
What Does It Take to Climb Up the Ladder? - dpflan
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/opinion/what-does-it-take-to-climb-up-the-ladder.html
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neves
Is it just me that chill? when I read things like:

> the expected returns to child investments by parents with > limited
> resources and uncertain futures may be lower than > for more educated
> parents with greater and more secure > investment capabilities.

Sure we live in a capitalist society, but treating my sons like an "investment
opportunity" looks crazy.

~~~
throwawayyyyyyy
The fact that you have an emotional attachment to your children is evidence of
their value. Things that provide value are assets, and things that provide
value over time are investments.

A common share of Google may give you financial value in return, whereas a
child will give you emotional or psychological return. Technically, children
should be classified as more of an investment than stock because they can go
work and provide for you financially while still giving you emotional value.
Stock can't really give you emotional value (other than pride).

~~~
neves
This mixing of the meaning of "value" and the small subset of the meaning
labeled as "monetary value" that is crazy.

~~~
taneq
Take a thing that you consider to have "value". How much money would I have to
give you to convince you to give that thing up? That's it's "monetary value".

There's an old saying: Everyone has a price. I'm not convinced it's 100% true
for everyone on every topic, but in general terms, it holds quite well.

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Boothroid
A question I'm interested in that is related to this topic: what are the
limits to improving conditions through education? For example, if we improve
chances for everyone we might end up with thousands more aspiring brain
surgeons that will never have the opportunity to pursue their dream, simply
because there's a limit to the amount of brain surgeries we will ever need to
perform.

Isn't improving chances for all going to create misery for those that have
their prospects raised, but whose ambition exceeds their talent? I'm reminded
of an essay titled The Rise of the Meritocracy in which if I recall correctly
a perfect meritocracy is depicted, and one of the problems is that the
unsuccessful genuinely have no one to blame but themselves for their status
and are even more miserable as a result!

~~~
pm90
It is an interesting question. Although, you do have to differentiate between
learning skills and an actual education, which I take to be an improvement in
critical thinking and general overall awareness.

I still think there would be interesting problems to solve, even in a
perfectly educated society. I don't want to be a brain surgeon, or any
surgeon, or anything really in the medical field. There is a theory that some
people are "naturally inclined" to certain tasks and maybe we could realize
that and have a society that allows everyone to specialize in that...

~~~
jeffdavis
The problem is that natural inclination doesn't always line up with demand.

Many people may want to be a professional beer taster, but we don't need very
many of them.

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kazagistar
I didn't see error bars or distribution within each category on those graphs.
Are these results significant enough to indicate these traits have more then a
few % points impact on upward mobility chance?

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jeffdavis
"the failure of government efforts to affect or slow down negative
developments has left an opening for conservatives to argue that government
interventions make things worse."

Why does the author dismiss the possibility that the argument has at least
some truth to it?

For a variety of reasons, some which are due to government policy, the
necessity of marriage has reduced dramatically.

That's good in many ways, such as reducing abusive situations. But it also
means that people who could get married peacefully choose not to, to the
detriment of their children.

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iblaine
>Key characteristics for success: perseverance, industriousness, grit,
resilience, curiosity, application, self-control, future orientation, self-
discipline, impulse control, delay of gratification

Students may left to figure out successful habits on their own. I believe
education could be improved by officially defining successful habits. It may
sound silly to have Tony Robbins courses taught in school but something along
those lines could have great benefits. As it stands today, parents are left to
define successful habits and that is not happening for every child growing up.

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samfisher83
To summarize if you have a family with a mother and father who make a of money
you will likely make a lot of money.

~~~
gadders
Well, yes, but that doesn't answer why.

I would suggest that some portion of intelligence has a hereditary factor, and
(outside entertainment and professional sports) intelligence has a correlation
with income levels.

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Cultural capital is a thing as well, one of the big reasons rich people's kids
get more successful is because they know people / they know how to behave with
other rich people.

~~~
gadders
That is a thing, certainly. If you chose two kids with identical
IQs/personalities, the child with wealthier parents would have an easier time.

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phantarch
Is this measuring a causal relationship though? Correlation is not
causation...

Maybe those kids from more wealthy/well-educated families are more persistent
and tempered because their self-image aligns with society's looming popular
image of what people /should/ be: wealthy, polymath millionaires.

