What do you want to do with the little people?

[bilby]

The 'owner of the tool' and the 'worker' need not be different people.

For the most part, the reason that they are different people is that the owner of the tool had wealthy ancestors, and the worker didn't.

Ned Ludd wasn't wrong to be angry about technology destroying his income; He was wrong to think destroying the technology was the answer. A better answer would have been to demand a share in the technology. There's no tablets of stone anywhere that have "the owner is entitled to everything" written on them by the gods; And no reason other than tradition why having wealthy grandparents should correlate so strongly with having wealth today.

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

What is inherited are attitudes.

Most wealth IS inherited.

Most wealthy people pretend that's not so, by passing wealth down to their kids long before they die, so it doesn't show up in inheritance statistics, nor get taxed as inheritance.

The attitude wealthy people's children inherit is "It's OK to fail because mom and dad will bail me out if I do". Poor people's kids don't have that attitude, they know that failure would be fatal. So guess who become entrepreneurs, and thereby get richer?

 

[Trausti]

The 'owner of the tool' and the 'worker' need not be different people.

For the most part, the reason that they are different people is that the owner of the tool had wealthy ancestors, and the worker didn't.

Ned Ludd wasn't wrong to be angry about technology destroying his income; He was wrong to think destroying the technology was the answer. A better answer would have been to demand a share in the technology. There's no tablets of stone anywhere that have "the owner is entitled to everything" written on them by the gods; And no reason other than tradition why having wealthy grandparents should correlate so strongly with having wealth today.

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

What is inherited are attitudes.

Most wealth IS inherited.

Most wealthy people pretend that's not so, by passing wealth down to their kids long before they die, so it doesn't show up in inheritance statistics, nor get taxed as inheritance.

The attitude wealthy people's children inherit is "It's OK to fail because mom and dad will bail me out if I do". Poor people's kids don't have that attitude, they know that failure would be fatal. So guess who become entrepreneurs, and thereby get richer?

The most consequential inheritance to the child is the parents' genes and behaviors. Saying it's just material wealth passed down is cargo-cult thinking.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/efm/media/workingpapers/working_papers/pdffiles/dp20722.pdf

 

[bilby]

Most wealth IS inherited.

Most wealthy people pretend that's not so, by passing wealth down to their kids long before they die, so it doesn't show up in inheritance statistics, nor get taxed as inheritance.

The attitude wealthy people's children inherit is "It's OK to fail because mom and dad will bail me out if I do". Poor people's kids don't have that attitude, they know that failure would be fatal. So guess who become entrepreneurs, and thereby get richer?

The most consequential inheritance to the child is the parents' genes and behaviors. Saying it's just material wealth passed down is cargo-cult thinking.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/efm/media/workingpapers/working_papers/pdffiles/dp20722.pdf

There's certainly an element of genetic and behavioural influence. But to say it is "the most consequential" is to seriously overstretch your evidence, in support of your personal biases.

In the absence of a communist revolution to level the economic playing field, economic inheritance - money - is far more significant (hence the need to look at an extreme case such as China's in order to see the genetic and behavioural effect at all).

 

[Trausti]

Most wealth IS inherited.

Most wealthy people pretend that's not so, by passing wealth down to their kids long before they die, so it doesn't show up in inheritance statistics, nor get taxed as inheritance.

The attitude wealthy people's children inherit is "It's OK to fail because mom and dad will bail me out if I do". Poor people's kids don't have that attitude, they know that failure would be fatal. So guess who become entrepreneurs, and thereby get richer?

The most consequential inheritance to the child is the parents' genes and behaviors. Saying it's just material wealth passed down is cargo-cult thinking.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/efm/media/workingpapers/working_papers/pdffiles/dp20722.pdf

There's certainly an element of genetic and behavioural influence. But to say it is "the most consequential" is to seriously overstretch your evidence, in support of your personal biases.

In the absence of a communist revolution to level the economic playing field, economic inheritance - money - is far more significant (hence the need to look at an extreme case such as China's in order to see the genetic and behavioural effect at all).

How about this?

https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC5436311&blobtype=pdf

 

[bilby]

There's certainly an element of genetic and behavioural influence. But to say it is "the most consequential" is to seriously overstretch your evidence, in support of your personal biases.

In the absence of a communist revolution to level the economic playing field, economic inheritance - money - is far more significant (hence the need to look at an extreme case such as China's in order to see the genetic and behavioural effect at all).

How about this?

https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC5436311&blobtype=pdf

What about it?

It hints at a possibility that an effect might be more important. In Georgia in 1832, before the industrial revolution (notably the Cultural Revolution in China also affected a mainly agrarian economy, even more so at its end than at its beginning).

