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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 educat

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.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    You're asking for measurements to something not measurable. I can't relate to you my experiences or the experiences of others I've known or just observed (I'm a keen observer) without just giving you anecdotes. I could counter and ask you to measurably prove that people are not looked down upon for coming from a lower station, but I think we'd have some trouble with that as well. (Christians* are some of the worst for it—coming from one who grew up "in the church") * Thought I should asterisk that so we don't go down a discussion about what makes a "true" christian. It's a broad scope and label of convenience. It's not meant to slander anyone practicing their religion. It's most certainly not isolated to Christians. Most of the encounters I've had are with people who tend to believe themselves somehow more... esoterically enlightened. It doesn't even make them bad people—just filled with hubris.
  - apercu 5y ago
    Did you and I grow up in the same country? The entire puritan work effort is based on this premise in some way or another. The more religious you are the more you appear to believe your wealth is a god-given right and that everyone else is a lazy no-gooder trying to steal the fruits of your hard work.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Puritanism typically holds that work is required, both historically and with the remnants we might see in more conservative protestants. Love of wealth - and particularly displays of wealth - would be failures of modesty and humility which are core values. Simply having wealth, especially wealth not shown but used for charity, would be considered a result of hard work. The puritans didn't wear drab clothes because they lacked decent dyes, they wore them as an element of modesty. Alms to the poor was not considered a bad thing, it was religiously required, especially when used to evangelize. [1] - https://www.apuritansmind.com/stewardship/rykenlelandpuritansandmoney/ https://www.apuritansmind.com/stewardship/rykenlelandpuritan...
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    The concept of a "wealth of the soul" is not related to the metaphysical concept of a "soul." It refers to the idea that you're born deserving the position you are given.
  - drakythe 5y ago
    >In my experience people here are Christian You need new experiences. Only ~70% of the US claims christianity (https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/) -- and that is "claims" because we all know there are people who do not practice what they preach. If you have more than 10 friends and don't know a single non-christian, your anecdotal experience most certainly does not reflect the data. Additionally, growing up in the bible belt, in my experience, the person you responded to is correct. "God will bless you" is a common refrain when talking about working hard, tithing, saving ones self for marriage, etc. And what is God's blessing in the arena of economics (hard work) except monetary reward? The prosperity gospel of mega churches is so popular for a reason, as disgusting as those of us on the outside may find it.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      anecdotal experience needn't ever reflect data, since humans can cluster into similar groups.
  - Frondo 5y ago
    It's a somewhat clumsy restatement of the just world hypothesis, which seems like it's built into much of the discourse and attitudes of American society and has almost always been dominant.
  - dahart 5y ago
    > I’ve never met anyone who things wealth reflects “wealth of the soul.” I’ve never met anyone who would say exactly those words out loud either, and I don’t speak for the parent, but I feel like you might be taking what was an analogy extremely literally. Have you ever met or seen someone sneer at a “hippie”? Have you ever heard someone argue that we should not increase the minimum wage? Have you ever heard someone suggest that homeless people are lazy or could get work if they wanted to? Have you ever witnessed anyone saying that the success they have is due primarily to their own hard work, and not for luck or advantages? I’ve seen all of those, often, and they all fit my interpretation of the parent’s comment. Social Darwinism certainly is a thing and has been for a long time. A quick google about it brought up this article worrying that it’s a growing fad again: http://faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell/2011fall/engl3130/student_writing/social_darwinism.htm http://faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell/2011fall/engl3130/student_w... Even just Survivor Bias in business - assertions that being better than the competition got them where they are - is relatively close to believing that having money proves you’re a better person. Certainly there’s no lack in the US of fascination with rich people nor of listening to our richest citizens. (How many famous rich people can you name? How many famous poor people?)
  - bwh2 5y ago
    There's a good book called Moral Politics which covers this topic in depth.
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_in_Calvinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_in_Calvinism Reformed Christians believe that God predestined some people to be saved and others were predestined to eternal damnation
  - anotherman554 5y ago
    Regardless of what the bible says, American Christians do not believe "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." You might ask yourself what America would look like if american Christians believed this line. A billionaire like Donald Trump would be unelectable. The inheritance tax would be 90%. The social safety net would be larger than secular Europe. Health care would be free as a universal right.
  - speakersPushAir 5y ago
