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Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

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Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#481

Post by CountDrewku »

gjulianm wrote: post #317
nexus_dave wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2019, immigrant entrepreneurs made up 21.7 percent of all business owners in the United States, despite making up just over 13.6 percent of the population and 17.1 percent of the U.S. labor force. As an immigrant I can assure you that my starting position was not that great. It is super sad to see the west being turned into an epicurean type world.

That statistic, by itself, is meaningless. Immigrants have almost double the poverty rate of US natives too. The point of the parent is not to say "you can't do anything to improve" but that, in general, starting conditions are the major factor deciding how much you can improve. Someone born in a poor family with hard access to education will need to work much more than others born in rich families to reach the same…

>That statistic, by itself, is meaningless. Immigrants have almost double the poverty rate of US natives too.

Most immigrants come to America desiring to improve their circumstances from what they dealt with in their home countries. This means they're coming in at a much lower standard than people who've been in the US their whole life. This would explain why they have a higher rate of poverty. It has nothing to do with America being uniquely bad at helping immigrants improve their lives. You don't immediately achieve a higher standard of living just by showing up somewhere. It takes time and work. In a few generations they will improve their circumstances. This is what has happened with every large immigrant population that has entered America (Italians, Jews, Irish, etc.)

Exactly what are immigrants not allowed that citizens born in the US are? I'm having a hard time understanding what opportunities they would need.

At some point in the past every one of those rich families had an individual who did something to achieve more than the average person. So, if you don't like it then it would seem that you're suggesting we just allow immigrants (or low class) people to skip that by giving them things? Now, that would mean that everyone gets raised up to a similar level again and we're back in the same position where all the average people feel they're not being treated fairly because they don't have what upper class people have. Eventually you end up in a scenario where the only way to even it out is to bring down the people that are outliers and have mad their way into the upper echelon of society.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#482

Post by lsiebert »

lsiebert wrote: post #478
fairity wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you measure social mobility and what does the data show? I don’t have time right now to grab the data, bu last time I looked, there was actually a surprising amount of movement between the various quintiles of wealth from one generation to the next. It’d be great if you included data that supports your claims.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...

And gini coefficient for 12 countries with a higher gini coefficient than the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#483

Post by clarkmoody »

CraneWorm wrote: post #143
esens wrote: post #37

Working hard but doing so for someone else can often not lead to significant gains. Many services like Uber or InstaCart or even McDonalds or Amazon Warehouse or Walmart or Retail Sales or call center, you can work hard but there is no where to progress to. Your rewards are capped. You need to find a way to work hard such that your rewards are not capped artificially. Startups were you get equity. Large companies whe…

Post-scarcity cannot come fast enough; the (external) need to work hard should just die in a fire.

The greatest kings of history had a worse standard of living than much of humanity has today. Certainly the average American has a vastly superior standard of living.

Think of things the ancients could only dream of that are available to most people in developed nations:

- Fast transportation

- Antibiotics

- Instant global communications

- All of human knowledge in your pocket

- Climate controlled buildings

- Access to the global supply chain for goods

Yet scarcity persists, and people want more because wants are relative.

A thousand years from now, people will be jealous of others who have an annual off-world holiday, a family jet, life-extension therapy... And even then, lots of people will work hard because they want to improve their standard of living.

As long an human minds remain bound to human bodies, then we are limited by the finite resources of the physical world.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#484

Post by kradroy »

esens wrote: post #37

Working hard but doing so for someone else can often not lead to significant gains. Many services like Uber or InstaCart or even McDonalds or Amazon Warehouse or Walmart or Retail Sales or call center, you can work hard but there is no where to progress to. Your rewards are capped. You need to find a way to work hard such that your rewards are not capped artificially. Startups were you get equity. Large companies whe…

This is a naive set of statements, even the ones without tone-deaf conditionals like "if you are able to rise" and "if you can get something better".

Here's a run-on reality of your statements.

"Startups were you get equity." ... that gets watered down and most of which goes to investors and founders, who will force a sale after 5-7 years when they get into a pinch and all you get is a $75k retention bonus that doesn't offset the opportunity cost of not having gone to work for an established company, if you're not let go after being acquired.

"Large companies where you can progress to high salaries if you are able to rise." ... based upon your ability to play politics and join the right factions, if you're the right skin color and social class and age group, and ignore that fact that by sticking around "to rise" you're limiting your salary increases that would come from jumping ship every 2-3 years, if you're in an area where there's a dense concentration of businesses that require your skillset.

"Starting your own business and being competent at it." ... which requires capital that a bank usually grants you in the form of a loan because your parents aren't rich, but if you're the wrong skin color or social class, you don't get that loan and your business ends up being mostly an expensive hobby because you're still working a 9-to-5 (or 2 part-time jobs) so that you don't starve and become homeless.

