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Comment by rpmisms | Hacker News Reader

Social mobility is very different than economic mobility. It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. Heck, I did it without any college.

Social mobility is a different story. I was raised in a rural area, which is essentially a social class of its own. Since becoming an adult, I've found myself gravitating towards working-class people. I like the bluntness, the awareness of real issues, and the family values. I make more money than many of the yuppies who live a mile away, but socially, I'm several rungs "below" them.

I could get a nice haircut, mow my lawn properly, get divorced, and fit right in, if I chose to, but I don't want to. I think you'll find many lower-class Americans wouldn't, even if they knew how to.

Edit: by "Working class", I mean blue-collar and not wealthy. The salary cap is a little higher than the traditional definition, but I think it's a more accurate representation of middle America.

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This is not your main point, but in the spirit of Americans overestimating social mobility, you may be overestimating "family values" among the working class. According to the 2015 US census, the share of people who have been divorced at least once is 46% (poor), 41% (working class) and 30% (middle and upper class). Similarly, people who report they are "very happy" in marriage are 54% (poor), 56% (working class) and 65% (middle and upper class). (https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-marriage-divide-how-and-why-w...).

I wasn't able to turn up any stats on lawn care though.

I'm telling an anecdotal story, and in my area the working class is very Catholic, black, or both. YMMV, not valid in California.

California has one of the lowest divorce rates in the entire country https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with...

California is ~1 point below the national average in marriages and divorces. By comparison, Maine is 4 points over the marriage average and 3 points under the divorce average.

I should have remembered my audience and not made a joke about California's differences from the rest of the country.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/12/united-states...

It's a trite joke not even grounded in reality. Vast swaths of California believe exactly the same shit as the people making those jokes. I mean, I grew up in the mountains, cutting through cow-pastures to get to school. I've yet to hear a California joke that rings true to my experience.

It's the most populous state in the nation, as well as one of the most climactically and geographically diverse states.

There's almost nothing anyone could say that will apply to the whole population or the whole geography, certainly not anything that wouldn't apply equally well (or badly) to all Americans.

Now why would you mention Maine? I guess then I would say Arkansas has the worst divorce rate (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with... 2020). I assume that's the whole thing we're doing here?, blue state, red state?

I responded to your original comment because you said "and in my area the working class is very Catholic, black, or both. YMMV, not valid in California." which you say is a joke. What's the joke? Now I don't want to accuse you of contributing to this because I have no way of knowing where your beliefs about CA came from by (I'm going to go off on a tangent here) but what I've seen when it comes to California is that people now use it as a negative example for almost every comparison, often without evidence. It's done so much that there's now there's a negative connotation to the state itself that certainly isn't valid in all cases. It's so insidious how a belief / stereotype can just appear out of no where if it's just causally spread out.

Maine isn't hard red, they do lean red but tend to elect very moderate people. I looked at the map of states by divorce and marriage vs the average and noticed Maine is nuptually superior.

California is an exception to all sorts of rules, due in part to its diversity and insane wealth. I could have said "Marriage is known to the State of California to cause cancer" and have been making the same joke.

Please note that I'm northeastern, and Cali/NYC are the butt of almost every joke, because both places have such a massive disconnect from the reality of middle America. I bet people from rural California know exactly the feeling I'm describing.

This may be influenced by the fact that CA also has one of the lowest marriage rates in the country: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/ma...

I think his definition of working class is perhaps different to the definition in your study.

It's one of those terms that are loosely defined (at least in certain societies) and mean very different things to different people.

Is an electrician earning US$80k/year middle class because he's well compensated for his work, or working class because he's doing manual labour?

The phrase "Family Values" is pretty vague, too. I'm sure if you asked almost everyone who is in a family whether they felt they had family values they'd say yes. I'm not really sure what someone means when they say an area has "family values". I don't think it means lack of divorce.

In the 90s, I remember "family values" having been used by politicians as a polite euphemism for the very narrow "straight, Christian, atomic" view of what a family should be.

>I don't think it means lack of divorce.

I'd definitely view a lack of divorce as a pretty big part of it.

But as you said, it's entirely personal and subjective. :)

However you cut it, divorce rates are substantially higher among the working class. If you look at educational attainment:

% divorced among those married, by age 46:

Did not graduate from high school: 58.8

High school graduate, no college: 49.1

Some college or associate degree: 48.5

Bachelor's degree or higher: 29.8

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/pdf/marriage-and-d...