    The myth of rugged individualism is embedded in Western society. Be thankful you live in a position of such privilege to be unaware. I highly recommend you find paths for empathy in your own life. If you're young, the hubris is unavoidable and disregard this comment. There are many places you can start your research, but maybe looking into how we leverage shame and stigma is a good start: https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/mental-health/priority-areas/stigma-and-discrimination https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-di...
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      Have you started your research? Because you seem to pin ignorance on OP due to various failings (youth, privilege, lack of empathy) while assuming your own position is ultimately correct. I would assume you (and anyone else) are better placed to describe your own virtues (to support your correctness), than some strangers vices (to support their incorrectness).
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > I've never met anyone who thinks wealth reflects "wealth of the soul." I've never met one either, but I've definitely met plenty of people who think the opposite: if you had any advantages of any kind over anybody else, your accomplishments don't "count". The only people who can actually be proud of what they've achieved and deserve what they have are people who were thrown away in a dumpster at birth, grew up in a run-down, inner-city, rat-infested orphanage being beaten every day but still managed to graduate with a perfect GPA even though they had to walk five miles each way to school in the snow with no shoes.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      Maybe those born into positions of wealth believe the former, and those not believe in the latter - Hence each believing whatever benefits their ego. Maybe not hearing of the former opinion is due to its unpopularity - there are more people not born into wealth after all; This means you are less likely to meet a wealthy person (or be a wealthy person if this increases likelihood of meeting one), and if you did, they would be less likely to tell you of their perspective.
    - 52-6F-62 5y ago
      You're misinterpreting the discussion, I think. I can't tell if it's intentional or not. Nobody was coming down on anyone for their accomplishments. My intended contribution was that some (or in my experience, many) people in already achieved positions, regardless of how they arrived in their materially advanced station, might mistake the circumstances of another who is less materially fortunate as being so because it's a product of the less fortunate person's intrinsic inner worth. And when someone, who is trying to breach those meritocratic strata for financial or other material rewards, encounters that kind of mindset in their superiors it can be terribly inhibiting—like trying to climb a hill of ice that refuses to believe it's slippery of its own accord and that the continual flailing of the climber is a failing of the climber alone. Or sometimes that would-be climber prefers to stick around the plains and enjoy the views. Neither of those situations makes the would-be climber a less-capable, less whole person—even if the would-be climber cannot see the icy hill for what it is. ("Why not pick a better hill" is about as controllable as "why not be born into a more materially advanced family")
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  Your last sentence confuses me. If someone believes in the great meritocracy then they must agree that wealthier people are better people, then it seems obvious that most people in the world feel this way, whether they admit it or not, and even whether they realize it themselves or not. The princess marrying the pauper is a nice fairy tale but how often does it actually happen in reality?
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    Fair point—that line was a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I'm comfortable living with contradictions, so I do believe there is a meritocracy, but I don't believe it's total. Only wading in the shallows because I actually have some work to get to today, but to clarify by example: I'm sure most North Americans around this forum grew up hearing lines like "you don't want to end up a janitor". Personally, I've seen episodes like factory supervisors ignore physical health requests because their faithful hourly workers were "probably just trying to get off easy" (no, they ended up losing their job when their back gave out). Obviously they were only a line hand, so they're probably a dirtbag, as the line of reasoning followed in that situation.. and so on. Definitely not touching the hot mess of "marrying upward" or other potential confidence games.
- imtringued 5y ago
  It doesn't make sense because there are jobs that only require one person but the impact scales with the environment. For example, there only needs to be one president at any given time. The president didn't contribute the entire population to the country but he is compensated with power as if he did. The idea that the person is the only deciding factor into the impact they have is absurd. Send a software developer back into medieval times and his programming skills will be worthless.
jasonkester 5y ago
Indeed. I have a friend whos whole extended family kept telling her that she should stop with this fancy expensive state college education and go to a trade school or something that would get her a job. Even when she was working at an engineering firm and starting to see the payoff, her family kept trying to drag her down. Fortunately, she had a particularly strong will, so she spent just as much time telling them where they could stuff their trade school, and ended up doing quite well for herself. I'm not sure I would have done so well had I come from a family that was that opposed to education on principal. I don't have any trouble believing this sort of thing keeps lots of people exactly where they started in life. (Lucky for me, my dad spent several years working at a paper mill out of highschool before going back to get his degree, so I got to hear first hand about what a good idea that was.)
