Unstacking the deck

http://www.seattlereviewofbooks.com/reviews/unstacking-the-deck/

by fern12 • 9 years ago

52 33 9 years ago

jackfrodo• 9 years ago

I think that the popular idea of inherited or generational wealth is getting a fat 6 figure check when a grandparent dies, which doesn't really happen to most of us. Rather, it looks like what the author describes -- a safety net that allows upper middle class kids to do things that their peers can't afford. As someone in the top quintile, you may not feel that much richer than the people in the next neighborhood over, but for a lot of folks, that dad could have said, "I'm sorry son, but I need to pay rent too." Instead, it was more of an annoyance at his son needing a handout. But these things accumulate over time, and this kid from a top-quintile family gets a better resume than his neighbor who washed dishes over the summer.

maroonblazer3• 9 years ago

Agree. This review and the ideas behind this book are really interesting (I've not yet read it).

I'm surprised though that the reviewer discounts legacy preferences at universities. Given the degree to which a well-qualified school can open up opportunities for someone this seems like a perfectly valid and effective policy proposal.

umanwizard2• 9 years ago

Only a tiny minority of even people in the top quintile were admitted to top schools as legacies.

ccalvert• 9 years ago

I think the gift that some upper-middle-class kids get that others don't always get is a belief in their ability to succeed. You also need a strong work ethic, but I'm not sure there is such a thing as a work ethic if a person has no faith in their ability to succeed.

Perhaps it looks a bit like this:

- Some people you can't keep down no matter what you do. These people do things like work full time, go to school in the evenings, and graduate from college in four years.

- Some people will succeed if given the opportunity to succeed. That is, if you give them a scholarship or financial aid or if their parents pay for their education.

- Some people will succeed if you give them a big push. Take them to the financial aid office and help them fill out the form, ply them with encouraging words when they want to give up at midterms or finals, etc.

- Some people won't succeed no matter what you do. Usually, because they have so little faith in themselves that they give up even when success is all but guaranteed.

So yes, government programs are needed to get enough citizens across the finish line. But I don't think this is really about class, I think it is about motivating people -- helping them learn to believe in themselves.

calt2• 9 years ago

Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more.

My belief in my ability to succeed was briefly shattered by my dad's employment situation. He was a well qualified engineer laid off from manufacturing. That made us struggle.

I was always thinking about money and feeling the need to optimize for $2 meals instead of $4 meals, and wondering if my car would hold in long enough to be able to get me to school in a week. These are things that only your first, most motivated, category of people will overcome.

I didn't overcome these obstacles. I temporarily dropped out. Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more.

My story only has a happy ending because state schools are cheap and engineering internships are paid.

Terr_• 9 years ago

belief in their ability to succeed

Or an objective economic capability to fail-and-retry. (As opposed to fail-and-starve.)

jimbokun2• 9 years ago

"These people do things like work full time, go to school in the evenings, and graduate from college in four years."

That's not a thing anymore. Working full time at the wages you can earn without a college degree, won't pay for college tuition, especially not in four years.

The biggest way to help inequality would be to radically bring down the cost of a college education. Not loans, which just place lower and middle income families in even greater financial risk. A fully funded public university system with low tuition, like many states used to have not too long ago.

calt2• 9 years ago

The author's story makes me incredibly grateful for the current situation for developing engineers. I went to a cheap state school and had paid internships. Also, we have a long way to go on sexism and discrimination, but there are countless fields that are far more closed.

sudosteph• 9 years ago

That was my path as well. Pretty much every smart, working class or middle class student at my high school picked engineering or science routes. Unfortunately many of the science routes led to academia, which everyone I've talked to seems to hate from a financial perspective. Of about 5 people I know personally, all but one has dropped out and picked up a mostly unrelated jobs or research gig.

I went back and checked LinkedIn for some of my old HS people, and it's interesting how different that patterns are. The children of doctors are doctors or lawyers. Some of the really motivated children of first-generation immigrants ended up equally successful though. Both groups tended to go to private institutions though.

I wonder if the difference is how risk is evaluated. Middle classes see hard sciences and engineering as reliable, accessible, career paths that minimize risks of joblessness and allow them to leverage existing connections by staying in state while studying (since most working and middle class folks have a family support structure local to the area, also in-state discount) without burdening their family more by picking a field where paid internships are rare.

Meanwhile, richer folks are not worried about needing to work while studying, and they don't need to stay in any one place, especially if the careers of their parents gives them connections to in-demand places for jobs and study (or maybe money just makes connections unnecesary).

rbcgerard• 9 years ago

At the end of the day I think very few people want to actually "pay" the price that a more equal society would entail, but are very happy to have others bear the burdens of "paying" for a redistribution of "opportunity".

jimbokun2• 9 years ago

Education and health care.

These two items are huge economic burdens, even for those in the top %20. But radically reducing their cost would also do wonders for improving economic opportunities.

quantumofmalice• 9 years ago

This is a decent article on a true problem, but there are two things I would mention that add context to the situation:

Genetics do matter. Adult intelligence appears to be somewhere between 50 and 80% determined by genetics. Thus we should expect over time in a meritocracy for smart kids to come from the same families. This is compounded by assortative mating by IQ, which has become far more widespread in the last forty years. So things are going to look nepotistic (and they always will be to some extent, see my second point below) when, in fact, this is a natural phenomena.