That's a long way short of actually supporting your beliefs.

You might not be wrong.

But you probably are. Particularly with regards to the kind of wealth seen amongst the middle and upper classes in the post industrial world, which is very different from that of farmers in 1832 Georgia or in 1976 China.

So what?

 

[Gun Nut]

Tools without people to work them stand idle. There are no tools without the people who build them. Money alone does not mine raw materials, process or build.

in other words, the world needs ditch diggers too.

 

[bilby]

Tools without people to work them stand idle. There are no tools without the people who build them. Money alone does not mine raw materials, process or build.

in other words, the world needs ditch diggers too.

No it doesn't. We have backhoe drivers now. One highly skilled person doing the work that used to require hundreds of low skilled workers.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The 'owner of the tool' and the 'worker' need not be different people.

For the most part, the reason that they are different people is that the owner of the tool had wealthy ancestors, and the worker didn't.

Ned Ludd wasn't wrong to be angry about technology destroying his income; He was wrong to think destroying the technology was the answer. A better answer would have been to demand a share in the technology. There's no tablets of stone anywhere that have "the owner is entitled to everything" written on them by the gods; And no reason other than tradition why having wealthy grandparents should correlate so strongly with having wealth today.

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

What is inherited are attitudes.

Intelligence/behavior is inherited. A fun example is that the descendants of the Chinese gentry/nobles dispossessed during the Great Leap Forward / Cultural Revolution now make up much of China’s current rich elite.

Attitudes and behavior are pretty much two sides of the same coin.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The 'owner of the tool' and the 'worker' need not be different people.

For the most part, the reason that they are different people is that the owner of the tool had wealthy ancestors, and the worker didn't.

Ned Ludd wasn't wrong to be angry about technology destroying his income; He was wrong to think destroying the technology was the answer. A better answer would have been to demand a share in the technology. There's no tablets of stone anywhere that have "the owner is entitled to everything" written on them by the gods; And no reason other than tradition why having wealthy grandparents should correlate so strongly with having wealth today.

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

What is inherited are attitudes.

Most wealth IS inherited.

Most wealthy people pretend that's not so, by passing wealth down to their kids long before they die, so it doesn't show up in inheritance statistics, nor get taxed as inheritance.

The attitude wealthy people's children inherit is "It's OK to fail because mom and dad will bail me out if I do". Poor people's kids don't have that attitude, they know that failure would be fatal. So guess who become entrepreneurs, and thereby get richer?

I suggest you read "The Millionaire Next Door". I've recommended it many times, I don't think anyone has listened.

Since college every employer I've had had a middle class background. Self-made, not inherited.

The reality is that the vast majority of people have already made their path in life before they inherit anything. You're thinking of an elite that is a very small percentage of the population.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's certainly an element of genetic and behavioural influence. But to say it is "the most consequential" is to seriously overstretch your evidence, in support of your personal biases.

In the absence of a communist revolution to level the economic playing field, economic inheritance - money - is far more significant (hence the need to look at an extreme case such as China's in order to see the genetic and behavioural effect at all).

The point of looking at China is not that it is extreme, but that it's one of the very few places where we have a clear separation of the internal factors vs wealth. Without something like the Cultural Revolution you have no way to separate the two factors.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Tools without people to work them stand idle. There are no tools without the people who build them. Money alone does not mine raw materials, process or build.

in other words, the world needs ditch diggers too.

No it doesn't. We have backhoe drivers now. One highly skilled person doing the work that used to require hundreds of low skilled workers.

Actually, we still need a few ditch diggers, but they need a bit of brains. The issue is digging around things which must not be destroyed. The backhoe operator stays away from that buried gas pipe, if you have to dig there the final digging is done with hand tools.

 

[Swammerdami]

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

Mr. Pechtel's meme is commonly held, probably due to the many examples of entrepreneurs and professionals who become admired as "self-made and wealthy." However the meme is essentially wrong. There is much inherited wealth that lacks such visibility; and that share is growing. Cite: Piketty's Capital.

 

[Rhea]

The most consequential inheritance to the child is the parents' genes and behaviors. Saying it's just material wealth passed down is cargo-cult thinking.

[two links to studies of grandchildren of elites]

What Trausti’s and Loren’s arguments and evidence fail to prove is that it had anything to do with genes. In both cases you are STILL looking at the behaviors of people raised by the children of elites (chilren raised by the elites and now we study THEIR children) versus those raised by the children of poor people.

It looks like you both are claiming that being raised as an elite, and being raised by someone who was raised by elites, has NO BEARING on the second generation. But it so obviously does. You can see this clearly when you look at the influence your childhood has n your parenting choices.

