12-07-2011, 06:32 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-07-2011, 07:01 AM by FireIceTalon.)
Only sometimes? Guess I'm slacking then, lol.
Anyways, looking at the first couple pages of the document you provided, it seems to more or less be echoing the same stats as what I posted, but attempts to turn it around into a positive thing by saying "hey look, 50% of people experienced social mobility!" Basically, the parents you are born from will factor 50% to where you end up in life. Maybe that isn't a lot to you, but from my perspective, it most certainly is. To be born from the "right" parents being that much of a factor in determining your place in life, before taking everything else into account, is not a good look. Then comes everything else I mentioned before (right place or time, connections, luck, and merit/talent). And this doesn't take into account that those who have a staggered start not only have less opportunity to start with, but are born into conditions where achieving the necessary capital to even get a chance for having equal opportunity is extremely difficult.
No matter how you look at it, we do not have equal opportunity, and never did. And to think otherwise is very naive IMO. Your logic implies that those born into poverty or working class proletarians have the same life chances as those born into the middle class or those in capitalist class, which is simply not true. Again, if it were, 40% of the US population wouldn't live in poverty, and the class disparities would be far less pronounced than they are. Nations with a more egalitarian society like the Social Democratic nations of Europe have more equality of opportunity than nations with more class disparity, this is hardly a coincidence. My mom works hard as hell, and has for 25 years, much harder than many people who have more money than her who never lifted a finger in their life. Hard work means much less than having the right parents or connections. Again, capitalism chooses winners and losers at random, it is like flipping a coin to determine who gets what and when.
This is why I have serious issues with the politics and views of right-wingers, and why I cannot take them seriously: you guys live in some lovey-dovey Horatio Alger fantasy world that completely flies in the face of the material conditions of the world around you. You are an optimist, I am a REALIST. Meaning I see the world for how it really is, and I don't have rose colored glasses distorting my vision. It is easy and convenient to ignore, deny, or downplay these problems, but just because you choose to do so doesn't mean you can sweep them under the rug and pretend they don't exist, because they most certainly do.
Anyways, looking at the first couple pages of the document you provided, it seems to more or less be echoing the same stats as what I posted, but attempts to turn it around into a positive thing by saying "hey look, 50% of people experienced social mobility!" Basically, the parents you are born from will factor 50% to where you end up in life. Maybe that isn't a lot to you, but from my perspective, it most certainly is. To be born from the "right" parents being that much of a factor in determining your place in life, before taking everything else into account, is not a good look. Then comes everything else I mentioned before (right place or time, connections, luck, and merit/talent). And this doesn't take into account that those who have a staggered start not only have less opportunity to start with, but are born into conditions where achieving the necessary capital to even get a chance for having equal opportunity is extremely difficult.
No matter how you look at it, we do not have equal opportunity, and never did. And to think otherwise is very naive IMO. Your logic implies that those born into poverty or working class proletarians have the same life chances as those born into the middle class or those in capitalist class, which is simply not true. Again, if it were, 40% of the US population wouldn't live in poverty, and the class disparities would be far less pronounced than they are. Nations with a more egalitarian society like the Social Democratic nations of Europe have more equality of opportunity than nations with more class disparity, this is hardly a coincidence. My mom works hard as hell, and has for 25 years, much harder than many people who have more money than her who never lifted a finger in their life. Hard work means much less than having the right parents or connections. Again, capitalism chooses winners and losers at random, it is like flipping a coin to determine who gets what and when.
This is why I have serious issues with the politics and views of right-wingers, and why I cannot take them seriously: you guys live in some lovey-dovey Horatio Alger fantasy world that completely flies in the face of the material conditions of the world around you. You are an optimist, I am a REALIST. Meaning I see the world for how it really is, and I don't have rose colored glasses distorting my vision. It is easy and convenient to ignore, deny, or downplay these problems, but just because you choose to do so doesn't mean you can sweep them under the rug and pretend they don't exist, because they most certainly do.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)