So, what? Just let the people who lose the genetic lottery rot? No. Instead, we might want to focus on having a more balanced economy where, rather than everyone striving to become part of the elite, a working class person can have a perfectly reasonable life. Jordan Peterson discusses this problem in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0

Secondly, it is not immoral for parents to make large investments in their own children's lives. This behavior is no doubt somewhat driven by genetics (nearly everything appears to be at least 40% genetic) but it is also a learned behavior. Government programs that replace parental investment have been catastrophic for minorities in the united states: for example 73% of non-hispanic blacks are born out of wedlock. So delegating parental investment in children to the state, in the name of ending nepotism, may have some very detrimental effects that are difficult to predict.

All of this is to add context and suggest a different solution: making middle class non-elite life paths more attractive, not to deny that there is a problem.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

assortative mating by IQ, which has become far more widespread in the last forty years

That's curious. Is there any explanation why? Naively, I would assume the opposite, although I can imagine some factors that would point in that direction.

for example 73% of non-hispanic blacks are born out of wedlock.

Why is that catastrophic? Is there good evidence¹ that the kids would have been better off otherwise?

¹ (by good evidence, I'm discounting simple comparisons between children born into and out of wedlock, since it's pretty easy to see why many confounding variables might play into that.)

oculusthrift• 9 years ago

women have started going to college in higher numbers than men. the vast majority of women will only date a man who is equal or higher education level than they are.

danieltillett• 9 years ago

Greater choice. Men and women have more choice and longer times (at least at the upper middle end) to find a spouse. People tend to want to marry people with similar attributes to themselves. The end result is people tend to marry people of similar IQ to themselves.

forapurpose• 9 years ago

Is there any explanation why? Naively, I would assume the opposite

You may not be the naive one, as we don't have any evidence

Robotbeat2• 9 years ago

Adult intelligence appears to be somewhere between 50 and 80% determined by genetics.

Citation desperately needed. An IQ test, if you've ever taken one, measures a whole bunch of things but not necessarily intelligence. It's a written test which a native speaker benefits tremendously from due to some of the sort of convoluted language used for some of the questions. And many of the mental tricks it tests are things which can be (and are) taught.

Also, even if you somehow proved that some aspects of intelligence were biologically inherited, that still doesn't prove genetics. Current understanding of epigenetics shows that you can pass on traits caused by your environment through mechanisms not in the DNA itself.

Graziano_M• 9 years ago

Whatever IQ measures, it's correlated strongly with success.

There are 'cultural bias free' IQ tests that has no words in it at all, and the correlation holds.

a_puppy• 9 years ago

Whether IQ tests measure intelligence depends on how you define "intelligence". IQ tests measure ability to solve visual and/or verbal puzzles, and it's reasonable to call that a type of intelligence. I'm not saying that's the only form of intelligence, but it's clear that IQ scores have _something_ to do with intelligence.

But that question is ultimately a red herring. IQ scores are partially biologically heritable. IQ scores are correlated with job performance. So there exists a biologically heritable factor that's correlated with job performance. That's very relevant for discussions about social mobility, whether or not you want to call that factor "intelligence".

You asked for a citation. The strongest evidence for the claim that IQ is biologically heritable comes from studies of twins. A meta-analysis of 111 separate studies (https://sci-hub.la/10.1126/science.7195071) found that when identical twins were separated and raised in different families, their IQs were correlated at 0.72. Fraternal twins raised together had IQs correlated at only 0.60. Biologically unrelated children raised together (an adopted child and a biological child) had IQs correlated at 0.29. (Side note: Before you demand someone provide a citation, try googling it for yourself. This result isn't hard to find.)

You have a good point that the mechanism could be epigenetic rather than genetic. Here's a study that found a hint of a link between epigentic factors and intelligence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892514/. Here's a study finding that epigenetics are correlated strongly between identical twins: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063335/ On the other hand, the epigenetic correlation decreases as the twin pairs get older, but the IQ correlation actually increases as twin pairs get older. So it's not clear.

It's also worth noting that IQ correlates with income at only 0.23 according to http://www.emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Intellige....

In general, I agree it's difficult to draw unambiguous conclusions from the data we have. I think the data are consistent with the possibility that genetic inheritance of intelligence plays a major role in reducing social mobility, and also consistent with the opposite possibility. But you are demanding a much higher standard of evidence for the claim that intelligence is genetic than for the claim that it isn't, and I don't think that's fair.

empath75• 9 years ago

Even assuming that there is a genetic component to iq, you’re assuming that iq is strongly correlated with success and that the iq difference from genetic differences is meaningful.

tunesmith• 9 years ago

Articles like these make me wonder about one metric. What "percentage" do you need to be in (top 20%, top 50%, top 1%), in the US, to be confident in having a secure retirement? And how has that changed over the decades?

Because when I see the top 20% as being described as making $112,000 or more, I don't see that as even close to feeling confident you'll have a secure retirement. Until that improves, I have a hard time criticizing a 20%-er or a 19%-er for having somewhat of an "every man for himself" attitude in getting ahead.

RickJWag• 9 years ago

Raising a privileged family takes just one generation to sacrifice.

As numerous financial books will testify, if you are frugal (no matter the income) and invest wisely, it is possible to accumulate some measure of fortune. If you teach your children to do the same (as they grow up in a frugal household), they will become the next tier of the pyramid.

I really, truly believe this. I was raised in a large family and inherited nothing of worth. I'm not done working yet, but I'm encouraged by the way things are progressing and have hopes all of my kids will go to college and emerge without a mountain of debt.

In America, the dream can be obtained. It will take time, though.

Unstacking the deck

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