The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
Locked
jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

@prognastat - This, incidentally, is also how it works outside the US. However, doing it thus doesn't fix the cultural issue as it would still segregate rich kids and poor kids (as well as rich parents and poor parents). Effectively speaking, there would be fewer private schools because they would be more expensive. The only children who would attend would be the 0.1%. In terms of class-risk, this is probably safer though.

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 5:16 pm
If you're spending money on SAT training from grade 7 onwards, you're not trying to make your child any smarter in any capacity whatsoever. You're spending money to get a leg up on the competition. Since we're approaching the limits the "exponential growth" values of freedom are beginning to run into boundary conditions... hence the biggest strength becomes the biggest weakness.
this is exactly the zero-sum point brute was trying to make. spending money on SAT training is zero-sum, because it will mean some other human child will not get that spot in college or whatever. educating a human child to learn a useful skill is positive-sum, because that human child can now increase the size of the pie.

brute doesn't think this has much to do with the "limits of exponential growth". zero-sum vs. positive-sum thinking is often more a societal/psychological phenomenon than an inherent characteristic of reality. in a sense, of course, the universe is zero-sum, all the atoms and energy used by brute are not available to other entities. but brute doesn't buy that even the limits of earth are anywhere close to being reached. especially in education, which is not very limited by physical resources (as opposed to e.g. energy), but only by the way humans organize.

regarding the randomized school idea, brute is not opposed, but skeptical. there are pretty hard limits geographically, since a human child from LA can't conveniently go to school in NYC. reasonable commutes are a huge constraints in jobs as well, which is why this whole urbanization/rent explosion thing is happening. children can probably only be expected to commute less than adults, more than an hour seems unreasonable.

thus, without randomizing where parents can decide to buy/rent homes, there wouldn't be much of a difference. sure, there are some schools/districts that are right next to each other with very different outcomes. but isn't part of the problem that poor humans can't even afford to live in Palo Alto, where all the good schools could reasonably be commuted to?

funding public schools with property taxes seems like a really dumb idea to brute. pretty much any other idea would likely work better - be it a flat tax, or even parents paying for school themselves (i.e. privatize the school market).

ps: brute disagrees with Dear Leader jacob on thoughts on family. most countries in Asia and Latin America tend to focus way more on their families than US culture does. individualism, yes. family? no.

bryan
Posts: 1061
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:01 am
Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by bryan »

jennypenny wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 4:37 pm
I'm usually not a tax-the-rich-to-death person, but IMO no one needs that much money.
Eh, but does the <government> utilize the money better than the rich? Better than the poor? Better than Apple? Better than a mom-and-pop corner store? Better than Goldman Sachs, SoFi, Lending Tree, Kiva, GoFundMe, VC funds, Catholic Church, DACs, Wintermute/Neuromancer, etc etc. I think there are persons that need (i.e. should have) "that much money".. it's just that, apparently, and too often, those persons are not the persons with the money (for reasons? So maybe, sure, no one actually needs that much money? :D Or maybe those persons should be selected as the beneficiaries of regular taxes/lotteries/grants/whatever).

I definitely think the world will look a lot different in 50 years since it seems like governance hasn't really caught up to "new" technology (and existing processes are not looking great).

It's curious how "tax" regimes have varied through time and civilizations; I would love to read a book or blog post, essay on this. Anyone know of resources? I bet there are some older ones..
BRUTE wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 5:42 pm
regarding the randomized school idea, brute is not opposed, but skeptical. there are pretty hard limits geographically, since a human child from LA can't conveniently go to school in NYC. reasonable commutes are a huge constraints in jobs as well, which is why this whole urbanization/rent explosion thing is happening. children can probably only be expected to commute less than adults, more than an hour seems unreasonable.
But, but VR, cyberspace, holodecks, Young Ladys' Illustrated Primers!! http://suburbanlion.com/blog/2013/04/09 ... lassrooms/
Last edited by bryan on Thu May 24, 2018 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

prognastat
Posts: 991
Joined: Fri May 04, 2018 8:30 pm
Location: Texas
Contact:

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by prognastat »

jacob wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 5:36 pm
@prognastat - This, incidentally, is also how it works outside the US. However, doing it thus doesn't fix the cultural issue as it would still segregate rich kids and poor kids (as well as rich parents and poor parents). Effectively speaking, there would be fewer private schools because they would be more expensive. The only children who would attend would be the 0.1%. In terms of class-risk, this is probably safer though.
Yeah I'm pretty sure this is how it was growing up in the Netherlands, though I was too young at the time to know exactly how it worked. I do agree it definitely doesn't address the disparity completely, but it would reduce it by lifting up the lower limit.

