
Raj Chetty’s American Dream - johnny313
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/raj-chettys-american-dream/592804/
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User23
This is just yet another demographic map of the United States that happens to
be using an extremely high quality data set.

If anyone wonders why Raj Chetty can't seem to reach the obvious conclusions
the data points to, it's because his job and reputation depends on him not
doing so. So instead the work has absolutely no explanatory power and just
suggests relocating poor performing people to good performing zip codes. Why
that won't reduce inequality is left as an exercise for the reader.

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I'm criticizing because this supposed solution
will be harmful to everyone. I want to improve outcomes for those who are
doing poorly, this just won't do that.

~~~
bassman9000
And the premise may be wrong altogether

[https://www.aei.org/publication/a-new-fed-report-suggests-
am...](https://www.aei.org/publication/a-new-fed-report-suggests-american-
upward-mobility-is-better-than-you-think/)

 _Measuring real growth properly is useful for addressing a host of questions.
For example, existing studies use measured inflation to calculate the real
income of children relative to their parents. Chetty et al. (2017) find that
50% of children born in 1984 achieved higher incomes than their parents at age
30. Adjusting for missing growth would raise the real income of children about
17% relative to their parents, increasing the fraction of those who do better
than their parents by a meaningful amount. Thus, to the extent that inflation
is overstated due to imputed values, a larger fraction of children appear to
be better off economically than their parents. This improvement in economic
welfare can shine a bit more positive light on current conditions, despite the
gloom of slower productivity growth._

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bin0
First, this was too long. Well-done journalism does not have to be a tome unto
itself; vignettes of his daughter the ballerina add little to the story
besides acting as padding.

Secondly, I don't get this part. From the article:

> In the 1940s, the city built Independence Boulevard, a four-lane highway
> that cut through the heart of its Brooklyn neighborhood, dividing and
> displacing a thriving working-class black community. The damage continued in
> the ’60s and ’70s with new interstates.

I don't get this part. I thought red-lining and confining blacks to ghettos
was the problem? Wouldn't building an interstate mean more commerce and more
prosperity?

~~~
Frondo
The interstate highway system cut neighborhoods in half and let people drive
right through them. it didn't bring people to them -- better local
infrastructure would do that and that's been systematically underfunded for
decades.

~~~
bin0
I get where you're coming from, but I'm not sure this was malicious. First,
you could have driven around, which is probably what people did. More
importantly, this happened all over with the interstate system; old railroad
towns had their last gasp and newer highway towns replaced them. Finally,
interstate is federal, so blame them if any one.

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mdorazio
The gist of this seems to be "take poor families and give them assistance to
move to neighborhoods with statistically higher opportunities". Which to me
seems a little bit weird if taken to a broader extent - would that not lower
the opportunity rates of the moved-to neighborhoods and potentially make the
moved-from areas even worse off?

~~~
scottlocklin
Chetty is regressing against the wrong thing, which is pretty typical for
economists, who mostly seem to be political ideologues armed with least
squares fitting and dumb models.

He's basically suggesting school busing on a societal level, and we all know
how well that turned out.

~~~
sfkdjf9j3j
What do you mean by, "we all know how that turned out"?

~~~
HarryHirsch
Wikipedia has an article on busing in Boston:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_desegregation_busing_cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_desegregation_busing_crisis)

It was a boon for politicians on either side. The right could say "look, it
isn't working", and the left could say "we tried".

------
codingslave
Going to get downvoted for this, but:

As time (t) => infinity, social mobility => 0 in any society that has a highly
mobile social system.

Those who are inherently predisposed to wealth and power and up in positions
of wealth and power, and so do their children. As time goes on, the randomness
of poor life environments gets washed out, and peoples children end up where
they should (in the destiny sense). If we acknowledge that evolution is a real
thing, then we should acknowledge that abilities and skill sets for moving up
in society are genetic. Believeing in evolution without believing that peoples
personalities and abilities are predetermined is illogical and nonsensical. We
can keep playing the shell game of why things might be the opposite, but to me
it seems really silly. Let's all run around concocting all sorts of theories
about society and societal structure to hide the inconvenient and humiliating
truth.

In saying this, I am saying nothing about welfare, who should get it and why,
because I do believe in strong welfare systems. I believe in equal
opportunity, I just dont believe in mass constructed and distributed veils.

~~~
HarryHirsch
In less words: this is the just-world theory.

If this is true, why have chemists' earnings dropped so precipitiously
following the 2008 recession? Their genetic makeup hasn't changed. What
gives?!

~~~
codingslave
Who said the chemist was ever that valuable except for a small period in time?
Maybe his children will make better choices

