<story><title>Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life</title><url>https://insidermag.net/survey-shows-people-no-longer-believe-working-hard-will-lead-to-a-better-life/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dahart</author><text>&amp;gt; How much social mobility we talking? ([...] only talking about the US)&lt;p&gt;My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at least at the time) social mobility in the US was the same as in India. The surprise, of course, was that India has a caste system, while the US narrative is freedom; if you work hard, you’ll get ahead.&lt;p&gt;I don’t remember the sources, but the rate of social mobility (up &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; down) we learned in class was ~20%, as defined by ending up in a different quintile than one was born in, meaning put people into 5 categories according to socioeconomic status, and see whether they ever change categories, for example going from middle class to upper middle class.&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says that overall average social mobility in the US hasn’t changed since then.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>How much social mobility we talking?&lt;p&gt;Statistically nobody goes from trailer park to billionare by working hard.&lt;p&gt;You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments.&lt;p&gt;edit: I&amp;#x27;m only talking about the US</text></item><item><author>wishigotitfree</author><text>Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one&amp;#x27;s parents&amp;#x27; education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual&amp;#x27;s future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn&amp;#x27;t BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success stories, but it seems more and more people are seeing through the illusion. In my opinion, that&amp;#x27;s a good thing, as recognizing the true state of things is the first step to improving them, and this combination of consciousness and lived experience can prove to be potent immunization against bad faith actors who want to maintain the illusion of widespread social mobility.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Frost1x</author><text>Narrative is important because the language it provides frames a way of life for many who haven&amp;#x27;t framed their own perspective based on the information they have and haven&amp;#x27;t seen. It&amp;#x27;s easy to pickup a narrative, it&amp;#x27;s far more difficult to dig through and generate your own perspective. It&amp;#x27;s even more critical because childhood education relies on providing narrative frameworks because children often don&amp;#x27;t have enough information of processes yet to think critically.&lt;p&gt;The reason I say this is as you point out, in the US we frame everything as being highly mobile. The illusory framing of our society in &amp;quot;the American dream&amp;quot; in K-12 education and freedoms dangles this carrot of possibility of high social mobility to children. It&amp;#x27;s not completely invalid, it is possible to make massive transitions in socioeconomic brakets, but it&amp;#x27;s just a framing of the rare exceptions, not the norms.&lt;p&gt;Most of us are going to be the norms, so these narratives are a disservice to people about what their real socioeconomic mobility potential and &lt;i&gt;probability&lt;/i&gt; is. It&amp;#x27;s fine to dream, aim high, and shoot for the moon as a society-- that promotes growth and avoids stagnation. At the same time, we should be very clear what is and isn&amp;#x27;t a moonshot that way many aren&amp;#x27;t so resentful when they later discover what they thought was reasonable was actually incredibly difficult bordering on impossible. What&amp;#x27;s possible and what&amp;#x27;s probable need to be distinguished and the American dream framing doesn&amp;#x27;t talk to probability.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s this whole lie painted to children that the US is somehow a meritocracy when it&amp;#x27;s not. Merit can help, but it isn&amp;#x27;t everything and we need people to understand this.</text></comment>
<story><title>Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life</title><url>https://insidermag.net/survey-shows-people-no-longer-believe-working-hard-will-lead-to-a-better-life/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dahart</author><text>&amp;gt; How much social mobility we talking? ([...] only talking about the US)&lt;p&gt;My college US history course ~20 years ago very much drove home the fact that (at least at the time) social mobility in the US was the same as in India. The surprise, of course, was that India has a caste system, while the US narrative is freedom; if you work hard, you’ll get ahead.&lt;p&gt;I don’t remember the sources, but the rate of social mobility (up &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; down) we learned in class was ~20%, as defined by ending up in a different quintile than one was born in, meaning put people into 5 categories according to socioeconomic status, and see whether they ever change categories, for example going from middle class to upper middle class.&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says that overall average social mobility in the US hasn’t changed since then.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>How much social mobility we talking?&lt;p&gt;Statistically nobody goes from trailer park to billionare by working hard.&lt;p&gt;You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments.&lt;p&gt;edit: I&amp;#x27;m only talking about the US</text></item><item><author>wishigotitfree</author><text>Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one&amp;#x27;s parents&amp;#x27; education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual&amp;#x27;s future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn&amp;#x27;t BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success stories, but it seems more and more people are seeing through the illusion. In my opinion, that&amp;#x27;s a good thing, as recognizing the true state of things is the first step to improving them, and this combination of consciousness and lived experience can prove to be potent immunization against bad faith actors who want to maintain the illusion of widespread social mobility.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bluGill</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen those reports myself.  However they don&amp;#x27;t note anything about the entire class changing.  Today even the lowest cast things nothing about having an entire encyclopedia in their pocket (a smart phone), 40 years ago encyclopedias were something you needed to be middle class to have one in your house, and nobody could have them in a pocket (meaning you both could afford one, and the space to store it at home)&lt;p&gt;Going back farther, 120 years ago cars were the play thing of the super rich.  Now the poor have much nicer cars (including options like electric start, not to mention the unheard of AC), that are fast and never break (by todays standard they break down all the time).</text></comment>