New research suggests that social mobility in America may be more limited

So, success == wealth? That's quite a myopic view, IMO.

The irony of WashPo publishing this article when Bezos has been under fire for near-servitude conditions in AMZN facilities for years, is palpable.

It's common sense that certain people are predisposed to learning certain fields quickly, especially given a family tradition.

I mean, consider a family where the husband is a carpenter. Then, one day his son decides that he's going to be a carpenter, but his dad has retired so he find another carpenter to apprentice under. That very same day, the carpenter actually hires another apprentice from a family of bankers. Which apprentice would be MOST LIKELY to become the superior apprentice, learn quicker than the other one, complete more satisfactory work, etc?

Multiply that by a hundred years or so, thousands of industries, millions of families, and there it is. Maybe the banker-family-apprentice has a knack for it, and becomes a carpenter one day. If he sticks with it long enough, surely he'll figure the work out. That's what mobility is all about anyways, being able to adapt to new circumstances.

I don't really buy in to this idea that there's shame in coming from a family that has done well. Now, this is from someone (me) who comes from a "family" that has done very poorly, and I've done sorta kinda good. The banker-apprentice has as much chance and opportunity to become a carpenter as the other one, since they were both chosen in the first place.

Knowledge isn't some heirarchical weapon that only the privileged elite can obtain.

"– such as financial resources, personal connections, or knowledge about how Wall Street works from her grandfather – that make it easier for her to become a banker than it is for the average kid."

What about the library? The NYPL SIBL has an entire section of FREE textbooks. You want to learn about Wall St? Free. You want to take the series 7? Free. You want to take the series 66? Free.

The phrasing of "surrendering a larger income to write poetry" or whatever it was, is some sort of prose gymnastics that I think is trying to imply that people are "destined" to become poets, and that there's some boogieman to point the finger at and scream about inequality. If you wanna get rich, maybe you should think twice about writing poems. If you want to create art and have some sort of impact on the social sphere, maybe you should think twice about sacrificing your life for FINRA's sick amusement, - I mean premiere regulatory excellence.

Anyways, this was an OK article. I chuckle whenever I see WashPo trying this pandering to try and convince ambitionless people it's the rest of the world's fault, somehow.

This phenomena (that children are not statistically independent of their grandparents even when controlling for parents) has already been found to be robustly true in Europe and some eastern countries. Gregory Clark wrote a book on it that was widely discussed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_(book)

The point is that families transmit something across multiple (> 5 generations) that's responsible for strong persistent effects on economic success, and it's almost certainly not money (which can be measured and decays faster).

How can the OP author honestly suggest conclusions about what this means for America without contrasting with Europe, and the known hypotheses? Indeed, Clark argues that multi-generational economic mobility is remarkably constant across vastly different political and economic systems.

In a rich country, that's a very easy thing to say.

In most of the world and most of human history, success definitely equates to wealth, because the poor are permanently one bad harvest away from starvation. Wealth is the only road towards securing safety for you and your progeny.

Even today in the US, wealth might not imply success, but when unexpected bad things happen, money is the best safety net.

Admittedly this might be one of the white lies I tell myself in order to stomach American political discourse. Good catch.