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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

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.
      - jfrunyon 5y ago
        Is the millionaire's kid successful if he does literally nothing in his whole life, lives off his mommy or daddy's money, and still lives better than the plumber's kid?
    - chasebank 5y ago
      He doesn't. Nobody deserves anything.
      - bitexploder 5y ago
        Depends on the word games being played. We don't deserve anything, but being born as thinking humans we have certain inalienable rights. They aren't "deserved", they just are.
  - simiones 5y ago
    > Plumber sends his kids to community college and all that. This is precisely the wrong model, one which accepts that there is no guarantee of equal opportunity. You're describing a promise almost as unworkable as the promise of heaven: if you're born poor, and you do everything well in life, your grandchildren's grandchildren will have a chance to enjoy the good life! That is not what a democratic free society should mean.
    - csunbird 5y ago
      That's exactly the point. For example, my parents sacrificed a lot of give me and my brother the opportunity to get a good education, and now when they want to retire, they are unable to do it safely, as they could not accrue the wealth required to retire. They literally lived just to improve my chances of having a good life, which I might not have even succeeded on that. Is this fair to them? Definitely not.
      - 5560675260 5y ago
        Why not? Life is a team game. Instead of ensuring certain comforts in old age, your parents made an investment into future. This way they get a peace of mind, a feeling of beating their own mortality, leaving something (well, someone) behind after they are gone. It's a great deal if that's how they see things.
    - unishark 5y ago
      It's traditionally three generations, not six. And it's just human nature to look at things in a relative sense. If you are living a lot better than when you grew up, you are very likely to be comfortable and stop there. Similarly your parents might just be happy to see you reach that next rung, rather than pushing for more. Immigrants doing it in one generation, working blue collar jobs while sending their kids to the ivy league or med school, prove it's not based on real barriers either way.
      - simiones 5y ago
        This is not about barriers (fortunately, most of us do not live in a feudalistic or caste-based or apartheid society, where this would be literally the case); it is about probabilities and effort, even when accounting for genetic differences. It is extremely clear that our society, nowhere in the world, doesn't offer equality of opportunity; based on your birth, even accounting for genetics, your mid-life expected income could be predicted with decent accuracy.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Ok, sure, but that isn't the same thing as meritocracy is it? It is hard to justify to the population at large that billionaires earned their wealth and deserve to keep it when they could only get to that position by being born out of the right womb. That's just a different kind of aristocracy.
- josefx 5y ago
  People like stories of extremely poor ending up rich and it doesn't help that the rich like to abuse these kinds of stories to better their optics. What looks better on a millionaire: * The poor guy that invested every cent he had and kept slaving away for years every day at the brink of certain failure. * The rich kid that got several hundred thousand from his parents for his first company and knew exactly that failure just meant asking his parents for another go or having to switch to a management position that has probably been waiting for him since he was five? Of course the first one looks better, you can also bet that any millionaire telling it is a habitual liar that paid a good sum to have some PR guy find ways to navigate around his actual rich kid background without looking too obvious about it.
  - bitexploder 5y ago
    Except, some of us really did grow up in trailer parks and make it. Mostly through hard work. Luck too, but it isn't a completely false narrative. I am sure there are a lot of biases at play and that is not the statistically average way someone becomes a millionaire, yet it does actually happen.
    - croon 5y ago
      Some people win the lottery too, it doesn't mean it's actionable advice or good policy. It also happens to be statistically easier if you can afford more tickets.
kulig 5y ago
IMO there's a deception that we are doing better, but its more like the whole of society is doing better. I have a nice car not because Im doing better than my parents, but because technology has improved. Real social mobility is very very very very hard if you dont have any special skills.
paulluuk 5y ago
I don't really know the stats, but I'm curious if this is true. Yes, GDP has been going up for a long time in many countries, and so the "average wealth" of each generation is going up. However, is the same true for purchasing power? Sometimes you hear about these mythical stories of janitors who could afford to actually buy a house, despite having two children and their partners being stay-at-home moms. And yet today, I hear so many stories about 30 year olds with masters degrees who are still living with their parents because they can't afford to rent a studio. Like I said, and I can't find good stats on this online. If you have any stats on which you based your comment, I'd love to see them!
- faitswulff 5y ago
  The Wall Street Journal has a great infographic here comparing how many hours of worth it would take to pay median rent today versus in 1968: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-does-the-federal-minimum-wage-buy-you-now-vs-then-11614866413 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-does-the-federal-minim... Spoiler: it’s not pretty.
  - cheschire 5y ago
    https://archive.is/vMKTY https://archive.is/vMKTY
  - paul_f 5y ago
    A better comparison would be the price per square foot. The median rent today buys a MUCH larger (and nicer) house than it did in 1968. The average house in the US has increased by 1,000 square feet in the last 50 years. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
    - Jenk 5y ago
      It's a comparison, but I wouldn't say a better one. You can't just rent a fraction of a property without sharing it with someone else, so the comparison is "What does it cost to get a place of your own in 1968 vs today?" and the answer is you either rent today's bigger but more expensive property, or don't - even if you could afford a 1968 property today.
frockington1 5y ago
I think this fits parents expectations as well. If you raise your children well, they will have a better life than you did. If you don't, your child is hitting the reset button on their branch of the family tree
- sethammons 5y ago
  If you raise your children well, it loads the dice for them having a better life than you did, but doesn’t guarantee it.
jq-r 5y ago
Is this the reality at least in Europe? Especially with regards to people not leaving parents' houses, marrying much later, having less kids, and generally having less disposable income. There always was some upward social mobility and that is usually called IIRC a safety valve. Very bright and fortunate can come from rags to riches, but honestly there are very very few. But from what I remember from my sociology book, the large majority of people stay the same or, go to +1 or -1 social class level (if there are about 7) compared to their parents.
