7 ms·

Is a Hard Life Inherited?

122 points by plg 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
applecore 12y ago
Isn't success in the United States better explained by hard work and intelligence? You can lower the cost of being unsuccessful by expanding the availability of health care for the poor, increasing long-term unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage, but the middle class doesn't rely on these programs for its success.
- pkaye 12y ago
  Many times people whose family were poor don't have access to the opportunities when they are young to make a better a better life for themselves when they are older.
- msutherl 12y ago
  Difficult to mobilize intelligence when you are struggling daily to survive and otherwise overwhelmed with emotional turmoil.
- lsc 12y ago
  How is intelligence not luck? There is a lot of legitimate controversy about how much is genetic vs. environmental, but I think it's well-established that your intelligence is pretty much fixed by the time you are old enough to really be held responsible for your own actions.
- misuba 12y ago
  Do a search on "toxic stress effects on cognition" sometime.
- lsc 12y ago
  >You can lower the cost of being unsuccessful by expanding the availability of health care for the poor, increasing long-term unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage, but the middle class doesn't rely on these programs for their success. If you are trying to pitch a safety net as a tool to help people create private-sector success, the angle that you would take is that without a safety net, a single failure can take a long time to recover from. Like being able to crash in mom's basement. If you have a place to sleep, shower, and get career advice and/or interview leads, your periods of unemployment are going to be easier to recover from. I know after 2001, I made a bad choice; I quit a job when so many of my compatriots were getting fired. I ended up crashing at my parent's place for a while, and pretty quickly got an interview (and a job) through one of my dad's contacts. Imagine how much longer it would have taken me to get back on my feet if instead I became homeless. Of course, I don't have any good ideas on how the government could replicate that sort of thing for people with parents that are unable or unwilling to contribute spare bedrooms and industry contacts- I'm just giving an example of how a safety net can contribute to long-term success and not just make failure less painful. Health care, I think, is actually easier to sell on these grounds. It's going to be way more difficult to be successful if you are sick, and especially if you have only an average earning potential, a big medical bill early on can pretty easily take that average income and, say, prevent you from buying a house or otherwise throw up a big obstacle to living your average life.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > Isn't success in the United States better explained by hard work and intelligence? That's the official party line, at least.
- lmkg 12y ago
  Yes, success in the United States can be explained by some combination of hard work, intelligence, and luck. Hard work and intelligence can, to a depressingly large extent, be predicted by the success of your parents.
megaman821 12y ago
I hate the argument that boils down success to just being lucky. A person's success in life is due to many things like environment, opportunity, intelligence, and work ethic. Positive increases in those things are going to increase the odds of success, so I do agree with the rest of the author's arguments that the poor are at a disadvantage usually coming from a bad environment and an area that lacks much opportunity. Unfortunately the US government seems to be geared to taking care of the old rather than enriching the lives of the young.
- mjfl 12y ago
  I agree. There are hundreds of millions of people born into the American middle class. There are tens of millions of people born into the "global 1%". On average, the richer are going to better, because you average out all other factors, like work ethic. So if I'm "floating" through life, putting in the average work into everything I do, I think it's pretty obvious that I'm going to benefit from having rich parents to save me from the random pitfalls that I may fall into. However, the huge problem that I have with these arguments is that so many successful people are statistical outliers, in terms of hard work, natural talent, ect. They aren't going to follow the average behavior. Lionel Messi is not a good soccer player just because he got lucky. There were millions of people brought up with the same means, but through whatever personal work ethic he has, he's become one of the biggest statistical outliers in soccer. Sure, you could make the case that for "soft skill jobs" like CEO, luck comes into play quite a bit, but for someone like Mark Zuckerberg, he simply would not have gotten lucky if he didn't lock himself in his room and code for 6 hours a day at Phillips Exeter (which is something he actually did, he was very asocial, at least at Exeter). In the end, I think for the same reason OKCupid's match percentage is nearly useless in terms of finding a "soulmate", I think you can't really attribute average statistics to explain why someone was successful, they are both going to be outliers, "black swan events" to borrow from Nassim Taleb.
  - watwut 12y ago
    There are also plenty of soccer players who worked hard, trained as much as they could and did not became famous players. The same goes for any well developed sport. Hard work is a must, but so is the right body type, support in make difference age and, well, luck.
mparr4 12y ago
I am reminded of PG's essay on income inequality. Worth reading if you haven't: http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html
- norswap 12y ago
  I haven't read this particular essay, but I've read those on wealth and income inequality from Hackers & Painters, and those seems rather similar from what I've skimmed. PG makes a good point when he says that inequality is not intrinsically bad. It's not bad if the quality of life of both the poor and the rich increase. The fact is that it has been shown that the quality of life of the poor has in fact decreased. In this context, the rise of inequality doesn't seem agreeable. Especially when you consider the source of this inequality: entrepreneurs are not out to eat the poor people's lunch; but if the crisis has shown anything, it's that greed at multiple strategic points in the system (esp. the banking system) had very bad consequences for the people ground by the wheels of said system. I think it's useful to keep in mind the time at which those essays were written (first half of the 2000s), when such opinion may have been easier to form. I'm curious to know if PG would write the same today.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
I'm going to post a recent Onion article. It shares some of my thoughts on the subject matter far more eloquently than my own words ever could. "White Male Privilege Squandered On Job At Best Buy HAMILTON, OH—Despite being the beneficiary of numerous societal advantages and having faced little to no major adversity throughout his life, local man Travis Benton has spent the last four years squandering his white male privilege on a sales floor job at Best Buy, sources confirmed Tuesday. “You can get by with a regular HDMI cable, but if you’re looking at a length longer than 10 feet, I’d go with a gold-tipped one,” said the man dressed in a bright blue polo shirt and pin-on name tag as he continued to fritter away such innate life advantages as greater access to higher education, leniency from the justice system, and favorable treatment from other white males who lead and make hiring decisions at a disproportionately high number of American companies. “The AudioQuest gold-tip is actually the cable I use in my own home entertainment center and it provides excellent audio and video clarity, plus it comes with a full five-year warranty, unlike the 90-day warranty of a bargain brand. For your money, you’re not going to find a better cable.” At press time, the man born into the world’s most affluent and privileged socioeconomic group was spending his 15-minute break silently consuming a sleeve of Donettes purchased out of a vending machine." http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-male-privilege-squandered-on-job-at-best-buy,35835/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-male-privilege-squand...
