Nonsense, one must look at it genetically, there are a lot of dumb rich kids and by the third generation they are broke. One could argue, based solely on my observations in New York, that most of the big winners are street smart kids, the Princeton Degree may at best get you lunch. Just look at traders, they have a gut to trade, yes there is some math behind the scenes but they become the risk takers.
The report contends that Denmark and Norway have the least correlation of generational economic stickiness. Now I have spent a great deal of time in both, they are fundamentally stable middle class socialist countries, with Norway subsidized by oil money. The US is not a class society, if you think otherwise go t the UK or India. Mao had to destroy the class structure in China by brutal means. So in a class structure society, namely who were your ancestors, where you went to school, and especially your accent, that determines your future and that is fairly unchangeable. Not so in the US.
Now my favorite economist chimes in. He states:
So when you hear conservatives talk about how our goal should be equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes, your first response should be that if they really believe in equality of opportunity, they must be in favor of radical changes in American society. For our society does not, in fact, produce anything like equal opportunity (in part because it produces such unequal outcomes). Tell me how you’re going to produce a huge improvement in the quality of public schools, how you’re going to provide universal health care (for parents as well as children, because parents in bad health affect childrens’ prospects), and then come back to me about the equal chances at the starting line thing.
Now, inequality of opportunity is only one reason for the inequality in outcomes we actually see. But of what remains, how much reflects individual effort, how much reflects talent, and how much sheer luck? No reasonable person would deny that there’s a lot of luck involved. Wall Street titans are, no doubt, smart guys...., but there are surely equally smart guys who for whatever reason never got a chance to grab the 9-figure brass ring.
Outcomes is NOT a measure of input equality. Any starting geneticist would see right through their specious ad hoc propiter hoc tautology. Balderdash! Improve public schools, simple, close them. My grandson just switched from a private school to a public. He was doing two hours plus a night in the private and now none required for the public. So is there a problem. Yes, the public school.
Inequality of opportunity assumes implicitly, as the good economist from just south of me here in New Jersey states, leads to inequality of outcomes. Nonsense, to anyone who has ever held a real job, who has employed people, who has created wealth, that is wrong, you take your own chances, use your own wit, and work with your team to seek success. Failure is always an option, but the true entrepreneur has a "burn the boats" mentality and there is no way but forward.
Wall Street has always been a money maker, not the entrepreneurial life. One has a better chance at the gold ring in basketball sometimes. Wall Street, it has been a club, but a club that oftentimes allowed entry from the mail room. Thus the above two references are abjectly wrong, they based their arguments on false assumptions. The relationships between father and son are complex, and one may look at the data and then one must ask why? Genetics has a strong role, not just that dad was poor. There are quite a few millionaires from poor drunks and I suspect that there are a lot of poor drunks from a wealthy dad.
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