I've been around to see people over decades, and how their decisions affect their lives. Meritocracy is not a myth. Where people wind up is very much a consequence of their choices.
This isn't the Soviet Union where one is assigned a career, a job and an apartment.
I've seen immigrants arrive here with nothing and become millionaires. That's why everyone wants to come to America. The opportunity is here.
True.
But we also have lots of studies showing that the best of the lowest socioeconomic class almost never do better than the laziest of the uppermost socioeconomic class.
That looks an awful lot like a meritocracy.
If things keep going like this, those millionares will soon have to build their own fortress cities to keep all the undesirable and disgruntled poor people away.
The fact that poor people come to the US doesn't prove anything either, 99,(9)% of them will never be millionares, just like most people won't.
* does not apply if you or your children get shot by the police for being the wrong shade of brown, maimed by unsafe working conditions associated with low-skilled labour, get sacked because you ask for a raise, etc.
Where I am, the good and the bad, is nearly entirely the sum of my choices. For example, if you floss or not eventually has a large effect on your health. Ditto for the amount you choose to drink, smoke, and exercise. Where you choose to live, who you choose to marry, who you pick for friends, what you do with your free time, do you work to excel in school or do just enough to squeak by, what major do you select in college, it just goes on and on.
Could you point me to one? I've seen a number of studies on averages, and anecdotally, this contradicts my experience, so I'd be interested in whatever data you're referring to.
When millions can barely do it, the political and business classes fucked up and they need to fix it. That's the point of goverment, they can tackle systemic issues.
Choices is not the same as skills. Meritocracy is about merit, not choices.
Who told you poor people are capable of as good choices as richer people?
When you live life in easy mode is easy to make the right choices.
It's also easy to see some people who managed to play in hard mode and win, and extrapolate to everybody (especially if you don't account for lucky breaks and mitigating factors in their course).
But because a handful managed to win in hard mode, it doesn't make it as easy as those who play in easy mode, nor it makes it any more statistically possible for the masses to win the hard mode gameplay they were dealt.
>Where I am, the good and the bad, is nearly entirely the sum of my choices.
LOL. http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
(One is even tempted to wish upon people saying hat a couple some serious accident or decease that kills their savings or takes their job, or puts them into depression, or have them tend to another family member, and such, to see whether their tune will remain the same...)
From https://www.wola.org/analysis/fact-sheet-united-states-immig...
"While the total number of migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border is near its lowest level since the early 1970s, the number of apprehended unaccompanied children and families is again on the rise after a dramatic drop in the months following Trump’s inauguration.
This is a vulnerable population who, for the most part, are deliberately seeking out U.S. border security authorities and asking for protection. Affirmative requests for asylum of individuals from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have increased by 25 percent in fiscal year 2017 compared to 2016.
These people are fleeing for a reason. As White House Chief of Staff John Kelley once put it, the mass migration of children from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border primarily consists of “[parents that] are trying to save their children.” The countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are facing unparalleled levels of violent crime, with El Salvador and Honduras ranking among the top five most violent countries in the world."
As an aside, when the word "meritocracy" was coined, it wasn't considered a good thing. It was a bad thing.
The first step in making better choices is to realize that one is making choices.
Which policies hurt the poor and middle class the most?
Our housing policies, our immigration policies, our trade policies, and our anti-family policies.
That doesn't make much sense if the US is a hell-hole of capitalism grinding people into poverty (as immigrants usually have little).
In 2016, 1.49 million immigrants came to the US. The median age is 44, so they're hardly all children.
Meanwhile, an awful lot more want to come but can't get in legally.
> This is the most ridiculous proof that America is the land of opportunity I can imagine.
People run to opportunity, not away from it. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...
A lot of the planet is just terrible. Of the places that aren't terrible many wont let you just sneak in and make a living if you live a cash and carry lifestyle.
At best you can prove that the US is viewed as better than their current abode by people that don't live here.
This is the definition of damning with faint praise.
For example, you can get an MIT education for free on youtube, you can open a business on github for free, you can get funding for free from kickstarter, you can advertise for free on reddit, you can reach a worldwide market for free via the internet, you can write and sell a book on Amazon for free, and on and on. Nobody needs to know your age, gender, ethnicity, religion, location, disability, marital status, etc.
There's never been such opportunity, right here anywhere in America.
You don’t have to go back many generations to see that compared to today almost everyone played on hard mode.
Police kill ~1000 people per year in the US and roughly half are white. While there is an inarguabale disparity there, that means your chances of getting shot by police are extremely, vanishingly rare. And the numbers killed each year is in steep decline. Let's abandon the fear mongering rhetoric of getting shot by police is any real threat. It makes good headlines but it's just not likely to happen to 99.9999% of people no matter their "shade of brown" as you say.
There are more worker protections, more systemic empowerment of people in all classes, all genders, all faiths, all backgrounds than ever in history. There's a lot of work to be done and the system is by no means equal. Wealth disparity is real. But the fact is there's more learning resources available for free with which to bootstrap yourself than ever. As someone descended from hard working immigrants who valued education, and who is part of an incredibly racially diverse family, I don't think it's a crap deal at all.
