve their economic status, and most people currently in the bottom 20% started above it. On the opposite end, a majority of people born into the top 20% end up in a lower quintile. [1, table 2] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/70266/406722-economic-mobility-in-the-united-states.pdf https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/70266/...
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > Starting conditions are a factor, but a terrible predictor. If you look at income by the quintile you are born into, it is closer to random than 1:1 predictive. Closer to random would mean a 20% chance of ending on any quintile from any quintile. From your report (which has data from 1991, quite few things changed since then), the probability of being at the top 20% is 3% if you are in the poorest quintile, 40% if in the richest. That's not "closer to random" and definitely not a terrible predictor, given that's just a single factor in social studies. Not to mention that the quintile method is just an approximation. You don't know if the 24.5% of people in the bottom quintile who get to the next one moved from being 0% to 39% or from 19% to 21%. > This means most people born into the bottom 20% improve their economic status, and most people currently in the bottom 20% started above it Well, that's a minimum. If starting conditions weren't a factor you'd have 80% improving their status, not 55%. You can rephrase the statistic in another way, such as saying that 13% of the people at the lowest quintile should be in the highest income bracket, but they're not there because they started poor. Or that 22% of the people in the highest quintile are there not because they worked hard enough, but because they just started there.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Random would mean 20% of ending in the same quintile, perfect predictor would mean 100%, so 40% is much closer to random. >you can rephrase the statistic in another way, such as saying that 13% of the people at the lowest quintile should be in the highest income bracket, but they're not there because they started poor. You say "should" but it seems like this is only true if you expect (and want) completely random results.
ed_balls 5y ago
To play devil's advocate: Rich kids are doing cocaine in Ferraris. It's the poor kids that make stuff happen. > Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. That could be true for USA where the mobility reached an equilibrium.
- antiterra 5y ago
  There’s a level of wealth that is below ‘lambo for kids’ that still provides a vastly different life experience than ‘occasionally have to hock something to keep the lights on.’ There’s also wealth that manifests itself as parents investing in their kid’s startups and providing social access to other elites. Also, I was acquainted with a high school kid who had a supercar. He also was subjected to domestic violence, which curbed the majority of envy I had for his situation.
fairity 5y ago
How do you measure social mobility and what does the data show? I don’t have time right now to grab the data, bu last time I looked, there was actually a surprising amount of movement between the various quintiles of wealth from one generation to the next. It’d be great if you included data that supports your claims.
- lsiebert 5y ago
  https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-of-82-countries/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...
  - lsiebert 5y ago
    And gini coefficient for 12 countries with a higher gini coefficient than the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerational-income-mobility-is-better-than-us-2020-2?op=1#1-denmark-it-is-estimated-that-it-would-take-two-generations-for-a-child-in-a-low-income-family-to-earn-the-average-income-in-their-country-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...
steve76 5y ago
Work 3 jobs. Get a mortgage for a low income home. Double up your mortgage payments. Build up equity. Sell it. Use it as a down payment for a nice home. Get a promotion and quit one job. Not that difficult. The real problem are people around you. Not environment. More like locking up one person for a petty crime, and you find out all these arsons and murders suddenly stop.
geggam 5y ago
Sort of curious, What lifestyle are people entitled to ? What effort are they responsible for putting forth to better their life ? Who is responsible for ensuring they have a good life ?
- caconym_ 5y ago
  As a matter of physical reality, the universe owes us nothing. It was quite content to allow such things as the Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust, which took people’s lives completely out of their own hands and utterly destroyed them. Were those people “entitled” to better? The question is, I think, utterly meaningless. Were these morally abhorrent events that should never be repeated? From my own moral point of view, and that of many other people, absolutely. The effort of changing society to give more people more opportunity is generally undertaken on a moral basis alone. If you aren’t convinced by the premise, asking leading moral questions as if they have objective answers isn’t going to tell you anything you don’t already “know”, and it also isn’t going to provoke any kind of useful discussion around how we might implement real policies to this effect.
