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Except in the United States it is true. Something like 80% of new military recruits come from military families (parent, sibling, uncle/aunt, or grandparent).

Except in the United States it is true. Something like 80% of new military recruits come from military families (parent, sibling, uncle/aunt, or grandparent). Similarly over the last few decades the number of medical doctors who have immediate family who are also doctors has grown. Social and economic class in the US is increasingly set in stone and hereditary.

mothballed 6mo ago
Medical schools require a lot of volunteering and things like 'slinging hot dogs to pay tuition' don't count unless you grew up without clothes surviving on rabid dogs in the holler of W Virginia working the coal mines from age 8. We all know who has time to volunteer or do minimum wage healthcare instead of work the best paying shitty side job they can get: the rich. It's set up heavily tilted so you have to be rich, or dirt poor enough for a sob story, or a desired minority. Even if you do volunteer a lot and are middle class, you probably didnt know anyone that could help you into the most prestigious positions. A middle class person of equal aptitude would likely go into something like engineering or law which have fewer class-signalling non-academic purity tests.
- alistairSH 6mo ago
  That gating on medical training has always been there (at least for 40 years, if not more). But the number of doctors from doctor families has increased. And just generally, socioeconomic mobility has decreased in the US across the population.
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    Always been gated. But the slider has been dragged even further in the purity test direction. The intelligent un-pure now tend to become NP or PA, those programs still let you practice independently and slide more towards academics and less at whether a rich person set you up to be taken care of while you play mother Teresa until the switch flips the day you are accepted.
- triceratops 6mo ago
  > Medical schools require a lot of volunteering But...why? Why not just let in the applicants that have the best grades?
  - Plasmoid 6mo ago
    Because there are so many applicants that have good grades. A more cynical view is that the governing boards want a way to pick and choose who they let in. So they create "holistic" application systems to get "360 degree view of the candidate".
    - triceratops 6mo ago
      > Because there are so many applicants that have good grades. So train more doctors.
      - waterhouse 6mo ago
        That would increase competition and thus depress wages for existing doctors, who are the ones who make the decisions here. I heard, from a medical school attendee, that she overheard some doctors discussing whether it would be a good idea to require a fifth year of medical school to become a general practitioner (luckily, they were like, "Eh... nah"). It did not seem like it bothered them that this would make it even harder for civilians to get medical care.
        triceratops 6mo ago
        I thought lawmakers made the decisions. Silly me! :-D
        waterhouse 6mo ago
        Theoretically yes. But I think at least part of the decision they've made is to delegate a chunk of the decisionmaking to doctors' guilds. Which—on the one hand, they are experts of a sort, but on the other hand, they have an obvious conflict of interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#Restrictions_on_physician_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#R... Wow. 1997: https://www.baltimoresun.com/1997/03/01/ama-seeks-limit-on-residents-to-prevent-glut-of-new-doctors-shortage-of-physicians-in-inner-cities-continues/ https://www.baltimoresun.com/1997/03/01/ama-seeks-limit-on-r... > “The United States is on the verge of a serious oversupply of physicians,” the AMA and five other medical groups said in a joint statement. “The current rate of physician supply — the number of physicians entering the work force each year — is clearly excessive.” > The groups, representing a large segment of the medical establishment, proposed limits on the number of doctors who become residents each year. > The number of medical residents, now 25,000, should be much lower, the groups said. While they did not endorse a specific number, they suggested that 18,700 might be appropriate.
gedy 6mo ago
Joining Military isn't really a "class" thing - unless you mean lower income people join the military more often to get started in life. Military academies are more of a upper class thing though.
- ok_dad 6mo ago
  Military academies are not upper class at all, mostly middle class folks. Officers are generally of the same stock as any other white collar job in engineering, law, business, etc.
pmc123 6mo ago
I've noticed the same trend with SWEs tbh. Many new grads from the top schools have parents who were SWEs or SWE adjaent
- wholinator2 6mo ago
  In the United States i suspect some portion of this is due to "legacy" admissions whereby some child is admitted to a competitive program or given very advantageous scholarships not because of their hard work and displayed competence, but because of their parents. I know that it will be very possible for my children to end up at ivy league if they take the legacy advantage I've given them, even though ivy league has been completely off the table for me my entire life. They'll start _much, much_ higher on the ladder than I could.
  - Larrikin 6mo ago
    Legacy admission was removed in response to affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration.
    - gtowey 6mo ago
      I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. They were not "removed", they were made to be disallowed if and only if the school wanted to receive a certain kind of government funding. Some schools have enough money that they can ignore this. Notably, Stanford said they would give up the funding to keep their policy of legacy admissions. So the richest, most prestigious schools where legacy admissions are a gateway to the upper classes, will keep the policy.
    - RestlessMind 6mo ago
      > affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration. Affirmative action was gutted by SCOTUS when Biden was president. Not that it was popular before. California of all places rejected it by 56-44 margin in 2020.
- red-iron-pine 6mo ago
Sir_Twist 6mo ago
I wonder how much of this has to do with seeing someone you are close to work as a doctor makes being a doctor (or military recruit, SWE, etc.) seem real and achievable to you. When I was little I wanted to be a firefighter purely because my father was a firefighter; it wouldn’t surprise me if the same goes for a lot of other people.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  I can't prove it, but I've heard more than one story of those with relatives in the military managing to get someone to pull rank and put them on better and upwards promoting assignments.
majormajor 6mo ago
>(parent, sibling, uncle/aunt, or grandparent) That's a pretty wide net. What percentage of the total population has a military connection in that many degrees?
- alistairSH 6mo ago
  Obv not a great sample, but within my peer group, none have parents or siblings. I have an uncle. Grandparent is a weird one - for anybody born in the 70s as I was, it’s almost a given to have a grandparent or four who served. Being European, all of mine served at the tail end of WWII or immediate aftermath.