Poor, middle, and upper class are economic distinctions in America. Not social ones. I think OP misstated his alignment to the "working class". He refers to Yuppies in the subsequent sentence which gives a hint that this is a rural/urban divide argument.

But that's just my reading of it.

> Americans overestimate social mobility in their country (economist.com)

>> HOW likely is someone to move up the economic ladder?

> It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field.

> https://personalfinancedata.com/income-percentile-calculator...

>> An income of $100,000 for ages 40 to 100 ranks at the 89.82%

good to see evidence the article is correct in the wild.

Why are you citing individual income instead of house hold income? A household income of 100k puts you in the 66th percentile.

https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/

I cited individual income because that's what the comment I quoted was referring to?

I don't think they did.

Only 8% of people in the United States make more than $100k: https://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/

Don't know if I'd call it easy if it's something only 8 out of 100 people do. It also depends on the area. $100k in SF is a lot different than $100k in the mid-west.

I definitely have survivorship bias, but I also know many people who've done similar things in different fields. I think knowing other people who make plenty of money helps, but often only by way of example. Knowing it's possible means you'll work harder.

“What I’ve seen contradicts measured statistics across the country” is not a convincing argument. Most users of HN probably live in a bubble; important to look at hard data from reliable sources rather than personal experiences.

> “What I’ve seen contradicts measured statistics across the country” is not a convincing argument.

You are not understanding the other possibilities here.

The other possibility is that yes, it is true that it is not that hard to make it to this level of success, but the stats are still true, and it is simply that people don't do this, for other reasons.

There are a multitude of reasons, as for why someone might not join lucrative fields, even if it isn't that hard to do so.

For example, maybe they simply aren't aware of it, or they incorrectly think it would be difficult. Or maybe there a social reasons why people don't do it.

Or maybe, in order to achieve that level of success they would have to move, and I know that lots of people don't want to do move.

A lot of people simply don't want to be HTPL maintenance, for example. It pays very well, but it's hard. That's not acceptable to a lot of folks right now.

My sister-in-law's fiancé is doing it as a journeyman, and he's making very close to what I do as a mid-level SWE.

> My sister-in-law's fiancé is doing it as a journeyman, and he's making very close to what I do as a mid-level SWE

This is not a very useful statement without a ballpark figure. Mid level SWE salaries range from <100k to >300k depending on the company.

> Only 8% of people in the United States make more than $100k

How does the percentage change when you look at people with full-time jobs? With full-time professional jobs? Who are actively trying to optimise their income instead of for example prioritising family? I'd guess it becomes much larger very quickly.

According to the 2020 census data linked below the percentage increases to around 24% for individuals who worked full time all year. I don’t think there is any easy way to find the more specific groups you mentioned. That’s not a large enough increase to consider making six figures as easy as “prioritizing” it or whatever you’re proposing.

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/pinc-01/...

In any case what you’re proposing is selection bias. No one should be surprised that people who work full time are more likely to make six figures than those who don’t. And yes, if you cherry pick a group of “professionals” who receive larger salaries of course the percentage will increase. And it’s back to survivorship bias for the “prioritization” examples you mentioned. Unless you happen to have a random sample of people who don’t make six figures but would prefer to.

I think you've just proved yourself that making 100k is extremely achievable in the US (1/4) for someone who even just bothers to turn up full-time.

Keep in mind the "underemployment rate" -- the people who want to be working more but can't find a job that will let them -- is something like 12%.

Being willing to show up full time is necessary but not sufficient.

When 3 out 4 people "fail" at something, I'm not sure that calling it "extremely achievable" is really a particularly suitable description.

Ahem, your statement assumes people even try - most do not. Especially given the "follow your passion" advice Americans are following nowadays.

The GP was using a quote from the GGP:

> According to the 2020 census data linked below the percentage increases to around 24% for individuals who worked full time all year.

It said and implied nothing about people trying or not. GP attempted to cast this as "1/4 of people succeed, so it's easily achieveable"

It said and implied nothing about failing either.

Also, if I look at the people around myself and see that 1 / 4 are able to do something, it would probably be easy. So it’s the GPs own self awareness combined with the stat.

This calculator is from 2016. I’m curious what results this would give after adjusting for inflation and current salary jumps.

A few lessons for social mobility I learned while joining the SF techie class, coming here from a relatively poor country in Europe.