- NAFV_P 12y ago
  > I'm going to post a recent Onion article. It shares some of my thoughts on the subject matter far more eloquently than my own words ever could. Eloquent or not, I thought that the supplied article was irresponsible and lacked substance. I sincerely hope that the given name "Travis Benton", is a pseudonym (and that photograph is not of him). If a potential employer has perused this article, it could effect his chances of gaining more suitable or substantial employment. The article has possibly put "Mr. Benton" at a serious disadvantage in life. If a similar article was published about me I would call up the editor and shoot hell-fire down the phone.
  - evilduck 12y ago
    The Onion is a satire site...
avz 12y ago
> Yet many are oblivious of their own advantages, and of other people’s disadvantages. The result is [...] partly explaining the hostility to state expansion of Medicaid, to long-term unemployment benefits, or to raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation. I don't think hostility to the expansion of social welfare programs depends much on one's stance in the debate about the relative importance of different factors of success in life. The causation runs the other way. It's convenient and pleasant for the successful to think their success is of their own making. It's convenient and extenuating for the less successful to attribute their failures to external factors. We internalize success and externalize failure. Both arguments are self-serving simplifications of a surely more complex reality.
- leot 12y ago
  It's not just convenient and pleasant: just like everyone, those who are successful recognize the impact of their own decisions and behavior on a moment to moment basis. They succeed when they try hard, forego immediate pleasure for delayed gratification, and in a disciplined way execute on a particular plan. When the wealthy and successful criticize others for not behaving similarly, they are externalizing their own personal internal heuristic/narrative that they use to compel themselves to take responsibility for the way they spend their time. In other words, it's not just convenient to take responsibility for one's own success: it's extremely helpful to one's own psychology to do so.
avz 12y ago
Many successful people will resent contributing to the welfare of the not-so-successful regardless of who is to blame for the misfortune of the latter. It's yet another instance of the tribal mentality dividing people into "us" and "them". We generally find it easier to empathize with those who are like us and perceived to belong to the same group. I used to think tribal divisions are characteristic of the earlier stages of human development. I don't think that's actually true. Humans everywhere live in tribes. In the developed countries people have simply found other characteristics than ethnicity to peek at in our tribal membership classifiers.
- zo1 12y ago
  "Many successful people will resent contributing to the welfare of the not-so-successful regardless of who is to blame for the misfortune of the latter. It's yet another instance of the tribal mentality dividing people into "us" and "them"." Yes, but you should take care to not attribute their definitions of "us" and "them", with the ones you imagine they do. It's all too-popular to assume that they mean "us, wealthy" and "them, lazy entitled leeches". It could just as well mean something a little more genuine such as "us, hardworking" and "them, mooching off the state/our hardwork". I'm not saying it's either. But I find that people regularly attribute very mean, hateful and prejudiced motivations to the rich, privileged or those they don't like. Most of the time, it's simply implied in the comments.
  - qu4z-2 12y ago
    I like that the "them" in both cases is "lazy". The "us" group, on the other hand, nicely changes from "wealthy" to, essentially, "deservedly wealthy". I'm fairly certain they believe the latter, but is it so surprising that from the outside people see the former? Your point stands, though. I seriously doubt anyone's being deliberately mean or hateful. They just genuinely believe that they succeeded on their own merits. I also think that most definitions of "us" and "them" are usually after-the-fact justifications for including/excluding people from a group. The groups form, then the criteria arise, not vice versa. But I have nothing to back that up. It's just something worth considering when seeing the categorisations people discriminate based on.
sbussard 12y ago
Raise the minimum wage to increase inflation.. Stupid
ivoras 12y ago
I'm not sure if most of the commentators here are joking or just being too subtly sarcastic, but truly the best predictor of a person's success is the success of his parents during his formative years. It's not a hard-coded rule, but it's statistics: if, given two persons of equal age, gender and health, you would have to bet how they turn out, your best bet would be to look at their parents and assume the same will happen to them, and not to give them an IQ test and draw a conclusion from there (on average, everyone has an average IQ). So, yes, while there are always exceptions, poor families will mostly yield people who will not move away from poverty. It is as unreasonable to say to those people "move out and get a better job" as to say to a clinically depressed person "oh cheer up, it's all in your head": no, such problems are actually not the problems of attitude and positive thinking, but have external causes and factors (i.e. external to the mind). One example of such a factor could be poor work habits learned from their parents - but still it's a trait derived from those particular parents. Unless the person sees or learns about "better" work habits somehow, he will in all probability not conclude that is one of his problems all by himself.
- zo1 12y ago
  But at what point do we draw the line of responsibility? There are many examples of poor/struggling people that made the best of what they had and made sure that their children had a good start in life. Yes, my parents were poor and struggling. But they pushed through, made sacrifices and made sure that me and my sister had a good start in life. Free from the burdens that they bore. To me, the line of responsibility does not cross over a generational boundary. All these individuals that have rough and tough childhoods, are responsible for their own actions. And they're also responsible for not ruining an innocent's or unborn's future by bringing them into this world, and then abandoning them by not doing their best to break the cycle of violence, poverty and lack of education.
  - _greim_ 12y ago
    Even if responsibility lands on the individual, rather than background circumstances, it's still reasonable to try to figure out how to break the cycle, isn't it? It's possible to hold someone guilty, and still have empathy.
jqm 12y ago
