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Yeah wealthy families exist. But also there is a lot of upwards mobility. And they do not need to be correlated even. What if rich families maintain their wea

Yeah wealthy families exist. But also there is a lot of upwards mobility. And they do not need to be correlated even. What if rich families maintain their wealth, and meanwhile other families create wealth and become rich. How is this incompatible?

iamshs 2y ago
So why do rich families need to own all the media? All the think firms? Why do they lobby? Avenues to upward mobility are blocked by these rich people through various methods.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Judgmentality 2y ago
> But also there is a lot of upwards mobility. There's increasingly less in the USA. In fact, most people today will end up worse off than their parents. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/09/social-mobility-upwa...
- TZubiri 2y ago
  I think this is a statistics and definitions question There can be a lot of upwards mobility (say 10%), and there can be a lot of statics (say 90%) The datapoint I remembered is that a huge fraction of billionaires wer3 first generation billionaires. But that may not mean much for the greater part of the population. So we may be saying things that sound contradictory, but are congruent.
  - deflat3d 2y ago
    [dead]
  - Judgmentality 2y ago
    Your evidence is that there are more billionaires when arguing there is upward mobility? We are talking about completely different things. Many of those people started out as multimillionaires and then became billionaires - almost none of them started out poor. And you're focusing on a tiny percent of the population and extrapolating that to everyone as though it's representative of anything meaningful.
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      https://youtube.com/shorts/MqA-hUeYvb0 https://youtube.com/shorts/MqA-hUeYvb0 Millionaires too. The last bit is sus though. "Only inherited after making a million". Sounds like it would include born rich, high education, basic necessities covered, can work on startups without worrying about earning a salary, many such cases.
svnt 2y ago
Because as wealthy families produce offspring who do not need to work or earn income in order to compete for finite resources with those who do, the cost of those resources increases, while the burden of labor and stress falls increasingly on the employed. Eventually the man dying while making an income and spending no time with his child will grow to resent the one making the same income through family wealth who has enough time for that and more.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Might you be conflating finite for static? Or more charitably, implying and assuming the growth rate is smaller or equal to consumption. I'm not saying it is or isn't, but that would need to be the case for your argument. Also the ratio of wealthy to non wealthy needs to be quite high. Also wealth needs to be transferred and maintained, and not spoiled or lost. I think those are the assumptions. But yeah, under those conditions, the competition for resources would mean in order to move upwards someone needs to come down. But it would need to be a zero sum economy
  - svnt 2y ago
    Thank you for passive-aggressively outlining the infinite growth mindset. Falsely equating economic growth with cost of living metrics, and assuming that with more money everything can just continue happily. It’s been a very successful evolutionary niche for a handful of centuries.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  when wealthy people have kids their wealth is diluted. Truly, one of the best parts of Elon Musk having so many fucking kids is that at least his fortune will be greatly divided and spread the second he dies Generational wealth rarely lasts more than a generation or two. Families like the Rothschilds seem to be more the exception than the rule. Though I am not wealthy so perhaps I truly don't know what it's like in the big club I'm not in
  - TZubiri 2y ago

iamshs 2y ago

So why do rich families need to own all the media? All the think firms? Why do they lobby? Avenues to upward mobility are blocked by these rich people through various methods.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Judgmentality 2y ago

> But also there is a lot of upwards mobility. There's increasingly less in the USA. In fact, most people today will end up worse off than their parents. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/09/social-mobility-upwa...

TZubiri 2y ago
I think this is a statistics and definitions question There can be a lot of upwards mobility (say 10%), and there can be a lot of statics (say 90%) The datapoint I remembered is that a huge fraction of billionaires wer3 first generation billionaires. But that may not mean much for the greater part of the population. So we may be saying things that sound contradictory, but are congruent.
- deflat3d 2y ago
  [dead]
- Judgmentality 2y ago
  Your evidence is that there are more billionaires when arguing there is upward mobility? We are talking about completely different things. Many of those people started out as multimillionaires and then became billionaires - almost none of them started out poor. And you're focusing on a tiny percent of the population and extrapolating that to everyone as though it's representative of anything meaningful.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    https://youtube.com/shorts/MqA-hUeYvb0 https://youtube.com/shorts/MqA-hUeYvb0 Millionaires too. The last bit is sus though. "Only inherited after making a million". Sounds like it would include born rich, high education, basic necessities covered, can work on startups without worrying about earning a salary, many such cases.

svnt 2y ago

Because as wealthy families produce offspring who do not need to work or earn income in order to compete for finite resources with those who do, the cost of those resources increases, while the burden of labor and stress falls increasingly on the employed. Eventually the man dying while making an income and spending no time with his child will grow to resent the one making the same income through family wealth who has enough time for that and more.

TZubiri 2y ago
Might you be conflating finite for static? Or more charitably, implying and assuming the growth rate is smaller or equal to consumption. I'm not saying it is or isn't, but that would need to be the case for your argument. Also the ratio of wealthy to non wealthy needs to be quite high. Also wealth needs to be transferred and maintained, and not spoiled or lost. I think those are the assumptions. But yeah, under those conditions, the competition for resources would mean in order to move upwards someone needs to come down. But it would need to be a zero sum economy
- svnt 2y ago
  Thank you for passive-aggressively outlining the infinite growth mindset. Falsely equating economic growth with cost of living metrics, and assuming that with more money everything can just continue happily. It’s been a very successful evolutionary niche for a handful of centuries.
dingnuts 2y ago
when wealthy people have kids their wealth is diluted. Truly, one of the best parts of Elon Musk having so many fucking kids is that at least his fortune will be greatly divided and spread the second he dies Generational wealth rarely lasts more than a generation or two. Families like the Rothschilds seem to be more the exception than the rule. Though I am not wealthy so perhaps I truly don't know what it's like in the big club I'm not in
- TZubiri 2y ago