As much as I would like the opportunity for all children to be the same and to have the people that are most capable in the job best suited to their capabilities, however I doubt that will be happening any time soon. Given that there are few places that do this even in most of the countries with more of a social safety net. Even in those places parents would be unlikely to agree to not being able to buy a leg up for their children.

IlliniDave
Posts: 3845
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:46 pm

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by IlliniDave »

Interesting ideas, not enough time to touch on everything that piques my interest.

I don't think one can distinguish much between tribes (in the context above) and family as most tribes of that ilk were pretty much extended family clans. I believe the "bias" towards family is the extension of that as the world grew crowded.

Yes, the US is very individualistic. That was/is quite deliberate. The rights of individuals were very deliberately elevated relative to that of the government. At the time it made the US rather unique.

Anyone who considers retiring before they are too old to perform a task for pay has more money than they "need" by a good bit. It's very easy to look at the other guy and say, "He has too much, take his!" Problem is, as that plays out many people will have their eyes on us.

Many of the ideas from the boutique N. European countries seem nice, but I'm leery they are scalable. I'll never know the answer, but I'd like to see what those systems look like 200 years from now as well. A nice thing about the US is that if you like more wealth distribution you can move to the West Coast and Northeast states (though perhaps ironically that will put you near a disproportionate share of the highest end of that 9.9%. If you favor less redistribution there are places you can select from in Flyover Country.

Regarding schools... When I was in grade school "busing" was a big deal in my home town (early 1970s). After more years of failure special tax levy's were imposed. After more years the federal government basically took over school system for a time. It's still to this day the worst school system in the state. The real problem isn't the schools or the funding or which student has to commute how far or who gets tutoring and who doesn't. I certainly don't know what the answer is, but it's really not a univariate problem and I think failed school systems might be more symptoms than causes.

User avatar
Sclass
Posts: 2791
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:15 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Sclass »

IlliniDave wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 7:33 pm
Regarding schools... When I was in grade school "busing" was a big deal in my home town (early 1970s). After more years of failure special tax levy's were imposed. After more years the federal government basically took over school system for a time. It's still to this day the worst school system in the state. The real problem isn't the schools or the funding or which student has to commute how far or who gets tutoring and who doesn't. I certainly don't know what the answer is, but it's really not a univariate problem and I think failed school systems might be more symptoms than causes.
+1. They did this in the LA burg where I grew up. Man did it suck. Ruined the schools. Now the real estate has gone up in value and the people buying the homes won’t send their kids to public schools. A cottage industry of private schools has sprung up. If you can drop $2M on a home you can prolly drop $30k/kid year on tuition. Now I read in the LA times they are closing down several of my schools because of lack of enrollment. Complete failure.

The system was disgusting and corrupt rife with reverse discrimination. A noble cause that just failed.

It created a freakish environment. We had Rodney King in the same graduating class as Richard Feynman’s daughter. It didn’t do Rodney a lick of good.

It’s one thing to have noble agendas, it’s quite another pulling it off.

Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Campitor »

@jacob

You're assuming that I'm only teaching/helping my own family or that my family doesn't help the needy. That isn't the case. The article that we've been discussing claims, without any proof, that all or most of the 9%'ers are also not helping the less fortunate.

Enlightened self interest means that we care about society because when society does better it also makes life better for ourselves. The 9%'ers are our teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. Don't these professions help the poor as well as the rich? The roads, buildings, infrastructure, and technologies (which are made cheaper by new breakthroughs) benefit everyone. And if the poor, through help of others, reach the 9% status are we now going to disenfranchise them by making it harder to pass down knowledge and wealth to their offspring? How would African Americans feel about that? Or Latinos? Or Native Americans? I'm Latino and I don't like it at all.

The author cited some statistics but gave zero proof to his allegation that the 9% are stealing the poor's future. Correlation doesn't equal causation. To the author of the article, and anyone else who agrees with him, I would ask 5 questions:
  1. What verifiable evidence do you have that the 9% are not helping the poor or directly harming the poor?
  2. How will you determine which child has claim to educational resources when everyday new students arrive that are way behind the educational curve?
  3. How do you plan to enforce these edicts in a free society where our Constitution guarantees freedom of association and commerce?
  4. What will be the cost of administering this redistribution of educational capital?
  5. Who outside of the 9% will be qualified to administer this program? Because if it's someone in the 9% then you're just perpetuating the asymmetry of power you're trying to eliminate.
We live in the technology/information age. Knowledge is the currency whereby all other benefits derive. Good luck trying to police knowledge.
Last edited by Campitor on Sun May 27, 2018 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Over the course of the last few years, I have taught in a low-income district full of recently immigrated children and the public school district associated with the most literate city in America. I have also tutored private students from wealthy suburban area and students from a neighborhood in Detroit that looks like fit setting for zombie apocalypse movie. I believe that there is no simple uni-rule change solution to this problem.