Having the right connections helps as well. No matter what your skill set is, if you know people who know people through your school, social group, church etc. it makes opportunities easier to come by. In addition, if you look, think and talk like the people who can help you get ahead you are more likely to be given the opportunity. On the other hand, if you look, think and talk like people disliked by those who can help you get ahead... well, you have your work cut out for you. Sure, in a perfect world it is all about hard work and skills. And certainly some find ways around the system or beat the odds. But for the most part, I don't think it is disputable that a hard life is largely heritable. What can/should we do to change this? I don't know that we can and maybe we should but I'm not sure about that. Sometimes there are cultural reasons those who are ahead are ahead. We certainly don't want to lower everything to the lowest common denominator (see the public school system for an example of how not to do things.....).
norswap 12y ago
From an European (Belgian, if you're interested) perspective, it's borderline shocking that these questions are so hotly debated. When I contrast the image I get by consuming American media and what I witness here, the contrast is astonishing. Social mobility seems to be much more prevalent here than in the states. Of course, the gap between "poors" and "rich" is much smaller. But I can legitimately say that everyone here has a chance to make it. It might be harder for some, but it's rare to really have your head under the water, as I've heard happens often to poor people in the states (too many accounts, both from traditional and social media, too discount as pure fancy). It's shocking that education is not a right. Here, it costs less than half a month salary to get tuition for a year; and the level is good besides (w.r.t. the states, not saying it couldn't be better). And in the end? The quality of life is I believe the same here as in most well off places in the states. But the people at the bottom suffer less. That's a win in my book.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  These are all good points, but it's also important to realize that American and European populations are very different in regards to constituency (you touched on this a bit with your point about the rich-poor gap). So a simple drop-in-place European substitute isn't likely to be as effective as it might seem. That's not to say that things don't need to change or that they have to be this way, but I think it will require more than simply copying Europe.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- Dewie 12y ago
  > From an European (Belgian, if you're interested) That's certainly more interesting than just the generic European. EDIT: I mean: saying that you are of a certain nationality is more specific, and therefore more interesting, than just saying that you are from somewhere on that continent!
  - norswap 12y ago
_random_ 12y ago
Well, the country with an alternative social order has been destroyed. No need to worry about the working class now.
spindritf 12y ago
ONE delusion common among America’s successful people is that they triumphed just because of hard work and intelligence. The ability to work hard (conscientiousness) and intelligence are also heritable to a significant degree. The central supposed conflict between inherited privilege and innate qualities simply doesn't exist because our qualities are inherited[1]. This always surprises me when I read about privilege and related subjects, the fixation on race, sex and, as in this case, class. I can name at least five factors that matter much more for your life outcomes: 1. conscientiousness, 2. being born in or able to move to the first world, 3. intelligence, 4. conscientiousness again, 5. and looks (face symmetry, height). OK, I cheated a little but conscientiousness really matters a lot. I highly doubt music classes, or library card would crack the top 100. Maybe as a correlate for educated (ie. likely intelligent) parents. Those used to be heavily influenced by class due to widespread malnutrition but this is now gone from the western world. Which is why we see diminishing returns from investments in education, or any intervention, really. Let's take truancy and suspension as an example since it was mentioned in the story. Is suspension responsible for kids' later poor educational outcomes? Unlikely[2]: while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the relationship is unlikely to be causal, but rather stems from differences in the characteristics of those suspended compared to those not suspended. Moreover, there is no evidence that suspension is associated with larger educational penalties for young people from disadvantaged family backgrounds compared to those from more advantaged family backgrounds Even in the west you can simply be unlucky but as a society we're bumping against the limits of who we are. I'm not saying that the usual "get married, stay married, take care of your kids, don't inject H, crime doesn't pay" is not a good advice but let's not forget that we're just a bunch of clever apes and perhaps should ease up on the hubris that somehow we should be able to better manage never before seen levels of complexity ("Hey, here are a few steps I came up with!"). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880 [2] http://ftp.iza.org/dp7794.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp7794.pdf
- Mz 12y ago
  FWIW: I have intelligence and conscientiousness. What I don't have is physical stamina and mental focus. I was one of the trop three students of my graduating high school class. I have yet to have a successful paid career (I was a homemaker for a long time and full time mom and I was successful at those things but I am now divorced). One of the things that middle and upper class kids get is good medical care, good nutrition, early intervention for speech problems and endless other things which make it possible for them do sustained work of the sort that pays money. I actually grew up with a lot of advantages. My misfortune is largely being born with the wrong genes as I have a serious genetic disorder. Because I am smart, hard working, and have a long list of other "virtues"/resources, my situation is gradually improving. But it has definitely been a very long haul and an uphill climb -- made all the harder by the fact that many people who are already successful do not take me very seriously. This has helped to keep doors closed for me in ways which I find enormously frustrating.
teddyh 12y ago
I am again reminded of this article: 4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-understand-about-poor-people/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-... (When I posted the same link before, it generated a large number of responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383275)
_greim_ 12y ago
> But the essential starting point is empathy. This is great, but even if it's not true, you can approach the issue from a completely selfish, cold-hearted point of view and still arrive at similar conclusions. Poverty is a drain on every aspect of society. If we (the privileged) can figure out how to minimize it, think how much better a place the world would be for ourselves and our children. How much safer would the streets be, how much less tax money would be sucked into prisons, law enforcement, medicare, or various other forms of welfare, how many fewer broken families and unwanted children there would be to contend with.
frogpelt 12y ago
The message I get from these articles is if you have failed at life it wasn't because of your own decisions. What motivation is there to do any better? Because to me the real issue is if a person finds themselves in a less than ideal situation that they look for ways to improve rather than waiting on all of us to figure out how to change the system.
- qu4z-2 12y ago
  Sometimes you're so busy looking for ways to survive that improvement doesn't really even enter into it. Also, I'd imagine the whole "being poor sucks" would provide motivation to do better. Finally your embedded assumption that somehow being "motivated to do better" will fix the problem (ie it's their fault).
ASneakyFox 12y ago
What about the middle class thing where EVERYONE thinks they're middle class? If you ask some one who makes 30k they'll say they're middle class. If you ask some one who makes 130k they'll say the same thing.

