
Americans Are Skeptical That Hard Work Will Pay Off - paulpauper
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/hard-work-mobility/522207/?single_page=true
======
patrickmn
One of the things that bothers me the most about the United States is the
ubiquity of "ass-in-seats" thinking. Somehow, the appearance of sacrifice
(commuting two hours a day and being there at 9) means much more than the
results you deliver in many companies.

It should be "smart work," not "hard work." Hard implies it's all just the
transfer of energy--what seems to excite MBAs--when all that should matter is
delivering results. Isn't that what capitalism is supposed to be?

~~~
throw20161123
Your ass in your seat, taking minimal vacation (with your Blackberry),
justifies my existence and competence as your manager in Big Corp.

~~~
raverbashing
Also "hard work" is easy. Sit and do some meetings to look busy

Shipping and solving problems is harder

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Shipping useful stuff and solving actual problems is even harder

------
csense
The biggest problem I see with the US today is we lack a _national narrative
for success_. From ~1950 - ~1980 it was something like "Get a good job, work
hard and you'll be able to succeed." By whatever combination of political,
social and economic factors, the country was able to provide opportunities for
the majority of people with aspirations of a comfortable middle class
lifestyle to achieve them.

Earlier in the country's history it was "Go west, young man" \-- the frontier
served a similar social function of giving just about everybody willing to put
in the effort demanded the ability to move up a notch economically -- maybe
several notches.

Now we've reached a point where many ordinary people no longer have that sort
of opportunity. It's tearing our society apart. We need to figure out how to
fix it.

I've heard a lot of HN'ers talk about how "Detroit deserved to be disrupted
since American cars weren't innovative." OK, maybe true, but the guy screwing
bolts on cars now has to go work at McDonald's for a third of the wage and no
benefits. He had approximately zero influence on how cars were designed, and
now he's struggling to support his family. What was once a shining city in the
industrial heartland of America is now a bandit-infested ruin.

"Go work for a startup" is also (understandably) a common sentiment on HN. OK,
that works for people like us, but we all know there are a lot fewer decent
programmers out there than people who can screw bolts on cars. We need
something that can be done by most people, not only the 1%'ers of the
intellectual food chain.

This country's made of ordinary folks who just want a comfortable middle class
lifestyle. Our society used to be able to provide paths to achieve that,
accessible to all, and that was the key to our success. Now we've lost the
ability to do so, despite our technological advancements.

America's a broken system. How can we fix it?

~~~
metaphorm
> America's a broken system. How can we fix it?

it's not nearly as complicated or intractable as everyone makes it out to be.
the basic problem in the system is concentration of wealth at the top and wage
stagnation at the middle and bottom.

the solution is progressively distributed pay raises in private sector
employment, concentrating on raising the wages of those on the bottom and in
the middle of the economy. this will massively stimulate demand in the economy
and produce an economic growth spurt.

the reason this doesn't happen is because the ideology of shareholder
capitalism is completely sociopathic and has caused business managers to
behave like sociopaths in the pursuit of short term gains.

so the situation is not that we have no idea what needs to be done to fix the
problem, it's that we have no idea what needs to be done to remove the deeply
entrenched causes of the problem.

but honestly, a lot of these people with their broken pathological ideology,
well, they gotta go. they are unfit to lead.

~~~
jdmichal
I think the answer is employee-owned companies. This necessitates falling away
from capital-driven growth machines, because introduction of capital dilutes
ownership and destroys the whole concept. And then you have to figure out how
to be competitive with those capital-driven growth machines, which is a real
problem when sales are driven by whatever is cheapest at Walmart / Amazon.

~~~
metaphorm
I agree with that solution. The best real world example of it is the Mondragon
Corporation[0], but it's an interesting and versatile idea and I'm sure many
different versions of it could be successful.

I really favor this type of solution because it solves the alienation problem
without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This is a business structure
that appropriately distributes the profits of labor, and I think that is the
only thing that will get us out of our current predicament. The current
American system of funneling profits to the 0.0001% while locking the working
population into lifelong wage slavery is not sustainable and I fear for the
future if things go on like this for much longer.

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation)

------
wccrawford
"Hard Work" isn't just "spending a lot of time at work". You have to actually
do good work, consistently.

Most of the people I've met who don't believe in "hard work pays off" are the
type that want something for nothing.

Most of the people that I've seen hard work pay off for are those who were
self-motivated to do good work, and it eventually worked out for them.

But you also have to stop working for companies that abuse you and find one
that appreciates its employees. Many people don't even believe those companies
exist and won't _try_ to find a better company. Even getting people to _look_
for a new job is nearly impossible. They come up with a ton of excuses and
just never do it.