  - geggam 5y ago
    What is moral about teaching people they dont need to work to survive ?
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      In the context of this thread, and in particular the top level comment you initially replied to, who do you imagine is suggesting we teach people that?
      - geggam 5y ago
        Well, lets look at society. We have the rich who use the govt to oppress the people and preserve their wealth. We have the poor who think the govt will help them We have a large group of people who just want to work to survive What rules would you put in place and how would you go about doing that to ensure the rich / powerful didnt corrupt the system ? The US was designed with a constitution defining the rules a govt could work within and the bill of rights was added to ensure the govt didnt enroach on the peoples rights so they could control the govt This design failed as did all the rest... why ? Because people are inherently lazy and dont want to be bothered. So you think its better to simply feed these folks and ensure they are ok will somehow motivate them to work ? Capitalism works better than most systems and in fact many of the so called socialist countries arent. They are capitalist countries that have strong social programs funded by said capitalism Perhaps instead of letting the govt get away with violating the rules it was bound by we start enforcing the rules ?
codyswann 5y ago
I've been a mid-level manager, upper-level manager and now run my own company. I simply won't hire or promote someone who isn't a hard worker. Does it guarantee success? Nope. Is it a requirement for success in many circumstances? Yep.
- kangnkodos 5y ago
  What if I came to work at your company as janitor? And I did a great job. Worked hard. Attention to detail. Polite, and easy to work with. Arrived early every day. Stayed late. The best janitor in every way. What are the chances I would move into another position at your company? My guess is 0%. You might keep me employed, and not fire me. Maybe pay me a little more. But there would be no realistic hope to jump up to the next level. That's been the case for a long, long time. But now something new is happening. Now professionals at many companies are realizing that they are in the same position. They see that hard work will not lead them to jump to the next level.
  - codyswann 5y ago
    You're 100% wrong. If you showed that much initiative, I would absolutely try to train you in other skills. I own a software company, and while we don't have a physical office, I'm always offering education material to employees who want to learn new skills. My mentor had a saying that I agree with fully - skill can be taught. Effort can't. If you're willing to put in the effort, I'll make sure you're rewarded.
  - InnerGargoyle 5y ago
    man i am 100% agree on this.. this notion that someone wil see through your effort and you will get chances to move higher up.. are just illusion.
fairity 5y ago
> Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn't BE the odds These claims simply don't hold up against scrutiny. In the US, children born into a family in the bottom quintile of household income have a 58% chance to step up into a higher income bracket as adults, a ~30% chance to realize an above average income as an adult, and a 6% to reach the top quintile. Being born into poor circumstances makes things undeniably harder, but the claim that working hard won't lead to a better life is patently false (and imo extremely pernicious). Source: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_economic_mobility_sawhill_ch1.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ... Reading through these comments, I see an onslaught of unverifiable claims. I'd really appreciate evidence.
- LdSGSgvupDV 5y ago
  But, be born into US is already 5%. Maybe not top 5%.
mbrodersen 5y ago
This. It is so obviously in-your-face true that I laugh out loud whenever somebody claim that they are “self-made” and owe nothing to the people and society who raised them, protected them, fed them etc. until they finally “made it”.
Goosee 5y ago
“70 percent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and a stunning 90 percent by the third.” -money magazine Initial Conditions really don't mean much in the long term trend. Short term, sure.
mgh2 5y ago
At the heart of this debate is the Western ingrained belief in free will, a statement often used by the rich to justify inequality, despite plenty of evidence supporting the contrary. https://m-g-h.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf8095812 https://m-g-h.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf80...

