Max,


So your position is that the "rich" have advantages that the "poor" don't? That's revolutionary.

I know, right? Judging by the reactions here, you would think I posted something provocative about alien DNA or whatever. Just a few straight obvious tips for bumping up the average chance of people achieving the items in Witt's list. Be born wealthy, in the right location, and the right color. Nothing revolutionary about it. No claims that you're a lock to be doomed otherwise. No claims about how many people can or can't overcome starting in the hole. In fact, Didace, I didn't even say anything about the "rich" having advantages, other than what I said about it increasing the chance on average that their kids achieve the things in Witt's list.

Amazing how many posters here have conjured up fantasies about my post. Even Sklansky couldn't resit pretending I said something about how easy or difficult I think is to overcome the disadvantages of not having certain privileges. Unless maybe he was talking about previous posting elsewhere, in which case he should supply the backstory to be clear to me and others what he's talking about.

Yeah this doesn't fly by your own words:
This is what intellectually bankrupt left wingers do: make strong claims, and then when obliterated by facts and evidence, slink back into "I didn't say anything at all about magnitude."

Unfortunately for you, your use of "much higher" is plain unequivocal language that implies these things are large affects, and that people who have them have "much higher" odds of success. Your attempts to walk it back now are amusing. And that's without even looking at your comical history throughout this thread: a person with zero interest in facts or evidence.

It's a raison d'être rather than a position or an argument.

I have friends that emigrated to North America off wooden boats in the 80s, while they were on the boat pirates invaded and stole whatever gold / money they had left. Didn't speak a lick of English.

30 years later they are millionaires.

How could that possibly happen? I was told you had to be a white male with rich family wealth.

Hey look, TS is back with more BS. You need about two or three more paragraphs of ad homs if you're gonna maintain that average. You have yet to even address the post I made other than straw man rhetoric and all this child-like yelling about my intelligence and whatnot.

That's crazy, who told you that? I mean I have pointed out to a couple times that I don't believe it. By posting here I presume you can read. This is pathetic. Are you not able to make an argument about what I actually claimed? Do you know what an anecdote is? Do you know what things like average and probability are?

Let's be real - most poor people are poor because they're lazy. The ones I feel bad for are those with true mental conditions - if your mind isn't sound it'll be much tougher to become highly successful. To be highly successful isn't some secret - all it is is working hard and smart at 100% capacity every single day for years. The problem is most people don't want to run the marathon of disciplined hard work and then whine when they're not successful. Living in America with a sound mind is such a gift - everything is available to you if you're willing to bust your ass. In the end though you can spend your whole life whining like a baby until you die and get no where, or you can shut the **** up, get to work, and achieve whatever you want.

I think every one would agree with Max Cut that the wealth of the family you are born into and the wealth you accumulate as an adult have a positive correlation.

What happens if the Government understates that correlation? Success will be more luck based than is fair. The Government will be less likely to proactively lift people up out of their situations.

What happens if the Government overstates that correlation? They have certainly poured tons of money into trying to mitigate the problem. So, evidence would show it is something they are concerned with and think is a real issue. But, as Tooth said, the Government's focus on the problem with little to no success actually leads to worse outcomes due to minimizing individuals' internal locus of control.

Ironically, this obsession with trying to "fix" the problem only strengthens its effects. The people who benefit from the narrative that financial success is nearly impossible for people born into poverty are people born into wealth.

So, Max, you are right in a vacuum. But, this is the problem with the left. They are obsessed with identifying problems but not obsessed with coming up with solutions that lead to positive outcomes.

Increase policing in poor neighborhoods, decriminalizing all drugs, weaning people off social welfare programs that create terrible incentives, school choice, and UBI for all Americans would go a long way.

It wouldn't lead to perfectly fair outcomes. Not even close. But, life isn't fair. As others have said, having shitty things happen to you can actually give you huge advantages over people who have everything handed to them.

Maria Konnikova does an incredible job illustrating why your kind of thinking can lead to bad outcomes for people. In poker and in life.

19:15 mark

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/kon...biggest-bluff/

Your opinions are unconvincing. Yours too, Z06.

What the **** is my kind of thinking? You agree with my simple statement and now like all the other dimwits are responding by setting up some straw man about what I think. ****ing derp army.

Incredibly well-reasoned counter. Not interested in back and forth name calling. Good luck

Likewise, not interested in opinions and people putting their words in my mouth to attack them.

poor people work a lot harder than rich people. I never worked harder than when I was poor. and I sure didnt become successful due to hard work, rather it was luck.

regardless, none of that really matters. rich people should be taxed enough that no one goes without food, house/apartment, health care, transportation, internet, education in this country.

and one of the biggest shams these guys perpetuate is that just bc anyone can get rich that everyone can. in this country, millions of poor people work just as hard or harder than anyone else but they will never make much beyond 15-20 and hour and never have health care nor retirement. sure a few will make it out of poverty to middle class and even fewer will get rich. but its obv impossible for everyone with a job to make a living wage in our society. that is by design.