mothballed 6mo ago

Medical schools require a lot of volunteering and things like 'slinging hot dogs to pay tuition' don't count unless you grew up without clothes surviving on rabid dogs in the holler of W Virginia working the coal mines from age 8. We all know who has time to volunteer or do minimum wage healthcare instead of work the best paying shitty side job they can get: the rich. It's set up heavily tilted so you have to be rich, or dirt poor enough for a sob story, or a desired minority. Even if you do volunteer a lot and are middle class, you probably didnt know anyone that could help you into the most prestigious positions. A middle class person of equal aptitude would likely go into something like engineering or law which have fewer class-signalling non-academic purity tests.

alistairSH 6mo ago
That gating on medical training has always been there (at least for 40 years, if not more). But the number of doctors from doctor families has increased. And just generally, socioeconomic mobility has decreased in the US across the population.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  Always been gated. But the slider has been dragged even further in the purity test direction. The intelligent un-pure now tend to become NP or PA, those programs still let you practice independently and slide more towards academics and less at whether a rich person set you up to be taken care of while you play mother Teresa until the switch flips the day you are accepted.
triceratops 6mo ago
> Medical schools require a lot of volunteering But...why? Why not just let in the applicants that have the best grades?
- Plasmoid 6mo ago
  Because there are so many applicants that have good grades. A more cynical view is that the governing boards want a way to pick and choose who they let in. So they create "holistic" application systems to get "360 degree view of the candidate".
  - triceratops 6mo ago
    > Because there are so many applicants that have good grades. So train more doctors.
    - waterhouse 6mo ago
      That would increase competition and thus depress wages for existing doctors, who are the ones who make the decisions here. I heard, from a medical school attendee, that she overheard some doctors discussing whether it would be a good idea to require a fifth year of medical school to become a general practitioner (luckily, they were like, "Eh... nah"). It did not seem like it bothered them that this would make it even harder for civilians to get medical care.
      - triceratops 6mo ago
        I thought lawmakers made the decisions. Silly me! :-D
        waterhouse 6mo ago
        Theoretically yes. But I think at least part of the decision they've made is to delegate a chunk of the decisionmaking to doctors' guilds. Which—on the one hand, they are experts of a sort, but on the other hand, they have an obvious conflict of interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#Restrictions_on_physician_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#R... Wow. 1997: https://www.baltimoresun.com/1997/03/01/ama-seeks-limit-on-residents-to-prevent-glut-of-new-doctors-shortage-of-physicians-in-inner-cities-continues/ https://www.baltimoresun.com/1997/03/01/ama-seeks-limit-on-r... > “The United States is on the verge of a serious oversupply of physicians,” the AMA and five other medical groups said in a joint statement. “The current rate of physician supply — the number of physicians entering the work force each year — is clearly excessive.” > The groups, representing a large segment of the medical establishment, proposed limits on the number of doctors who become residents each year. > The number of medical residents, now 25,000, should be much lower, the groups said. While they did not endorse a specific number, they suggested that 18,700 might be appropriate.

gedy 6mo ago

Joining Military isn't really a "class" thing - unless you mean lower income people join the military more often to get started in life. Military academies are more of a upper class thing though.

ok_dad 6mo ago
Military academies are not upper class at all, mostly middle class folks. Officers are generally of the same stock as any other white collar job in engineering, law, business, etc.

pmc123 6mo ago

I've noticed the same trend with SWEs tbh. Many new grads from the top schools have parents who were SWEs or SWE adjaent

wholinator2 6mo ago
In the United States i suspect some portion of this is due to "legacy" admissions whereby some child is admitted to a competitive program or given very advantageous scholarships not because of their hard work and displayed competence, but because of their parents. I know that it will be very possible for my children to end up at ivy league if they take the legacy advantage I've given them, even though ivy league has been completely off the table for me my entire life. They'll start _much, much_ higher on the ladder than I could.
- Larrikin 6mo ago
  Legacy admission was removed in response to affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration.
  - gtowey 6mo ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. They were not "removed", they were made to be disallowed if and only if the school wanted to receive a certain kind of government funding. Some schools have enough money that they can ignore this. Notably, Stanford said they would give up the funding to keep their policy of legacy admissions. So the richest, most prestigious schools where legacy admissions are a gateway to the upper classes, will keep the policy.
  - RestlessMind 6mo ago
    > affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration. Affirmative action was gutted by SCOTUS when Biden was president. Not that it was popular before. California of all places rejected it by 56-44 margin in 2020.
red-iron-pine 6mo ago

Sir_Twist 6mo ago

I wonder how much of this has to do with seeing someone you are close to work as a doctor makes being a doctor (or military recruit, SWE, etc.) seem real and achievable to you. When I was little I wanted to be a firefighter purely because my father was a firefighter; it wouldn’t surprise me if the same goes for a lot of other people.

mothballed 6mo ago
I can't prove it, but I've heard more than one story of those with relatives in the military managing to get someone to pull rank and put them on better and upwards promoting assignments.

majormajor 6mo ago

>(parent, sibling, uncle/aunt, or grandparent) That's a pretty wide net. What percentage of the total population has a military connection in that many degrees?

alistairSH 6mo ago
Obv not a great sample, but within my peer group, none have parents or siblings. I have an uncle. Grandparent is a weird one - for anybody born in the 70s as I was, it’s almost a given to have a grandparent or four who served. Being European, all of mine served at the tail end of WWII or immediate aftermath.