throwaway894345 5y ago

> A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success stories, but it seems more and more people are seeing through the illusion. I don't think we can conclude that from anything. It could just as easily be that our previous optimism was warranted but we've become influenced by a more pessimistic media narrative. To be clear, I don't have a position because there doesn't seem to be enough evidence one way or another.

52-6F-62 5y ago
It sounded like an intuition rather than a conclusion. It’s an intuition that’s very familiar to those born without a leg up. There’s always hope. This isn’t about hope. It’s about seeing things as they are, as the parent suggested.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > It sounded like an intuition rather than a conclusion. Fair enough. > It’s an intuition that’s very familiar to those born without a leg up. I was born to a blue collar family and I lived in a trailer until I was 6. I don't share the intuition. I worked through college while my classmates skipped class, spent loads at starbucks, restaurants, etc. I double majored and graduated with a fraction of the debt of my peers, and I picked majors that are likely to pay well. I now make multiples of what my parents made together. N=1 and all that, but it's not "intuition of those born without a leg up".
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    If you lack the intuition, it might not be because it doesn't exist. It might be because you were not so intuitive, at least about the nature of the people around you. I don't mean that to sound negative, some people have good fortune with their intuitive sense in the same way some have good fortune to make all the "right" choices at the right time. It sounds like you made it through some trying circumstances. Good on you. It doesn't mean the rest of us who have witnessed the other side of the veil are incorrect in our own intuitions. I wish I had grown up with the worldly insight to make money out of any situation along my way without losing my sense of myself or my principles. Instead I encountered recessions and empty job markets. C'est la vie. We all get our breaks somewhere. So, to extend on that, my point was never one is more noble than the other—but pointing out that asking for datasets and conclusions about intuitions is like asking artwork to explain itself.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      No worries. Maybe it’s luck, or maybe it’s mindset. Maybe the messaging (from the press or even from one’s own community) that life is hard, that only the exceptional few escape their circumstances, etc becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I think it’s somewhere in the middle, and America needs to make some reforms so we don’t have billionaires and abject poverty at once; however, I don’t think the media narrative is helping.
      - 52-6F-62 5y ago
        I'm sure it's ultimately an amalgam of who you are, your hard work, and good fortune that got you where you are. I do believe you have to work to prepare yourself to make the most of whatever comes your way. If it all was so simple, and so easily digestible then we wouldn't be having a discussion at all! I can see where you're coming from when you mention a media narrative, but I disagree. But I think that's just a matter of perspective—I don't see it as some moral or other failing to decide that working hard and hoping and aiming for good fortune just to acquire capital when in the end you really just want to work a day job and smoke a joint and watch the flowers grow. I think that's the tone that's being expressed, especially in the introspective light of the recent pandemic. The big questions have come out for a lot of people all over again: what's it all for, anyway? America, the modern world, what have you, glorify financial success in itself above all else as if its representative of something deeper, more profound. I think the article(s) on the subject are pointing to the growing tendency of late to question whether it's really worth it, or in the interest of most people. Personally, I don't get the quest for money alone. Life, for me, is primarily experiential. I'm a practical person, but there's no reality I can fathom in which I'd put a raw capital value or property ownership above a wealth of experience. For instance, I rent a beautiful old century townhome in a small artist's town in Ontario from a wealthy dentist. He bought it several years ago and has probably made a killing in the increase in property values here, but somehow I feel like I'm getting the better deal here. Especially when he keeps wistfully remarking that maybe they'll move in when they retire.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

How much social mobility we talking? Statistically nobody goes from trailer park to billionare by working hard. You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments. edit: I'm only talking about the US

9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
My understanding is that social mobility implies being able to climb the ladder from destitute to poor, poor to modestly wealthy, etc. and not referring to jumping to the 1% from destitution.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Exactly. And everyone seems to think that the fact that all the billionaires came from a situation of decent familial wealth enabling them to make big bets refutes the fact that most people who don't screw up too bad end their career much better than they started and that most people's kids manage to start a rung up or so. Plumber sends his kids to community college and all that.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    Why does the millionaire's kid deserve a better shot at success than the plumber's kid?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      If the plumber's kid not successful if he goes to school, gets a white collar job and generally lives better than his parents?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I think the point of the question is, that we as a society try to sell the plumber's kid on the idea that everyone gets where they are through hard work and therefore deserves what they have. But the millionaire's kid can coast into a life that the plumber's kid could likely only achieve by incredible luck combined with hard work. In light of that, the idea of the millionaire's kid deserving what they have is called into question.

