5 ms·

What is your point. Also all our statistics counter your point on class mobility

xyzelement 3y ago
Is my point that hard to grasp? The person I am replying to is painting the picture of inevitable stuck-ness. But in that example he omits the free thoughts that other poor people have thought that had enabled them to get un-stuck. The stats are really not that relevant IMHO because you don't know which way the people are thinking, that make up those stats. I bet stats show a vast difference in upward mobility between Asian immigrants and others, for example, because Asians think about how to get unstuck...
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  No, your point is perfectly clear. Some people have taken to replying "What is your point" as if it were a Jedi mind trick, as if by saying that they could make everyone else not see your point. Sometimes someone really didn't have a point, or stated it badly enough that it's not very clear. But more often, "What's your point?" is being used as a cheap rhetorical trick, to try to make everyone else not see the point that is being made, because the one who says "What's your point?" very much doesn't want anyone to see the point, or to acknowledge it as an actual point with any validity. Take comfort when you get asked that. You've made a point that they have no real response to, so all they can do is ineffectively try to get everyone else to ignore it. Now in this case, they did go one step further. They said that statistics disprove your anecdata. That's at least a bit of a rebuttal. But they didn't actually cite any statistics, so it's just this unsupported claim.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    Thank you for this supportive post. You're describing a real dynamic but there's a reason I replied to the person's post. If we're just talking debate styles then you're completely right. But this is more than that - this is real "life and death" in a way because how a person thinks about their situation (eg: being stuck in poverty vs looking for long-term ways out) has a huge impact on their outcomes. For some reason, for some people, it's very important to insist that "no, you can't change your own stickiness" - if you are poor, you are poor. If you are fat, you are fat. If women hate you, they will hate you. This reveals something about their own approach in life but worse, I worry that it can influence someone who's on the fence ("should I try to lose weight, should I try to better my economics, etc?") and being barraged with messages of impossibility is poisonous to them.
    - jxramos 3y ago
      Self fulfilling prophecies of being defeated and stuck.
    - Swizec 3y ago
      > being barraged with messages of impossibility is poisonous to them It is not your successful friends staying online all day posting negative messages. That’s the line I tell anyone who needs some unstuckitude and feels it’s impossible. Has worked well for me personally. The people bitching and moaning on Reddit are not the people busting their butts getting unstuck.
      - tsunamifury 3y ago
        This is a bit of a feel-good misnomer as well -- as now several of the richest men on the planet are known, active internet trolls.
        xyzelement 3y ago
        Are they the ones saying everything sucks and nothing is possible?
        anigbrowl 3y ago
        No, they're the ones ranting about 'blood poisoning' and 'great replacement' and indiscriminately calling immigrants vermin. (Anyone who is thinking of replying with emollient, nuanced interpretations of such rhetoric, please save your effort.)
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      > For some reason, for some people, it's very important to insist that "no, you can't change your own stickiness" - if you are poor, you are poor. Commies want everybody to think that class warfare is the only solution to their problems. They lose their composure whenever somebody points out that individual determination and responsibility have proven effectiveness. I almost fell for their ruse and but pulled myself out of it and have turned my life around. Screw their crab bucket hell.
- nineplay 3y ago
  _Immigrants_ do better because immigrants have self-selected for people with the ability to leave bad situations in pursuit of a better one, and further self-selected for those who have succeeded. Immigrants believe that with sufficient effort you can improve your circumstances, because that is their experience.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    Yes I think that's exactly my point. The immigrants have less resources and are at a disadvantage (eg language) compared to the US born population. But they think and do differently which enables them to achieve escape velocity from poverty. My point is that the same mindset is available to others if they chose to seek it out. Telling yourself how poor and stuck you are precludes that.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Reasonable, but don't fall into the trap of thinking it's that easy. There are a lot of complicating factors, from what assets an immigrant can leverage on arrival (if any) to how socially connected they are, to whether other political and economic actors push back against immigrants (recall that one major political party defines itself by its willingness to do this).