"Working on commissions in an area where the commissions can be large -- true sales, or real estate." ... where you discover that you simply can't pick up any high priced asset and sell it, because someone is doling out the leads while also taking a sizable cut of your commission despite you "working hard" to obtain it, especially if you're not the same skin color as and part of the in-group of the persons giving you the sales leads.

"Being a professional, e.g. doctor, accountant, lawyer, has traditionally had high wages and you often run your own business." ... that require years of specialized schooling during which you aren't earning much money and are likely going into massive 6-figure debt, because your parents aren't rich and are also in debt and then you hope and pray that you can overcome the various artificial hurdles that professional associations put in place to enforce scarcity and exclusivity and then after all the "hard work" you get to either join a company of professionals and play out one of the previously stated scenarios or try to start your own business, which require various forms of legally required insurance (malpractice, etc), acceptance into various trade networks, leasing an office.

It's not as simple as it seems.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#485

Post by esens »

driverdan wrote: post #334
esens wrote: post #37

Working hard but doing so for someone else can often not lead to significant gains. Many services like Uber or InstaCart or even McDonalds or Amazon Warehouse or Walmart or Retail Sales or call center, you can work hard but there is no where to progress to. Your rewards are capped. You need to find a way to work hard such that your rewards are not capped artificially. Startups were you get equity. Large companies whe…

You contradicted yourself. Many companies like McDonald's and Walmart promote from within. You can be successful at those companies by working hard and getting promotions.

Theoretically possible yes. But the pyramid is very very bottom heavy at McDonalds and Walmart where 90% of all employees make close to minimum wage. It would be better to start in corporate at Walmart and work your way up there, rather than to start as a restocker or cashier or warehouse worker -- all of which are at risk of being further automated.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#486

Post by j_walter »

ewmiller wrote: post #461
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately public schools in poor neighborhoods are getting shittier and parents need to pay for private tutors and summer school. Guess who can afford that? Education doesn't fall out of the sky.

That's very true. Widespread, high quality public education is a must.

It's not necessarily that the educators aren't high quality, but that the majority of students are there as a babysitting service and take up more time being disciplined than actually getting taught. We always say inner city schools have worse education...but I suspect it's more that the kids that attend those schools are disruptors and the system won't allow them to be disciplined in the way they should be (not that expelling them is the right thing either).

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#487

Post by ryandrake »

rawtxapp wrote: post #472
treis wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, this misses the point. How the fuck can Elon/Tesla buy bitcoin, do a pump and dump, and walk away with enough money to cover 300 lifetimes of me working. Or some kid in a basement that bought GME options gets to retire and not work a day in their life. Also the guy that VC gifted 6 figures (multiple years of me working) of equity just because he wanted more money from the acquisition. Watching people get a bunc…

> Watching people get a bunch of money over and over for no work starts to make you question things. You're ignoring risk. Do you feel the same way when people win lotteries? Because everybody has access to Robinhood, so nothing is stopping you from gambling on penny stocks or random crypto and you just might get retirement money or lose it all.

There is something very wrong with a society where a major driver of success and wealth is risk taking and gambling, in its various forms.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#489

Post by j_walter »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #449
ewmiller wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> valuing education means people succeed. So why didn't the parents succeed then? Picture a first-generation immigrant family in America where the parents are older, don't speak English very well, and spend almost all their time working multiple jobs to pay bills and provide food and shelter for their kids. They then push their kids to do well in school because they know it's practically too late for themselves, but…

Unfortunately public schools in poor neighborhoods are getting shittier and parents need to pay for private tutors and summer school. Guess who can afford that? Education doesn't fall out of the sky.

If parents value education they don't need to pay for tutors or summer school. I grew up in district with shitty schools, but I saw some kids succeed only because they learned stuff on their own.

Those schools aren't necessarily shittier...they are filled with kids that don't want to learn (and their parents increasingly blame the teachers for their failure).

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#490

Post by antiterra »

ed_balls wrote: post #407
wishigotitfree wrote: post #25

Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn't BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success sto…

To play devil's advocate: Rich kids are doing cocaine in Ferraris. It's the poor kids that make stuff happen. > Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. That could be true for USA where the mobility reached…

There’s a level of wealth that is below ‘lambo for kids’ that still provides a vastly different life experience than ‘occasionally have to hock something to keep the lights on.’

There’s also wealth that manifests itself as parents investing in their kid’s startups and providing social access to other elites.

Also, I was acquainted with a high school kid who had a supercar. He also was subjected to domestic violence, which curbed the majority of envy I had for his situation.

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