tester34 5y ago

On the other hand I don't think you ever in the history had as wide opportunities as you do now You can live in some shithole where 400$/month is easily enough to live without struggle, learn hard computer stuff and then work remotely for X times more than you needed to live. How are you going to skew the odds if you aren't even trying? Internet is huge advantage, you can not only have access to good information/knowledge/tutorials/blabla about something, but also you can meet professionals with decades of experience in $something significantly easier

watwut 5y ago
> On the other hand I don't think you ever in the history had as wide opportunities as you do now There were periods in history with great opportunities where many people actually really richer. Economies always went up and down, where up literally means opportunities.
- tester34 5y ago
  in US or worldwide?
  - watwut 5y ago
    Both.
- zepto 5y ago
  Brief periods, for a few. Basically no different from now.

fullstop 5y ago

Starting conditions help tremendously, and I'm not doubting that in the least. One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education. Most of the people I know who grew up very poor but now have money had parents that valued education, and pushed their kids to learn. They didn't have shelves of books at home, but they did visit the library weekly. It has to be extremely difficult to focus on school and education when you don't know when your next meal is going to be. It's why I find news articles about lunch aids being fired for giving a kid lunch when they have no money so infuriating, and food insecurity is an enormous problem that is likely happening in your neighborhood today, and it's often overlooked. It's not easy to move upward especially when your choice is between "Do I improve myself by working hard or do I eat?"

52-6F-62 5y ago
What you’re not counting, and what most people miss, is that not only are you at a disadvantage due to lack of resources, but there are many people in positions of authority, power, or just plain tenure who believe that accumulated wealth is a reflection of the wealth of soul. If you are below them in birth, and didn’t chance yourself to some higher strata by the time they grace your presence, they tend to believe you belong there and treat you as such. Even in the great meritocracies of North America.
- datapls 5y ago
  Show me the data that supports this claim. Big claim, zero citations. As an American I've never met anyone who thinks wealth reflects "wealth of the soul." In my experience people here are Christian, in which case there's that verse about heaven and wealth and the eye of the needle (Google it) or they're atheist and don't believe in souls.
  - EliRivers 5y ago
    Prosperity Theology, also known as Prosperity Gospel. Some of them say that the "eye of the needle" is actually a narrow gateway in Jerusalem - a physical gateway - which is a bit tight, but you can get a camel through it, so that's what Jesus was actually talking about, so actually it is fine to be rich; you might just have to unpack your camel a bit and carry your riches through. "The prosperity gospel (also known as the “health and wealth gospel” or by its most popular brand, the “Word of Faith” movement) is a perversion of the gospel of Jesus that claims that God rewards increases in faith with increases in health and/or wealth." - https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-you-should-know-about-the-prosperity-gospel/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-you-should-k... And so on.

bko 5y ago

Do you honestly believe this? What would you tell this to someone who wasn't born into wealth or opportunity? You're pretty much screwed, don't bother? What impact do you think teaching nihilism has on children? I don't believe its true, but even if it were, it's not a useful model for life.

kulig 5y ago
That's exagerated. I would tell them "dont get fooled by tales of money. Take care of your body, your relationships, because thats where your wealth is. "
afpx 5y ago
Why would it be nihilism? A person's purpose in life doesn't have to be tied to working hard (especially if that strategy has diminishing returns).
- ferrumfist 5y ago
  Working smart doesn't equal working hard. You can put in 12 hours a day at work doing pointless shit like reformatting powerpoints and that would technically be considered "working hard" but that's probably not going to help you make money in the future.
- bko 5y ago
  I was raised to believe certain truths, such as hard work and sacrifice pays off. It's guided much of my life, from pursuing education, building a career, settling down and starting a family. I couldn't imagine what my life would be if I had believed that I am incapable of changing the circumstances of my being. It would be incredibly hard to live in an arbitrary society. That would likely lead me to the idea of nihilism.
  - gjulianm 5y ago
    > such as hard work and sacrifice pays off Most don't disagree with that. The point is that the rate is different for different people. For some people, a decent live (house, bed, food) will take a lot of effort. For others, they might be born already into that. What's important is that this is a discussion about policy and systemic problems. You can't address systemic issues with individual solutions (such as "poverty would be solved if people worked hard"), it's nonsense the same way it is to address individual problems with systemic solutions ("if you're homeless, ask the government to enact affordable housing policies).

