Main takeaway is that upward social mobility in all of these countries is extremely, dangerously high to the point of making society hardly functional at all. It should be extremely hard to get from bottom to the top, or people who are at the top will not care about things in society for the long term - coz why if their children will most probably be poor again anyway? And they are those who actually make decisions.
Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
241–250 of 391 posts
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even beyond that, interpreting financial mobility is a tricky thing. For example, countries that have had high levels of meritocracy in the past may exhibit less financial mobility because people are already sorted into their merited economic brackets.
How can "merited economic brackets" span generations?
Genes. Of course people like you don't believe in genes, but it explains most things we see here. It is really hard to make poor people successful even if you give them resources, a top 10% childhood is extremely cheap compared to how much society derives from those, if it was that easy then Governments would already mass produce those.
70 years ago college was only for the elite. Today close to half of young adults go to college. Yet that didn't fix anything.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#243Archived: https://archive.ph/EsTD4
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, as a european, I don't really understand all this fuss about exceptionalism, being the biggest economy in the world, having the highest amount of billionaires in the world, etc. I know that it is all a big deal in US and the Americans I speak with every now and then all proudly always talk that greatness, but I would just care about being able to live a life with dignity with socialised services, govern…
What do you think about mega corps in Europe? VW, Siemens, etc? I was just trying to get some perspective, so thanks! I’d like US to adopt some of the EU bits but without losing the entrepreneural drive and atmosphere. I believe some of them are mutually-exclusive. Also worth noting corporate policies in EU: > Sometimes European integration is a byproduct of American policy. Stubbornly national elements of policymaki…
I am not sure what to think about those mega corps, my idea is that they exist, but their relationship with their workers is subject to the oversight of governments regulations and the relationship they have with the forming unions, etc.
I think their workers have a month of paid time off? The ability to have sick days without receiving them from coworkers? The ability to access socialised health care when they need it without going bankrupt? Paternity and maternity leave which might be nice or not depending on the union country in this case, for Siemens and VW in Germany I guess they have a lot of time off, as Italian I believe Italy doesn't have a good law on paternity leave, but that's improving afaik
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I think as a system EU is good for being working class, but to be honest in the past few years I've met some cases where I was not happy, I have lived in Germany for few years and I left because the last company I was working with fired 5 people who were trying to set up a worker's union, and my last boss in Netherlands was too self-centric on the way he built his startup, so on his exit he bought a big villa with swimming pool, a new tesla, but of the marketing guy who grew the company 150% YoY for the last 3 years, backend developers and frontend developers, CS, no one got anything
While a friend's company who exit being sold to a US corp, gave even 3k to people who were interns for less than 6 months, and people working there longer got even bigger perks.
So I think bigger companies are more regulated compared to smaller ones, so I am not worried about them, some smaller ones have owners appear to have a big ego and greed drive, which is something I would like to improve in seeing beforehand
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#245Social 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. 'T…
>>>I think that's true for White and Asian folks.
I think it's true for people from households that stress STEM, the utility of higher education, and asset management. My mother grew up in North Philadelphia, graduated from an HBCU with a Math degree at age 20, and was making six figures in the early 2000s as a Software Architect/Project Manager, after a brief stint running a small consulting firm. My father grew up in a poor area of Virginia, worked as an engineer (BS Math, MS Space Engineering) and then went to medical school at the age of 35 to became a radiologist. Both grew up during the Civil Rights Movement.
In comparison, my Japanese wife, from a blue-collar family of school teachers, is completely baffled at the idea of entrepreneurship, financial independence, real estate income, etc... She looks at my ~$95k salary and thinks "You make as much as a Japanese school principal, you're at the top." I look at it and think I'm behind the power curve for a 39yo with a STEM Masters degree, and behind the power curve in accumulated assets based on my assessment of long-term freedom, risk mitigation, and how I want to spend my time.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, as a european, I don't really understand all this fuss about exceptionalism, being the biggest economy in the world, having the highest amount of billionaires in the world, etc. I know that it is all a big deal in US and the Americans I speak with every now and then all proudly always talk that greatness, but I would just care about being able to live a life with dignity with socialised services, govern…
What do you think about mega corps in Europe? VW, Siemens, etc? I was just trying to get some perspective, so thanks! I’d like US to adopt some of the EU bits but without losing the entrepreneural drive and atmosphere. I believe some of them are mutually-exclusive. Also worth noting corporate policies in EU: > Sometimes European integration is a byproduct of American policy. Stubbornly national elements of policymaki…
Another thing I wanted to say is that when I was in Berlin I lived with an American European history/philosophy scholar for a while, and as far as I understood is that US has always been a working class supportive country up to a certain point after the WW2, so I am not surprised to learn that EU is a product of US, I think a lot of working class rights come from policies that originated in US, I just think that at a certain point US diverted from shared wealth and started caring too much about single people wealth
EDIT: So I think you shouldn't take anything from working culture, I think you guys should just go back to where you were a while ago
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To be fair, #5 is kind of trolling. Taxes are not 'charity'. The point of #5 is that in a number of other countries, people believe that taxes should pay for the social services required by the unfortunate, the sick, the indigent, and so forth. Charity plays a minor role, because it is the job of the state to take care of its citizens.
There are always needs that go far beyond what the government will and should pay for. Social justice, animal shelters, basic needs for foreign citizens etc..
Sure, and that's all that charity covers in countries that believe that taxation should cover the rest.
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can "merited economic brackets" span generations?
Genes. Of course people like you don't believe in genes, but it explains most things we see here. It is really hard to make poor people successful even if you give them resources, a top 10% childhood is extremely cheap compared to how much society derives from those, if it was that easy then Governments would already mass produce those. 70 years ago college was only for the elite. Today close to half of young adults…
What's a "person like me" ? What do I believe? Or not believe?
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think his definition of working class is perhaps different to the definition in your study. It's one of those terms that are loosely defined (at least in certain societies) and mean very different things to different people. Is an electrician earning US$80k/year middle class because he's well compensated for his work, or working class because he's doing manual labour?
The phrase "Family Values" is pretty vague, too. I'm sure if you asked almost everyone who is in a family whether they felt they had family values they'd say yes. I'm not really sure what someone means when they say an area has "family values". I don't think it means lack of divorce. In the 90s, I remember "family values" having been used by politicians as a polite euphemism for the very narrow "straight, Christian,…
>I don't think it means lack of divorce.
I'd definitely view a lack of divorce as a pretty big part of it.
But as you said, it's entirely personal and subjective. :)
Re: Americans overestimate social mobility in their country
#250Again, 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…
I read about another study relatively recently (maybe it was HN? Not sure.) that talked about some of the fundamental flaws when looking at these types of economic mobility studies (i.e. change of moving from bottom quintile to top quintile, etc.) because they usually only look at income and ignore social class . That is, suppose Bob is a rich banker. His kid Frank goes to private school and on to an Ivy League colle…
It’s easy to choose the artist life if your parents can bail you out when shit happens.
A little harder if you’re expected to be the bail out for your parents.