~~~
Daddy_cat
I agree. Poor people are poor because they are lazy, if you really think about
it.

~~~
jameskilton
If you're being sarcastic, I would ask you stop using this statement as such.
If not, and for those that think this is true, no. This statement is not only
totally wrong but disrespectful and destructive.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/08/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/08/laziness-
isnt-why-people-are-poor-and-iphones-arent-why-they-lack-health-care/)

[http://www.socialworkdegreecenter.com/10-common-
misconceptio...](http://www.socialworkdegreecenter.com/10-common-
misconceptions-poor/)

[http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-poverty-
poll/](http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-poverty-poll/)

And there's plenty more research to go along with this. Please stop spreading
this lie, even if it's just a joke.

~~~
sauronlord
Have you talked to poor people lately?

I'm consistently shocked at how they choose to watch TV, do drugs, and quick
to blame other people.

I try to help people and share opportunities that seem in line with their
experience and skills... yet they do not leave their damn couch. Anectodal,
yes

We really shouls just put a good UBC plan together and call it a day.

~~~
sp332
The #1 cause of bankruptcy in this country is medical bills. Nothing to do
with being lazy.

~~~
zeroer
I would reframe this as the cause being lack of health insurance and an
emergency fund capable of paying the deductible on said insurance plus 6
months of expenses in the event you're not able to work. Those two things
don't guarantee not going bankrupt, but I would imagine it would be a lot
harder.

~~~
jameskilton
Another way to frame it is how well people can bounce back from a medical
emergency. The poorer you are, the harder it is to come back to even where you
were before the incident.

Medical bills get out of hand but blue collar workers often find themselves
out of work, fired because they couldn't make it to work through no fault of
their own.

Our society punishes people for being poor and it's disgusting that it's so
hard to even get people to acknowledge this, much less try to fix it.

~~~
zeroer
Yea, that's what the E-fund is for. What percentage of the people declaring
medical bankruptcy had health insurance and an E-fund to cover the deductible
plus 6 month's expenses?

------
ronnier
I'm a believer in hard work pays off. I grew up poor, in projects (government
housing) as a child in what must be one of the worst cities and regions in
America (Port Arthur, TX). Lived in a normal house in middle school and high
school in the same area, then got out of there around age 20. Then spent years
doing almost nothing but working a full time job through my undergrad and grad
school and studying every day. Also programmed on the side for people who
found me through my website. After finishing up grad school, Amazon found me
through that same website of mine. There was a lot of luck in there, but I
believe hard work has paid off for me in ways I never imagined.

I guess my point is, if not for hard work, I'm certain I'd still be in that
same area where each day is a struggle.

~~~
v64
I don't doubt any of your story (I'm from outside Tyler and have a similar
trajectory), but I know you know folks back in Port Arthur that never made it
out. I won't speak for you, but I know my hard work was augmented by a healthy
dose of luck as well, and luck ain't something you can control.

~~~
ronnier
There's also the anti-luck or what I'd call self inflicted pain put on
themselves with drugs, alcohol, bad behavior, out of control spending, etc. If
one can avoid those things through strong will and at the same time, work
hard, then they'll likely do well. Close friends of mine that are stuck, well,
they fell into the trap of those things listed and they tend to surround
themselves with people doing the same, The bad choices they make end up being
normal choices judged by their peers and they don't break free.

~~~
sssilver
"self-inflicted" as in, the brain they happened to possess due to
circumstances beyond their control happened to have the neural network that
non-ambiguously led to those choices?

------
frgtpsswrdlame
As they should be, economic mobility in the United States is pretty low. Hard
work can move you a couple rungs on the ladder but the predominant factor is
still on which rung you started.