agumonkey 5y ago

society is an extremely thick swamp hard work is only one small ingredient I'm a hard worker, I love it.. if the task suits me, i won't leave.. why did I fail ? people are jealous of your performance (inferiority), feel guilty of not being fast enough, are afraid of being thrown out because of you, and more and more politics (faster performance will be exploited by managers to pressure others in sad ways so people assemble/unionize and will restrict performance as leverage). Unless you value yourself enough, society will drag you down to its level

nxmnxm99 5y ago

You're right. If you're lucky enough to be born in the US, you're going to have a better life than 90% of people in the world and 90% of people who have ever existed.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nightski 5y ago

Maybe starting conditions are heavily predictive. Does it matter that much? The fact is mobility has never been more available. The problem is the "work hard" narrative. It's about working smart, not hard (that is a boomer mentality). I think the real reason people struggle is because they just don't know how to take advantage of the opportunity available. It used to be easy - get some basic knowledge and find a hard working 9-5. Now that isn't the best path and while there is a lot more opportunity it is more open ended and one needs to find their own way.

karencarits 5y ago

Well, it depends. This short tedxoslo had some nice points ("Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?" Hint: not the US): https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU He's talking about social mobility from 8:30

nexus_dave 5y ago

In 2019, immigrant entrepreneurs made up 21.7 percent of all business owners in the United States, despite making up just over 13.6 percent of the population and 17.1 percent of the U.S. labor force. As an immigrant I can assure you that my starting position was not that great. It is super sad to see the west being turned into an epicurean type world.

ferrumfist 5y ago
It's because immigrants proactively make their lives better while average Americans reactively complain about why their lives aren't perfect
- Jotra7 5y ago
  Your comments sound like something an angsty teen would say.
- nexus_dave 5y ago
  Yeah, it's real simple, there is no stuff unless you make stuff.
- masklinn 5y ago
  Or it’s because a fraction of immigrants does do with means and for the express purpose of this, essentially self-selecting for the task? Immigrants also make up a disproportionate portion of poverty population.
  - sershe 5y ago
    But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American? And if it's smth like ability, then how is it not well deserved? :)
    - masklinn 5y ago
      > But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American? They did not. They self-selected from largely good opportunities at home which they leveraged into good opportunities in the US. Successful indian-americans are not generally dalit. In fact relatively few indian americans originate from lower-caste families. And there are too many different kinds of american poor to average them. Who is the "average poor american"? A black american? A native american? A resource or industry-cursed white? An invalid vet? The opportunities, or lack thereof, are different for all of them.

slibhb 5y ago

> Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future Where do you think these "starting conditions" come from? We've lost interest in the long game. The system looks much fairer if you think about your family rather than yourself. And sure enough, immigrants continue to come to the US looking for economic opportunities, which often take the form of small businesses, and then their kids become doctors and lawyers.

jfrunyon 5y ago
The immigrants who come to the US are, by and large, already relatively wealthy. Especially if they come here with the capital to start a small business, or to send their children to medical school.
- jacob2484 5y ago
  Can you provide stats to back this up? Many come here as refugees or cross the border illegally from very poor countries.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    Are those the immigrants whose kids have a good chance of becoming doctors and lawyers?
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    > > immigrants continue to come to the US looking for economic opportunities, which often take the form of small businesses, and then their kids become doctors and lawyers > Especially if they come here with the capital to start a small business, or to send their children to medical school. I'm not sure what part of my comment or its parent made you think anyone was talking about refugees or illegal immigrants.

lettergram 5y ago

I think we need more studies and evidence to create meaningful predictions. Now, I’m going to remove any moral or emotional thoughts for a moment. Sure there may be a correlation between wealth and future success, but hasn’t that always been the case - it’s a fact of nature. The most successful genes are able to procreate leading to success. What we did is say “all humans need to have the same vindication’s” and ensure infant mortality was near zero. As a consequence even the least able to produce can (a) survive but importantly (b) reproduce. If you want maximal improvement to society, reduce the points subsidies. Quickly, only those helping society will procreate. All of our poor, all of them. Are a creation of our society. Historically, the weak and unfit didn’t survive. Those hardy enough to survive the system procreated and made a stronger society over time. today, we have the weak and unfit leading more weak and unfit. Eventually, this system will collapse.