1. If Americans can’t read your emotes they put you in a “Uh this feels weird, that person is an emotionless robot” camp. You have to practice

2. It is not okay to ask “What’s that?” when someone proudly mentions which college they went to (because as a European you only recognize 4 or 5)

3. Talking about money with upper middle class people is impolite. They have never had money problems and do not understand why anyone would ever talk about money

4. You should instead talk about your investments

5. Saying “Charity? That’s what taxes is for” is considered trolling

6. Rent and real estate are the only times it’s socially acceptable to say “Damn, life is expensive”

7. You have to talk about helping the less fortunate

8. It is not okay to directly help the less fortunate on your street, wouldn’t want to make them feel like it’s okay to be there

9. You can only say positive things about your boss (because you aim to become them)

10. It is okay to say negative things about your boss’s boss’s boss

11. Every acquaintance is “a friend”

12. Real friends are “best/close friend”

13. Everyone hires cleaners and similar help, this is not considered a luxury

14. Everything is always awesome

15. You don’t fail, you are given an opportunity to grow

To be fair, #5 is kind of trolling. Taxes are not 'charity'.

Also, the 'money talk' thing - that's Anglo, not American, and it's nothing to do with not understanding low income, it's basically avoidance of blunt status bragging, it's considered a bit crude. Which is why you'd have to talk about your investments in order to humble brag.

> To be fair, #5 is kind of trolling. Taxes are not 'charity'.

The point of #5 is that in a number of other countries, people believe that taxes should pay for the social services required by the unfortunate, the sick, the indigent, and so forth. Charity plays a minor role, because it is the job of the state to take care of its citizens.

There are always needs that go far beyond what the government will and should pay for.

Social justice, animal shelters, basic needs for foreign citizens etc..

Sure, and that's all that charity covers in countries that believe that taxation should cover the rest.

Governments do all of those though. USA doesn't send a lot, true, but other governments send as up to 1% of their GDP as foreign aid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...

Are you ... familiar with the "regional gothic" genre?

> Talking about money with upper middle class people is impolite. They have never had money problems and do not understand why anyone would ever talk about money

That isn't the reason at all. My parents struggled in the Depression, but they never ever talked about their money. The Depression taught them to be very, very frugal, a lifelong habit. (My family tended to keep cars for 30 years, for example.) I had no idea what my Dad had until after he passed away.

> You don’t fail, you are given an opportunity to grow

This is an attitude common to successful people at all levels. There's a reason it correlates with success.

Money talk might be an american thing then, not a class thing? Where I’m from everyone is safely broke together so complaining about lack of money is almost used as small talk like weather.

But once you climb out of that, suddenly you stop talking about money. Figured US was the same

Talking about money just makes you a target for every charity, scam, people wanting loans, people wanting you to invest in their startup, groupies, and on and on.

I bet it would be really, really hard to become an actual friend of Bill Gates, for an extreme example. I once was at a conference, where he was a speaker, and sat at the lunch table he sat at, along with 7 other people. It was sickening how they fawned all over him. He pretended not to notice, but can you imagine going through life with that happening all the time?

> It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field.

If you want to call what the article measures "economic mobility", OK. Regardless of terminology, the point is that Americans think it's easier than it actually is to go from the bottom quintile of income to the top. If "it's not hugely difficult" translates to "more than a 7.8% chance of going from bottom quintile to top", then you'd be among them.

> It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field.

That's if you also had a healthy learning environment at school and home, can afford college, and have a healthy early development to be able to grow up into an sufficiently smart child. A lot of people in the bottom 20% don't have those initial conditions.

or go into one of the many trades that pay north of $100k with no college education and just provided on the job training.

trades right now that are struggling to find applicants.

The trades are oversold in the US. Many of them are physically demanding if not dangerous. Many of them are dominated by smaller businesses that are practically exempt from labor law enforcement. Many are strongly dependent on the housing cycle. Since many of those businesses are also family-owned, a person without the right connections can face an uphill battle getting a decent job.

I believe that the opioid epidemic started out as a pain epidemic, with a population of people suffering chronic pain that they acquired from their jobs. I've hired people to work at my house, and the ones who are my age tend to be hobbling and broken.

I'd be more enthusiastic about the trades if I lived in a country with better unions, labor laws, health care, and safety net.