~~~
CuriouslyC
The system doesn't reward hard work, it rewards good ideas. One properly
executed good idea is enough to move you quite far on the ladder. Sadly people
over commit their time and live stressful lives. To have good ideas you need
relaxed idle time to study and think.

~~~
dpark
Most of the nation isn't involved in revolutionary entrepreneurship fueled by
VC money. You're talking about why some people become billionaires and others
only make 6 figures. Economic mobility is a lot more about moving from low
5-digits to high 5-digits. Good ideas don't matter so much there.

~~~
zeroer
I would argue that good ideas matter a lot, specifically what one studies
and/or what job you choose to train for and how you go about doing so and how
much time you dedicate to it.

~~~
dpark
I think that's largely luck. Most people who go into engineering do so because
they have some "natural aptitude". That's luck of the draw. Conversely, I'd
say that studying history is also largely (bad) luck. A kid has some interest
in it and they're too shortsighted to understand what it means to carry tens
of thousands of dollars in nondischargable debt while working a low paying job
because history degrees are not in demand.

Of course, it's largely luck whether a person even goes to college. If you're
born upper middle income or higher, college is basically a certainty. If
you're born low income, it's much less likely.

~~~
CuriouslyC
I think Luck is something people who've stopped struggling against mediocrity
lean on so they don't have to feel bad. You have a huge degree of control over
your life. I started in just about the worst position possible in this game,
and now I make my own rules.

I lived in a tent and got food stamps so I could afford to attend a community
college. I studied whatever interested me, and I didn't decide on a specific
track until I was about 120 units deep. I nearly lived in the library because
I couldn't afford to buy textbooks. That isn't luck, that's determination.

After college, I took several positions that paid shit, on the condition that
they gave me a lot of free time, exposure to interesting new science and
technology, and latitude in how I did my work. I used that free time to read
scientific journal articles and practice my programming. That wasn't luck, it
was an investment.

Now I'm in the position of having almost total control over my work. I choose
what I work on, how I contribute, and my work schedule. Beyond that, I'm
nearly debt free - I had to take a 10 year mortgage to finance my house, but
I'm going to pay that off several years early.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Sure but there are fewer and fewer people like you.[1] If you take it that
social mobility is actually declining what are we to take that to mean? That
more now than in previous times have "stopped strugging against mediocrity"? I
don't really buy that, I'd say that it's that they're unlucky. Political
forces beyond their individual control have influenced their chances to build
a better life.

[1]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-
mobility-america/491240/)

~~~
CuriouslyC
The problem isn't that social mobility is no longer possible. The problem is
that the current social narrative for how you achieve that mobility is no
longer accurate. You can march for 16 hours a day and never reach your
destination if you're walking in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, most people blindly trust the social narrative. As a result,
rather than step back and question their direction, they proceed in an
unproductive manner. When things don't work out, rather than admit their
chosen path was poor, they blame circumstances.

------
xemdetia
I think the most frustrating thing for me as someone from the United States is
the number of people I talk to that want a 'better paying job' where the job
is exactly what they are doing right now just with a bigger dollar amount
attached to it. They can't even see that the fact that they have a job that
pays as well as it does is an aberration and can go away, or that it is a
cultural/economic norm to just slowly increase pay over time and those
bonus/yearly raises are often not representative of your value in the
organization. There is a reason why firing someone and replacing them with
someone fresh out of school is such a common trope/strategy because it just
resets this implicit clock among other established interpersonal tensions.

I'm not talking about the more entrepreneurial types or people who feel like
trying to take a level of change jobs or start a business of their own is
beyond their taste for risk, which are people I could see as part of 'hard
work will pay off' not really ringing true.

------
jliptzin
Maybe Americans will finally stop thinking of themselves as temporarily
bankrupt millionaires and start voting with their own interests in mind.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Yes we need higher taxes and more laws. How many laws do you think it takes to
make us good people?

~~~
dclowd9901
Oh, I'd say enough so that you don't go into financial ruin when you get sick.