- fullstop 5y ago
  On the flip side there are plenty of examples of kids being pushed into higher education who would have been much better off going to a trade school. Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative, and they are certainly things that society needs. Being pushed into higher ed is so much different than having an internal drive to do it. I'm glad that she's doing well and hopefully they can resolve their differences. I have a number of friends who are teachers, and part of their job is to call the parents if the student is failing, falling behind, or not doing their work. The vast majority of the time the response on the other end of the line is "that's their problem, not mine." If the parents don't care, the students don't care, and life goes on as it always has for them.
  - caf 5y ago
    Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative, and they are certainly things that society needs. I hear this kind of thing, but I have to say it is less than convincing when most of the people saying it don't seem to be sending their kids to trade school.
    - oblio 5y ago
laurent123456 5y ago
I would think "starting conditions" includes the parents one has. Also what you say is not quite logic - you're saying that valuing education means people succeed. So why didn't the parents succeed then? I think that's the question, and usually that's because they were born in the wrong place, at the wrong time or under the wrong regime. When their kids are born, it's a different perhaps better time, so better starting conditions, and they now have a chance to succeed. The anomaly is corrected. But those are anomalies, it's exceptional. I think the issue is when you take two people born in the same town, at the same time, and both work equally hard, except one has the parents to give them a head start in everything and the other doesn't. Maybe one will eventually make an average salary in a local company, while the other will have his own company.
- randlet 5y ago
  > you're saying that valuing education means people succeed. So why didn't the parents succeed then? Possibly because the parents parents didn't value education and by the time the parents came to value education they were already stuck in the cycle of poverty.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    Agreed, your parents mistakes are often a very strong source of motivation to act differently.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Why do you think the parents didn't succeed? Starting conditions matter, if you start from nothing and realize the right change it will still be a few generations before you can fully take advantage of it. However by making a small change now the future can be better for the future generations. If you took the vast majority of babies and had be adopt them (this is of course kid napping which I wouldn't agree to) they would grow up to be more successful than if they remain with their parents. Of course successful is in the eye of the judge, some of their parents in 40 years would be glad for my help and some would think their baby would be better off with them. The above applies to most of the people reading this as well. (a few of you have admitted you don't want kids because you would be a bad parent, and a few more could be good parents to your own kids but bad for adopted kids - but overall these groups are a minority)
foobarian 5y ago
I'll never forget something a grade school friend's parent told us once when I visited their tiny communist provided apartment. Total blue collar worker barely making ends meet. "The times are fucked up, boys, you need to study hard" That for me pretty much sums up that mentality. I don't know where it comes from - maybe the delta from no education to education, no matter how basic, is enormous, whereas things like public school vs private school, or public school in town X vs. town Y don't have the same lift.
umvi 5y ago
> 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 This is true, but which is the bigger factor in America: parent(s) who are uneducated themselves and do not take an active role in their childrens' education OR food insecurity? I would argue the former. I remember a recent story about Baltimore single mom Tiffany France being shocked that her kid (a senior in high school) wasn't going to graduate because he had a 0.1 GPA (the story was that that was one of the top GPAs in the school). Like... how checked out do you have to be from your kid's education in order to not know that your kid is rampantly truant and has <1.0 GPA over the course of 4 years? Not to downplay her own struggles; part of the reason she's checked out from her kid's education is likely due to dealing with her own jobs/responsibilities/issues. So for that reason alone even having 2 parents is a massive educational advantage over their peers. Food insecurity exists, but also there is an obesity epidemic and single parenthood epidemic in America among various lower classes and based on personal experience I tend to think parent mentorship (or lack thereof) plays a far bigger role in kids' education than food insecurity.
- fullstop 5y ago
  I would encourage you to look into food insecurity a little bit more. I live in a fairly nice area and there are kids in my school district who often don't eat when there are snow days and in the summer. It is significantly more prevalent than you think. A lot of the food that lower class families have available, stuff which is non-perishable, tend to have empty calories and less fiber. Soft drinks are a problem, and they're cheap.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Having grown up around it, I can tell you that, if you had to pick one, a parents attitude has a much bigger impact on success in school than food insecurity. That isnt to say that we cant or shouldnt do more about food insecurity, but wrt the GP post, it isnt the biggest factor.
    - fullstop 5y ago
kmonsen 5y ago
