[ExoticPearTree]

> If you want a wealthy society, make it so hardworking people born into poor families can outcompete wealthy failsons

This is a very wrong assumption. You cannot have the same outcome even if you start from the same position - everyone poor or everyone rich.

[RugnirViking]

> You cannot have the same outcome

you aren't arguing seriously. reread what I said. You're replying as though I said the complete opposite of what I actually said.

[ExoticPearTree]

you said

> make it so hardworking people born into poor families can outcompete wealthy failsons

I said you can't and you do not agree. Please tell me how do you see this happening and what is the barrier to this now?

[RugnirViking]

you replied to that by saying > You cannot have the same outcome

I explitly talked about outcome being dramatically different. Children of wealthy people who have no motivation to contribute anything to the world, learn no skills, and are lazy, should not end up on the same level as hardworking skilled children of poor parents. They should end much lower. Barriers to this include enormous inheritances, the housing market (prices driven up enormously by hoarding and inheritance), the cost of university education, vast disparities in the quality of education available in different areas, and nepotism in the jobs market.

These factors are very different in different countries. I forget the name of the stat but looking at the percentage of people born to bottom fifth income parents ending up as top fifth income earners themselves is quite telling. If I remember right there is a dramatic difference between similarly "developed" countries. I looked and couldn't find the original data I read but here [0] is similar, showing denmark children born to bottom quintile parents reach top quintile 14% of the time (perfect unachievable meritocracy would be 20%), wheras in the US its 8%.

It goes without saying, but the reason it is important to point out that it is different between countries is to argue against vibes based arguments of people who just throw their hands up and say "oh but woe is us this is the natural way of the world why rage against nature it will always be thus" simply because they think that is the case without any data whatsoever. This is literally table stakes for even discussing the problem.

[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ...

[ExoticPearTree]

> Children of wealthy people who have no motivation to contribute anything to the world, learn no skills, and are lazy, should not end up on the same level as hardworking skilled children of poor parents. They should end much lower. Barriers to this include enormous inheritances, the housing market (prices driven up enormously by hoarding and inheritance), the cost of university education, vast disparities in the quality of education available in different areas, and nepotism in the jobs market.

My gripe is with the above. Why would they try when they don't have to? Would you? And what does it matter to you that someone just spends money they inherited? It's like winning the lottery.

And what has someone's else wealth has to do with university costs?

[RugnirViking]

I am not arguing it is morally wrong for a wealthy child to spend their wealth. I am talking about the whole of society. It's really very annoying of you to persist in strawmanning me in literally every coment. Sure I used negative words to describe an entirely hypothetical person, but the reality is that people exist on a range of productivity.

let me switch to a tangent. You seemed to be concerned with making a wealthy society, where at least some people have wealth, right?

In order to do that we have to ensure that its worthwhile for a talented person to work hard. When someone cannot become wealthy no matter how hard they work, why would they work to make anything in this world?

and so society suffers. The way to make people work to make things, is to reward them for doing that. This is an economic reality, and is demonstrable, there are many economics papers on the relationship between income inequality, gdp growth, and income mobility. Suffice to say, no matter who you are, its in your interest for there to be more mobility, and for inequality to be in a certain range (not too equal, for incentive, and not too unequal, it causes dramatic negative outcomes like crime, unrest, addiction, violence)

[ExoticPearTree]

One aspect is the work you do and what it pays. If you're in the right industry, you can become wealthy (being in top 5-10% or less of the population) working a normal job.

On the other hand, if you're in a industry that pays very little, then no matter how much you work, you're not going to make it. And probably you're going to make if you decide to become an entrepreneur and get a piece of the pie. But it doesn't work for all and the only thing you can do is to switch industries if you can.

And these days I think the inequalities are greater due to rampant inflation that makes everyone poorer (considering only money earned) and though in percentage terms it is the same for everyone, it hits the lowest earners the most.

The thing is that in a free market I don't know how this can be solved.