Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 391 posts

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#81

Post by throwaway0a5e »

booleandilemma wrote: post #31
rpmisms wrote: post #23

Social mobility is very different than economic mobility. It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. Heck, I did it without any college. Social mobility is a different story. I was raised in a rural area, which is essentially a social class of its own. Since becoming an adult, I've found myself gravitating towards working-class people. I like the blu…

Is six figures really that much any more? I’m talking about 1xx,xxx, which is what most people mean when they say six figures. If you’re living in a place like New York, California, or even say, Jersey, what does a low 6 figures really get you?

>what does a low 6 figures really get you?

A house 50min (but not in a nice neighborhood, thank fucking god, I don't want to live among "nice people") from Boston and not generally having to worry about money (i.e. I'm not house poor in the slightest).

Though I did buy a couple years before 'rona and the inflation so I probably would be renting today.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#82

Post by sumedh »

echelon wrote: post #8

America is being attacked by pervasive narratives like this. News rags the whole world over are shitting on us, meanwhile authoritarian regimes are rising to power. It's a narrative dismantling, and we're being played like fools. America is still the best country in the world to start a business and take risks. America still has more freedoms (speech especially) than most of the world. (Side note: The left wants to p…

> meanwhile authoritarian regimes are rising to power.

like what an authoritarian tried to do on Jan 6?

> We need more unity.

yes but how do you unite a deeply divided nation?

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#83

Post by rpmisms »

mitigating wrote: post #64
rpmisms wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm telling an anecdotal story, and in my area the working class is very Catholic, black, or both. YMMV, not valid in California.

California has one of the lowest divorce rates in the entire country https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with...

California is ~1 point below the national average in marriages and divorces. By comparison, Maine is 4 points over the marriage average and 3 points under the divorce average.

I should have remembered my audience and not made a joke about California's differences from the rest of the country.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/12/united-states...

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#84

Post by jollybean »

rpmisms wrote: post #23

Social mobility is very different than economic mobility. It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. Heck, I did it without any college. Social mobility is a different story. I was raised in a rural area, which is essentially a social class of its own. Since becoming an adult, I've found myself gravitating towards working-class people. I like the blu…

"t's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field."

I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

But the thing about America is that it has two, giant categories of people in a 'different lane' - notably those in poor Black urban neighbourhoods, and new Latino migrants particularly in Texas/Cali where they are highly segregated from the rest of society.

'Technically' you might argue they have that opportunity, but it's not really the case if they live in a situation wherein that reality has never dawned upon them, and their entire life context is skewed towards something else.

My distant cousin married a Latino man, their daughter was 17 and was making 'big money' helping her mother at the cleaning service. And by 'big money' I mean 'some money' for a kind of poor family, a 17 year old with any cash at all was living large. She had absolutely zero concept or aspiration of going to college, nobody she knew did that and was really keen on working, because it made her money and wasn't even keen on finishing high school.

The 'cultural gaps' between these communities are gigantic, it's like being in a different country.

America probably is 'technically the most open' but pragmatically, it's not the case.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#85

Post by thomasahle »

refurb wrote: post #58

Again, it's highly problematic defining mobility as "moving from bottom quintile to top quintile". - Moving from bottom quintile to 2nd highest is significant mobility and completely ignored in this analysis. - The analysis ignores the fact that the highest quintile in the US is higher in absolute terms than other countries. So moving from bottom to 4th may give more income than bottom to 5th in other countries. - Th…

The story is not so much about the US's (low) social mobility, but about how Americans perceive it. The effect of "Americans are much more optimistic about social mobility" seems to be the same if you look at other measures, like "Probability of remaining in the bottom quintile". (Except Q2 -> Q1 mobility, which Americans seem more pessimistic about for some reason.)

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#86

Post by lifeformed »

rpmisms wrote: post #23

Social mobility is very different than economic mobility. It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. Heck, I did it without any college. Social mobility is a different story. I was raised in a rural area, which is essentially a social class of its own. Since becoming an adult, I've found myself gravitating towards working-class people. I like the blu…

> It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field.

