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Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

economist.com

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Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#371

Post by Swizec »

defaultprimate wrote: post #370
Swizec wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you don't know enough about how well, for example, African and central Asian refugees or immigrants do in a single generation. In a generation? I moved here from Europe and within ~6 years accumulated as much wealth as my parents did in a lifetime. The American dream is still alive and kicking for many if not most immigrants. But my american friends have a fun joke they like to say: "Wow look at that immigrant…

I'm so happy to hear of your success! Unfortunately not enough people will give you the credit you deserve because you didn't come from a "bad" place.

I mean … does it count if there was a (short) civil war when I was 4? Or that my country went from communist dictatorship to EU member in the first 17 years of my life?

“Bad” is extremely relative. Some of my good friends were actively getting bombed by USA just 600km south of my city when I was in high school. That’s like living in SF with an active warzone in LA, if they were in different countries ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#372

Post by WalterBright »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #367
WalterBright wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, for example, all those news stories about DACA immigrants are fake news? "With the granting of work authorization and the imminent threat of deportation removed, DACA recipients have experienced pronounced upward mobility in their socioeconomic status." https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/deferred...

I think most people recognize that a life growing up in the USA followed by the legal right to work and live here is a fairly huge step up in socioeconomic status from where most DACA-covered folk would have been had they not come to the USA. But TFA was about socioeonomic mobility within the USA, not comparisons with Mexico, Peru or Bolivia. The success of a specific subgroup [0] of undocumented immigrants at moving…

I'm not refuting the TFA. I am refuting the notion that people in American cannot move upwards. There is no group more disadvantaged than immigrants, who arrive with nothing, have no support structure, are discriminated against, and often don't even know the language. Yet they can and do succeed, as the DACA cohort shows.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#373

Post by analog31 »

rpmisms wrote: post #332
anonfornoreason wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are moving the goalpost here. good luck finding a job paying well that's not a trade or a technical job requiring a college degree. grew up blue collar, still spend plenty of time with blue collar folks. just like there are fat unhealthy desk workers, there are beaten up tradesmen who didn't take care of their bodies. there are also healthy examples of both. finally, these are required jobs that make our society…

Out of curiosity, would you consider programming a trade? I'm a degreeless developer, and I definitely treat my work like trade work.

Ultimately, "trade" is defined by social custom. Another term is "profession." It probably makes more sense to look at how different occupations are trained. Some training is defined by licensure requirements, possibly union standards, and so forth. The duration of training varies by occupation, e.g., medicine takes longer than truck driving. Some training occurs in a college setting, such as medicine and nursing. Some is provided by local or regional trade schools, or by the military.

An interesting thing about programming is that we still haven't reached a consensus on what kind of training is needed. So we can say it's a trade, profession, or whatever, but that doesn't tell us anything useful about it.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#374

Post by DarylZero »

Jensson wrote: post #363
DarylZero wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to historian André Castelo, on one particular occasion, [Napoleon's] cuisiniers roasted no fewer than 23 chickens in close succession (Napoleon couldn’t possibly dine on reheated food) until the emperor finally deigned to put his quill down and spare a few minutes for his meal.

Having lots of raw resources doesn't mean you had high quality end products. Also Napoleon wasn't a medieval king, the medieval ages ended 500 years ago, things were much better 200 years ago when Napoleon lived. When I lived on the minimum my government allows I could still buy higher quality raw ingredients than kings had access to 500 years ago and cook my own meals that are higher quality than was possible back t…

Why the hell would you think your raw ingredients were higher quality than a KING's?

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#375

Post by Thorrez »

DarylZero wrote: post #352
Thorrez wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the water cold? Filtered well? Yes, food and drink was probably better for them, because technology related to those can be replaced by manpower. For air conditioning, healthcare, lighting, or travel they had problems. > How do you get your water? I takes me a few seconds to get cold, pure water from my fridge. The bigger benefit of running water I think is hygiene. I doubt they would have a hot shower. A hot bat…

Hot baths without running water were available to ordinary people. They would boil water on a stove and put it into the bathtub. The big problem with your argument here is that it's special pleading. You just focus on some technologies that weren't available then. You don't even make an attempt to show that these very few specific things somehow dominate "lifestyle." I think having full service everything, and no lab…

>Hot baths without running water were available to ordinary people.