What you just said simply isn't true:



The rich, on average, are far harder working than the poor and far more efficient at working than the poor. They in fact subsidize the poor with their hard work, essentially being their slaves.
This isn't possible because the rich don't have enough for this. How can you not get this simple concept through your head?

This isn't true. And hard work is only one side of the equation. The other side is consuming less than you produce.
Everyone who works hard and doesn't make horribly expensive mistakes like having kids out of wedlock gets to the middle class, sir, from any state of poverty. The Asian experience in the US shows that very clearly - they in fact rapidly get above the middle class.

There's no shortage of opportunity. As I noted early, the US is short about 2 million STEM degrees alone compared to desired openings. And about 10 million short for other professional degrees. There's a huge skill shortage. But people study humanities rather than train themselves to be economically useful. That's their own personal fault and no one else's.

Another way to state my thoughts on this subject is to say that the big advantage white men have is not so much that they much more likely to be successful than others if they work hard, but rather that they are much more likely if they don't. White male semi screw ups are often successful while semi screwupping stops almost all others. But so what? No healthy person has to screw up. (Which means more than an unwillingness to work hard. It also means not exercising, not studying, not eating right, postponing gratification, and getting high a lot. Among other things)

You can see no problem with the (presumably large) population of successful semi screwups being skewed disproportionally towards white males?

Today I learned the rich are slaves to the poor. Hahahahahaha! Peak TS up is down bullshit.

i don't think max is saying 'harder working' # of hours. i worked a construction job when I was 15, moving rocks from one place to another in a quarry in the middle of summer. for $12/hr, in the mid-90s, that was a lot of $.

i quit after 8 hours. decided i was going to figure out how to code and work in a place that had air conditioning.

that still was the hardest job i had. i get to sling code for 20 hours a week, sit in meetings for the rest, or other general planning. the guy busting his ass in the field has it *far* harder than i do.

i mostly agree with TS -- the opportunities are there (and yeah, sure, if you have certain advantages, those opportunities are easier to take advantage of). you couldn't throw a rock far enough to not hit an IT recruiter looking for people who could do basic wordpress/drupal **** and paying $60-$80k entry level not too long ago.

and yeah, a lot of people may not be cut out for that kind of work, i'll give you that -- but there are surely a lot who could better themselves, and there are plenty of free resources online to get you going. people coming out of school now and into the workforce, i'm ****ing jealous of -- i had to do BS help desk work back in the day as that's how you climbed the ladder. now you can just jump on the middle of the ladder.

How many poor people do you know who work 80-100 hours a week, drink zero
alcohol, and don’t socialize?

This is where the discussion pretty much always goes. Whine about an “injustice” that is perceived, have no insightful ideas on how to rectify the “injustice” and then commence with the personal attacks while doing more whining.

People listen to Max Cut and Victor talking about wealth and they will stay poor their whole lives.

My GF was regurgitating a lot of that rich vs poor trivial lvl 1 arguments and I could see what kind of financial damage it did to her throughout her life.

At least she got converted. Can't help em all.

Yeah, people like Max Cut and Victor ruin lives and societies with their toxic ideologies. Truly awful people who do orders of magnitude more damage to minorities and the poor than any vestiges of racism do.

And deep down they don't even care - they have an envy born of inadequacy that's turned into an ideology. Max Cut knows that what we say is true - he can see the data, which is why he obfuscates and equivocates all throughout this thread. But he doesn't care because his moralizing about the rich serves a selfish purpose.

The magical thinkers in this thread will have you believe the only thing that can't be overcome, the greatest disadvantage, that thing that can ruin societies, is accurate knowledge of the playing field.

Super racist ToothSayer now getting real with his take that knowledge is orders of magnitude worse than racism. I believe he believes that since he sees racism as a net positive.

The stunning rapid success of poor Asian immigrants proves beyond all doubt that the US is highly meritorious, and those with the right cultural attitude crush whites on all metrics (the supposedly dominant racist group) in 1-2 generations. If that's not enough for you, look at poor Jews - from the bottom to the top of society with incredible rapidness. Or look at the success of African immigrants vs African Americans.

Attitude and philosophy determines your life path in a meritorious capitalist society with ample opportunity, like the US.

And yes of course knowledge and attitude matter far more than any vestiges of racism. That's trivially true if you just think about it: a person with an internal locus of control has endless possibilities; those with an external locus of control are doomed to never get anywhere. Why? Because sustained effort and discipline is not a natural outcome of human nature, and only people who believe they have all the control in making a difference to their lives will do/develop them. That's simply how the world works, sir, and why people like you are so toxic and harmful to the poor and minorities.

Ah, the lazy slur of the guy whose philosophy and psychology I just accurately exposed.

Ah, the strut of a pigeon after winning his chess game.