Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
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Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#2I think this article is important and useful, but the title she chose is misleading. The content has absolutely nothing to do with higher education, or either correlative or causative connection to her employment with Instacart. Social mobility is an interesting research area, and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or worked menial jobs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...
Press coverage: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-...
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the_myth_destroying_america_...
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2...
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...
Original research / scholarly articles:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115...
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#3I think this article is important and useful, but the title she chose is misleading. The content has absolutely nothing to do with higher education, or either correlative or causative connection to her employment with Instacart. Social mobility is an interesting research area, and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or w…
Authors at media publications usually don't get to choose titles, so let's not assume she chose it. We'll use the subtitle for now (shortened to fit the limit). If anyone has a better idea, we can change it again.
By the way, we put this article in the second-chance pool (described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10705926 and the other links there) and removed the penalty normally applied to buzzfeed.com. We did that because on first glance, at least, it's far better than the median article in this category: it speaks substantively from first-hand experience.
This is also a category that tends to set off flamewars. Hopefully commenters will respond to the substance of the piece and that won't happen this time.
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#4[deleted]
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#5I think this article is important and useful, but the title she chose is misleading. The content has absolutely nothing to do with higher education, or either correlative or causative connection to her employment with Instacart. Social mobility is an interesting research area, and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or w…
Did people stop hiring plumbers? It's difficult in North America to become a millionaire, but it's pretty trivial to escape poverty.
What I often find is people would rather be poor than sell their skills to the highest bidder, eg. I know welders who refuse $60/hr jobs because they dislike the oil industry.
Or train for jobs that actually pay, like plumbing.
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#6TL;DR
Why is it a myth?
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#7[deleted]
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#8I think this article is important and useful, but the title she chose is misleading. The content has absolutely nothing to do with higher education, or either correlative or causative connection to her employment with Instacart. Social mobility is an interesting research area, and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or w…
and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or worked menial jobs
I don't know about easy, but I know from personal experience that it's possible, at least in some cases. I did it. And I saw other people do it.
And while it's not politically correct to say this, I firmly believe that a significant factor in whether (some) people escape their circumstances or not is simply desire and work ethic. Just to share an interesting anecdote... when I was in college, I had a friend who went to my same school. He didn't have a car, and the campus was about 12-15 miles from his home. Did he let that deter him? F%!# no... dude walked to school the days he couldn't get a ride. This guy had a burning passion to improve his life and he wasn't going to let something as trivial as lack of transportation stop him. Now, how many people are willing to commit to that level of effort to raise themselves up? I don't know, but my experience suggests that it's a pretty small percentage.
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#9TL;DR Why is it a myth?
Re: Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth
#10I find it amusing that one of Instacart's competitors, TaskRabbit, is currently blanketing the NYC subway system with ads that say "We do chores. You live life." The implication being, at least the way I read it, that they consider their workforce to be perhaps slightly less than human.