First off so, your parents are part of the starting conditions obviously. But I think I read that from twin studies there are indications that parents does not help all that much. In the U.S. just focusing on education can be bad, if you pick the wrong one you just get a giant student loan and not much else. Finally, even though starting conditions and luck are extremely important, you can’t do much about them. So hard and smart work is still the best option to improve. Going back and giving itself better starting conditions is not an option.
asah 5y ago
s/education/financial success - parents who support and motivate their kids in arts, sports and entertainment vs parents who support their kids in fields that don't pay well or which the child has little interest or skill.
bstar77 5y ago
This is pretty much what I came to say. Both of my parents came from very poor families, but they both valued education very highly. My brother and I may as well been born into a wealthy family since we both got every educational resource we needed, but up until I was 10 years old my parents had to make huge sacrifices to achieve that. In these poor communities I'm seeing a tendency to stigmatize education... that's the biggest problem. The educational resources available to anyone today obliterates what we had in the 80's. You don't need to be an elite to have access to the critical material, you just need the desire to pursue it.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > You don't need to be an elite to have access to the critical material, you just need the desire to pursue it. For most children and teenagers, this desire is at least partly a function of one’s peers. Hence the premium placed on houses in certain school districts or neighborhoods.
  - bstar77 5y ago
    That's pretty much the point I was making. The whole community has to buy into the value of education. If you are getting harassed by your peers because you are reading a book for enjoyment, you are likely going to stop.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      My intention was to point out that “you just need the desire to pursue it” is often not just a “you” problem, unfortunately, since people are heavily influenced by their environment.
- dron57 5y ago
  > The educational resources available to anyone today obliterates what we had in the 80's. Do you mean the materials available online? There's definitely lots of great material online, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that schools and universities have gotten any better (despite becoming much more expensive).
f6v 5y ago
I think a big part of me starting PhD at 30 is that I wanted to get off my parent’s back as soon as possible. So I got my bachelor’s at 21 and started working. I enrolled in Master’s at 28, only when I could pay for it myself. Other factors include the quality of my BS degree. I wish I was surrounded by professors who liked what they doing.
Bukhmanizer 5y ago
It’s not just education, but a specific type of education. The final path to a good career is pretty winding and complicated. As someone who had to figure it out on their own, and is now a bit older, I can say I knew basically nothing when I started choosing my career path. I used to think that the best route was the trade schools, because you can make a lot of money fast. But then I saw a lot of my friend’s salaries peak at ~$70000, and every year their jobs got harder and harder as they got older. Then I used to think the most successful would be my friends in the hard sciences, like physics or chemistry, because they usually were extremely intelligent. But then after their PHDs, many just seemed lost and didn’t really know what kind of jobs to go to. Of my cohort, it seems like the only successful people were: 1. The biology people who became doctors 2. The liberal arts people who became lawyers 3. Certain engineers (not civil) 4. Techies That’s it. The 4 good career paths available to most of my high school/college cohort. Everything else didn’t seem to matter. The business majors, and psych majors, and sociology majors who didn’t have parents to give them cushy jobs got stuck in entry-level hell.
g9yuayon 5y ago
I was wondering if the effect of valuing education is subject to survivorship bias. Take China for example, on average 50% of the grade-9 students have to enter vocational training schools instead of high schools (grade-10 to grade 12). The odds of getting into the top 33 universities in China is less than 2%, and the odds of getting into the next best 100 universities is less than 4%. I'm sure more than 6% of parents value education to the extreme, yet large number of students may not get what they desire no matter how hard they try.
- fullstop 5y ago
  China might be a different sort of beast, though, given the sheer number of people and because of the level of control the government has on their citizens. I looked into how many Chinese students there are in America, and it (was) about 370,000 students in 2018, but surely that number has decreased because of COVID restrictions. Keep in mind that valuing education does not mean having a college education, it means that you value education and are more likely to keep learning throughout your life.
rualca 5y ago
> One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education. This is not a necessary condition, nor a sufficient one. There are plenty of examples where highly educated individuals didn't managed to become financially independent in spite of their education, which goes way beyond the old "literature/philosophy major" trope.
- fullstop 5y ago
  I'm saying that it's a contributing factor, not a steadfast rule.
aussieguy1234 5y ago
The wealthy are only wealthy in comparison to everyone else. So if everyone else gets less poor say from free school lunches or free college, then it makes the wealthy relatively less rich even if their bank balance remains the same number. It also means that the general population is harder to exploit. So there are multiple motivations why some would like to perpetuate this myth and not fund social programs.