122 points by plg 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Isn't success in the United States better explained by hard work and intelligence? You can lower the cost of being unsuccessful by expanding the availability of health care for the poor, increasing long-term unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage, but the middle class doesn't rely on these programs for its success.

pkaye 12y ago
Many times people whose family were poor don't have access to the opportunities when they are young to make a better a better life for themselves when they are older.
msutherl 12y ago
Difficult to mobilize intelligence when you are struggling daily to survive and otherwise overwhelmed with emotional turmoil.
lsc 12y ago
How is intelligence not luck? There is a lot of legitimate controversy about how much is genetic vs. environmental, but I think it's well-established that your intelligence is pretty much fixed by the time you are old enough to really be held responsible for your own actions.
misuba 12y ago
Do a search on "toxic stress effects on cognition" sometime.
lsc 12y ago
>You can lower the cost of being unsuccessful by expanding the availability of health care for the poor, increasing long-term unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage, but the middle class doesn't rely on these programs for their success. If you are trying to pitch a safety net as a tool to help people create private-sector success, the angle that you would take is that without a safety net, a single failure can take a long time to recover from. Like being able to crash in mom's basement. If you have a place to sleep, shower, and get career advice and/or interview leads, your periods of unemployment are going to be easier to recover from. I know after 2001, I made a bad choice; I quit a job when so many of my compatriots were getting fired. I ended up crashing at my parent's place for a while, and pretty quickly got an interview (and a job) through one of my dad's contacts. Imagine how much longer it would have taken me to get back on my feet if instead I became homeless. Of course, I don't have any good ideas on how the government could replicate that sort of thing for people with parents that are unable or unwilling to contribute spare bedrooms and industry contacts- I'm just giving an example of how a safety net can contribute to long-term success and not just make failure less painful. Health care, I think, is actually easier to sell on these grounds. It's going to be way more difficult to be successful if you are sick, and especially if you have only an average earning potential, a big medical bill early on can pretty easily take that average income and, say, prevent you from buying a house or otherwise throw up a big obstacle to living your average life.
Dewie 12y ago
> Isn't success in the United States better explained by hard work and intelligence? That's the official party line, at least.
lmkg 12y ago
Yes, success in the United States can be explained by some combination of hard work, intelligence, and luck. Hard work and intelligence can, to a depressingly large extent, be predicted by the success of your parents.

