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Kids from rich families are more likely to succeed?

Economic Disparity = Education Inequality?

  • Yes

    Votes: 31 83.8%
  • No

    Votes: 6 16.2%

  • Total voters
    37
Very true, but what is annoying is when they don't understand that being born on 3rd with the bases loaded and being advanced to home by a walk is a hell of a lot easier than stepping up to the plate and trying to hit a home run.

Its called a worthwhile effort. Beats the hell out of sitting there moaning.
 
Very true, but what is annoying is when they don't understand that being born on 3rd with the bases loaded and being advanced to home by a walk is a hell of a lot easier than stepping up to the plate and trying to hit a home run.

Does it matter? Im by no means wealthy. I have a 6 figure income which by the standard i was raised is overachieving. But i am so much poorer than top 5 pct of earners in this country. So what? If i spent my time worrying about how much other people made i would put myself into an early grave.

Ive been to war and seen real poverty. This is not it. And i thank god i was fortunate enough to be born in the united states
 
Does it matter? Im by no means wealthy. I have a 6 figure income which by the standard i was raised is overachieving. But i am so much poorer than top 5 pct of earners in this country. So what? If i spent my time worrying about how much other people made i would put myself into an early grave.

Ive been to war and seen real poverty. This is not it. And i thank god i was fortunate enough to be born in the united states

It only matters in so far as there are a fair number of trust fund kids that judge the poor when being poor is a foreign concept to them. Similarly there are some that are born in poverty that think that's an excuse for failing in life.
 
It only matters in so far as there are a fair number of trust fund kids that judge the poor when being poor is a foreign concept to them. Similarly there are some that are born in poverty that think that's an excuse for failing in life.

And this is worth standing the entire US economy on its ear so you can make sure the poor little poor people *sniff* aren't judged by a small handful of spoiled rich kids?
 
I would wager there are more rich people being judged by the poor and middle class than the other way around.
 
But they're not. The reason so many schools in poor neighborhoods are bad is because the parents don't care. They don't get involved. They don't care about education. They don't instill a love of learning in their children. Most kids drop out before they graduate high school. None of that has anything to do with the amount of money someone has, but with the amount of interest they have. We just have this really stupid and destructive ghetto culture in place that teaches people not to care about getting an education because the government will give them a check and crime pays a lot more. They do it to themselves.


Actually, that is just plain false. The local funding of most schools in the nation are based on local property taxes. Many urban and rural areas do not have as large a property tax base as suburban areas.
 
Or kick all of the poor people out of the USA.

better yet, don't let them in if they are coming here for handouts which apparently is true with a lot of the illegals
 
People who are born on third base obviously have a much better chance of scoring.

Amen brother. And to go one step further, when Daddykins owns the team and Mumsy hires the umpires, your chances of scoring from third base are really really good.
 
Actually, that is just plain false. The local funding of most schools in the nation are based on local property taxes. Many urban and rural areas do not have as large a property tax base as suburban areas.

Which is true but that doesn't mean that they can't get something useful out of the schools that they have. It might not be as good as a better funded school but it's better than nothing.
 
Amen brother. And to go one step further, when Daddykins owns the team and Mumsy hires the umpires, your chances of scoring from third base are really really good.

hard to explain then, why more than half of the millionaires in the USA are first generation millionaires. and rid trust fund kids are not costing us tax payers anything.

most of the whining comes from people who make excuses as to why they are on the public dole or are envious others are wealthier than they are
 
hard to explain then, why more than half of the millionaires in the USA are first generation millionaires. and rid trust fund kids are not costing us tax payers anything.

most of the whining comes from people who make excuses as to why they are on the public dole or are envious others are wealthier than they are

So who is the other half of those millionaires then? :roll:

Ah the ever present ENVY card. :doh A hollow and worthless card with no value of any kind. :roll:
 
And this is worth standing the entire US economy on its ear so you can make sure the poor little poor people *sniff* aren't judged by a small handful of spoiled rich kids?

When did I say we should do that??
 
When did I say we should do that??

How else are you planning to level the playing field. You were talking about money....ie rich kids, trust fund babies that sort of thing.
 
How else are you planning to level the playing field. You were talking about money....ie rich kids, trust fund babies that sort of thing.

I don't think we can do anything about it, I was just making a social commentary.
 
More money does not equal better education. If it did the exponential increase in college tuitions and public school spending over the past couple of decades would mean every student would be more educated, which is clearly not the case. Much of success is based on opportunities. A child of a successful business owner does not need to be a genius to get a good paying job on a fast track if they can take advantage of other people's connections. For many people all it takes is the right break. Business owners have a disproportionately low instance of college education. We tend to think outside the box. The majority of college students are in the box before they ever attend their first class. College is not about the student getting a better job, it is about long term financial obligation to the education system. It is a for profit system, and college loans are simply someone else's revenue stream. If you get a degree and it helps you land a good job, good for you. But the goal is achieved before you ever crack a book. The reason that people in more expensive colleges land higher paying positions has nothing to do with quality of education, it has everything to do with connections. Students who attend expensive colleges are there because someone who made a lot of money was able to put them there.