Even if I lost all my money, I would still raise my children with the elite ethos. With the knowledge that you can find a way. With the knowledge of how to behave to appear elite - to fit in with the elite. And if I lost all my money, my kids would have that upbringing, and they would bring that to their parenting time. 2 generations is not anywhere near enough separation to erase those family stories, that knowledge of how the world works and that optimisim of how the world ought to work for me.

Indeed, this is exactly the story of my husband. His mother’s parents were elite, very wealthy. They lost everything when the Russians captured Berlin. My husband’s mother was made destitute and finally accepted a marriage in America. As she raised her kids, she taught them the very stories and skills that she was taught. It came through pverty and across the ocean. She did not give only her genes. She gave actual knowledge of her parent’s expectations.


So this idea that looking at grandkids after an overthrow has controlled for everything but genes is just shallow and bad science.

Instead, you need to look at adoptions of wealthy people into destitute families, and then destitute people into wealty families.

And I don’t think your claim will hold up.

 

[DBT]

Most people are capable of doing skilled work to varying degrees. Not everyone can be doctors or lawyers. Even in the absence of skilled trade and service jobs due to mechanization, somebody has to clean the floors, toilets do deliveries, stock shelves, etc....essential work that is underrated in terms of status and pay.

 

[bilby]

Most wealth IS inherited.

Most wealthy people pretend that's not so, by passing wealth down to their kids long before they die, so it doesn't show up in inheritance statistics, nor get taxed as inheritance.

The attitude wealthy people's children inherit is "It's OK to fail because mom and dad will bail me out if I do". Poor people's kids don't have that attitude, they know that failure would be fatal. So guess who become entrepreneurs, and thereby get richer?

I suggest you read "The Millionaire Next Door". I've recommended it many times, I don't think anyone has listened.

Since college every employer I've had had a middle class background. Self-made, not inherited.

The reality is that the vast majority of people have already made their path in life before they inherit anything. You're thinking of an elite that is a very small percentage of the population.

Oh for fucks sake. The instant someone is born, they inherit whatever financial safety net their family can provide. A person with upper middle class parents can take huge risks without even pausing to recognise them. A person whose parents cannot afford to support them is not able to take those risks. And a vast amount of wealth is generated by taking risks at a young age.

Millionaires aren't rich anymore; You need tens, or more likely hundreds of millions to be rich. But they're certainly wealthy enough to make things vastly easier for their children than parents living paycheck to paycheck ever could.

Americans love the phrase "middle class". But it's used in a way so broad as to be completely meaningless. It encompasses everyone from the guy who has an 80% mortgage on the cheapest house he could find, through to the people who are your 'millionaires next door'.

Every American I have ever met believes wholeheartedly that whatever his or her own level of wealth is, defines the 'middle class', and is a level of wealth available to all, if only they put in some effort and make a few sacrifices. This is, of course, utter horseshit in the vast majority of cases.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Most wealth IS inherited.

Most wealthy people pretend that's not so, by passing wealth down to their kids long before they die, so it doesn't show up in inheritance statistics, nor get taxed as inheritance.

The attitude wealthy people's children inherit is "It's OK to fail because mom and dad will bail me out if I do". Poor people's kids don't have that attitude, they know that failure would be fatal. So guess who become entrepreneurs, and thereby get richer?

I suggest you read "The Millionaire Next Door". I've recommended it many times, I don't think anyone has listened.

Since college every employer I've had had a middle class background. Self-made, not inherited.

The reality is that the vast majority of people have already made their path in life before they inherit anything. You're thinking of an elite that is a very small percentage of the population.

Oh for fucks sake. The instant someone is born, they inherit whatever financial safety net their family can provide. A person with upper middle class parents can take huge risks without even pausing to recognise them. A person whose parents cannot afford to support them is not able to take those risks. And a vast amount of wealth is generated by taking risks at a young age.

Millionaires aren't rich anymore; You need tens, or more likely hundreds of millions to be rich. But they're certainly wealthy enough to make things vastly easier for their children than parents living paycheck to paycheck ever could.

Americans love the phrase "middle class". But it's used in a way so broad as to be completely meaningless. It encompasses everyone from the guy who has an 80% mortgage on the cheapest house he could find, through to the people who are your 'millionaires next door'.

Every American I have ever met believes wholeheartedly that whatever his or her own level of wealth is, defines the 'middle class', and is a level of wealth available to all, if only they put in some effort and make a few sacrifices. This is, of course, utter horseshit in the vast majority of cases.