megaman821 12y ago

I hate the argument that boils down success to just being lucky. A person's success in life is due to many things like environment, opportunity, intelligence, and work ethic. Positive increases in those things are going to increase the odds of success, so I do agree with the rest of the author's arguments that the poor are at a disadvantage usually coming from a bad environment and an area that lacks much opportunity. Unfortunately the US government seems to be geared to taking care of the old rather than enriching the lives of the young.

mjfl 12y ago
I agree. There are hundreds of millions of people born into the American middle class. There are tens of millions of people born into the "global 1%". On average, the richer are going to better, because you average out all other factors, like work ethic. So if I'm "floating" through life, putting in the average work into everything I do, I think it's pretty obvious that I'm going to benefit from having rich parents to save me from the random pitfalls that I may fall into. However, the huge problem that I have with these arguments is that so many successful people are statistical outliers, in terms of hard work, natural talent, ect. They aren't going to follow the average behavior. Lionel Messi is not a good soccer player just because he got lucky. There were millions of people brought up with the same means, but through whatever personal work ethic he has, he's become one of the biggest statistical outliers in soccer. Sure, you could make the case that for "soft skill jobs" like CEO, luck comes into play quite a bit, but for someone like Mark Zuckerberg, he simply would not have gotten lucky if he didn't lock himself in his room and code for 6 hours a day at Phillips Exeter (which is something he actually did, he was very asocial, at least at Exeter). In the end, I think for the same reason OKCupid's match percentage is nearly useless in terms of finding a "soulmate", I think you can't really attribute average statistics to explain why someone was successful, they are both going to be outliers, "black swan events" to borrow from Nassim Taleb.
- watwut 12y ago
  There are also plenty of soccer players who worked hard, trained as much as they could and did not became famous players. The same goes for any well developed sport. Hard work is a must, but so is the right body type, support in make difference age and, well, luck.