    - TeaDrunk 3y ago
      I disagree with the broad idea that immigrants have less resources compared to the US born population as a category. Immigrants are often more educated than the native US born population, with greater incomes. Nigerian-Americans are some of the highest educated Americans by demographic, and way out-earn their native African-American counterparts. Remember that the immigrants who come to america already have enough resources at minimum to immigrate!
      - tetromino_ 3y ago
        > Immigrants are often more educated than the native US born population ... and are usually unable to do anything with that education because most American employers (outside the very unusual field of software engineering) discount or ignore non-American degrees. An immigrant with an engineering or medical degree making a living by driving an Uber in America is a stereotype very much based in reality. I personally know people who fit that stereotype.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  No I was just drawing out what you really were saying 'Asians are better than others." Which is frankly something as a child of an asian immigrant im tired of hearing. Its such a self-congratulatory nonsense.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    FWIW I am not Asian but I admire Asian cultures as being good "operating systems" for growth.
bilbo0s 3y ago
I think maybe he's saying that sometimes, one person can slip through if the appropriate conditions are met. Your implication is correct as well. He offers only an anecdote to back up the claim, but no data. Even assuming the anecdote to be true, and s/he has multiple childhood acquaintances from poverty who each now have a 5.8 million dollar or higher net worth [1], it would have little effect at the mean of the population. Personally, I think the explanation is structural, or if you prefer, just math. Just statistical distribution will assure that if you're poor, 99 percent of you won't get into the 1%. You'll never amass the required 5.8 million dollar net worth. In fact, I almost hate to say this, but it should be implied, whether you are poor or middle class, 90% of you will never even get into the 10%. I'm not sure that it's a psychological state of mind, or even a statement on the innate abilities of poor or middle class people? I'm more confident that it's a simple structural barrier. There is not room in the 10% for every law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individual. Which means many law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individuals who are poor or middle class, will need to aim lower to increase their chances of success. It sucks, but just in my opinion, that's how things are, I'm not sure there's a way around it? So I think what's happening is more along the lines of people, perhaps even unconsciously, realizing the structural reality, and adjusting their strategies accordingly. That poor or middle class kid says: "You know it's a lot safer if I just become a nurse, teacher, or regular software engineer instead of trying to swing for the fences on a startup since I have no safety net to work with." In fact, in a societal moral hazard kind of way, the more intelligent and rational that poor or middle class kid is, the more likely s/he is to say that. (Or maybe it isn't a societal moral hazard? Since we do need nurses, teachers, fire fighters, and so on. I don't know?) [1] Net Worth of 1%-er: https://money.com/richest-1-percent-america-other-countries/ https://money.com/richest-1-percent-america-other-countries/
- pdonis 3y ago
  > There is not room in the 10% for every law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individual. While this is true as a simple matter of distribution, it conflates two very different things. In terms of relative wealth, yes, there's no way everybody can be in the top 10%. But in terms of absolute wealth, there is lots of room to make even the bottom 10% wealthier than they are today. Indeed, the bottom 10% in the US are already wealthier than most humans who ever lived. But they could be much wealthier still, even if their relative wealth stays the same. Focusing kids on "getting out of the bad situation" doesn't have to mean "shoot for being in the top 10%" (and if the GP was implying that it does, I think the GP is wrong on that point). It just has to mean "go out and create wealth instead of staying stuck in this place". And doing that will make those kids better off--not to mention society as a whole--even if their relative wealth never makes it anywhere near the top 10%. To the extent that our society has "structural problems", I think they are about preventing people from creating wealth, by imposing all manner of nanny state micromanagement and by allowing people in power to bully others.