I'm an entrepreneur. I've worked with other entrepreneurs for most of my life. I've always found that business owners with nothing to lose fight and figure out a way to make it. But the entrepreneurs with wealth who seem to have a sense of entitlement that seem to fail. If you want to start a company and make it, you have to have a great sense of grit and willingness to work incredible hours to figure things out. People born with wealth don't inherit this grit all the time.

 

[Trausti]

Instead, you need to look at adoptions of wealthy people into destitute families, and then destitute people into wealty families.

And I don’t think your claim will hold up.

Adoption studies have consistently shown that adoptees take after their biological parents on cognition and behavior. Can’t ignore genetic confounding.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

Mr. Pechtel's meme is commonly held, probably due to the many examples of entrepreneurs and professionals who become admired as "self-made and wealthy." However the meme is essentially wrong. There is much inherited wealth that lacks such visibility; and that share is growing. Cite: Piketty's Capital.

I read a bit of that and gave up because I got tired of him repeatedly making a fundamental mistake: He was assuming that what applies to the group applies to the members of the group. This is not valid, it assumes the group is unchanging when he was applying it to groups that were obviously changing. He's like the statistician that on average feels fine with his head in the oven and his feet in the freezer.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What Trausti’s and Loren’s arguments and evidence fail to prove is that it had anything to do with genes. In both cases you are STILL looking at the behaviors of people raised by the children of elites (chilren raised by the elites and now we study THEIR children) versus those raised by the children of poor people.

It looks like you both are claiming that being raised as an elite, and being raised by someone who was raised by elites, has NO BEARING on the second generation. But it so obviously does. You can see this clearly when you look at the influence your childhood has n your parenting choices.

Even if I lost all my money, I would still raise my children with the elite ethos. With the knowledge that you can find a way. With the knowledge of how to behave to appear elite - to fit in with the elite. And if I lost all my money, my kids would have that upbringing, and they would bring that to their parenting time. 2 generations is not anywhere near enough separation to erase those family stories, that knowledge of how the world works and that optimisim of how the world ought to work for me.

Indeed, this is exactly the story of my husband. His mother’s parents were elite, very wealthy. They lost everything when the Russians captured Berlin. My husband’s mother was made destitute and finally accepted a marriage in America. As she raised her kids, she taught them the very stories and skills that she was taught. It came through pverty and across the ocean. She did not give only her genes. She gave actual knowledge of her parent’s expectations.


So this idea that looking at grandkids after an overthrow has controlled for everything but genes is just shallow and bad science.

Instead, you need to look at adoptions of wealthy people into destitute families, and then destitute people into wealty families.

And I don’t think your claim will hold up.

Foot, meet bullet.

You're supporting what we are saying! For the purposes of this argument it doesn't matter if it's genetics or parenting at work. You can't overcome the parenting other than by taking all the kids from their parents and raising them communally and you can't overcome genetics at all. (Reality: Adoption studies show it's part genetics, part parenting.)

 

[Trausti]

What Trausti’s and Loren’s arguments and evidence fail to prove is that it had anything to do with genes. In both cases you are STILL looking at the behaviors of people raised by the children of elites (chilren raised by the elites and now we study THEIR children) versus those raised by the children of poor people.

It looks like you both are claiming that being raised as an elite, and being raised by someone who was raised by elites, has NO BEARING on the second generation. But it so obviously does. You can see this clearly when you look at the influence your childhood has n your parenting choices.

Even if I lost all my money, I would still raise my children with the elite ethos. With the knowledge that you can find a way. With the knowledge of how to behave to appear elite - to fit in with the elite. And if I lost all my money, my kids would have that upbringing, and they would bring that to their parenting time. 2 generations is not anywhere near enough separation to erase those family stories, that knowledge of how the world works and that optimisim of how the world ought to work for me.

Indeed, this is exactly the story of my husband. His mother’s parents were elite, very wealthy. They lost everything when the Russians captured Berlin. My husband’s mother was made destitute and finally accepted a marriage in America. As she raised her kids, she taught them the very stories and skills that she was taught. It came through pverty and across the ocean. She did not give only her genes. She gave actual knowledge of her parent’s expectations.


So this idea that looking at grandkids after an overthrow has controlled for everything but genes is just shallow and bad science.

Instead, you need to look at adoptions of wealthy people into destitute families, and then destitute people into wealty families.

And I don’t think your claim will hold up.

Foot, meet bullet.

You're supporting what we are saying! For the purposes of this argument it doesn't matter if it's genetics or parenting at work. You can't overcome the parenting other than by taking all the kids from their parents and raising them communally and you can't overcome genetics at all. (Reality: Adoption studies show it's part genetics, part parenting.)

Congress should pass the Universal Tiger Mom.