------
Overtonwindow
Hard work will really only pay off for your employer, unless you are building
and running it yourself. If you work for a corporation you are absolutely
replaceable and only as valuable as the bottom line.

~~~
gdulli
I don't work for myself but my hard work has paid off in the form of raises,
promotions, larger bonuses, and more job security than my peers.

Of course a business will replace me if I do badly enough or they stop having
enough money to pay me. And if it has an exit my gain from it will be less
than the people above me. But those are all rare events. After 20 years I've
never been fired or laid off. I've done well and it feels like it makes sense
to acknowledge that my efforts have paid off rather than complain about being
a victim of an unfair system.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Forgive me, I hear you and agree with a lot of what you say, but I do not
trust corporations. I think they will replace you to save the job of your
superior, to reduce costs, or increase profits. You are fortunate, and I hope
it continues for you, but caution to never get comfortable.

~~~
scarface74
You don't have to trust corporations. You have to keep your skills up and be
ready to jump ship when necessary.

------
jupiter90000
I'm not sure how anyone could believe generalized "hard work" will lead to a
lifestyle one desires. To me the idea that "if I work really hard someone will
reward me" is lacking of personal responsibility that comes with freedom.
Waiting for someone else to make my life the way I want it isn't how I want to
spend my time.

Also, the definition in the article of 'pay off' is vague, but seems to allude
that getting into a higher income quantile is the goal. If this is the big
'pay off' Americans are looking for, it's a little sad to me.

------
geoffbrown2014
In my lifetime I've seen linearity of the link between 'hard work' and capital
formation drastically distorted. Lots of different causes, but the one that
strikes me most is also the most recent. Zero interest rate policy.
Historically it has taken discipline (hard work?) to build capital to take
business risks. While there has always been an unequal distribution of capital
and idiot heirs to spend it, currently however, there is a fairly large group
of people who has first dibs on nearly free capital that they had little to do
with generating. This decouples or reduces the link between capital formation
and the type of people who have the work ethic traditionally required to
perform this activity. This is a disconnect that I find a fairly radical
departure, at least in scale, from the past. I think the effect of this is
that the pool of people with the required work ethic, dedication, luck and
capacity to out compete incumbents is smaller. I think people are correctly
assessing that their chances have been reduced.

------
atemerev
Most of us know people that worked hard for most of their lives and were not
as successful as somebody who was able to secure an early exit. And vice
versa, of course.

So, it is easy to conclude from personal observations and some basic first-
order logic that hard work per se doesn't always pay off, to say the least.

However, figuring out things that better correlate with success, filtering out
non-actionables (I can't have richer parents), turning the rest into a life
strategy and executing it usually requires more advanced reasoning.

------
scarface74
I've seen a lot of comments where people think that _their_ hard work led to
their success without taking into account the benefits they had based on their
environment.

I felt the same way. I use to say that I graduated from an unknown state
college with a horrible CS degree over 20 years ago (debt free) and within
three years, I was making as much as people who graduated from well known
schools who had debt. If I could do it, anyone could.

But looking back, I realized that I did have a few advantages. Many of my
classmates took jobs working in the defense industry working on mainframes and
other not so cutting edge systems. But they came out of college, moved to
small towns, making enough to support themselves.

That's not the life I wanted. I was offered a job, based on an internship the
prior year as a computer operator in a larger, more expensive metro area,
making much less than my classmates, but I knew it was a better long term
opportunity. I told my parents my rational for wanting to take the job and I
knew I couldn't afford to make the move by myself.

My parents, paid the deposit, the first months rent and sent me money for the
first two years to make up the difference until I got a job as a software
developer. 20 years later, the rest is history. My parents could afford to do
that without blinking. How many of my classmates didn't have that same
opportunity?

On a related note, many people get jobs based on unpaid internships. Who can
afford to work a summer without pay without parents who are able to help?

My internship happened to be paid and they provided housing, but I was lucky.

------
dlwdlw
The world has always been dividided into regions with unfair allocation of
resources. The control of the resources is allocated to those who believe more
in the boundaries.

A large company for example is an institution that contains resources that is
allocated to people who "work hard and believe in the company". The amount
allocated is removed from value added, and in some cases, an employee with 0
or negative value is still knowingly paid as it actually supports the
legitimacy of the institution. "If you work hard and believe, even if you're
useless you'll still be taken care of. "

The American attitude towards hard work is the leftover cargo cult of this
type of thinking and it is weakening as examples of rapid non-institutional
growth increase.