Now, some of the better trades are medicine and nursing related. Those tend to be indoors, in a better regulated workplace. Or computer programming.

you are moving the goalpost here. good luck finding a job paying well that's not a trade or a technical job requiring a college degree.

grew up blue collar, still spend plenty of time with blue collar folks. just like there are fat unhealthy desk workers, there are beaten up tradesmen who didn't take care of their bodies. there are also healthy examples of both.

finally, these are required jobs that make our society function. hard to say they are oversold while most of the people on this forum make the proverbial fourteenth attempt at Uber for dogwalking. myself included.

Out of curiosity, would you consider programming a trade? I'm a degreeless developer, and I definitely treat my work like trade work.

by the colloquial definition, no. "the trades" usually mean plumber, electrician, sheet metal worker, welder, home construction, etc. skilled labor with an apprenticeship program, often union backed.

I would consider any person engaged in skilled work that requires learning or training to be a tradesman, so yes a programmer fits in my opinion.

Ultimately, "trade" is defined by social custom. Another term is "profession." It probably makes more sense to look at how different occupations are trained. Some training is defined by licensure requirements, possibly union standards, and so forth. The duration of training varies by occupation, e.g., medicine takes longer than truck driving. Some training occurs in a college setting, such as medicine and nursing. Some is provided by local or regional trade schools, or by the military.

An interesting thing about programming is that we still haven't reached a consensus on what kind of training is needed. So we can say it's a trade, profession, or whatever, but that doesn't tell us anything useful about it.

Unschooled, no college, committed parents. All I needed.

The last part is priceless.

From a great article I read recently:

“A solid, two-parent home is critical for a child’s future. There is simply no shortcut."

“ Poverty, even extreme poverty, is surmountable. What is nearly impossible to overcome is the instability—the psychological havoc—created by broken homes. Especially for boys.”

https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1456287662243991560

I agree with this strongly, but saying this publicly is taboo. Implying that children need a nuclear family is widely considered ignorant at best, bigoted at worst.

Sure, but that situation is not unique to America. Go to any country in the world and if you have a bad upbringing, how far you go is likely stunted.

> Social mobility is very different than economic mobility. It's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field. Heck, I did it without any college.

And yet, many people assert that it is indeed hard for them.

The easiest way to compare this between countries is to look at actual economic/social mobility, in the form of poor people becoming affluent, affluent people becoming poor, etc. Rather than theorycrafting or going off anecdotes, see what’s actually happening.

And the data says that the US doesn’t do so well here, IIRC.

Ah, survivor bias

See my other replies, I'm aware of this, baby.

Not even that. Just sheltered fool bias.

I was running around my nearest city at age 14, looking for work. I got in fights at bus stops, got mugged once*, slept on benches when I missed a ride a couple of times.

Sheltered, yes, ignorant, no. I know what being hungry is like, I remember how weird it was to wear brand-new clothes.

I'm not complaining, it was all perfectly normal to me at the time, but I'm not talking down at the poors, I'm talking about who I am.

*Mugged once and then learned how not to get mugged. People tried after that, didn't go well.

Is six figures really that much any more? I’m talking about 1xx,xxx, which is what most people mean when they say six figures. If you’re living in a place like New York, California, or even say, Jersey, what does a low 6 figures really get you?

>what does a low 6 figures really get you?

A house 50min (but not in a nice neighborhood, thank fucking god, I don't want to live among "nice people") from Boston and not generally having to worry about money (i.e. I'm not house poor in the slightest).

Though I did buy a couple years before 'rona and the inflation so I probably would be renting today.

Given that median household income in NYC is around $70k, I'd say it buys you quite a bit.

"t's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field."

I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

But the thing about America is that it has two, giant categories of people in a 'different lane' - notably those in poor Black urban neighbourhoods, and new Latino migrants particularly in Texas/Cali where they are highly segregated from the rest of society.

'Technically' you might argue they have that opportunity, but it's not really the case if they live in a situation wherein that reality has never dawned upon them, and their entire life context is skewed towards something else.

My distant cousin married a Latino man, their daughter was 17 and was making 'big money' helping her mother at the cleaning service. And by 'big money' I mean 'some money' for a kind of poor family, a 17 year old with any cash at all was living large. She had absolutely zero concept or aspiration of going to college, nobody she knew did that and was really keen on working, because it made her money and wasn't even keen on finishing high school.

The 'cultural gaps' between these communities are gigantic, it's like being in a different country.

America probably is 'technically the most open' but pragmatically, it's not the case.

I would argue that the people in those ecosystems have much of the opportunity afforded to me, they just don't know about how possible it really is.

