[aerosmile]

Your grandfather - just like mine - was born a farmer and, statistically speaking, likely stayed a farmer his entire life. Today's United States offers the level of social mobility never experienced in any other country or at any other time in human history.

But there's a catch... the social mobility you get here in the US comes with a higher reward but also a higher risk. If you play your cards well, you'll skip quite a few levels and can go from a poor immigrant to a decamillionaire within a single generation. But if you play them poorly, you might not only be left with nothing and become homeless, but you might literally get killed by disease or the police (yes, that happens elsewhere as well, but not within the runner up countries).

So there you have it - what kind of a risk-to-reward ratio do you want? If you're shooting for the moon, come to the US, get a shitty laptop, start learning to code, and get a job in tech (no, you don't have to go to Harvard to get a 6-digit job as a developer). If you'd rather make sure that the chances of the worst case scenario are as low as possible, I'd recommend a socialist democracy like Austria where the government will never let you to drop below a certain level of comfort.

[lm28469]

This, as usual with the US, is an extremely individualistic point of view on the topic. The problem is that the majority of people are bottom feeders and stay bottom feeders all their lives. Of course, if you play all your cards well and the planets are aligned you might end up better than somewhere else, the drawback is that everyone under a certain threshold will eat shit until they die

> I'd recommend a socialist democracy like Austria

The vast majority of people can't just "chose" to live where you recommend them to go.

You're basically describing the proverbial american dream, it concerns an unbelievably small portion of the people living in the US, imho it's not too far from straight up propaganda to keep the gears turning, ie "I might have to work 2 full time jobs now but I'll work harder and in 5 years I'll make it". It even is a double edged sword, companies like Amazon or Uber made it _because_ they're allowed to stomp on bottom feeders, it's a game with a minority of extreme winner and a majority of losers.

People don't want "social mobility", they want a decent life and access to basic things like medicine, affordable housing, toilet breaks no matter where they are on the social ladder... for every sociopathic wantrepreneur who wants to make it big you have thousands of family who just want to not be treated like cattle

[aerosmile]

I mean... I am a living proof that you can just move to a place like Austria. And yes, we were a family of 4, quite poor, and had nobody to turn to for help. My sister loves it there, I didn’t so I moved to the US. If we were able to make those decisions, why is it that other people can’t? I know the usual excuses, but we’re taking about life-transformational decisions that IMO are worth making a few sacrifices for (eg: moving kids out of school, not seeing your parents for an extended amount of time, living in a tiny studio apartment, etc). Not recommending it to most people, but I would push back on the idea that it’s impossible.

[vaidhy]

Amazing for you!! I cannot even get a visitor visa to EU without jumping through hoops. When I moved to US, I had to make the same sacrifices. However, I also accept and understand the privileges I had that allowed me to make the transition. For most of the world, passports are a burden that will not allow them to get to a better life.

[lm28469]

It's not impossible, but it's statistically unlikely.

> If we were able to make those decisions, why is it that other people can’t?

Because we all come from widely different backgrounds, families, education, get different opportunities, make different choices, &c. It's easy to compare people's lives to our own stories but you can't sum up everything with "if I made it everyone can make it", there are so many variables, the majority of which we can't understand before going through them ourselves.

Regardless of that, if I was part of the 10% or 15% of American below the poverty threshold and you told me "just move to Austria, anyone can make it" I don't think I would take it well

Of course you'll always find people who manage to drastically change their lives, but I'm personally not really interested in the edge case. Btw I started searching about social mobility and found this, which supports social mobility in the US is pretty poor https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...

[random314]

Standard conservative thinking.

Society is meant to be hierarchical, bottom feeders are supposed to serve the small percentile of elites.

This is the natural order of things.

Social support systems for the bottom feeders makes the bottom feeders entitled. Democratic government focus inevitably moves towards social programs which must be pushed back hard by the elite.

Most elites inherit their elite status. We must ignore this and talk about anecdotes of how some software engineer made a lot of money in Silicon valley. Buying bitcoin and TSLA a few years ago is also an undeniable marker of extraordinarily elite thinking, which society must reward.

We must never bluntly state our beliefs but cloak it in other acceptable words, so you don't get canceled by the SJWs and bottom feeders.

The naturally superior and their offspring will and must be allowed to ascend the social hierarchy.

BTW, conservatives have larger amygdala. Anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs

[Petrova]

The US objectively has a low amount of social mobility compared to other countries