Hard mode is comparable across the same game. Those in 1800 played 1800s game, those in Nigeria play the Nigerian game, etc.
You wouldn't consider it much of a success if a person with huge work, skills, and effort got themselves to 1800-era middle class possessions TODAY, would you?
In other words, you "make" decisions only partially, and your choices are shaped by your status in life, before your conscious self can "chose".
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6107/682
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br...
https://qz.com/964920/data-show-poor-people-make-better-fina...
http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/03/02/anxious-people-decisions...
>It's the whole point of all the education available to Americans, most of it free. Choose it, or not. Heck, you can even get an MIT education for free over the internet. It's up to you.
It's only free if your time is worthless.
Else you have opportunity costs. Which are not just monetary (e.g. needing to work long hours to put food on the table) but human too (e.g. tending to a sick relative or raising your kid).
One could still study after his shift flipping burgers for their "MIT education for free over the internet". But they'd still be left without an actual MIT degree, and even following that free education will be much harder than the average HN commenter whose parents splurged for their education.
Our ancestors struggled in a much harsher world and got us to a point where we can enjoy easy mode.
Why can’t the poorest Americans do the same?
They struggled in an era of economic upward momentum, much mobility, job creation, with a population boom, and when the US emerged as global leader. And from 30s to 70s, in a much more labor and working class friendly climate, when lots of protections and rights were established (the 8-hour work day, pensions, minimum wages, equal rights for women and foreign workers, work safety, etc).
Not on an era of stagnant wages, job outsourcing, automation, over-concentration of money to too few hands, precariousness, eroded labour rights, when other countries emerge as global leaders, and so on.
When playing life's levels, it's not just the conditions you meet that matter, it's the momentum of the whole game environment too. If the game environment constantly upgrades, gives you more guns, ammo, etc, it's easier than playing easier initial conditions but seeing very slow or negative game environment progress.
If a person is poor, and they still think sparing an hour watching a Ivy League university lecture(that can vastly increase their opportunity range) isn't worth your time, they have far bigger problems related to entitlement.
>>Else you have opportunity costs.
And there they have a choice. Which opportunity is more important to one's life?
>>and even following that free education will be much harder than the average HN commenter whose parents splurged for their education.
There is often a huge space between Homelessness and being a billionaire.
You can always start doing work that is better than flipping burgers. And I don't any one will contest the fact that it will take a person years before they reach 6 figure salaries.
Again, even an entry level QA job could pay you better than flipping burger and you can work from there.
Compared to working to put food on the table?
Not to mention that after back-to-back shifts, your ability to take in a Ivy League university lecture diminishes compared to somebody whose parents pay for their college...
And that's assuming you even have the necessary background in your underfunded school district and impoverished childhood to seek it and understand it in the first place....
"But we also have lots of studies showing that the best of the lowest socioeconomic class almost never do better than the laziest of the uppermost socioeconomic class."
The entire point is that there is inequality of opportunity and unequal return on equal potential not that there isn't opportunity.
If you recall the post I replied to you said
"So why do penniless immigrants keep coming here? Do they know something poor people in America don't, or are they simply misinformed?"
This is terrible logic. This is a wealthy nation with lots to offer but people here have actual problems here too. You are glibly dismissing these actual problems with bad logic which personally makes me very angry. Who the heck are you.
Imagine if someone was talking about how racism was still a problem in America and you piped in with how your black doctor friend's practice was doing great and people shouldn't let negatives become a self fulfilling prophesy.
Well no shit but what we were actually talking about was inequality in America which we can actually do something about.
From the individual's prospective whatever society does the individual ought to do the best they can and for many decent lives await in spite of challenges. From the perspective of society we ought to try to maximize everyone's chances as best we can.
My ancestors came here because life in the "Old Country" was so bad that braving the crossing of the Atlantic in cattle class on a ship, coming through Ellis Island, finding out that working in New York wasn't much better, and finally landing in the steel mills and coal mines of Western Pennsylvania was a step UP--but not by much.
Those same ancestors also stood in front of bullets from Pinkertons because that was preferable to allowing their working conditions to continue.
The fact that immigrants move is generally a sign of how shitty the place they are leaving is, not necessarily a sign of how good their destination is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...
Edit: in fact, the Wikipedia article directly contradicts your claim, saying "Looking at larger moves, only 4% of those raised in the bottom quintile moved up to the top quintile as adults. Around twice as many (8%) of children born into the top quintile fell to the bottom" - suggesting that the best of the underprivileged are far more successful than the laziest of the over-privileged.
Percentages hides values:
"However, because US income inequalities have increased substantially, the consequences of the "birth lottery" - the parents to whom a child is born - are larger today than in the past. US wealth is increasingly concentrated in the top 10% of American families, so children of the remaining 90% are more likely to be born at lower starting incomes today than the same children in the past. Even if they are equally mobile and climb the same distance up the US socioeconomic ladder as children born 25 years earlier, the bottom 90% of the ladder is worth less now, so they gain less income value from their climb ... especially when compared to the top 10%."
And, those who fall from the top quintile are likely starting at the 80% point and not the 95% point.