Another catalyst is that the original boundaries are weakening via technology.
From manual copying to printing to the web, rapid information democracy is
dragging along physical goods democracy as well. An ephemeral concept is
slowly but surely tugging at the physical world.

The issue with this equalizing force is that it is BAD for US citizens. The
total output of the world divided amongst people is 30k, which is bad for
people inthe US but good for a lot of other countries in the world.

In fact, many executives in the Us are paid very hadsomely for speeding up
this equality by offshoring.

Ironically they are also targets for being unfair and hoarding wealth.

So middle class scripts that relied on the existence of institutions are now
segfaulting ad the external environment changes. The attachement to these
scripts is a huge weakness when it was formerly a strength.

The kneejerk reaction is to go backwards in time, in current news manisfesting
as kneejerk isolationism.

People who are unattached to these scripts though (young people mostly) have
more freedom. Sometimes they will grow up during a time when new institutions
are already in the process of consuming the old ones and can just use
script2.0 to be successful until the next environmental shift.

Currently though, the old institutions are dying but the new ones aren't
powerful enough. So young people, thoguh they realize the futility of old
scripts, don't have a more powerful alternative. Making your own is hard. So
they float around in a state of anomy.

------
bleezy
"Of the children born in the bottom income quintile, 44 percent are still
there as adults."

Is this actually a problem? I would expect this number to be above 30% at the
very least. I'm glad it's below 50. What is the desired number? 40%? Serious
question.

If this number was actually 20% that would mean that you would have almost no
influence on your child's economic outcomes in life- how could that possibly
be?

~~~
AndrewDucker
If society provided those children with an education and options which allowed
them to succeed.

America lags behind many other countries which do this, and where the earnings
of the parents are not such a massive factor in their children's success.

[http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-
mobil...](http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/)

~~~
bleezy
The average person in the lowest quintile in the US is more likely to move up
a quintile then remain. That's currently the case. If this were increased even
more, that would result in more people from upper quintiles moving down to the
lowest one.

Shouldn't we focus more on making life better for the lowest quintile than
moving people into a higher quintile? Someone has to be in the lowest
quintile, I'm sorry to say. Literally 20% of people.

~~~
dpark
> _Shouldn 't we focus more on making life better for the lowest quintile than
> moving people into a higher quintile?_

Why shouldn't we be focused on both? Obviously more mobility means more people
moving down as well as more people moving up. That could be a very good thing
if it means that the quintiles are compressed.

------
marknutter
The whole premise is based on the straw man term "hard work" which isn't the
same as "smart work". Digging holes and filling them back up again is
certainly "hard work", but that doesn't mean it's valuable work. We have
always valued smart work over hard work in this country which is why we've
grown to the economic superpower that we have. Another aspect of "hard work"
that isn't ever mentioned is what you do with the money you earn from such
work. If you're saving every penny you can in service to some long term goal,
and then apply that money to achieving that goal, then you're doing hard work
but also making wise financial decisions. It doesn't matter what type of work
you're doing in that case because being financially wise will always pay off.

------
AndrewDucker
Hard work _can_ pay off. But in the USA the effects of your parents income are
literally _triple_ that of Denmark:

[http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-
mobil...](http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/)

Which means that the US could be set up so that hard work had a much bigger
chance of hard work paying off.

~~~
zeroer
I'm unconvinced that this measurement of income mobility is a good thing, and
I'm confounded that it gets talked about and referenced so often. The
frequency at which I'm hearing about this makes me suspicious that it's in
service of some political ideololgy.

I understand that this measurement of mobility purports to measure something
like how meritocratic a society is. But parents teach their children their own
habits (consciously and unconsciously), so if your income quintile has any
relationship to your behavior, then it's no surprise that income mobility is
not perfect. But what's the "right" amount of mobility? Comparisons between
countries are a little suspect, because, for instance, the top quintile in
income in the US is drastically different than the top quintile in Canada.

The fact is that 20% of your population will always be in every quintile no
matter what you do. Every person you send from the bottom quintile to the top
will be balanced out by a person falling by the same amount. We should be
focusing on making everyone's life better, not shuffling people around.