I actually earn my highest hourly wage tutoring the extremely disadvantaged children in the apocalypse zone. I steel myself to walk 2 blocks from the bus stop to the school in the morning, but I pay for Uber to drive me the first two miles north (up to 9 Mile, which may make sense to those of you familiar with Eminem.) out of the neighborhood at 3 PM, because some of the more ominous residents are awake my that time of day. While waiting for my ride one day last week, I witnessed a mother in an idling car scream at her young daughter, in reference to her son who was goofing off on the grass in front of the school, "Tell that m*f*cking b*tch to get his azz over here!" Then she jumped out of the car herself, apparently leaving it in gear, and the passenger had to reach over to apply the brakes to stop it from colliding with another vehicle.

One of my students at this school has high EI, low IQ, but no obvious disabilities. IOW, he's a very nice, not at all bright kid. He tries very hard to learn, and on one occasion he went to the trouble of returning to the library to apologize to me for goofing around a bit during his session. We offer small prizes to motivate the kids, and he said that he would like to earn some lip gloss as a present for his sister. He is 10 years old and he can't read. He is not capable of reading the two words "HELP WANTED." I helped him to sound out the word "bridge" and he asked me, eyes shining, "Have you ever seen a real bridge? I never have. I wish I could see a real bridge like in Spiderman." How many hours should society (my tutoring pay in this situation is ultimately publicly funded) of my labor should society fund towards the purpose of rendering this child even marginally employable as an adult?

Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Smashter »

@7, what an eye-opening and sad story. It reminds me of a friend I have who used to teach in the worst part of Milwaukee.

Her particularly low performing first-grade students were often picked up after school by a parent or relative who reeked of marijuana or alcohol. Usually, the parent was also driving. When the kids are already way behind by age 6, and they go home each day to a home environment like that, what chances do they have at becoming marginally employable as adults?

ThisDinosaur
Posts: 997
Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:31 am

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by ThisDinosaur »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Fri May 25, 2018 7:10 am
How many hours should society (my tutoring pay in this situation is ultimately publicly funded) of my labor should society fund towards the purpose of rendering this child even marginally employable as an adult?
You got me there. If a country is a community, then we have a responsibility to kids like this. Anybody who wants to be useful to his tribe deserves that opportunity. Whatever "deserve" means.

A page ago:
jennypenny wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 8:45 am
If IQ distribution is a bell curve, then one could assume that in an ideal situation, available and appropriate occupations would also follow that same curve as would income levels for those occupations.
...One caveat to all of this is the declining health of people in general (HQ?).
And then Jacob posted this link:
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx

I think @jennypenny is onto something. There is more to the connection between the inequality problem and the healthcare problem than just the fact that healthcare is too expensive.

Notice how the low end of the range is above the average for doctors and lawyers. Both of those professions are targeted as members of the 9.9% in the article. Another rising income group is investment bankers,(not separated out on that IQ chart.)

Doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers are also better paid in the US than in most other countries. So there is lots of competition for those jobs. Competition attracts talent and money. And the training for all of them basically consists of a multi-year Tournament of hackable IQ tests in the form of standardized tests. (And both tuition and Test-Prep courses are expensive.) One explanation for high physician pay is that costs are untethered to any market forces, b/c no one price-shops.(As BRUTE pointed out in another thread, Americans buy health insurance for problems they already have, which is not how insurance works in any other situation.) Another justification for doctors' higher pay is the massive student loan debt they take on here vs. anywhere else in the world. Still another justification is the massive liability they face from lawsuits here vs. other countries.

So that ties lawyers, doctors, and bankers together into the US healthcare system, which represents 1/6th of our economy.
All 9.9%ers.

Maybe what we want to do is direct the competition of high IQ individuals away from expensive educations. There is an example for this in the Information Technology field. I've been told (computer professionals here can correct me) that much of university level computer science coursework is not relevant to real world application. Programmers can be hired based on experience and non-university certification.

The highest income outliers in the world are information tech billionaires. To be a billionaire requires you to be kinda smart. To be a tech billionaire requires you be 2-3 standard deviations to the right smart. And a lot of them are college drop outs.

prognastat
Posts: 991
Joined: Fri May 04, 2018 8:30 pm
Location: Texas
Contact:

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by prognastat »

There definitely is a large cultural component to it. Fixing the education system would help more people, but wouldn't help many by itself. However as you mentioned already changing those cultural caused for the issue would require authoritarianism on a level few are going to agree to most of all in the US. Quite the opposite as currently culturally we are swinging away from making judgements between cultures and what is better or not making this less likely to happen soon.