jfrunyon 5y ago
> 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. Sure, maybe if your parents are affected by one of those factors.
airza 5y ago
I guess the implication is that only a small minority of poor people are trying hard enough to avoid these scenarios, but if the reality reflects that most don't, what is the role of willpower or 'managing' here?
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  Learned helplessness is the bigger factor. You get beat down so many times that it seems pointless to think further ahead than the next paycheck.
simiones 5y ago
> 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. That is a laughably low bar, and it is unlikely for the trend you are describing to continue past the move from poor to lower middle class. In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be equally likely for a child born in a trailer park to become high income earner as it is for Bill Gate's child. That is the normal social mobility we should expect in a democratic society with no class structure. We are so laughably far off from this everywhere in the world... And note that I completely accept that becoming a billionaire is going to be extraordinarily rare and a product of BOTH extreme luck and good work ethic. Or I would accept that, if not for the fact that being born the child of a billionaire is a guarantee to this future, or as close to a guarantee as one can ask for.
- IQunder130 5y ago
  >That is the normal social mobility we should expect in a democratic society That might be what we expect from a perfectly egalitarian society, but expecting any free, democratic society to come even close to perfect egalitarianism is completely delusional.
  - TheTrotters 5y ago
    Besides we could only expect it in a society of clones. Genes matter.
  - simiones 5y ago
    That is not egalitarianism (which would mean something closer to everyone owning the exact same amounts), it is the standard definition of "equality of opportunity".
    - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
      There is no standard definition of "equality of opportunity"; and many definitions that are regularly-used focus primarily on an absence of unreasonable discrimination in application processes rather than fairness in the Rawlsian sense.
dahart 5y ago
> How much social mobility we talking? ([...] only talking about the US) My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at least at the time) social mobility in the US was the same as in India. The surprise, of course, was that India has a caste system, while the US narrative is freedom; if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. I don’t remember the sources, but the rate of social mobility (up and down) we learned in class was ~20%, as defined by ending up in a different quintile than one was born in, meaning put people into 5 categories according to socioeconomic status, and see whether they ever change categories, for example going from middle class to upper middle class. Wikipedia says that overall average social mobility in the US hasn’t changed since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...
- Frost1x 5y ago
  Narrative is important because the language it provides frames a way of life for many who haven't framed their own perspective based on the information they have and haven't seen. It's easy to pickup a narrative, it's far more difficult to dig through and generate your own perspective. It's even more critical because childhood education relies on providing narrative frameworks because children often don't have enough information of processes yet to think critically. The reason I say this is as you point out, in the US we frame everything as being highly mobile. The illusory framing of our society in "the American dream" in K-12 education and freedoms dangles this carrot of possibility of high social mobility to children. It's not completely invalid, it is possible to make massive transitions in socioeconomic brakets, but it's just a framing of the rare exceptions, not the norms. Most of us are going to be the norms, so these narratives are a disservice to people about what their real socioeconomic mobility potential and probability is. It's fine to dream, aim high, and shoot for the moon as a society-- that promotes growth and avoids stagnation. At the same time, we should be very clear what is and isn't a moonshot that way many aren't so resentful when they later discover what they thought was reasonable was actually incredibly difficult bordering on impossible. What's possible and what's probable need to be distinguished and the American dream framing doesn't talk to probability. There's this whole lie painted to children that the US is somehow a meritocracy when it's not. Merit can help, but it isn't everything and we need people to understand this.
Guthur 5y ago
Statistically next to nobody goes from anywhere to billionaire. There are 2,755 billionaires in the world and 7.6 billion individuals, thats around 2.7 million to one. Not great odds for anyone to be frank. Also is it any wonder people believe that they can't get anywhere when they are constantly told, they can't get anywhere. Seems a little self fullfilling to be frank.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  The odds are pretty good if your parents are billionaires - a not particularly rigorous search suggests that some 1,186 of those inherited their wealth or 'self made' an empire already worth hundreds of millions into a billion. It's disingenuous to suggest that a minimum wage worker with no safety net isn't getting anywhere because they're not trying, and to contrast their accomplishments with someone who started with wealthy, powerful parents. For some, the adage "shoot for the moon - if you miss, you'll land among the stars" is fine. Take some risks, start a business, make a bet; the worst that can happen is you have to declare bankruptcy and move into a family member's vacation home. For others, the adage is more like "don't you dare shoot for the moon, if you miss, you and your family will be hungry and cold in a homeless shelter".
jellicle 5y ago
That may once have been true, but it's certainly not true today. Kids born in the 2000s can expect to earn less than their parents, as income has been pushed up to the ultra-wealthy. 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...
cascom 5y ago
I think this is the essential question. My hypothesis is that working hard can move you a few deciles on the income ladder (and position your children to start from higher up the ladder than yourself). I also think though that people misestimate the slope of the income curve at various points, and that it becomes exponentially harder to get up the curve in the top quartile (I.e. going from a ~$30k (~25th percentile) to ~$60k (~50th percentile) to ~$120k (~75th percentile) to ~$500k (~99th percentile)) Lastly, I generally don’t see people that are not hard workers advancing (perhaps they might not advance as much as they should or would like) but I definitely see them make marginal progress vs people who haven’t worked as hard