I personally work at a Floridian company, and have a bunch of coworkers who come from the exact backgrounds you talk about. It's totally possible, it just has to be a known opportunity, not a pie-in-the-sky dream.

Yes, it's definitely possible. But your personal experience more or less indicates that it can be done, not that it commonly is.

"it just has to be a known opportunity" - and this is the rub.

I think that this is far, far more than simply 'informing them they can go to college'. It's an entire life outlook, set of conscientious behaviours, that's almost impossible to contemplate if you're completely outside of positive conditions.

It is true that almost anyone can go to almost any public school, get into a hald-decent Uni and study STEM, and 'have a decent job'. But getting people into that modality is much more easier said than done, it's probably the 'hard part' actually.

Again, I did not go to college. That's not a necessary step for working in tech.

Again, your personal anecdote is not important, because it's not representative of the normal story in the US. Your story is exceptional.

The number of people who 'don't go to college and end up in in highly paid tech jobs' in the US is very, very small.

> I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

Race-based generalizations almost always end up leading you in the wrong direction. There's substantially more white people living below the poverty line compared to any other group [1] and those poor white communities are trapped by the same lack of awareness of opportunities as any of the minority groups you mentioned. Whites and Asians are over-represented in the affluent groups, which leads many people to look at things through a racial lens, but on a per capita basis, whites dominate the impoverished population.

[1] https://talkpoverty.org/basics/

Your link clearly shows that poverty is significantly worse along black people than white (19% to 8.5%), and worse among American Indians than black people (25% to 19%). I don't understand why you would ever look at this in per Capita terms when clearly there are more white people overall.

If the goal is to minimize and dispel the effects of systemic issues, then you have to use the overall number.

The goal is to use numbers to inform yourself instead of emotional attachments to political narratives. The numbers show that anyone can be poor and deprived of opportunity.

Then go back and read what I replied to instead of what you wanted to think I was saying. The original poster stated "white and asian people don't have this problem" but the numbers show this clearly is not true.

hmm, I did, a few times. I don't see that quote in the parent. They do say that white and Asian people have more opportunity which these numbers clearly confirm.

>> "it's not hugely difficult to earn six figures in the US if you're committed, work hard, and pick a good field." > I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

So the 15 million impoverished white people are just lazy but the 8 million impoverished black people are systematically deprived of opportunity? It's so strange to me that SJWs feel the need to minimize the struggles of groups that are facing the same obstacles as the groups they are advocating for just because they have a common skin color with the majority of the affluent group.

Hmm, I don't see anything about white people being lazy in the parent either. I see that you're not interested in debate based on facts but are driven by your ideology. I wish you luck in reading different viewpoints and making your own decisions based on facts rather than what you've been told to believe.

> I see that you're not interested in debate based on facts but are driven by your ideology

That's an awful lot of projecting. Your use of logical fallacies is dizzying.

>>>I think that's true for White and Asian folks.

I think it's true for people from households that stress STEM, the utility of higher education, and asset management. My mother grew up in North Philadelphia, graduated from an HBCU with a Math degree at age 20, and was making six figures in the early 2000s as a Software Architect/Project Manager, after a brief stint running a small consulting firm. My father grew up in a poor area of Virginia, worked as an engineer (BS Math, MS Space Engineering) and then went to medical school at the age of 35 to became a radiologist. Both grew up during the Civil Rights Movement.

In comparison, my Japanese wife, from a blue-collar family of school teachers, is completely baffled at the idea of entrepreneurship, financial independence, real estate income, etc... She looks at my ~$95k salary and thinks "You make as much as a Japanese school principal, you're at the top." I look at it and think I'm behind the power curve for a 39yo with a STEM Masters degree, and behind the power curve in accumulated assets based on my assessment of long-term freedom, risk mitigation, and how I want to spend my time.

> I like the bluntness, the awareness of real issues, and the family values

I'm sure that working class people are more aware of issues that affect them. I'm also sure the same applies to poor, middle class, and wealthy people.

They're all real issues.

>Social mobility is very different than economic mobility

Truly. And unfortunately while the headline says "social mobility" the article looks at economic mobility, specifically income quintiles (as opposed to wealth accumulation).

Economic mobility is considered a type of social mobility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility

I guess that’s what makes Trump “the peoples billionaire” but I don’t think it’s a class.

It’s more of a function of how much you embrace the norms of formal education and institutions. This defines who do you trust, what do you care about and how do you think.

I’m inclined to think that this is a personality trait. Surely, personality is shaped by the environment too.

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