User avatar
Mister Imperceptible
Posts: 1669
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:18 pm

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

“If you hire 20 million 7w5's to tutor kids day and night, will that make a difference? I honestly doubt it.”

There is only one 7w5. 20 million 7w5’s would not only make a difference, they would transform the world.

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Fri May 25, 2018 9:59 am
I've been told that much of university level computer science coursework is not relevant to real world application. Programmers can be hired based on experience and non-university certification.
it is accurate that CS is not very relevant to 98% of the work. as brute's friend likes to say: it's not a science, and it's not about computers.

the problem is that there also doesn't exist any other metric of how to hire programmers. experience is meaningless, skills are meaningless, education is meaningless, certifications are meaningless. it is difficult to tell how capable a programmer is even years after having hired him. might as well roll the dice.

slowtraveler
Posts: 722
Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2015 10:06 pm

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by slowtraveler »

@Augustus
Having had dozens of high-achieving (Engineering/CS) Asian (Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indian) friends, not one of them was beaten or abused as a kid. Some were compared to others but that was it. They had an internal drive to succeed and do something. To my surprise, this was rarely forced or pressured upon them. Some had successful parents, others had lazy parents or even parents in jail. Most have had a mix of lazy and successful peers. Not one of them lived in a highly policed neighborhood, in US or abroad (not all were born in the states). At least one of the parents did seem to be there for them to talk to and they seemed to feel more cared about than I've seen is the norm in the modern USA system.

I've only seen the high police presence with poor 2nd+generation black and mexican (sometimes Hondurian or Guatemalan) communities where gangs were frequent and it does not in any way lead to higher achievement. Doesn't stop murders, theft, or dealing. It does lead to more hatred of the system and isolation though, which seems the opposite of what will help. These tend to have single parent households or both present emotionally absent even if physically there.

I think tons of 7w5's would be helpful since it would remove isolation, foster self-belief, and lead young folks to see a broader solution set of behaviors to engage in.

IlliniDave
Posts: 3845
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:46 pm

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by IlliniDave »

Some more hometown trivia.

In the years leading up to the Great Depression my hometown purportedly had the highest concentration of millionaires per capita in the USA. $1M then is something like $14.5M now. Very similar to the tale told in the article, by the time I was growing up 50-60 years later there was no "aristocracy" that could trace back to those families--over time most of the fortunes had dissipated through the generations. The guys who wrote The Millionaire Next Door found a similar pattern. It's anecdotal, of course.

In the intervening 40-50 years the city's fortunes have plummeted. In many ways an archetypal Rust Belt story. A political machine cozy with unions resisted change, sought redistribution-based solutions that were unfriendly to growth and evolution. Having been away 30 years what I see now is a culture of victimhood and waiting around for someone else to fix things. I suspect that is based on generations of political promises that never quite panned out. Regardless, I think it is that environment which brings down the schools rather than the schools that bring down the environment. Some of the ideology taught in schools probably does amplify the process.

It's a tough juncture when a young person realizes that just showing up isn't enough to get on an upward trajectory.

Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Campitor »

https://youtu.be/0DxWBXOZ9PM

The above is a conversation about inequality and capitalistic markets between clinical psychologist/professor Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein professor of evolutionary biology. I think they both do a good job explaining the advantages and perils of free markets. They don't offer any solutions but they do an excellent job of illuminating the questions and considerations that must contemplated, by both sides, regarding free markets and their hazards versus overt market regulation. I think the video is worth watching.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

There is only one 7w5. 20 million 7w5’s would not only make a difference, they would transform the world.
Yeah, but not everybody is interested in a world full of free time, second-hand sofas, 18th century novels, messy gardens, after nap sex, and home-made pastry.

My personal ideal would have me volunteering 4 hours/week to tutoring disadvantaged kids and 4 hrs/week to some sort of pro-permaculture cause rather than engaging in mixed value paid activities. I also would greatly prefer tutoring poor gifted students. There are at least 2 dimensions of Wheaton levels involved in teaching. For instance, a 6 year old with an IQ of 145 can offer some interesting commentary on “ Charlotte’s Web”

Jason

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Jason »

There is only one 7w5. 20 million 7w5’s would not only make a difference, they would transform the world.
I assume by "transform" you mean "Rosetta Stone would add a class based on need for translators."

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

Multi-D Wheaton levels is a good lattice work model but it's even harder to construct than the one-dimensional levels. A 2D model seems to be applicable here. You have culture on one axis and money on the other axis.

Some of this thread has been spent on arguing whether money causes culture or if it's culture that causes money. Where one falls depends on one's ideological framework. It's similar to how Keynesians and Austrians focus on different terms in the economy-equations and pick different independent variables while insisting that the other one's are the dependent ones. All we know is that culture and money is somehow correlated. This also makes it tricky to separate the variables away from one dimension.


Locked