vharuck 5y ago
Appeals to "survival of the fittest" piss me off, because they necessarily give up on the idea of improving society. I don't want to replace my ethics and hopes for the world with a barbaric version of pre-history. As a person who wouldn't be alive without corrective glasses and modern medicine, who also considers himself fairly productive, I'm might be a bit biased. Besides, if you really want the end result of human nature, you'd just get what we have today. Humans are, overall, compassionate for fellow humans. It's why we tend to the sick. Hell, our compassionate nature is so strong we sympathize with sick or disabled animals.
- Geee 5y ago
  That's not what it means. Corrective glasses and modern medicine are exactly the kind of improvement that results from universal darwinism, when incentives are correctly aligned. Darwinism also applies to groups of people and ideas, not just individuals and genes.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

lumost 5y ago

There was an odd period of time between roughly 1820 and 1970 where economic and industrial growth outpaced loans and other passive financial products in both stability of returns and rate of returns. This period minted many wealthy individuals as well as a large middle class as starting position matters less if GDP is growing at 5-10% consistently. This isn't to say that starting position doesn't matter, I'm sure most of the vanderbuilts are still doing reasonably well. When interest rates and returns on labor are low it becomes difficult to get ahead by either working smart or hard for the majority of individuals. Even in the tech sector, the most lucrative approach is to simply work with a dominant firm. Founders/Employees give up too much equity and have too little cash flow to compete. Taken to the extreme this economy looks more like a feudal economy of court jesters, peasants, and lords then the proto-industrial economies Adam Smith wrote about.

imtringued 5y ago
This might be what happens when inflation is too low. You can get away with a lot of money shuffling games and end up ahead without doing anything productive. If there was 5% inflation you would actually have to make sure that you are doing something useful, otherwise inflation would eat away at your wealth but workers can just switch jobs to get a raise. Low interest rates are an indicator that something is going wrong. Companies stopped hiring people and they already have done all the investments they could possibly do. The quick hack is to just let the government "steal" all the low interest money and spend it to generate inflation. What we are seeing during this pandemic is that businesses are waking up. They are realizing that they actually have to work or else their paper wealth is going to disappear into nothing. Fundamentally the problem is that cash is a low risk asset and the risk of actually doing work is too high compared to risk free money.

Siira 5y ago

Starting conditions are also heavily correlated with the qualities that lead to them, which are both culturally and genetically hereditable. There is also a chilling effect where even the people who have the qualities needed to succeed, judge their own chances by the median of their peers, and thus don’t bother in the first place. This is one of the reasons I advocate for big-population standardized tests just a self-assessment tool for students. It won’t help most underprivileged people, but it will at least help the best of them, and get a positive feedback loop going. I myself probably would not have worked hard enough if I did not consistently place high in these tests, as I was from a rather small city, and born with an under-confidence bias.

nr2x 5y ago

“False consciousness is a term used by some to describe ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation intrinsic to the social relations between classes.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wpietri 5y ago

Yup. There is no doubt individual effort matters. But the extent to which it matters is sharply constrained by systemic factors. And escape from those factors is often about luck, not effort. I'll use myself as an example. Going by parents, I do way better than one would expect. But I was lucky to be born into a time where my neuroatypicality was suddenly useful in an industry big enough that it created social upheaval and space for some to rise. Lucky indeed; 50 years earlier I would have made a mediocre car mechanic, somebody who only worked hard on the rare car problem that was interesting. And timing aside, two other lucky items pointed me at tech. One was getting an early computer (TRS-80 CoCo) as a gift from a well-off friend of my mom's. The other was my dad being a software developer himself. Which only happened because in the mid 1960s his dad was an exec at an insurance company that had just rented one of these newfangled minicomputers but didn't know what to do with it. My dad didn't have any training, but he was a) smart and b) a bad student in college, so my grandfather used his connections to try him out on computing. Something that was only possible because they were white; Milwaukee had no black insurance executives in 1965. Have I worked hard at points? Sure. Have I worked half as hard as a restaurant prep cook or a single mom who cleans offices at night? Nope. Indeed, the hardest times I worked were at the shittiest, lowest-paying jobs. Working the grill at McDonald's. Running an injection molding press to make mirror rims for cars I couldn't possibly afford. Since getting into tech my life has been comparatively cushy, and getting cushier. Way better than what my middle-school automated career counseling service suggested I was destined for: bowling pin machine mechanic.

