Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

There's a lot out there spinning the same result different ways; but I think that's the general status -- social mobility hasn't changed in the US for decades.

There's rather clearer data that the gap between rich & poor continues to widen in the US, which makes it a bit more bleak that going from poor to rich is still a rough uphill battle.

It's also fairly disheartening when you think of all the things that have changed in the past 50 years, many efforts that should help social mobility. Attempting to stop pervasive lead poisoning, lots of grants and policies to help get poor kids through basic and into higher education, legal and other sorts of efforts against sexism and racism... all kinds of things intended to hopefully make the playing ground more fair for everyone haven't actually moved this particular needle at all.

For a bit more context, also look outside of the US. If you want to live the American dream, you'll have a much better chance in Denmark. Reference here (though I read about it elsewhere a few years ago... can't remember orig src): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...

Of the 9 developed countries in that study, only the UK ranked worse than the US.

This entire thread is the most amazing Rorsach test, on the basis of the flimsiest data. Many of the points made in the comments may be true, but it's a disappointing for a HN thread to have so much impassioned comment but so little critical analysis of the underlying data.

The first issue worth noting is that the definition of 'employed'(not discussed in the article or the original paper) vs self-employed incorporated vs self-employed non-incorporated are based on self-reporting from the census [5]:

"CURRENT OR MOST RECENT JOB ACTIVITY. Describe clearly this person’s chief job activity or business last week. If this person had more than one job, describe the one at which this person worked the most hours. If this person had no job or business last week, give information for his/her last job or business.

Mark (X) ONE box. - an employee of a PRIVATE FOR-PROFIT company or business, or of an individual, for wages, salary, or commissions? ... several other answers elided... - SELF-EMPLOYED in own INCORPORATED business, professional practice, or farm? - SELF-EMPLOYED in own INCORPORATED business, professional practice, or farm?"

So if you are getting a salary from your startup, do you think there might be some ambiguity about which one you tick? If you are working at company A, but working on your startup on evenings and weekends, you would mark 'employed' if you followed the instructions.

Once you understand where the data came from, you might not infer the same meaning to the underlying paper, whose abstract is here: "We disaggregate the self-employed into incorporated and unincorporated to distinguish between "entrepreneurs" and other business owners. We show that the incorporated self-employed and their businesses engage in activities that demand comparatively strong nonroutine cognitive abilities, while the unincorporated and their firms perform tasks demanding relatively strong manual skills. The incorporated self-employed have distinct cognitive and noncognitive traits. Besides tending to be white, male, and come from higher-income families, the incorporated—as teenagers—typically scored higher on learning aptitude tests, had greater self-esteem, and engaged in more disruptive, illicit activities. The combination of "smart" and "illicit" tendencies as youths accounts for both entry into entrepreneurship and the comparative earnings of entrepreneurs. In contrast to past research, we find that entrepreneurs earn much more per hour than their salaried and unincorporated counterparts."

So they are using 'incorporated' as a proxy for entrepreneur, by comparing them with 'unincorporated self employed'. Let's see if that makes sense, and if their 'entrepreneur' is the same as what we might call a 'startup founder':

- The ratio of unincorporated to incorporated is 2:1 (approx 10 million vs 5 million in 2009 [1])

- The SBA says 600,000 new ventures are started each year (that they know about) [2]

- There are around 70000 angel deals in one year (2013) [3]

- There are about 4000 venture deals in one year (2014) [4]

We can probably agree that the angel and venture deals are 'real' startup entrepreneurs. Some small indeterminate proportion of the incorporated and unincorporated self-employed probably are too. However, doesn't it seem a little silly to analyze the 5 million incorporated self-employed vs the 10 million non-incorporated self-employed, and assume it's telling you anything about start-up entrepreneurs ?

[1] http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2010/09/art2full.pdf

[2] https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf

[3] http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/data/Documents/Resour...

[4] http://nvca.org/?ddownload=1868 (2015 NVCA Yearbook)

[5] http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/methodology/ques...

Edited to fix formatting issues

>But claiming someone has privilege isn't a value judgement on the person, or a sin...Saying someone has privilege is just pointing out the state of the world, it isn't a judgment.

That is exactly the same argument that bigots use when they talk about {minorities, poor people, immigrants, LGBT people}. "That person fits into category X, and everyone in category X shares some characteristic Y because they're in that category. I'm just saying that because it's true!" It doesn't matter who that generalization is made about, whether they're the dominant group in society or not. It's still a terrible generalization and an intellectually lazy argument and in and of itself carries a judgement. If you grant that something like "white privilege" or "male privilege" exists (and most people that buy into the concept do) then by that logic a homeless, illiterate white man has more privilege than a black woman millionaire CEO.

>People without food allergies have privilege in that they don't have to constantly worry whether what they eat will kill them.

That's absolute nonsense as well. There exist people without food allergies that have other conditions where they constantly have to worry about what they eat, diabetes being an example. So check your cis-gylcemic privilege you fascist!/s Do you see how ridiculous and divisive that sounds?

In some ways it's good, but in other ways it's worse. One noteworthy change in the last few years compared to say 10 to 20 years ago, most startups are either self-funded or funded through incubators of the already rich, unlike pre-2005 or so when regular investors had a chance getting in relatively close to the ground floor (let's ignore that most everyone lost their shirt!)

I think the negative of this is that most of the wealth created in the technology is going to remain in the pockets of those who are already rich and well connected.

I'm increasingly feeling like as our society becomes more technically advanced, it's almost inevitable that the vast majority of wealth is going to flow up to the top 10%.