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.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  You're asking for measurements to something not measurable. I can't relate to you my experiences or the experiences of others I've known or just observed (I'm a keen observer) without just giving you anecdotes. I could counter and ask you to measurably prove that people are not looked down upon for coming from a lower station, but I think we'd have some trouble with that as well. (Christians* are some of the worst for it—coming from one who grew up "in the church") * Thought I should asterisk that so we don't go down a discussion about what makes a "true" christian. It's a broad scope and label of convenience. It's not meant to slander anyone practicing their religion. It's most certainly not isolated to Christians. Most of the encounters I've had are with people who tend to believe themselves somehow more... esoterically enlightened. It doesn't even make them bad people—just filled with hubris.
- apercu 5y ago
  Did you and I grow up in the same country? The entire puritan work effort is based on this premise in some way or another. The more religious you are the more you appear to believe your wealth is a god-given right and that everyone else is a lazy no-gooder trying to steal the fruits of your hard work.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Puritanism typically holds that work is required, both historically and with the remnants we might see in more conservative protestants. Love of wealth - and particularly displays of wealth - would be failures of modesty and humility which are core values. Simply having wealth, especially wealth not shown but used for charity, would be considered a result of hard work. The puritans didn't wear drab clothes because they lacked decent dyes, they wore them as an element of modesty. Alms to the poor was not considered a bad thing, it was religiously required, especially when used to evangelize. [1] - https://www.apuritansmind.com/stewardship/rykenlelandpuritansandmoney/ https://www.apuritansmind.com/stewardship/rykenlelandpuritan...
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  The concept of a "wealth of the soul" is not related to the metaphysical concept of a "soul." It refers to the idea that you're born deserving the position you are given.
- drakythe 5y ago
  >In my experience people here are Christian You need new experiences. Only ~70% of the US claims christianity (https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/) -- and that is "claims" because we all know there are people who do not practice what they preach. If you have more than 10 friends and don't know a single non-christian, your anecdotal experience most certainly does not reflect the data. Additionally, growing up in the bible belt, in my experience, the person you responded to is correct. "God will bless you" is a common refrain when talking about working hard, tithing, saving ones self for marriage, etc. And what is God's blessing in the arena of economics (hard work) except monetary reward? The prosperity gospel of mega churches is so popular for a reason, as disgusting as those of us on the outside may find it.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    anecdotal experience needn't ever reflect data, since humans can cluster into similar groups.
- Frondo 5y ago
  It's a somewhat clumsy restatement of the just world hypothesis, which seems like it's built into much of the discourse and attitudes of American society and has almost always been dominant.
- dahart 5y ago
  > I’ve never met anyone who things wealth reflects “wealth of the soul.” I’ve never met anyone who would say exactly those words out loud either, and I don’t speak for the parent, but I feel like you might be taking what was an analogy extremely literally. Have you ever met or seen someone sneer at a “hippie”? Have you ever heard someone argue that we should not increase the minimum wage? Have you ever heard someone suggest that homeless people are lazy or could get work if they wanted to? Have you ever witnessed anyone saying that the success they have is due primarily to their own hard work, and not for luck or advantages? I’ve seen all of those, often, and they all fit my interpretation of the parent’s comment. Social Darwinism certainly is a thing and has been for a long time. A quick google about it brought up this article worrying that it’s a growing fad again: http://faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell/2011fall/engl3130/student_writing/social_darwinism.htm http://faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell/2011fall/engl3130/student_w... Even just Survivor Bias in business - assertions that being better than the competition got them where they are - is relatively close to believing that having money proves you’re a better person. Certainly there’s no lack in the US of fascination with rich people nor of listening to our richest citizens. (How many famous rich people can you name? How many famous poor people?)
- bwh2 5y ago
  There's a good book called Moral Politics which covers this topic in depth.
- pnutjam 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_in_Calvinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_in_Calvinism Reformed Christians believe that God predestined some people to be saved and others were predestined to eternal damnation
- anotherman554 5y ago
