Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

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nickthemagicman

Honestly, you can look at a poor kid born to a poor family who works his ass off every day.

Then look at a wealthy kid born to a wealty family who works his ass off every day.

Even if they make the same on all of their standardized tests, make the same grades, and go to the same college, and get the same degree.....

Who's going to be more successful with the same amount of hard work?

And sure there's outliers but it's hard to argue that one's situation matters much more than the individual and this bizarre American sense of individual exceptional-ism is really naive.

I think stems from early Puritanical settlers who believed in pre-determinism and God rewarding people Materialistically the better person you are.

I'm pretty successful but I credit my family, being born in a 1st world country. My hard work was the tiniest of all parts of it. Had I been born in Romania or Zimbabwe I would not be where I am no matter how hard I worked. Conversely, I probably could have been way more successful if I had been born in a truly wealthy family.

..this bizarre American sense of individual exceptional-ism is really naive.

That's what I'm getting at, maybe it's exactly that belief that sets us apart, and positing a distinctly American root seems to support the exceptionalist case.

It's like you're almost saying it's naive for the poor kid to believe he can be successful. If that belief is distinctly an American thing then I'm all in on exceptionalism.

Hope springs eternal and there's always the gamble that one will be one of the minority outliers but statistically peoples paths in life are pretty predictable based on their background, family, and birth region.

>Even if they make the same on all of their standardized tests, make the same grades, and go to the same college, and get the same degree.....

>Who's going to be more successful with the same amount of hard work?

Success is tied more to education than anything. Good education just also happens to be tied to wealth as well. So by framing it with them getting the same education, you have actually eliminated most of the advantage the wealthy kid had. Unless you are just defining success as 'being rich', in which case the wealthy kid doesn't even have to be educated.

In the United States, success is much more tied to how successful your parents are than anything else. "Social mobility is dying" isn't just said for one's health.

You're underestimating the power of connections. I would never say that hard work won't make you successful in the US, but coming from a wealthy family creates a lot of opportunities earlier on in life that poor kids will have to work hard to see. Coming from a wealthy, or even upper middle class, family means maybe your summer senior year of high school is spent interning with your uncle's firm instead of working for extra spending money. It means you can ask your parents for career advice (poor parents don't have career advice because they don't have careers). It means you have an idea, from growing up with it, what success in a career path in a developed country looks like. All of these things are tremendously valuable.

YES! Exactly this.

Passing down of beliefs and behaviors is almost more valuable than passing down money.

You're embedding positive or negative behaviors into someone's personality.

1>Passing down the belief that education is valuable

2>Passing down the belief that investing in the future is more valuable than short term spending.

etc.

Also having resources in general is a massive benefit. 1>having security allows wealthy kids to take more risks/reap more rewards.

2>More free time to learn and advance themselves

3>ability to take low paying jobs purely to make connections/build job skills

4>Status is a language that every one understands at a primitive level and so just getting more respect in general which means better promotions, better mates, etc.

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