There is some truth to that but I have a couple of reservations.

You are right about business owners in that My father,Grandfather and Great Grandfather nexer went to College but were all successful businessmen. IMHO College is only worth it for vocational education -becoming a Doctor,Lawyer Engineer etc. Liberal Arts education doesn;t actually make you a better performer its just a way for employers to filter applications.
 
I don't think we can do anything about it, I was just making a social commentary.

There is always something that can be done about, the social aspect :)

I honestly don't see it. I don't think there's any such thing as an insurmountable challenge, where someone cannot improve their situation.

That you fail to see it, does not make it so. Of course, I fully accept the idea of the American dream that 'anyone is able to do anything they put their mind too' I just feel this to be more of a pipe dream, than reality. As-long-as people continue to believe this, then 'competition' i.e. 'Capitalism' wins all day long. It is simply naïve to think that nothing is 'insurmountable'. You just haven't imagined the very worse it can be for someone, and multiplied that by 10, then you may touch on some empathy. Some kids are SO destined to fail, end up in crime, or dead--that the alternative is that insurmountable blockade called 'all things' stacked totally against them. That you may suggest the 'few' go on to get themselves '3-crappy jobs' to be in a position to eat, live in some crappy trailer park, is not really getting on; in any normative sense of the word.

Sure, they might not become a millionaire, but they can be better than they started out
.
When someone is at absolute rock bottom, yes, I suppose anything can be classed as an improvement.

Even a bad school is still better than no school at all.

But NOwhere near as good, as a plush fee paying private school.

When these people drop out of school, when they get pregnant out of wedlock, when they try to have a family before they are financially ready for it, when they get involved in drugs and gangs and end up in prison, those are all things that are going to either negatively impact or ruin one's life.

WOW, you've covered a massive amount of ground here. ALL this can happen for a multitude of reasons. For example, dads doing hard time for murder, mum is spending the majority of her time on her 'back' to keep food on the table, 'you' are the oldest of four siblings, yes sure things don't look that 'insurmountable' because you've inherited what? Not the work ethic like yourself, not the normalcy of a stable family unit, nothing but a stack of attributes of the criminal kind.

Those are bad decisions to make. If you make good decisions, if you stay in school, if you don't do things that will ruin your chances, if you get a job and keep a job and work hard, you are going to be better off than if you didn't and if you pass those lessons on to your kids and they to their kids, then your family line is going to climb out of poverty. It really isn't rocket science.

See above. Rocket science may be not, but 'social science' very much so. If only things were as clear cut as you suggest :)

Paul
 
Setting aside "legacy" admissions for a sec, these kids do better because their parents require it.
They may be predisposed to being.smarter genetically but thats a crap shoot.
Back to legacies, while they have an advantage at admissions time they still have to.perform. Otherwise they transfer to lesser schools.

You may be unaware of the lengths elite schools go to to find qualified disadvantaged kids. And money is never an object for them because the schools love to crow about it.

If you want to better the kids, then better the parenting.
 
Another problem is that Neo marxist teachers try and steer black kids into going to college and studying crap like 'Black studies' which give them no usefull skills at all wheras they would have been better off learning something taht would aqctually get them a well [paid professional job.
 
Cephus said:
Then maybe you shouldn't have kids until you're financially ready for it? Personal responsibility is a bitch, isn't it?

The problems I see with this position are two:

1) What about the people who were financially ready, but who lost their asses in 2008 and are now doing anything to make ends meet? I've personally laid off not a few people who were making 50K+ (in the midwest--this was a good income, especially at the time), and who had been assured their jobs were safe (this was back in 99-00 following the tech bubble). Not all of them were able to get good jobs again.

2) This is a particular instantiation of a more general claim often made by conservatives, that the poor should do what fits their circumstance. Stated thus, it sounds reasonable enough-everyone should do what fits their circumstance, no?

Well, my answer is: not necessarily. I'm not sure that what a person ought to do is the only thing that does, or should, have moral standing in the matter. It seems to me that the reason societies exist in the first place is to ensure a certain basic living standard for all participants (the exceptions being spelled out in a society's criminal code). But the rules governing wealth distribution in a society are essentially arbitrary. When one part of a society has to start adapting certain aspects of their living standards, it strikes me as manifestly unfair. For example, the answer to the poor having a difficult time getting out of poverty is to "work harder." Well, how hard should someone have to work? If society owes a person literally nothing, then why in the world should the person owe anything back? It would be easier for the person to steal, murder, and pillage their way out of poverty, and, again, if no one owes the person anything at all, then why wouldn't this be fair? Why do the poor owe anything to those who owe them nothing in return? The exceptions in criminal code are for those who enjoy the fruits of living in society with others. When there are no such fruits, no consideration has passed from society to the individual, and hence there can be no binding agreement.

