Socialism. Because that is what income equality basically is. It leads to massive unproductivity. And your rational is erroneous, outdated econ 101 gone rogue: Income inequality in itself is nothing bad. And it is natural and desirable. Because we are all born with different skills, different passions, and we are all born with a free will. We can choose to work hard and attain something in life or we can choose to be complacent and reject continuous education, retraining, ...it is a free choice. Which leads me to argue that not everyone should be compensated equally for their labor because different efforts went into such labor. Hence paying and compensating people differently is desirable, else nobody would want to attain the harder to attain qualifications, needed, to perform a certain job. Why would you undergo med school and work your butt off for years without pay to get your med qualifications if you are promised the same low pay of a grave yard digger? You would never bother with med school. I think this whole argument completely disproved your points. I continue to claim that it is the lack of opportunities that really strangulates an economy. The truth is that not everyone with equal qualifications will get the same opportunities. Put two applicants into one room, one Jew, one Black guy. I promise you that in virtually all cases the Jew will be taken for an investment banking job at Wall Street. For no apparent qualification related reason, but nepotism. Put a woman into the same room with a male sports athlete and let them compete for a trading position. Again, otherwise identical qualifications. Yet, it is very apparent that in most cases the guy is taken. Lack of opportunities are not always character or race/religion related. Often times it is because the lack of opportunities creates a chain reaction. Some parents simply cannot afford the education of a private boarding school which unarguably offers a better education than a public school in a slum neighborhood. So, this lack of equal opportunity almost certainly places an applicant for a Wall Street job, for example, on the bottom of the list of applicants, with all the other candidates having attended pristine private education. Not that this would be a hindering point to a strongly driven person to succeed but it simply presents unequal opportunities. @sle perfectly described it, privileged upbringing does not force someone to work like nutcase in order to attain certain opportunities, but someone on the bottom rung hardly ever is presented with such opportunities to start with and most often it either requires an incredible amount of luck or an iron willpower and effort to otherwise shine, or both.
Ah, but neither of them would get the job. You have to be a proper WASP from a fancy family to get in well, at least it used to be so - I still remember stopping the IB floor and feeling out of place. Yup, this one is so true. Sucks because I actually think that women make better traders. Extreme income inequality breeds lack of opportunities, there is that. It's unclear what the fix is, but Robin Hood approach is not the answer. Maybe it could come from making education and hard work cool again?
i agree and disagree, i disagree in the sense of i dont believe in luck and ive seen many born into rags and lower than rags and they have propelled themselves into the riches and some ultra riches, i agree that without a stroke of good luck u cant, but in saying this luck would be defined as hard work, cuz the harder u work the luckier u get
you are incorrectly applying summary statistics. Just because you know some or "many" cases does not mean that they are statistically significant. You may know 100 people or heard of 100 people who made it despite the odds having been stacked against them. However, you are not mentioning or considering the many millions of cases that never made it, even if they wanted to make it. Let's exclude for obvious reasons those who have no interest in busting their butt. Statistically a much lower percentage of people, who did not enjoy a privileged upbringing, get the same opportunities than people from higher social levels. Another often made mistake is the claim to my earlier point that "of course there are less people from underprivileged environments working on Wall Street, because much fewer of them apply for the job". That is again a statistical error because even when you have one such applicant from poorer means sitting in the same application room at that very same time he/she is competing head to head with everyone else. At that point it all comes down to skills/experience/education/impression and unfortunately also race/sex/socio-economic environment of upbringing. I get it, there is a lot of unfair shit happening in this world. And we sometimes tend to yawn and say "so what, just work hard and you will make it". But it is a myth that many who work hard will make it unless they work harder than everyone else, are blessed with a good dose of luck, and have the privilege of networks and connections. Some of the above ingredients can be acquired/learned/earned, but when you are given them free by default in a privileged upbringing then this automatically places you at the top of the queue.
Very true, The point is that iam making on an individual level any one can rise above and become the 1%er or a ceo, not many make it of course but any ONE can, And of course if your born into it its easier
You are mistaking survivorship bias for a proper trend I used to think this way too, even attributed my own meager progress to my hard work and perseverance. In reality, it's 98% luck, 1% hard work and 1% more luck. PS. Zzzz1 beat me to it. He's an HFP
I told you all i agree, because luck is undefined firmly, i subscribe to the defintion that the harder u work the luckier u get, so in that sense we all on the same page
at anyrate, I'm about done arguing with communists, if they haven't figured it out by now there is no cure for stupidity and I can just hope they all die off and don't reproduce.