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Comment by ricardoplouis | Hacker News Reader

That's a fair point assuming upward economic mobility in the U.S but statistically speaking it's more likely someone stays rich or stays poor than it is that they move upward into a different bracket entirely

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/07/16/the-u-s...

While it is true that much of the recent wealth in the U.S. is self-made and not entirely inherited. It's also true that a child born poor in this country is far more likely to stay as such than they are to become part of the top 10%.

If we lived in an egalitarian society, then pointing out the wealth of the top 10% might be divisive, but considering that our current wealth inequality is worst than 1774 France, then I believe it's a fairly accurate picture being painted.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/us-inco...

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> It's also true that a child born poor in this country is far more likely to stay as such than they are to become part of the top 10%.

how many of them get to the top 20%, how many more get to the top 30%? in other words, there's no need to be the best basketball player to succeed in life.

> but considering that our current wealth inequality is worst than 1774 France, then I believe it's a fairly accurate picture being painted.

wealth inequality is a meaningless measure, as J. K. Rowling increased it the moment she published her first book, and made it even larger with subsequent releases. If you look at the statistics of it, it might look as if she took advantage of her readers by making them financially poorer by the cost of books they bought. Obviously, the stats have no concern of non-monetary value exchanged here, and proclaim wealth inequality instead.

>how many of them get to the top 20%, how many more get to the top 30%? in other words, there's no need to be the best basketball player to succeed in life.

A fine thought. Though in a world of increasing inequality (Gini coefficient, etc), the "winner takes all" dynamic makes it more and more necessary to actually be "the best basketball player to succeed in life."

This book analogy doesn't make sense to me

They weren't clear with what they meant, but to steelman the argument...

Some things that increase wealth inequality are bad, others are good: J.K. Rowling increased wealth inequality by writing Harry Potter, but the world is better off having a great children's book series. Book purchasers, publishers and authors are all enriched by the existence of the book.

Ah thank you

The Forbes article study is a bit too creative to apply to this discussion:

"Rather than using the more traditional metric of income, this study uses educational attainment as the basis for defining upward mobility."

The Atlantic article seems like more of the same: comparing brackets and ignoring mobility.

Then you must be distressed that mobility has been decreasing in the US and that we now lag substantially behind many of our European peers on that measure.

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