------
seaborn63
As the child of middle-class parents, I was dirt poor for a long time as an
adult. That was due to bad life choices, not work ethic or job. I made enough
money to live comfortably, but I squandered it. Once I made smarter life
choices, my strong work ethic paid off and I finally started doing well in
life. Always had the strong work ethic, I just made dumb decisions.

------
patrickg_zill
Trying to express this simply, I think the business term "margin compression"
applies.

In 1972 my brother was working as a heavy equipment operator, bulldozers,
excavators, etc. Pay was $15 to $18 per hour.

In 2017, typical pay for this same job might be twice as much. However,
everything else is multiples higher, from gas, cars, housing whether renting
or owning, etc.

~~~
metaphorm
[http://www1.salary.com/Heavy-Equipment-Operator-
Salaries.htm...](http://www1.salary.com/Heavy-Equipment-Operator-
Salaries.html)

that source says the median salary for heavy equipment operator is $60K/year.
If we assume 2000 working hours per year, that divides out to $30/hour, so
your estimate seems pretty on target.

cost of living numbers based on Consumer Price Index (does not take into
account major dislocations in specific sectors like housing though, so this is
actually undercounting costs)

[http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/consumer-
pric...](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/consumer-price-index-
and-annual-percent-changes-from-1913-to-2008/)

1972 avg CPI was about 40. 2016 avg CPI was about 240. the cost of living went
up about 6 times.

2x wage increase vs. 6x cost of living increase. yeah, we're feeling the
squeeze alright. mind you during this same period GDP

[https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-
year-3305543](https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543)

in 1972 the real dollar GDP was 4.8 trillion. in 2016 it was 16 trillion.
that's an almost 4x increase in real dollars. in inflation adjusted dollars
its even more. 1972 nominal GDP was 1.2 trillion. 2016 nominal GDP was 18.5
trillion. YES THE NATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY WENT UP BY ALMOST 18 TIMES IN THAT
PERIOD.

so the nation is approximately 18 times wealthier, by a deeply flawed but
widely accepted metric, but wages only went up by 2 times, and cost of living
increased by 6 times. Where did all the rest of the money go? Not to the
workers, that's for sure.

~~~
sssilver
This is what I don't understand, and I would appreciate if anyone explained it
to me.

The money went to "the top 1%", whatever. Where do they keep it? Probably
either in a bank, which invests it back into the economy, or in other form of
investments. Definitely not under a pillow.

So entering back into the free market economy, the money, pretty much in its
entirety, gets distributed into the hands of the millions of "regular people"
in form of investment. They buy a McLaren or a mansion? Great, that money goes
to the people who make those things.

All in all, because the entire "1%" money is circulating in the economy
anyway, what does it matter who it actually belongs to?

What am I missing here?

~~~
metaphorm
> The money went to "the top 1%", whatever. Where do they keep it?

That's a complex puzzle but the answer is some combination of all of the
following: financial assets (this is a big one, stocks and bonds soak up a lot
of money), real estate, luxury goods, re-investment, off-shore tax havens, and
under a pillow (gold or other commodities that have low utility but high
scarcity).

> All in all, because the entire "1%" money is circulating in the economy
> anyway, what does it matter who it actually belongs to?

this is the theory behind the now discredited and disproved "trickle down
economics" theory. the money doesn't really circulate very well, actually. it
is far less liquid in the possession of the wealthy than it is in the
possession of the working class. wealth stockpiles in the form of longterm
held financial assets sucks a huge amount of money out of the economy.

------
matt_wulfeck
Every time this topic comes up I wonder about the role of delayed
gratification. For example, not signing a 2 year cell phone agreement and
saving up to buy one in cash.

That kind of mentality might not make you wealthy, but it surely won't make
you poor.

~~~
dpark
That's a poor example. I switched to buying my phones in cash and overall I'm
now paying more when I total everything up.

Not buying on credit would be a more useful example.