mparr4 12y ago

I am reminded of PG's essay on income inequality. Worth reading if you haven't: http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html

norswap 12y ago
I haven't read this particular essay, but I've read those on wealth and income inequality from Hackers & Painters, and those seems rather similar from what I've skimmed. PG makes a good point when he says that inequality is not intrinsically bad. It's not bad if the quality of life of both the poor and the rich increase. The fact is that it has been shown that the quality of life of the poor has in fact decreased. In this context, the rise of inequality doesn't seem agreeable. Especially when you consider the source of this inequality: entrepreneurs are not out to eat the poor people's lunch; but if the crisis has shown anything, it's that greed at multiple strategic points in the system (esp. the banking system) had very bad consequences for the people ground by the wheels of said system. I think it's useful to keep in mind the time at which those essays were written (first half of the 2000s), when such opinion may have been easier to form. I'm curious to know if PG would write the same today.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

I'm going to post a recent Onion article. It shares some of my thoughts on the subject matter far more eloquently than my own words ever could. "White Male Privilege Squandered On Job At Best Buy HAMILTON, OH—Despite being the beneficiary of numerous societal advantages and having faced little to no major adversity throughout his life, local man Travis Benton has spent the last four years squandering his white male privilege on a sales floor job at Best Buy, sources confirmed Tuesday. “You can get by with a regular HDMI cable, but if you’re looking at a length longer than 10 feet, I’d go with a gold-tipped one,” said the man dressed in a bright blue polo shirt and pin-on name tag as he continued to fritter away such innate life advantages as greater access to higher education, leniency from the justice system, and favorable treatment from other white males who lead and make hiring decisions at a disproportionately high number of American companies. “The AudioQuest gold-tip is actually the cable I use in my own home entertainment center and it provides excellent audio and video clarity, plus it comes with a full five-year warranty, unlike the 90-day warranty of a bargain brand. For your money, you’re not going to find a better cable.” At press time, the man born into the world’s most affluent and privileged socioeconomic group was spending his 15-minute break silently consuming a sleeve of Donettes purchased out of a vending machine." http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-male-privilege-squandered-on-job-at-best-buy,35835/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-male-privilege-squand...

NAFV_P 12y ago
> I'm going to post a recent Onion article. It shares some of my thoughts on the subject matter far more eloquently than my own words ever could. Eloquent or not, I thought that the supplied article was irresponsible and lacked substance. I sincerely hope that the given name "Travis Benton", is a pseudonym (and that photograph is not of him). If a potential employer has perused this article, it could effect his chances of gaining more suitable or substantial employment. The article has possibly put "Mr. Benton" at a serious disadvantage in life. If a similar article was published about me I would call up the editor and shoot hell-fire down the phone.
- evilduck 12y ago
  The Onion is a satire site...

avz 12y ago

> Yet many are oblivious of their own advantages, and of other people’s disadvantages. The result is [...] partly explaining the hostility to state expansion of Medicaid, to long-term unemployment benefits, or to raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation. I don't think hostility to the expansion of social welfare programs depends much on one's stance in the debate about the relative importance of different factors of success in life. The causation runs the other way. It's convenient and pleasant for the successful to think their success is of their own making. It's convenient and extenuating for the less successful to attribute their failures to external factors. We internalize success and externalize failure. Both arguments are self-serving simplifications of a surely more complex reality.

leot 12y ago
It's not just convenient and pleasant: just like everyone, those who are successful recognize the impact of their own decisions and behavior on a moment to moment basis. They succeed when they try hard, forego immediate pleasure for delayed gratification, and in a disciplined way execute on a particular plan. When the wealthy and successful criticize others for not behaving similarly, they are externalizing their own personal internal heuristic/narrative that they use to compel themselves to take responsibility for the way they spend their time. In other words, it's not just convenient to take responsibility for one's own success: it's extremely helpful to one's own psychology to do so.

avz 12y ago

Many successful people will resent contributing to the welfare of the not-so-successful regardless of who is to blame for the misfortune of the latter. It's yet another instance of the tribal mentality dividing people into "us" and "them". We generally find it easier to empathize with those who are like us and perceived to belong to the same group. I used to think tribal divisions are characteristic of the earlier stages of human development. I don't think that's actually true. Humans everywhere live in tribes. In the developed countries people have simply found other characteristics than ethnicity to peek at in our tribal membership classifiers.