Is my point that hard to grasp? The person I am replying to is painting the picture of inevitable stuck-ness. But in that example he omits the free thoughts that other poor people have thought that had enabled them to get un-stuck. The stats are really not that relevant IMHO because you don't know which way the people are thinking, that make up those stats. I bet stats show a vast difference in upward mobility between Asian immigrants and others, for example, because Asians think about how to get unstuck...

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
No, your point is perfectly clear. Some people have taken to replying "What is your point" as if it were a Jedi mind trick, as if by saying that they could make everyone else not see your point. Sometimes someone really didn't have a point, or stated it badly enough that it's not very clear. But more often, "What's your point?" is being used as a cheap rhetorical trick, to try to make everyone else not see the point that is being made, because the one who says "What's your point?" very much doesn't want anyone to see the point, or to acknowledge it as an actual point with any validity. Take comfort when you get asked that. You've made a point that they have no real response to, so all they can do is ineffectively try to get everyone else to ignore it. Now in this case, they did go one step further. They said that statistics disprove your anecdata. That's at least a bit of a rebuttal. But they didn't actually cite any statistics, so it's just this unsupported claim.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Thank you for this supportive post. You're describing a real dynamic but there's a reason I replied to the person's post. If we're just talking debate styles then you're completely right. But this is more than that - this is real "life and death" in a way because how a person thinks about their situation (eg: being stuck in poverty vs looking for long-term ways out) has a huge impact on their outcomes. For some reason, for some people, it's very important to insist that "no, you can't change your own stickiness" - if you are poor, you are poor. If you are fat, you are fat. If women hate you, they will hate you. This reveals something about their own approach in life but worse, I worry that it can influence someone who's on the fence ("should I try to lose weight, should I try to better my economics, etc?") and being barraged with messages of impossibility is poisonous to them.
  - jxramos 3y ago
    Self fulfilling prophecies of being defeated and stuck.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    > being barraged with messages of impossibility is poisonous to them It is not your successful friends staying online all day posting negative messages. That’s the line I tell anyone who needs some unstuckitude and feels it’s impossible. Has worked well for me personally. The people bitching and moaning on Reddit are not the people busting their butts getting unstuck.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      This is a bit of a feel-good misnomer as well -- as now several of the richest men on the planet are known, active internet trolls.
      - xyzelement 3y ago
        Are they the ones saying everything sucks and nothing is possible?
        anigbrowl 3y ago
        No, they're the ones ranting about 'blood poisoning' and 'great replacement' and indiscriminately calling immigrants vermin. (Anyone who is thinking of replying with emollient, nuanced interpretations of such rhetoric, please save your effort.)
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    > For some reason, for some people, it's very important to insist that "no, you can't change your own stickiness" - if you are poor, you are poor. Commies want everybody to think that class warfare is the only solution to their problems. They lose their composure whenever somebody points out that individual determination and responsibility have proven effectiveness. I almost fell for their ruse and but pulled myself out of it and have turned my life around. Screw their crab bucket hell.
nineplay 3y ago
_Immigrants_ do better because immigrants have self-selected for people with the ability to leave bad situations in pursuit of a better one, and further self-selected for those who have succeeded. Immigrants believe that with sufficient effort you can improve your circumstances, because that is their experience.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Yes I think that's exactly my point. The immigrants have less resources and are at a disadvantage (eg language) compared to the US born population. But they think and do differently which enables them to achieve escape velocity from poverty. My point is that the same mindset is available to others if they chose to seek it out. Telling yourself how poor and stuck you are precludes that.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Reasonable, but don't fall into the trap of thinking it's that easy. There are a lot of complicating factors, from what assets an immigrant can leverage on arrival (if any) to how socially connected they are, to whether other political and economic actors push back against immigrants (recall that one major political party defines itself by its willingness to do this).
  - TeaDrunk 3y ago
    I disagree with the broad idea that immigrants have less resources compared to the US born population as a category. Immigrants are often more educated than the native US born population, with greater incomes. Nigerian-Americans are some of the highest educated Americans by demographic, and way out-earn their native African-American counterparts. Remember that the immigrants who come to america already have enough resources at minimum to immigrate!
    - tetromino_ 3y ago
      > Immigrants are often more educated than the native US born population ... and are usually unable to do anything with that education because most American employers (outside the very unusual field of software engineering) discount or ignore non-American degrees. An immigrant with an engineering or medical degree making a living by driving an Uber in America is a stereotype very much based in reality. I personally know people who fit that stereotype.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tsunamifury 3y ago
No I was just drawing out what you really were saying 'Asians are better than others." Which is frankly something as a child of an asian immigrant im tired of hearing. Its such a self-congratulatory nonsense.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  FWIW I am not Asian but I admire Asian cultures as being good "operating systems" for growth.

bilbo0s 3y ago

I think maybe he's saying that sometimes, one person can slip through if the appropriate conditions are met. Your implication is correct as well. He offers only an anecdote to back up the claim, but no data. Even assuming the anecdote to be true, and s/he has multiple childhood acquaintances from poverty who each now have a 5.8 million dollar or higher net worth [1], it would have little effect at the mean of the population. Personally, I think the explanation is structural, or if you prefer, just math. Just statistical distribution will assure that if you're poor, 99 percent of you won't get into the 1%. You'll never amass the required 5.8 million dollar net worth. In fact, I almost hate to say this, but it should be implied, whether you are poor or middle class, 90% of you will never even get into the 10%. I'm not sure that it's a psychological state of mind, or even a statement on the innate abilities of poor or middle class people? I'm more confident that it's a simple structural barrier. There is not room in the 10% for every law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individual. Which means many law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individuals who are poor or middle class, will need to aim lower to increase their chances of success. It sucks, but just in my opinion, that's how things are, I'm not sure there's a way around it? So I think what's happening is more along the lines of people, perhaps even unconsciously, realizing the structural reality, and adjusting their strategies accordingly. That poor or middle class kid says: "You know it's a lot safer if I just become a nurse, teacher, or regular software engineer instead of trying to swing for the fences on a startup since I have no safety net to work with." In fact, in a societal moral hazard kind of way, the more intelligent and rational that poor or middle class kid is, the more likely s/he is to say that. (Or maybe it isn't a societal moral hazard? Since we do need nurses, teachers, fire fighters, and so on. I don't know?) [1] Net Worth of 1%-er: https://money.com/richest-1-percent-america-other-countries/ https://money.com/richest-1-percent-america-other-countries/

pdonis 3y ago
> There is not room in the 10% for every law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individual. While this is true as a simple matter of distribution, it conflates two very different things. In terms of relative wealth, yes, there's no way everybody can be in the top 10%. But in terms of absolute wealth, there is lots of room to make even the bottom 10% wealthier than they are today. Indeed, the bottom 10% in the US are already wealthier than most humans who ever lived. But they could be much wealthier still, even if their relative wealth stays the same. Focusing kids on "getting out of the bad situation" doesn't have to mean "shoot for being in the top 10%" (and if the GP was implying that it does, I think the GP is wrong on that point). It just has to mean "go out and create wealth instead of staying stuck in this place". And doing that will make those kids better off--not to mention society as a whole--even if their relative wealth never makes it anywhere near the top 10%. To the extent that our society has "structural problems", I think they are about preventing people from creating wealth, by imposing all manner of nanny state micromanagement and by allowing people in power to bully others.