Everyone once in a while, yes, but not for everyday people.[1]

>"lifestyle."

You're right, it does depend on the definition of lifestyle. Some people consider travel to be central to a fancy lifestyle, and that would be hard in the past.

>no labor obligations

Most people on HN likely have no physical labor obligations from employment. We have cushy programming jobs, and many can afford to eat out/order delivery every day and hire a cleaning and laundry service. I can get anywhere nearby in a fast and comfy car, not having to deal with a slow, bumpy, drafty, horse-smelling carriage. I don't even have to walk up stairs, I can take an elevator.

The king has the responsibility of running a kingdom. That sounds pretty stressful to me, much more so that my programming job.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-often-did-people-in-the-Middle-Age...

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#376

Post by WalterBright »

DarylZero wrote: post #348
WalterBright wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you do with the savings makes all the difference. For example, you could invest it to upgrade your job skills, making for a much higher income level. Investing it at the current negative 4% or so is not much better than setting it on fire.

But I would just say the same thing. The differences in income inequality are going to completely swamp any such effect from differences in spending. Maybe paying for college is an exception to the rule -- only because of all the grants, scholarships, loans, and income-based tuition.

Plumbing, welding, etc., are very well paying trades one can train for. College is hardly the only path to leveraging oneself into a more lucrative career.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#377

Post by piafraus »

fourtrees wrote: post #181
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, wars were fought over that and revolutions had. People decidedly did not like royalty, large so-wealthy-it's-hard-to-achieve groups, being so far above them. For a while, people much preferred knowing they could work hard or smart and make progress from the bottom to the top 20%. We're talking about the top 20% here. Not the top 0.1%.

This is one of my big take-aways from the article. My great-(great?-)-grandparents from Eastern Europe armed with nothing but excellent numeracy, some English, and the clothes on their backs. They could reliably expect to enter move out of post-immigration poverty based on skills cultivated for the purpose of success in the US. My great-x-grandfather ended up a bank manager. And they passed money and knowledge along…

> But that sort of outcome seems almost impossible in America today due to more factors than I could probably name especially at this hour.

Replace numeracy with programming and it happens right and left. We came from Eastern Europe with barely enough money to rent for a few months. Now we are in top percentile of earners in US. And have lot's of friends with a similar story.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#378

Post by _dark_matter_ »

tdfx wrote: post #358
_dark_matter_ wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link clearly shows that poverty is significantly worse along black people than white (19% to 8.5%), and worse among American Indians than black people (25% to 19%). I don't understand why you would ever look at this in per Capita terms when clearly there are more white people overall.

Then go back and read what I replied to instead of what you wanted to think I was saying. The original poster stated "white and asian people don't have this problem" but the numbers show this clearly is not true.

hmm, I did, a few times. I don't see that quote in the parent. They do say that white and Asian people have more opportunity which these numbers clearly confirm.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#379

Post by DarylZero »

WalterBright wrote: post #376
DarylZero wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I would just say the same thing. The differences in income inequality are going to completely swamp any such effect from differences in spending. Maybe paying for college is an exception to the rule -- only because of all the grants, scholarships, loans, and income-based tuition.

Plumbing, welding, etc., are very well paying trades one can train for. College is hardly the only path to leveraging oneself into a more lucrative career.

I wasn't saying college was the only path. I was saying it's the only place where the amount of money you SPEND on "leveraging yourself" isn't broadly determined by your income.

Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country

#380

Post by defaultprimate »

Swizec wrote: post #371
defaultprimate wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so happy to hear of your success! Unfortunately not enough people will give you the credit you deserve because you didn't come from a "bad" place.

I mean … does it count if there was a (short) civil war when I was 4? Or that my country went from communist dictatorship to EU member in the first 17 years of my life? “Bad” is extremely relative. Some of my good friends were actively getting bombed by USA just 600km south of my city when I was in high school. That’s like living in SF with an active warzone in LA, if they were in different countries ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To me, absolutely. To people of a different political persuasion, it's dependent on the color of your skin and how many political points can be scored on the basis of your relative suffering compared to those that are not coming from predominantly "white, European" countries (regardless of how white they may actually be), not the facts of your circumstance.

The plight of a progressive Nigerian immigrant whose family was extremely wealthy prior to immigration is worth more than your story in today's climate.

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