zo1 12y ago
"Many successful people will resent contributing to the welfare of the not-so-successful regardless of who is to blame for the misfortune of the latter. It's yet another instance of the tribal mentality dividing people into "us" and "them"." Yes, but you should take care to not attribute their definitions of "us" and "them", with the ones you imagine they do. It's all too-popular to assume that they mean "us, wealthy" and "them, lazy entitled leeches". It could just as well mean something a little more genuine such as "us, hardworking" and "them, mooching off the state/our hardwork". I'm not saying it's either. But I find that people regularly attribute very mean, hateful and prejudiced motivations to the rich, privileged or those they don't like. Most of the time, it's simply implied in the comments.
- qu4z-2 12y ago
  I like that the "them" in both cases is "lazy". The "us" group, on the other hand, nicely changes from "wealthy" to, essentially, "deservedly wealthy". I'm fairly certain they believe the latter, but is it so surprising that from the outside people see the former? Your point stands, though. I seriously doubt anyone's being deliberately mean or hateful. They just genuinely believe that they succeeded on their own merits. I also think that most definitions of "us" and "them" are usually after-the-fact justifications for including/excluding people from a group. The groups form, then the criteria arise, not vice versa. But I have nothing to back that up. It's just something worth considering when seeing the categorisations people discriminate based on.

sbussard 12y ago

Raise the minimum wage to increase inflation.. Stupid

ivoras 12y ago

I'm not sure if most of the commentators here are joking or just being too subtly sarcastic, but truly the best predictor of a person's success is the success of his parents during his formative years. It's not a hard-coded rule, but it's statistics: if, given two persons of equal age, gender and health, you would have to bet how they turn out, your best bet would be to look at their parents and assume the same will happen to them, and not to give them an IQ test and draw a conclusion from there (on average, everyone has an average IQ). So, yes, while there are always exceptions, poor families will mostly yield people who will not move away from poverty. It is as unreasonable to say to those people "move out and get a better job" as to say to a clinically depressed person "oh cheer up, it's all in your head": no, such problems are actually not the problems of attitude and positive thinking, but have external causes and factors (i.e. external to the mind). One example of such a factor could be poor work habits learned from their parents - but still it's a trait derived from those particular parents. Unless the person sees or learns about "better" work habits somehow, he will in all probability not conclude that is one of his problems all by himself.

zo1 12y ago
But at what point do we draw the line of responsibility? There are many examples of poor/struggling people that made the best of what they had and made sure that their children had a good start in life. Yes, my parents were poor and struggling. But they pushed through, made sacrifices and made sure that me and my sister had a good start in life. Free from the burdens that they bore. To me, the line of responsibility does not cross over a generational boundary. All these individuals that have rough and tough childhoods, are responsible for their own actions. And they're also responsible for not ruining an innocent's or unborn's future by bringing them into this world, and then abandoning them by not doing their best to break the cycle of violence, poverty and lack of education.
- _greim_ 12y ago
  Even if responsibility lands on the individual, rather than background circumstances, it's still reasonable to try to figure out how to break the cycle, isn't it? It's possible to hold someone guilty, and still have empathy.

jqm 12y ago

Having the right connections helps as well. No matter what your skill set is, if you know people who know people through your school, social group, church etc. it makes opportunities easier to come by. In addition, if you look, think and talk like the people who can help you get ahead you are more likely to be given the opportunity. On the other hand, if you look, think and talk like people disliked by those who can help you get ahead... well, you have your work cut out for you. Sure, in a perfect world it is all about hard work and skills. And certainly some find ways around the system or beat the odds. But for the most part, I don't think it is disputable that a hard life is largely heritable. What can/should we do to change this? I don't know that we can and maybe we should but I'm not sure about that. Sometimes there are cultural reasons those who are ahead are ahead. We certainly don't want to lower everything to the lowest common denominator (see the public school system for an example of how not to do things.....).

norswap 12y ago

From an European (Belgian, if you're interested) perspective, it's borderline shocking that these questions are so hotly debated. When I contrast the image I get by consuming American media and what I witness here, the contrast is astonishing. Social mobility seems to be much more prevalent here than in the states. Of course, the gap between "poors" and "rich" is much smaller. But I can legitimately say that everyone here has a chance to make it. It might be harder for some, but it's rare to really have your head under the water, as I've heard happens often to poor people in the states (too many accounts, both from traditional and social media, too discount as pure fancy). It's shocking that education is not a right. Here, it costs less than half a month salary to get tuition for a year; and the level is good besides (w.r.t. the states, not saying it couldn't be better). And in the end? The quality of life is I believe the same here as in most well off places in the states. But the people at the bottom suffer less. That's a win in my book.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago
These are all good points, but it's also important to realize that American and European populations are very different in regards to constituency (you touched on this a bit with your point about the rich-poor gap). So a simple drop-in-place European substitute isn't likely to be as effective as it might seem. That's not to say that things don't need to change or that they have to be this way, but I think it will require more than simply copying Europe.
- deleted 12y ago
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Dewie 12y ago
> From an European (Belgian, if you're interested) That's certainly more interesting than just the generic European. EDIT: I mean: saying that you are of a certain nationality is more specific, and therefore more interesting, than just saying that you are from somewhere on that continent!
- norswap 12y ago