  Regardless of what the bible says, American Christians do not believe "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." You might ask yourself what America would look like if american Christians believed this line. A billionaire like Donald Trump would be unelectable. The inheritance tax would be 90%. The social safety net would be larger than secular Europe. Health care would be free as a universal right.
- speakersPushAir 5y ago
  The myth of rugged individualism is embedded in Western society. Be thankful you live in a position of such privilege to be unaware. I highly recommend you find paths for empathy in your own life. If you're young, the hubris is unavoidable and disregard this comment. There are many places you can start your research, but maybe looking into how we leverage shame and stigma is a good start: https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/mental-health/priority-areas/stigma-and-discrimination https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-di...
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    Have you started your research? Because you seem to pin ignorance on OP due to various failings (youth, privilege, lack of empathy) while assuming your own position is ultimately correct. I would assume you (and anyone else) are better placed to describe your own virtues (to support your correctness), than some strangers vices (to support their incorrectness).
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > I've never met anyone who thinks wealth reflects "wealth of the soul." I've never met one either, but I've definitely met plenty of people who think the opposite: if you had any advantages of any kind over anybody else, your accomplishments don't "count". The only people who can actually be proud of what they've achieved and deserve what they have are people who were thrown away in a dumpster at birth, grew up in a run-down, inner-city, rat-infested orphanage being beaten every day but still managed to graduate with a perfect GPA even though they had to walk five miles each way to school in the snow with no shoes.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    Maybe those born into positions of wealth believe the former, and those not believe in the latter - Hence each believing whatever benefits their ego. Maybe not hearing of the former opinion is due to its unpopularity - there are more people not born into wealth after all; This means you are less likely to meet a wealthy person (or be a wealthy person if this increases likelihood of meeting one), and if you did, they would be less likely to tell you of their perspective.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    You're misinterpreting the discussion, I think. I can't tell if it's intentional or not. Nobody was coming down on anyone for their accomplishments. My intended contribution was that some (or in my experience, many) people in already achieved positions, regardless of how they arrived in their materially advanced station, might mistake the circumstances of another who is less materially fortunate as being so because it's a product of the less fortunate person's intrinsic inner worth. And when someone, who is trying to breach those meritocratic strata for financial or other material rewards, encounters that kind of mindset in their superiors it can be terribly inhibiting—like trying to climb a hill of ice that refuses to believe it's slippery of its own accord and that the continual flailing of the climber is a failing of the climber alone. Or sometimes that would-be climber prefers to stick around the plains and enjoy the views. Neither of those situations makes the would-be climber a less-capable, less whole person—even if the would-be climber cannot see the icy hill for what it is. ("Why not pick a better hill" is about as controllable as "why not be born into a more materially advanced family")
hallway_monitor 5y ago
Your last sentence confuses me. If someone believes in the great meritocracy then they must agree that wealthier people are better people, then it seems obvious that most people in the world feel this way, whether they admit it or not, and even whether they realize it themselves or not. The princess marrying the pauper is a nice fairy tale but how often does it actually happen in reality?
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  Fair point—that line was a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I'm comfortable living with contradictions, so I do believe there is a meritocracy, but I don't believe it's total. Only wading in the shallows because I actually have some work to get to today, but to clarify by example: I'm sure most North Americans around this forum grew up hearing lines like "you don't want to end up a janitor". Personally, I've seen episodes like factory supervisors ignore physical health requests because their faithful hourly workers were "probably just trying to get off easy" (no, they ended up losing their job when their back gave out). Obviously they were only a line hand, so they're probably a dirtbag, as the line of reasoning followed in that situation.. and so on. Definitely not touching the hot mess of "marrying upward" or other potential confidence games.
imtringued 5y ago
It doesn't make sense because there are jobs that only require one person but the impact scales with the environment. For example, there only needs to be one president at any given time. The president didn't contribute the entire population to the country but he is compensated with power as if he did. The idea that the person is the only deciding factor into the impact they have is absurd. Send a software developer back into medieval times and his programming skills will be worthless.

