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Kasz216 on 31 August 2012
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Immortal said:
Kasz216 said:
Immortal said:


I don't think I can argue with you very well given my relative lack of knowledge, but, going by the argument presented by the other member who quoted me, education is evidently much better and more effective for rich people, leading us back to poor people being born in a situation which won't let them get anywhere.

As for your anecdote, while there are obviously people who manage to get far against the odds, they are normally considered the exception. For every story about self-made millionaires (or even the less extravagant climbed-up-the-economic-ladder stories), you'd probably be faced with a dozen anecdotes from the other side telling you about people who are working/have worked insanely hard, are trying/have tried to follow the classic recipes to economic success and are still getting nowhere.

By the way, I'm honestly not completely sure if I disagree with you. Since I'm slightly left-leaning on this subject, I'm just keen to get the opposition's perspective here.

The problem is.... his stats are wrong... as can be shown by the article he himself presented that suggests the worst case scenario.   He said most people stay in their same economic condition yet....

"A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults."

42% isn't even close to "most".

 

My browser explodes when I click the link, but that statistic alone is inconclusive. If 42% stay there and another 50% or so move up one fifth, then that kind of fluctuation still seems to imply that most people stay in a similar economic condition, albeit not the "same". It's already enough to construct something of an argument on if nearly half of them don't even move up a fifth. I'd agree that it's a bit of a stretch, though.

If you've ever been at the bottom or know people at the bottom... there is a BIG difference from the bottom Quintile and the next one.  However, again... only using the data he provided, that best represents his point...

8% at the bottom... raised to the the highest position.

So it most definitly isn't  42/50/0/0/8% situation... actually they have their source cited so i'll have further data shortly.

 

Basically, research shows that to get out of the bottom percentile with something like a 75-90% ability within like 5-10 years you need to accomplish 3 things.

1) Graduate Highschool.

2) Don't have a child before you are 25.

3) Have a job lined up when you graduate.  Even if it's just working at McDonalds.


The reason why we have such a problem at the lowest level is that we

A) Have a lot of highschool dropouts, like the county I'm in, where I think the graduation rate is... 46-56% or so?

B) Do an AWFUL job with teen pregnancy with it happening all the time.

C) Give everybody the idea they should go to college, even when they really shouldn't.