sobriquet9 5y ago

Starting conditions are not orthogonal to hard work. Educated parents are more likely to teach their kids work ethics, and once you are hired your parents are not helping you with your job. It's not enough to be lucky. Most people still need to work hard to get ahead.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

>Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Starting conditions are a factor, but a terrible predictor. If you look at income by the quintile you are born into, it is closer to random than 1:1 predictive. It is most true for the poor, where those born into the bottom 20% have about 45% chance of ending up in the same quintile. This means most people born into the bottom 20% improve their economic status, and most people currently in the bottom 20% started above it. On the opposite end, a majority of people born into the top 20% end up in a lower quintile. [1, table 2] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/70266/406722-economic-mobility-in-the-united-states.pdf https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/70266/...

gjulianm 5y ago
> Starting conditions are a factor, but a terrible predictor. If you look at income by the quintile you are born into, it is closer to random than 1:1 predictive. Closer to random would mean a 20% chance of ending on any quintile from any quintile. From your report (which has data from 1991, quite few things changed since then), the probability of being at the top 20% is 3% if you are in the poorest quintile, 40% if in the richest. That's not "closer to random" and definitely not a terrible predictor, given that's just a single factor in social studies. Not to mention that the quintile method is just an approximation. You don't know if the 24.5% of people in the bottom quintile who get to the next one moved from being 0% to 39% or from 19% to 21%. > This means most people born into the bottom 20% improve their economic status, and most people currently in the bottom 20% started above it Well, that's a minimum. If starting conditions weren't a factor you'd have 80% improving their status, not 55%. You can rephrase the statistic in another way, such as saying that 13% of the people at the lowest quintile should be in the highest income bracket, but they're not there because they started poor. Or that 22% of the people in the highest quintile are there not because they worked hard enough, but because they just started there.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Random would mean 20% of ending in the same quintile, perfect predictor would mean 100%, so 40% is much closer to random. >you can rephrase the statistic in another way, such as saying that 13% of the people at the lowest quintile should be in the highest income bracket, but they're not there because they started poor. You say "should" but it seems like this is only true if you expect (and want) completely random results.

ed_balls 5y ago

To play devil's advocate: Rich kids are doing cocaine in Ferraris. It's the poor kids that make stuff happen. > Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. That could be true for USA where the mobility reached an equilibrium.

antiterra 5y ago
There’s a level of wealth that is below ‘lambo for kids’ that still provides a vastly different life experience than ‘occasionally have to hock something to keep the lights on.’ There’s also wealth that manifests itself as parents investing in their kid’s startups and providing social access to other elites. Also, I was acquainted with a high school kid who had a supercar. He also was subjected to domestic violence, which curbed the majority of envy I had for his situation.

fairity 5y ago

How do you measure social mobility and what does the data show? I don’t have time right now to grab the data, bu last time I looked, there was actually a surprising amount of movement between the various quintiles of wealth from one generation to the next. It’d be great if you included data that supports your claims.

lsiebert 5y ago
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-of-82-countries/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...
- lsiebert 5y ago
  And gini coefficient for 12 countries with a higher gini coefficient than the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerational-income-mobility-is-better-than-us-2020-2?op=1#1-denmark-it-is-estimated-that-it-would-take-two-generations-for-a-child-in-a-low-income-family-to-earn-the-average-income-in-their-country-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...

steve76 5y ago

Work 3 jobs. Get a mortgage for a low income home. Double up your mortgage payments. Build up equity. Sell it. Use it as a down payment for a nice home. Get a promotion and quit one job. Not that difficult. The real problem are people around you. Not environment. More like locking up one person for a petty crime, and you find out all these arsons and murders suddenly stop.

geggam 5y ago

Sort of curious, What lifestyle are people entitled to ? What effort are they responsible for putting forth to better their life ? Who is responsible for ensuring they have a good life ?