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.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      Is the millionaire's kid successful if he does literally nothing in his whole life, lives off his mommy or daddy's money, and still lives better than the plumber's kid?
  - chasebank 5y ago
    He doesn't. Nobody deserves anything.
    - bitexploder 5y ago
      Depends on the word games being played. We don't deserve anything, but being born as thinking humans we have certain inalienable rights. They aren't "deserved", they just are.
- simiones 5y ago
  > Plumber sends his kids to community college and all that. This is precisely the wrong model, one which accepts that there is no guarantee of equal opportunity. You're describing a promise almost as unworkable as the promise of heaven: if you're born poor, and you do everything well in life, your grandchildren's grandchildren will have a chance to enjoy the good life! That is not what a democratic free society should mean.
  - csunbird 5y ago
    That's exactly the point. For example, my parents sacrificed a lot of give me and my brother the opportunity to get a good education, and now when they want to retire, they are unable to do it safely, as they could not accrue the wealth required to retire. They literally lived just to improve my chances of having a good life, which I might not have even succeeded on that. Is this fair to them? Definitely not.
    - 5560675260 5y ago
      Why not? Life is a team game. Instead of ensuring certain comforts in old age, your parents made an investment into future. This way they get a peace of mind, a feeling of beating their own mortality, leaving something (well, someone) behind after they are gone. It's a great deal if that's how they see things.
  - unishark 5y ago
    It's traditionally three generations, not six. And it's just human nature to look at things in a relative sense. If you are living a lot better than when you grew up, you are very likely to be comfortable and stop there. Similarly your parents might just be happy to see you reach that next rung, rather than pushing for more. Immigrants doing it in one generation, working blue collar jobs while sending their kids to the ivy league or med school, prove it's not based on real barriers either way.
    - simiones 5y ago
      This is not about barriers (fortunately, most of us do not live in a feudalistic or caste-based or apartheid society, where this would be literally the case); it is about probabilities and effort, even when accounting for genetic differences. It is extremely clear that our society, nowhere in the world, doesn't offer equality of opportunity; based on your birth, even accounting for genetics, your mid-life expected income could be predicted with decent accuracy.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Ok, sure, but that isn't the same thing as meritocracy is it? It is hard to justify to the population at large that billionaires earned their wealth and deserve to keep it when they could only get to that position by being born out of the right womb. That's just a different kind of aristocracy.
josefx 5y ago
People like stories of extremely poor ending up rich and it doesn't help that the rich like to abuse these kinds of stories to better their optics. What looks better on a millionaire: * The poor guy that invested every cent he had and kept slaving away for years every day at the brink of certain failure. * The rich kid that got several hundred thousand from his parents for his first company and knew exactly that failure just meant asking his parents for another go or having to switch to a management position that has probably been waiting for him since he was five? Of course the first one looks better, you can also bet that any millionaire telling it is a habitual liar that paid a good sum to have some PR guy find ways to navigate around his actual rich kid background without looking too obvious about it.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Except, some of us really did grow up in trailer parks and make it. Mostly through hard work. Luck too, but it isn't a completely false narrative. I am sure there are a lot of biases at play and that is not the statistically average way someone becomes a millionaire, yet it does actually happen.
  - croon 5y ago
    Some people win the lottery too, it doesn't mean it's actionable advice or good policy. It also happens to be statistically easier if you can afford more tickets.

