Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by uselessbro | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

uselessbro

Upward mobility is a lie. There are tons of studies and books on this - Thomas Piketty might be one.

View on HN

There are also tons of studies and books that say it's not, and Piketty is hotly contested by many scholars.

That’s a pretty absurd thing to say so matter of factly. 62% of US billionaires are self made [1].

Many of us tech workers have experienced incredible upward mobility.

1. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269593

What percentage of self-made billionaires started out as millionaires?

what percentage of poor people become self-made billionaires?

What percentage of poor people who become self-made billionaires do so by going to trade school?

I think people argue past one another a lot about this because both facts can be simultaneously true: the US really is a land where a hard-working, smart, and motivated person (with a big pinch of luck) can work their way up from the top, and yet it's also a place where most people at the bottom aren't simultaneously hard-working, smart, motivated, and lucky. If they were, they would've moved up the rungs already.

I mean, if you lived in a strict feudal society, the nobility as a class was CLOSED. Commoners not admitted. End of story.

At the same time, even if say 20% of people at the bottom quantile of the wealth/income bracket make up into the next 20% every generation -- is that enough social mobility? Not enough? Should we just not have any poor people at all?

If the goal is to have no people who are poor, doesn't the fact that we admit millions of (relatively) penniless legal and illegal immigrants make that goal much harder to achieve?

You've arrived at the unthinkable thought. Why indeed, in a very rich country, do any poor people at all exist? Why is this crime not remedied immediately? The only possible explanation in a democratic society, is that somehow the upper classes have rigged the system via political machinations, voter suppression, dividing the intermediate classes against each other, and propaganda. It's a sobering thought. We might also ask ourselves, why are billionaires allowed to persist? Is that not itself, in the face of suffering, a crime on the face of humanity?

> Why indeed, in a very rich country, do any poor people at all exist?

There's an inherent tension between low-wage immigration levels and building a strong social state.

The stronger your social welfare protections, the stronger incentive there is for economic migrants to come (as Europe is also finding out), and the more voters perceive income and wealth transfers as mostly benefiting outsiders versus members of their own society.

This is part of what is creating the reaction from the right in the US and elsewhere.

All the 'solutions' for this have their own issues:

1. Don't allow recent immigrants the benefit of social welfare payments: this literally gives migrants second-class status and directly causes inequality.

Some countries do this though under temporary worker programs. The Gulf states come to mind -- generous benefits for citizens, almost nothing for cheap migrant labor.

2. Only allow well-off or well-educated immigrants: This only works if your country can attract educated labor. Properly executed, you get an immigrant class that is skilled and productive. Poorly done, and your system resembles a 'buy a citizenship' program. Also, your own educated elite may not welcome the new competition.

Canada looks a bit like this -- relatively high levels of immigration, but much of it is skilled. Some of it is just rich people HK buying houses in B.C. though. This directly hurts wage earners who live there by making housing unaffordable for them.

3. Get rid of your welfare state entirely (or don't build it). The US is sort of vacillating between this and option 1, unfortunately. Also the left has vehemently complained about option 2, which is Trump's points reform proposal.

Not sure what the best solution is, but I wish people would admit that there is a tradeoff involved and talk through them rationally.

There is a fourth option, though it's longer term. I think that's okay since we've been dealing with this problem for forever. Work together with other nations to raise their standards of living and labor.

We do some of that but then we also depose governments, start wars under the banner of drugs and terrorism. Those latter effects are huge and often not considered in concert with immigration policy. I'm stealing this analogy, but keeping these people out is like setting fire to someone's home and then locking the door.

You're downvoting me, and that's natural. I assume the bulk of vocal HNers are ancap libertarians (possibly some of you aligning with the Dark Enlightenment). However, you should take what I said more seriously. It represents a point of view with which you've perhaps had little contact, but is held by a significant (possibly even growing) portion of the population. It is diametrically opposed to many of the precepts you've been taught.

For instance, that process legitimizes outcomes rather than the other way around. That one is a bit weird, because the SV _thing_ is to conduct A/B testing and achieve outcomes at all costs. However, you also in your heart of hearts believe that there are institutions, such as schools, governments, and corporations that, solely on their own merits, elevate some people legitimately above others. You might also believe that hierarchy, coercion, and domination are legitimate elements of society when expressed in particular forms such as corporate officers, investors, managers, take-it-or-leave-it contracts, privatization, and denial of aid.

Here's a quick primer: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-difference-betwee...

The reason you’re getting downvoted has less to do with your argument and more to do with your tone.

The strawman doesn’t help either.

Can you clarify the issue with parent's tone? I only read a set of rhetorical questions that made a slight appeal to emotion, which seems appropriate considering that the future of peoples' livelihoods are being discussed.

I reread it and didn't sense that tone at all. I wonder if it's possible the parent edited, because it seemed incredibly sarcastic earlier.

I don't recall. I think I did add a sentence or two, but I don't think I changed it enough to change your read of tone.

Raising the idea that immigration might have negative effects is pretty much taboo here on HN.

Upward mobility is lower in US then in other western countries. The feudalism would have much lower mobility, but none of those countries have feudalism and did not had it for years.

Upward mobility is higher in Denmark, where I'm from, so that's what I'm familiar with. I don't think this metric necessarily measures exactly what people expect: The spread of possible outcomes is simply much tighter. Making $65,000/year puts you in the top 10% of earners, while the bottom 10% ends at $19,600/year. When tripling your salary is enough to travel almost the entire scale, obviously more people will do it. The same numbers for the US are $150,000 and $6,560 (not adjusted for purchasing parity or tax, so grain of salt). Or put differently, the 10%-90% income range for Denmark fits inside the 25%-75% income range for the US.

We have a lot fewer poor people in Denmark, and that's undoubtedly a very good thing. But there are also very, very few people who would be considered more than comfortably middle class in the US.

I don't know a good way to measure this, but I think that you can move further, faster upwards in absolute numbers in the US rather than in Denmark. I would expect that it's comparatively easier to for someone born around the 20%-mark to make it to 80% in the US than for someone to make it from 10% to 90% in Denmark, even though about the same journey in absolute numbers.

https://dqydj.com/united-states-income-brackets-percentiles/

http://www.statistikbanken.dk/statbank5a/SelectVarVal/Define... (Danish)

If I recall right, the mobility was measured by percentage of people who move out of their bracket. E.g. US kid born into 20% bracket is more likely to stay in that bracket. If you move, you make bigger jump (cause differences are bigger), but you are unlikely to move.

Where do you get the idea that we admit a significant number of penniless legal immigrants?

There are published numbers for immigrant income levels, for those interested in a little research:

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v68n1/68n1p31.html

Immigrants typically require sponsorship from a family member with minimum income requirements.

The minimums aren't high, but the sponsor has to make enough to support them, specifically so that they don't require government assistance.

Anecdotally, I worked for a CEO twice who had successful exits (8 figures), was raised poor.

What percent of billionaires come from Upper Middle class families?

Most.

Upward mobility.

Upward mobility is the reality. Look at the stats for people exiting the bottom quintile of household income.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com