_random_ 12y ago

Well, the country with an alternative social order has been destroyed. No need to worry about the working class now.

spindritf 12y ago

ONE delusion common among America’s successful people is that they triumphed just because of hard work and intelligence. The ability to work hard (conscientiousness) and intelligence are also heritable to a significant degree. The central supposed conflict between inherited privilege and innate qualities simply doesn't exist because our qualities are inherited[1]. This always surprises me when I read about privilege and related subjects, the fixation on race, sex and, as in this case, class. I can name at least five factors that matter much more for your life outcomes: 1. conscientiousness, 2. being born in or able to move to the first world, 3. intelligence, 4. conscientiousness again, 5. and looks (face symmetry, height). OK, I cheated a little but conscientiousness really matters a lot. I highly doubt music classes, or library card would crack the top 100. Maybe as a correlate for educated (ie. likely intelligent) parents. Those used to be heavily influenced by class due to widespread malnutrition but this is now gone from the western world. Which is why we see diminishing returns from investments in education, or any intervention, really. Let's take truancy and suspension as an example since it was mentioned in the story. Is suspension responsible for kids' later poor educational outcomes? Unlikely[2]: while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the relationship is unlikely to be causal, but rather stems from differences in the characteristics of those suspended compared to those not suspended. Moreover, there is no evidence that suspension is associated with larger educational penalties for young people from disadvantaged family backgrounds compared to those from more advantaged family backgrounds Even in the west you can simply be unlucky but as a society we're bumping against the limits of who we are. I'm not saying that the usual "get married, stay married, take care of your kids, don't inject H, crime doesn't pay" is not a good advice but let's not forget that we're just a bunch of clever apes and perhaps should ease up on the hubris that somehow we should be able to better manage never before seen levels of complexity ("Hey, here are a few steps I came up with!"). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880 [2] http://ftp.iza.org/dp7794.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp7794.pdf

Mz 12y ago
FWIW: I have intelligence and conscientiousness. What I don't have is physical stamina and mental focus. I was one of the trop three students of my graduating high school class. I have yet to have a successful paid career (I was a homemaker for a long time and full time mom and I was successful at those things but I am now divorced). One of the things that middle and upper class kids get is good medical care, good nutrition, early intervention for speech problems and endless other things which make it possible for them do sustained work of the sort that pays money. I actually grew up with a lot of advantages. My misfortune is largely being born with the wrong genes as I have a serious genetic disorder. Because I am smart, hard working, and have a long list of other "virtues"/resources, my situation is gradually improving. But it has definitely been a very long haul and an uphill climb -- made all the harder by the fact that many people who are already successful do not take me very seriously. This has helped to keep doors closed for me in ways which I find enormously frustrating.

teddyh 12y ago

I am again reminded of this article: 4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-understand-about-poor-people/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-... (When I posted the same link before, it generated a large number of responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383275)

_greim_ 12y ago

> But the essential starting point is empathy. This is great, but even if it's not true, you can approach the issue from a completely selfish, cold-hearted point of view and still arrive at similar conclusions. Poverty is a drain on every aspect of society. If we (the privileged) can figure out how to minimize it, think how much better a place the world would be for ourselves and our children. How much safer would the streets be, how much less tax money would be sucked into prisons, law enforcement, medicare, or various other forms of welfare, how many fewer broken families and unwanted children there would be to contend with.

frogpelt 12y ago

The message I get from these articles is if you have failed at life it wasn't because of your own decisions. What motivation is there to do any better? Because to me the real issue is if a person finds themselves in a less than ideal situation that they look for ways to improve rather than waiting on all of us to figure out how to change the system.

qu4z-2 12y ago
Sometimes you're so busy looking for ways to survive that improvement doesn't really even enter into it. Also, I'd imagine the whole "being poor sucks" would provide motivation to do better. Finally your embedded assumption that somehow being "motivated to do better" will fix the problem (ie it's their fault).

ASneakyFox 12y ago

What about the middle class thing where EVERYONE thinks they're middle class? If you ask some one who makes 30k they'll say they're middle class. If you ask some one who makes 130k they'll say the same thing.