kulig 5y ago

IMO there's a deception that we are doing better, but its more like the whole of society is doing better. I have a nice car not because Im doing better than my parents, but because technology has improved. Real social mobility is very very very very hard if you dont have any special skills.

paulluuk 5y ago

I don't really know the stats, but I'm curious if this is true. Yes, GDP has been going up for a long time in many countries, and so the "average wealth" of each generation is going up. However, is the same true for purchasing power? Sometimes you hear about these mythical stories of janitors who could afford to actually buy a house, despite having two children and their partners being stay-at-home moms. And yet today, I hear so many stories about 30 year olds with masters degrees who are still living with their parents because they can't afford to rent a studio. Like I said, and I can't find good stats on this online. If you have any stats on which you based your comment, I'd love to see them!

faitswulff 5y ago
The Wall Street Journal has a great infographic here comparing how many hours of worth it would take to pay median rent today versus in 1968: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-does-the-federal-minimum-wage-buy-you-now-vs-then-11614866413 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-does-the-federal-minim... Spoiler: it’s not pretty.
- cheschire 5y ago
  https://archive.is/vMKTY https://archive.is/vMKTY
- paul_f 5y ago
  A better comparison would be the price per square foot. The median rent today buys a MUCH larger (and nicer) house than it did in 1968. The average house in the US has increased by 1,000 square feet in the last 50 years. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
  - Jenk 5y ago
    It's a comparison, but I wouldn't say a better one. You can't just rent a fraction of a property without sharing it with someone else, so the comparison is "What does it cost to get a place of your own in 1968 vs today?" and the answer is you either rent today's bigger but more expensive property, or don't - even if you could afford a 1968 property today.

frockington1 5y ago

I think this fits parents expectations as well. If you raise your children well, they will have a better life than you did. If you don't, your child is hitting the reset button on their branch of the family tree

sethammons 5y ago
If you raise your children well, it loads the dice for them having a better life than you did, but doesn’t guarantee it.

jq-r 5y ago

Is this the reality at least in Europe? Especially with regards to people not leaving parents' houses, marrying much later, having less kids, and generally having less disposable income. There always was some upward social mobility and that is usually called IIRC a safety valve. Very bright and fortunate can come from rags to riches, but honestly there are very very few. But from what I remember from my sociology book, the large majority of people stay the same or, go to +1 or -1 social class level (if there are about 7) compared to their parents.

jfrunyon 5y ago

airza 5y ago

I guess the implication is that only a small minority of poor people are trying hard enough to avoid these scenarios, but if the reality reflects that most don't, what is the role of willpower or 'managing' here?

mkr-hn 5y ago
Learned helplessness is the bigger factor. You get beat down so many times that it seems pointless to think further ahead than the next paycheck.

simiones 5y ago

> 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. That is a laughably low bar, and it is unlikely for the trend you are describing to continue past the move from poor to lower middle class. In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be equally likely for a child born in a trailer park to become high income earner as it is for Bill Gate's child. That is the normal social mobility we should expect in a democratic society with no class structure. We are so laughably far off from this everywhere in the world... And note that I completely accept that becoming a billionaire is going to be extraordinarily rare and a product of BOTH extreme luck and good work ethic. Or I would accept that, if not for the fact that being born the child of a billionaire is a guarantee to this future, or as close to a guarantee as one can ask for.

