In regards to a and b, wouldn't someone who thinks the former likely be someone who also thinks the latter? Those don't seem contradictory and, indeed, one is a possible explanation of the other.
People who lean right, tend to think movement from lower classes to higher classes is possible with hard work and that a person’s starting point doesn’t matter as much.
People who lean left tend to think where you start is the biggest predictor of where you will end up regardless of how hard you work. Hence the reasons one side favors the social safety net more than the other side does.
I think that the difference is probably that one side thinks that being a parent that raises healthy functional adults comes down mostly to personal factors. The other side believes that societal/structural factors play a large part.
So they don't exactly disagree on what the circumstances for success looks like as much as they disagree on the degree to which those circumstances are under an individual's control.
That would be true if these issues were discussed in rational terms, but unfortunately because it's predominantly political, it means rational terms are not the basis of these discussions. That is presupposing either point A or B is even true.
Yes, this is exactly as I see it - but as you can see in the downvotes many people very strongly think just one of these is true and very aggressively disagree with the other one.