caconym_ 5y ago
As a matter of physical reality, the universe owes us nothing. It was quite content to allow such things as the Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust, which took people’s lives completely out of their own hands and utterly destroyed them. Were those people “entitled” to better? The question is, I think, utterly meaningless. Were these morally abhorrent events that should never be repeated? From my own moral point of view, and that of many other people, absolutely. The effort of changing society to give more people more opportunity is generally undertaken on a moral basis alone. If you aren’t convinced by the premise, asking leading moral questions as if they have objective answers isn’t going to tell you anything you don’t already “know”, and it also isn’t going to provoke any kind of useful discussion around how we might implement real policies to this effect.
- geggam 5y ago
  What is moral about teaching people they dont need to work to survive ?
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    In the context of this thread, and in particular the top level comment you initially replied to, who do you imagine is suggesting we teach people that?
    - geggam 5y ago
      Well, lets look at society. We have the rich who use the govt to oppress the people and preserve their wealth. We have the poor who think the govt will help them We have a large group of people who just want to work to survive What rules would you put in place and how would you go about doing that to ensure the rich / powerful didnt corrupt the system ? The US was designed with a constitution defining the rules a govt could work within and the bill of rights was added to ensure the govt didnt enroach on the peoples rights so they could control the govt This design failed as did all the rest... why ? Because people are inherently lazy and dont want to be bothered. So you think its better to simply feed these folks and ensure they are ok will somehow motivate them to work ? Capitalism works better than most systems and in fact many of the so called socialist countries arent. They are capitalist countries that have strong social programs funded by said capitalism Perhaps instead of letting the govt get away with violating the rules it was bound by we start enforcing the rules ?

codyswann 5y ago

I've been a mid-level manager, upper-level manager and now run my own company. I simply won't hire or promote someone who isn't a hard worker. Does it guarantee success? Nope. Is it a requirement for success in many circumstances? Yep.

kangnkodos 5y ago
What if I came to work at your company as janitor? And I did a great job. Worked hard. Attention to detail. Polite, and easy to work with. Arrived early every day. Stayed late. The best janitor in every way. What are the chances I would move into another position at your company? My guess is 0%. You might keep me employed, and not fire me. Maybe pay me a little more. But there would be no realistic hope to jump up to the next level. That's been the case for a long, long time. But now something new is happening. Now professionals at many companies are realizing that they are in the same position. They see that hard work will not lead them to jump to the next level.
- codyswann 5y ago
  You're 100% wrong. If you showed that much initiative, I would absolutely try to train you in other skills. I own a software company, and while we don't have a physical office, I'm always offering education material to employees who want to learn new skills. My mentor had a saying that I agree with fully - skill can be taught. Effort can't. If you're willing to put in the effort, I'll make sure you're rewarded.
- InnerGargoyle 5y ago
  man i am 100% agree on this.. this notion that someone wil see through your effort and you will get chances to move higher up.. are just illusion.

fairity 5y ago

> Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn't BE the odds These claims simply don't hold up against scrutiny. In the US, children born into a family in the bottom quintile of household income have a 58% chance to step up into a higher income bracket as adults, a ~30% chance to realize an above average income as an adult, and a 6% to reach the top quintile. Being born into poor circumstances makes things undeniably harder, but the claim that working hard won't lead to a better life is patently false (and imo extremely pernicious). Source: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_economic_mobility_sawhill_ch1.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ... Reading through these comments, I see an onslaught of unverifiable claims. I'd really appreciate evidence.

LdSGSgvupDV 5y ago
But, be born into US is already 5%. Maybe not top 5%.

mbrodersen 5y ago

This. It is so obviously in-your-face true that I laugh out loud whenever somebody claim that they are “self-made” and owe nothing to the people and society who raised them, protected them, fed them etc. until they finally “made it”.

Goosee 5y ago

“70 percent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and a stunning 90 percent by the third.” -money magazine Initial Conditions really don't mean much in the long term trend. Short term, sure.

mgh2 5y ago

At the heart of this debate is the Western ingrained belief in free will, a statement often used by the rich to justify inequality, despite plenty of evidence supporting the contrary. https://m-g-h.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf8095812 https://m-g-h.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf80...