But to answer, I don't think it matters much at all. Saving can certainly
increase your wealth. It won't do much for your income unless you're already
quite wealthy. Earned income is the biggest factor for economic status. If
you're poor, your income is low. If you're wealthy, your income is almost
certainly quite high.

~~~
crpatino
This is correct if you live in the US, where interest rates are artificially
low.

If you try to live like that in a country with double digit mortage rates, and
credit card rates in the ballpark of 30% for people with an established good
record, then you are setting yourself for debt servitude regardless of your
eventual income.

~~~
dpark
I'm really not sure what your point is. Whether or not saving to buy vs buying
on credit is the smarter option has very little to do with whether you're in
the top income quintile or the bottom.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
The GP was about delayed gratification. How much does a new iPhone cost? 1
year old model? 2 year old model? 3?

~~~
dpark
You didn't say anything about buying an OLDER phone. That's not really delayed
gratification. That's just being frugal.

And none of this is relevant to income inequality, which is what the article
was discussing. If your income is $15k/year, you're still in the bottom
quintile regardless of how much you save.

You said you wonder about the role of delayed gratification. The answer is
that there is no role. If you earn nothing, you're still poor even if you wait
to buy stuff. You might be less poor than your neighbor who buys on credit,
but you're still poor.

------
baursak
Yep. I believe that the meme "if hard work made you rich, [coal miners |
cotton pickers | day laborers | etc] would have been millionaires" is
relatively recent.

------
paulpauper
_Moving up the economic ladder relies on more than self-motivation; it also
requires opportunity._

IMHO, they also forgot to list an important factor: IQ

[http://greyenlightenment.com/paul-graham-economic-
inequality...](http://greyenlightenment.com/paul-graham-economic-inequality-
and-the-refragmentation)

 _The trend, I predict, is that wealth inequality will become almost the same
as IQ inequality. IQ is more much important today than a generation ago in
influencing individual economic outcomes. 100 years ago in an economy
dominated by manual labor, the difference between a 90 IQ and 120 IQ wasn’t
that important, but now it is._

[https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-
business/is-...](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/is-
success-in-our-genes.html)

 _When Belsky and colleagues analyzed measures of genetic variation and
educational attainment, they found a link: A high polygenic score—an aggregate
measure of variation across a person’s genome—predicted not only educational
attainment, but other forms of success as well._

But even 'work ethic' may be a function of innate traits. Biology plays a
bigger role than many social scientists may want to admit. Biology, especially
as it pertains to IQ, is still the 'third rail' of the social sciences.

The solution will probably mean more social safety net spending, but making
average Americans _feel_ like they are contributing will be even more
difficult. Post-scarcity does not answer the problem of existential
fulfillment, changing social values, etc.

~~~
speeder
I think opportunity is MUCH more important than IQ.

I know lots of intelligent people, some of them that do have measured IQs in
very high numbers, that are in really crappy situations right now (example:
one friend has a small kid, and both he, and his similarly extremely
intelligent wife are unemployed and failing to find freelance work, despite
their work quality and speed being quite good, both of their parents families
are also having economic problems, and are struggling to support the toddler,
with the toddler grandparents selling old properties to pay for basic needs).

Also when I was more "immersed" in startup world, having my own startup and
meeting lots of other startup owners, opportunity always was the important
factor in success, never intelligence or even motivation, I met funded
startups with crappy leaders, and similarly met genius stuff with no funding,
frequently the funded ones had as advantage the fact they had some personal
tie to someone in a VC somewhere (example: founder mother is friend of VC
partner, or founder is cousin of VC person, and so on).

And judging by corruption scandals I've been seeing, that are always tied with
rich companies (That you conclude that they are rich BECAUSE they are
corrupt), I can conclude that the "equality" that is important would be
"equality" in social relations. (even when there is someone "poor" that is
self-made rich, if you look closely enough that "poor" person had some past
connection that was important)

~~~
zeroer
> one friend has a small kid

How did they get the kid? Stork dropped it off without inquiring about their
financial situation?

~~~
speeder
They made the kid when both were employed, and got immediately fired (for
reasons unrelated to kid)

------
autotune
I wonder how many more Americans are skeptical that disabling their adblocker
to read an article will pay off...

~~~
Overtonwindow
I use Brave. No ads and never get blocked because I don't view ads.

~~~
autotune
Great, thanks for the suggestion!