That's if you also had a healthy learning environment at school and home, can afford college, and have a healthy early development to be able to grow up into an sufficiently smart child. A lot of people in the bottom 20% don't have those initial conditions.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#87

Post by syki »

Railsify wrote: post #77
refurb wrote: post #58

Again, it's highly problematic defining mobility as "moving from bottom quintile to top quintile". - Moving from bottom quintile to 2nd highest is significant mobility and completely ignored in this analysis. - The analysis ignores the fact that the highest quintile in the US is higher in absolute terms than other countries. So moving from bottom to 4th may give more income than bottom to 5th in other countries. - Th…

Thank you. The article is using statistics to lie.

Read the actual study. The people who did the study are knowledgeable about the topic. If a non expert can think of a problem with the paper after a few moments of thinking about it then it is highly likely that person’s objections are not valid and are accounted for in the study.

A person should not read the study or the article and think, “The reason this is nonsense is X.” Rather the thought should be, “I wonder how the study accounts for X.”

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#88

Post by [deleted] »

Swizec wrote: post #60
rpmisms wrote: post #23

Social mobility is very different than economic mobility. It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. Heck, I did it without any college. Social mobility is a different story. I was raised in a rural area, which is essentially a social class of its own. Since becoming an adult, I've found myself gravitating towards working-class people. I like the blu…

A few lessons for social mobility I learned while joining the SF techie class, coming here from a relatively poor country in Europe. 1. If Americans can’t read your emotes they put you in a “Uh this feels weird, that person is an emotionless robot” camp. You have to practice 2. It is not okay to ask “What’s that?” when someone proudly mentions which college they went to (because as a European you only recognize 4 or…

[deleted]

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#89

Post by notacoward »

twoodfin wrote: post #43
notacoward wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a wider income range ...and that's why such comparisons should be done using percentiles instead of absolute values. Which they did. > The conclusion of the article is in part a reflection of the methodology. The biggest methodological flaw points in quite a different direction than you seem to be suggesting. Change in percentile across the income distribution is less informative than change in percentile a…

Absolute is what matters. If 80% of your society is earning between $60k and $90k, a quintile jump around the middle is small compared to a similar shift in a $40k to $180k society. Relative mobility doesn’t buy you a vacation home.

> Absolute is what matters.

Only from a purely acquisitive standpoint, but not with respect to social mobility which is the subject here. Also, study after study has shown that life satisfaction is more highly correlated with relative income or wealth than absolute. If we want to use science instead of personal preference to determine what matters, you're flatly wrong.

> If 80% of your society is earning between $60k and $90K

Why choose such an unrealistic example when a real one is right there? Seems suspect TBH. The real distribution is nowhere near as tightly clustered around the median, and is quite asymmetric with a much longer tail at the high end. Also, why only consider changes in the middle? A small percentile difference at either end can have a much larger effect on quality of life.

> Relative mobility doesn’t buy you a vacation home.

The difference between second and fourth quintile actually does mean something like that, and does so regardless of prices or inflation. Absolute values are the ones that become meaningless without the context of prices in a particular time and place. The house I'm sitting in right now as I write this (vs. the dumps I grew up in) is a pretty good testament to the difference between first and fifth quintile, but the price of the house doesn't matter a damn bit.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#90

Post by bogota »

fartcannon wrote: post #72
999900000999 wrote: post #57

Social mobility is a very tricky thing. I think every person can succeed as long as they have the courage to cut off people who are counterproductive to that. For example, when I look at my own parents, they're simply self-destructive people who never took responsibility for any of their actions. Whenever I've needed to depend on anyone in my family. I've ultimately been let down, but when it comes to my own efforts.…

It's also not possible for everyone to succeed since it's a zero sum game. Therefore, you should be thanking the people who's life circumstances prevent them from learning to succeed and doubly you should thank your parents for raising you in a way that you were able to surpass them.

How is it a zero sum game? I see this said a lot here without any proof? It this just taken as true and no proof is needed?
Post reply on HN