[giltleaf]

You seem like just the type of person I wanted to read that comic when I decided to put that in. You're fully missing the point (forest through the trees type of thing) with those stats; the unarguable part is that life circumstances often allow some people to snowball minor successes/advantages and prevent the same from happening to others.

Basically, that comic represents a very realistic, though maybe not statistically significant if it were to be taken literally, situation. It illustrates that results are not dictated by hard work and there is not equal opportunity. It is an attempt to help people empathize.

It's not saying that the guy on the left is a shit (though maybe unaware of his blessings), but rather that the woman on the right (anecdotally representing marginalized society) may be trapped no matter how hard she works. Sure she can beat it, but look at everything else she has to overcome to do so.

[yummyfajitas]

The point is that while circumstances like what are described in the comic are super rare. If we want to take into account ridiculously rare circumstances and call it "very realistic", why stop there?

Richard's parents sent him to personal trainer who taught him to be a track star. Paula had her legs chopped off by Islamic terrorists.

Richard's parents taught him to ground his electronics projects. Paula got struck by lightning 3 times.

Richard didn't like to go to the beach. Paula had her right hand eaten by a shark.

etc.

You can prove anything if you pretend wildly improbable freak situations are somehow representative of reality.

If you want to claim we don't have equal opportunity, I don't disagree. Some folks have advantages - e.g. the author of this blog post was born into the right race to get major bonus points in the educational system, had a mother who knew how to game that system, had US citizenship, etc. In contrast, all I had was US citizenship. Most folks don't even have the citizenship, and a large number of them are members of a race that's treated even worse than mine.

But if you want to talk about the practical significance of this - whether she's actually trapped or whether she just needs to work 10% harder - then you need to think about the details, which the comic gets wildly wrong.

[giltleaf]

"You can prove anything if you pretend wildly improbable freak situations are somehow representative of reality."

That's true, but what is represented in the comic is far from "wildly improbable" and in fact comes across as pretty realistic. That's why many people like it.

It can't be that hard to believe that there are many situations where a person has several small things, often not worth studying, wrong in their lives that compound over time. That's the point.

At the end of the day, I think that we both agree more than not and that you're more taking issue with the fact that I said "impossible to argue" than the larger point, which is totally fine because it was a melodramatic thing to say.

Details the comic got right (btw, comic depicts Australia I believe, but it's equally applicable to US so we'll go with that, it's also hard to attribute the later panels to one given, testable factor, as what's depicted is the result of all the small things in life):

Houses with extended family: "57 million Americans now live in some sort of multigenerational configuration. That number has doubled since 1980," including 36% of young adults [1]

Frequent illness: "The Connecticut Commission on Children reports that children who live in poverty experience more illness than children in more affluent homes." [2]

Parents working 2 jobs: "more than 7 million people in this country were holding 2 or more jobs. That’s 5% of the total workforce" [3] The Bureau of Labor Statistics number doesn't count jobs for cash etc.

low income=shitty schools. not even going to bother to search that one.

working while in school (less time to network, study etc.): "over 78% of undergraduate students work" DOE [4]

Anyways, I'm glad you read the comic.

A lot of that stuff seems really self evident to me, but here are just some sources from random googling. [1]: http://www.newsweek.com/why-multiple-generations-families-ch... [2] http://www.livestrong.com/article/229181-effects-of-low-fami... [3] https://toughnickel.com/finding-job/Working-2-or-More-Jobs (from Bureau of Labor Statistics) [4] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77

[yummyfajitas]

Citing a bunch of statistics about non-poor people who work multiple jobs, and irrelevancies like multigenerational configuration, are not really supporting the comic.

It's quite true that people with lots of money (like Richard's parents) tend to work long hours. And 5% of the workforce - most of them non-poor - might work 2 jobs. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the comic portrays.

Similarly, attributing things like poor people getting sick more on things like a damp house (or otherwise lacking money) is simply wrong. We now have an actual randomized trial to demonstrate this. http://m.qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/2/687

Most likely some third hidden factor (for example low conscientiousness resulting in poor work habits and poor health habits) causes both poverty and poor health.

I'm not disputing the idea that some folks have a leg up on life. I'm simply disputing a comic that wildly misleads about the actual nature of that leg up.

Also, on the thing you are "not even going to bother to search", the question is not whether poor schools have bad outcomes. The question is whether those schools are significantly worse themselves - i.e., if we were to reduce class sizes, would outcomes improve? (Most studies suggest that small class sizes - like virtually every educational intervention - would barely change outcomes.)