Perhaps more perspicuously: it's not fair or just for the poor to have to work very much harder than everyone else, or to have to give up the basic rights of such things as enjoying children (or simply sex), merely because they are poor.
 
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I wonder if it is true that less successful people are more likely to over-generalize than more successful people.
 
You have the classic example with
blue and brown eyed kids. Suddenly the teachers told about a study that said blue eyed kids was smarter. Their work etichs increased and the brown eyed kids decreassed. Not only that by the teacher became more favorable too the blue eyed kids. Even if it was not planed in the expetiment. The result was the opposite when it was told brow eyed kids was smarter.

That going to a crappy school with only other poor kids will lead to alot of negative expectations with negative result.
 
The problems I see with this position are two:

1) What about the people who were financially ready, but who lost their asses in 2008 and are now doing anything to make ends meet? I've personally laid off not a few people who were making 50K+ (in the midwest--this was a good income, especially at the time), and who had been assured their jobs were safe (this was back in 99-00 following the tech bubble). Not all of them were able to get good jobs again.

Those are not the people I'm talking about. I'm talking specifically about the people who were never financially ready, who have never had the fiscal position to be able to afford kids but had them anyway. The poor are more likely to have lots of kids than the wealthy are and that has nothing to do with losing more kids in childhood as used to be the case, it has nothing to do with needing more kids to help with the harvests as used to be the case, it's just having a bunch of kids for the sake of having a bunch of kids. It's all about fiscal responsibility and unfortunately, the poorer you are, the more liberal you tend to be and fiscal responsibility goes right out the window.

2) This is a particular instantiation of a more general claim often made by conservatives, that the poor should do what fits their circumstance. Stated thus, it sounds reasonable enough-everyone should do what fits their circumstance, no?

Absolutely so. We don't need a double standard, everyone should live within their means.

Well, my answer is: not necessarily. I'm not sure that what a person ought to do is the only thing that does, or should, have moral standing in the matter. It seems to me that the reason societies exist in the first place is to ensure a certain basic living standard for all participants (the exceptions being spelled out in a society's criminal code). But the rules governing wealth distribution in a society are essentially arbitrary. When one part of a society has to start adapting certain aspects of their living standards, it strikes me as manifestly unfair. For example, the answer to the poor having a difficult time getting out of poverty is to "work harder." Well, how hard should someone have to work? If society owes a person literally nothing, then why in the world should the person owe anything back? It would be easier for the person to steal, murder, and pillage their way out of poverty, and, again, if no one owes the person anything at all, then why wouldn't this be fair? Why do the poor owe anything to those who owe them nothing in return? The exceptions in criminal code are for those who enjoy the fruits of living in society with others. When there are no such fruits, no consideration has passed from society to the individual, and hence there can be no binding agreement.

Morality has nothing to do with it. Everyone owes it to themselves, many of the reasons that the poor remain poor is because they do things that are self-destructive to success. They have multiple children out of wedlock. They get involved in drugs and gangs. They go to prison. They drop out of school. These are all things that harm them as individuals and they pass that harm on to their offspring so that generation after generation suffers the same problems. This is not about rich vs. poor, it's about personal responsibility and doing things to maximize your own success so you don't have to go to others for help on a regular basis. The poor often did this to themselves and continue to shoot themselves in the foot for generations on end because nobody ever holds them accountable for their own actions.

Perhaps more perspicuously: it's not fair or just for the poor to have to work very much harder than everyone else, or to have to give up the basic rights of such things as enjoying children (or simply sex), merely because they are poor.

Nobody said life was fair and nobody said they had to work harder than anyone else. It comes right back to those basic conservative values: personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility and hard work. There is no right to breed like rabbits and people need to stop pretending that there is. The poor will always be poor so long as they continue to engage in behaviors that are detrimental to success. They have only to look in the mirror to see where the lion's share of their problems come from.
 
I don't think we can do anything about it, I was just making a social commentary.

Oh but we can. Stop giving extra breaks for inheritance and treat it like all other income. In fact, take all money coming into ones pocket and treat it as all other normal income from wages and salary. That would be a start.
 
Oh but we can. Stop giving extra breaks for inheritance and treat it like all other income. In fact, take all money coming into ones pocket and treat it as all other normal income from wages and salary. That would be a start.

That may have a slight impact, but the fact is wealthy kids are going to go to the best schools, have all sorts of connections and in many cases benefit from nepotism. That is just the way it is.
 
Oh but we can. Stop giving extra breaks for inheritance and treat it like all other income. In fact, take all money coming into ones pocket and treat it as all other normal income from wages and salary. That would be a start.

And that does what, exactly, for the poor? Or are you just out to punish the wealthy?
 
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