IQunder130 5y ago
>That is the normal social mobility we should expect in a democratic society That might be what we expect from a perfectly egalitarian society, but expecting any free, democratic society to come even close to perfect egalitarianism is completely delusional.
- TheTrotters 5y ago
  Besides we could only expect it in a society of clones. Genes matter.
- simiones 5y ago
  That is not egalitarianism (which would mean something closer to everyone owning the exact same amounts), it is the standard definition of "equality of opportunity".
  - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
    There is no standard definition of "equality of opportunity"; and many definitions that are regularly-used focus primarily on an absence of unreasonable discrimination in application processes rather than fairness in the Rawlsian sense.

dahart 5y ago

> How much social mobility we talking? ([...] only talking about the US) My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at least at the time) social mobility in the US was the same as in India. The surprise, of course, was that India has a caste system, while the US narrative is freedom; if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. I don’t remember the sources, but the rate of social mobility (up and down) we learned in class was ~20%, as defined by ending up in a different quintile than one was born in, meaning put people into 5 categories according to socioeconomic status, and see whether they ever change categories, for example going from middle class to upper middle class. Wikipedia says that overall average social mobility in the US hasn’t changed since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...

Frost1x 5y ago
Narrative is important because the language it provides frames a way of life for many who haven't framed their own perspective based on the information they have and haven't seen. It's easy to pickup a narrative, it's far more difficult to dig through and generate your own perspective. It's even more critical because childhood education relies on providing narrative frameworks because children often don't have enough information of processes yet to think critically. The reason I say this is as you point out, in the US we frame everything as being highly mobile. The illusory framing of our society in "the American dream" in K-12 education and freedoms dangles this carrot of possibility of high social mobility to children. It's not completely invalid, it is possible to make massive transitions in socioeconomic brakets, but it's just a framing of the rare exceptions, not the norms. Most of us are going to be the norms, so these narratives are a disservice to people about what their real socioeconomic mobility potential and probability is. It's fine to dream, aim high, and shoot for the moon as a society-- that promotes growth and avoids stagnation. At the same time, we should be very clear what is and isn't a moonshot that way many aren't so resentful when they later discover what they thought was reasonable was actually incredibly difficult bordering on impossible. What's possible and what's probable need to be distinguished and the American dream framing doesn't talk to probability. There's this whole lie painted to children that the US is somehow a meritocracy when it's not. Merit can help, but it isn't everything and we need people to understand this.

Guthur 5y ago

Statistically next to nobody goes from anywhere to billionaire. There are 2,755 billionaires in the world and 7.6 billion individuals, thats around 2.7 million to one. Not great odds for anyone to be frank. Also is it any wonder people believe that they can't get anywhere when they are constantly told, they can't get anywhere. Seems a little self fullfilling to be frank.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
The odds are pretty good if your parents are billionaires - a not particularly rigorous search suggests that some 1,186 of those inherited their wealth or 'self made' an empire already worth hundreds of millions into a billion. It's disingenuous to suggest that a minimum wage worker with no safety net isn't getting anywhere because they're not trying, and to contrast their accomplishments with someone who started with wealthy, powerful parents. For some, the adage "shoot for the moon - if you miss, you'll land among the stars" is fine. Take some risks, start a business, make a bet; the worst that can happen is you have to declare bankruptcy and move into a family member's vacation home. For others, the adage is more like "don't you dare shoot for the moon, if you miss, you and your family will be hungry and cold in a homeless shelter".

jellicle 5y ago

That may once have been true, but it's certainly not true today. Kids born in the 2000s can expect to earn less than their parents, as income has been pushed up to the ultra-wealthy. 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...

cascom 5y ago

I think this is the essential question. My hypothesis is that working hard can move you a few deciles on the income ladder (and position your children to start from higher up the ladder than yourself). I also think though that people misestimate the slope of the income curve at various points, and that it becomes exponentially harder to get up the curve in the top quartile (I.e. going from a ~$30k (~25th percentile) to ~$60k (~50th percentile) to ~$120k (~75th percentile) to ~$500k (~99th percentile)) Lastly, I generally don’t see people that are not hard workers advancing (perhaps they might not advance as much as they should or would like) but I definitely see them make marginal progress vs people who haven’t worked as hard