Why people are rich and poor

[Chris]

I don't have an answer but here is what Pew found: Why people are rich and poor: Republicans and Democrats have very different views:



But we differ by sex, education and income:




I think we always sort of knew the first, the right holds the individual responsible, the left blames society.

[donttread]

I don't have an answer but here is what Pew found: Why people are rich and poor: Republicans and Democrats have very different views:



But we differ by sex, education and income:




I think we always sort of knew the first, the right holds the individual responsible, the left blames society.

I'm not sure if it's still true but at one time the biggest single predictor of your income was your parent's income. We also rate poorly on the upward mobility scale. In other words America is starting to suck at the American dream.

[Mechanic]

In my life I have known some very hard working people and some pretty lazy ones. The old add-edge of it is who you know not what you know seems to be a better predictor from my life experience. Seems the lazy ones one the right people.

[Common]

Most of the very rich are from 2nd and 3rd gen BIG MONEY. Like the Rockefellers and the Waltons, most of the time the founder and initial money maker was the only one who worked hard at being successful.

I think if the true numbers were known its minimal the people that come from poverty and make really big big money

[Chris]

I'm not sure if it's still true but at one time the biggest single predictor of your income was your parent's income. We also rate poorly on the upward mobility scale. In other words America is starting to suck at the American dream.

Not so sure. Sure you have more opportunity, but, I think, less incentive.

Thomas Sowell and other economists would argue the problem is the data you're looking at. It's aggregate data and grouped by low/middle/high income, which will always exist. But, as they argue, if you look at individuals you will find more rising from the bottom and more falling from the top. Income mobilty still happens at the individual level.

Here's some more data, from Shifting Incomes for Young People, better to go there to see full size, but comparing young and old incomes...



It seems between 1966 and 2016 that medians have shifted down but the pattern of income has stretched out higher.

[midcan5]

People who grow up in the wealthy sections of America (upper class) tend to continue the luck. There are of course exceptions. Class matters lots, you know that thing that doesn't exist in America.

'White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America' by Nancy Isenberg

"Will Trump make America great again? The question is absurd. The real question is this: when was the country great, and for whom? In the not-so-distant past, it was certainly better for union members who could earn a living, for educators whose jobs were not tied to test scores, for anyone who worked in manufacturing. The country is better now for people of color, for gays and lesbians, for women, and for the disabled. This progress has been grotesquely misinterpreted to mean that the country is worse for white people. Such thinking is false logic. One does not rule out the other. Straight white men, especially those who have inherited family fortunes, are doing just fine in America. The problem is that some of them are trying to ruin it for the rest of us." By Chris Offutt'IN THE HOLLOW, The changing face of Appalachia — and its role in the presidential race' Harper’s Magazine / November 2016

[Chris]

Be nice if people had more than anecdote to support opinions.

[Captain Obvious]

Give people access to education, opportunity and social support and IMO the majority of them will not be poor.

[Chris]

Give people access to education, opportunity and social support and IMO the majority of them will not be poor.

People rarely value what they don't earn.

[Captain Obvious]

People rarely value what they don't earn.

Agreed, it's a "meet in the middle".

Here are the tools, do with them what you will.

Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more and if you keep giving a man a fish he'll never learn how to catch them for himself.