~~~
jeffdavis
This article is not a standard "character drives prosperity" piece. Did you
read it? If so, I am missong your point.

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erikb
Well the stats aren't talking at all about success but about persistance and
self control

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rayiner
> For college graduates, they argue, “marriage has become the commitment
> device that supports intensive joint investments in children,” a cooperative
> “joint project of raising economically successful children.”

This is a great article but this point kind of made me chuckle. "Has become?"
It's always been that.

~~~
nfriedly
I got married while _in_ college, and generally recommend it.

For one thing, it made sense financially because the gov't stopped counting my
parent's money (that I couldn't touch) when determining how much aid I
received.

It was also nice just to have someone to help me out with things (eating
decently, remembering to print homework, etc.)

And, of course, the usual benefits of being married...

~~~
ashark
> For one thing, it made sense financially because the gov't stopped counting
> my parent's money (that I couldn't touch) when determining how much aid I
> received.

Can confirm. If my (now) wife and I'd gotten married freshman year instead of
waiting until junior year we'd have saved a hell of a lot of money.

> It was also nice just to have someone to help me out with things (eating
> decently, remembering to print homework, etc.)

Works both ways. One person's ice-cream craving easily becomes both people
eating ice cream, to pick an example. Or "I'm in a hurry and hitting Arby's,
do you want me to bring you something?". Well, I didn't, but now I guess I do.

Much easier to eat healthy solo unless you marry someone with significantly
healthier eating habits than yours, IMO. Even if they're just similar to yours
there's a good chance you'll end up eating more junk for the above reason. And
such habits can drift over the years.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Maybe HN readers are preternaturally mature for their ages, but marrying young
for material benefits has a pretty bad track record in the military, where
young soldiers do it in order to live off post.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Well, marrying young for material benefits and being in love. I have no
problem with gaming the system for benefits, because marriage is unfortunately
tied to so many benefits.

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exergy
I'm going to go off on a tangent here, and will happily accept downvotes, but
I feel like venting for a bit.

I love the NYT. Years ago, when I got into it, I was blown away by Krugman,
Kristof, Friedman (yes), and even David Brooks. They sounded sensible,
nuanced, and _intelligent_.

A lof of that hasn't changed (except perhaps my opinion of Friedman!), but
NYT's comment section is a cesspool. I'm as liberal as they come, but every
NYT comment section is effectively blaming the right-wing regardless of the
context of the article. When Brooks talks about values for example, or "social
fabric", I think he does a good job of being reasonable, and if the article
were from "anon" vs. Brooks, people would say "Yeah, sounds about right."
Instead, all we get are "David, _your_ party caused this, blah blah blah".

Even in this article, there is a lot of data and lots of food for thought. And
yet, the top comment starts out: _" Is the problem "single mothers" or is it
the right-wingers who conspire to create, perpetuate, and steadily increase
economic inequality?"_

It's as if you only care about establishing what side the author belongs too,
argument be damned.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This is the web today. I stopped reading comments on most articles long ago
because it's always like you described. This does nobody any good. Actually,
it does politicians good to keep us separated down the middle. We are at our
weakest in this position.

~~~
Boothroid
I knew this reminded me something, it's Chomsky (I had to google it):

'The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the
spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that
spectrum.'

~~~
metaphorm
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

------
known
Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism
(egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (lack of remorse and empathy),
Sadism (pleasure in suffering of others) in REAL World

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velebak
Two feet and the desire to climb it.

~~~
1maginary
>the desire to climb it

Isn't the article implying that even the very desire and will to climb it are
significantly influenced by upbringing, income, etc?

So even if two feet and the desire were all you really needed, you'd still be
at a disadvantage compared to people in different income brackets and more
stable family status.

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onewhonknocks
Taking one's hands out of one's pockets.