jasonkester 5y ago

Indeed. I have a friend whos whole extended family kept telling her that she should stop with this fancy expensive state college education and go to a trade school or something that would get her a job. Even when she was working at an engineering firm and starting to see the payoff, her family kept trying to drag her down. Fortunately, she had a particularly strong will, so she spent just as much time telling them where they could stuff their trade school, and ended up doing quite well for herself. I'm not sure I would have done so well had I come from a family that was that opposed to education on principal. I don't have any trouble believing this sort of thing keeps lots of people exactly where they started in life. (Lucky for me, my dad spent several years working at a paper mill out of highschool before going back to get his degree, so I got to hear first hand about what a good idea that was.)

fullstop 5y ago
On the flip side there are plenty of examples of kids being pushed into higher education who would have been much better off going to a trade school. Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative, and they are certainly things that society needs. Being pushed into higher ed is so much different than having an internal drive to do it. I'm glad that she's doing well and hopefully they can resolve their differences. I have a number of friends who are teachers, and part of their job is to call the parents if the student is failing, falling behind, or not doing their work. The vast majority of the time the response on the other end of the line is "that's their problem, not mine." If the parents don't care, the students don't care, and life goes on as it always has for them.
- caf 5y ago
  Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative, and they are certainly things that society needs. I hear this kind of thing, but I have to say it is less than convincing when most of the people saying it don't seem to be sending their kids to trade school.
  - oblio 5y ago

laurent123456 5y ago

I would think "starting conditions" includes the parents one has. Also what you say is not quite logic - you're saying that valuing education means people succeed. So why didn't the parents succeed then? I think that's the question, and usually that's because they were born in the wrong place, at the wrong time or under the wrong regime. When their kids are born, it's a different perhaps better time, so better starting conditions, and they now have a chance to succeed. The anomaly is corrected. But those are anomalies, it's exceptional. I think the issue is when you take two people born in the same town, at the same time, and both work equally hard, except one has the parents to give them a head start in everything and the other doesn't. Maybe one will eventually make an average salary in a local company, while the other will have his own company.

randlet 5y ago
> you're saying that valuing education means people succeed. So why didn't the parents succeed then? Possibly because the parents parents didn't value education and by the time the parents came to value education they were already stuck in the cycle of poverty.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  Agreed, your parents mistakes are often a very strong source of motivation to act differently.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Why do you think the parents didn't succeed? Starting conditions matter, if you start from nothing and realize the right change it will still be a few generations before you can fully take advantage of it. However by making a small change now the future can be better for the future generations. If you took the vast majority of babies and had be adopt them (this is of course kid napping which I wouldn't agree to) they would grow up to be more successful than if they remain with their parents. Of course successful is in the eye of the judge, some of their parents in 40 years would be glad for my help and some would think their baby would be better off with them. The above applies to most of the people reading this as well. (a few of you have admitted you don't want kids because you would be a bad parent, and a few more could be good parents to your own kids but bad for adopted kids - but overall these groups are a minority)

foobarian 5y ago

I'll never forget something a grade school friend's parent told us once when I visited their tiny communist provided apartment. Total blue collar worker barely making ends meet. "The times are fucked up, boys, you need to study hard" That for me pretty much sums up that mentality. I don't know where it comes from - maybe the delta from no education to education, no matter how basic, is enormous, whereas things like public school vs private school, or public school in town X vs. town Y don't have the same lift.

umvi 5y ago

> 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 This is true, but which is the bigger factor in America: parent(s) who are uneducated themselves and do not take an active role in their childrens' education OR food insecurity? I would argue the former. I remember a recent story about Baltimore single mom Tiffany France being shocked that her kid (a senior in high school) wasn't going to graduate because he had a 0.1 GPA (the story was that that was one of the top GPAs in the school). Like... how checked out do you have to be from your kid's education in order to not know that your kid is rampantly truant and has <1.0 GPA over the course of 4 years? Not to downplay her own struggles; part of the reason she's checked out from her kid's education is likely due to dealing with her own jobs/responsibilities/issues. So for that reason alone even having 2 parents is a massive educational advantage over their peers. Food insecurity exists, but also there is an obesity epidemic and single parenthood epidemic in America among various lower classes and based on personal experience I tend to think parent mentorship (or lack thereof) plays a far bigger role in kids' education than food insecurity.

fullstop 5y ago
I would encourage you to look into food insecurity a little bit more. I live in a fairly nice area and there are kids in my school district who often don't eat when there are snow days and in the summer. It is significantly more prevalent than you think. A lot of the food that lower class families have available, stuff which is non-perishable, tend to have empty calories and less fiber. Soft drinks are a problem, and they're cheap.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Having grown up around it, I can tell you that, if you had to pick one, a parents attitude has a much bigger impact on success in school than food insecurity. That isnt to say that we cant or shouldnt do more about food insecurity, but wrt the GP post, it isnt the biggest factor.
  - fullstop 5y ago

kmonsen 5y ago

First off so, your parents are part of the starting conditions obviously. But I think I read that from twin studies there are indications that parents does not help all that much. In the U.S. just focusing on education can be bad, if you pick the wrong one you just get a giant student loan and not much else. Finally, even though starting conditions and luck are extremely important, you can’t do much about them. So hard and smart work is still the best option to improve. Going back and giving itself better starting conditions is not an option.

asah 5y ago

s/education/financial success - parents who support and motivate their kids in arts, sports and entertainment vs parents who support their kids in fields that don't pay well or which the child has little interest or skill.

bstar77 5y ago

This is pretty much what I came to say. Both of my parents came from very poor families, but they both valued education very highly. My brother and I may as well been born into a wealthy family since we both got every educational resource we needed, but up until I was 10 years old my parents had to make huge sacrifices to achieve that. In these poor communities I'm seeing a tendency to stigmatize education... that's the biggest problem. The educational resources available to anyone today obliterates what we had in the 80's. You don't need to be an elite to have access to the critical material, you just need the desire to pursue it.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> You don't need to be an elite to have access to the critical material, you just need the desire to pursue it. For most children and teenagers, this desire is at least partly a function of one’s peers. Hence the premium placed on houses in certain school districts or neighborhoods.
- bstar77 5y ago
  That's pretty much the point I was making. The whole community has to buy into the value of education. If you are getting harassed by your peers because you are reading a book for enjoyment, you are likely going to stop.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    My intention was to point out that “you just need the desire to pursue it” is often not just a “you” problem, unfortunately, since people are heavily influenced by their environment.
dron57 5y ago
> The educational resources available to anyone today obliterates what we had in the 80's. Do you mean the materials available online? There's definitely lots of great material online, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that schools and universities have gotten any better (despite becoming much more expensive).

f6v 5y ago

I think a big part of me starting PhD at 30 is that I wanted to get off my parent’s back as soon as possible. So I got my bachelor’s at 21 and started working. I enrolled in Master’s at 28, only when I could pay for it myself. Other factors include the quality of my BS degree. I wish I was surrounded by professors who liked what they doing.

Bukhmanizer 5y ago

It’s not just education, but a specific type of education. The final path to a good career is pretty winding and complicated. As someone who had to figure it out on their own, and is now a bit older, I can say I knew basically nothing when I started choosing my career path. I used to think that the best route was the trade schools, because you can make a lot of money fast. But then I saw a lot of my friend’s salaries peak at ~$70000, and every year their jobs got harder and harder as they got older. Then I used to think the most successful would be my friends in the hard sciences, like physics or chemistry, because they usually were extremely intelligent. But then after their PHDs, many just seemed lost and didn’t really know what kind of jobs to go to. Of my cohort, it seems like the only successful people were: 1. The biology people who became doctors 2. The liberal arts people who became lawyers 3. Certain engineers (not civil) 4. Techies That’s it. The 4 good career paths available to most of my high school/college cohort. Everything else didn’t seem to matter. The business majors, and psych majors, and sociology majors who didn’t have parents to give them cushy jobs got stuck in entry-level hell.

g9yuayon 5y ago

I was wondering if the effect of valuing education is subject to survivorship bias. Take China for example, on average 50% of the grade-9 students have to enter vocational training schools instead of high schools (grade-10 to grade 12). The odds of getting into the top 33 universities in China is less than 2%, and the odds of getting into the next best 100 universities is less than 4%. I'm sure more than 6% of parents value education to the extreme, yet large number of students may not get what they desire no matter how hard they try.

fullstop 5y ago
China might be a different sort of beast, though, given the sheer number of people and because of the level of control the government has on their citizens. I looked into how many Chinese students there are in America, and it (was) about 370,000 students in 2018, but surely that number has decreased because of COVID restrictions. Keep in mind that valuing education does not mean having a college education, it means that you value education and are more likely to keep learning throughout your life.

rualca 5y ago

> One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education. This is not a necessary condition, nor a sufficient one. There are plenty of examples where highly educated individuals didn't managed to become financially independent in spite of their education, which goes way beyond the old "literature/philosophy major" trope.

fullstop 5y ago
I'm saying that it's a contributing factor, not a steadfast rule.

aussieguy1234 5y ago

The wealthy are only wealthy in comparison to everyone else. So if everyone else gets less poor say from free school lunches or free college, then it makes the wealthy relatively less rich even if their bank balance remains the same number. It also means that the general population is harder to exploit. So there are multiple motivations why some would like to perpetuate this myth and not fund social programs.