But these percentiles are a zero sum game (the distribution of percentiles is always uniform 0-100).
Which makes me wonder why one would laud upward mobility in percentiles, when any such upward mobility must be balanced out by equal and opposite downward mobility.
Because the lack of downward mobility suggests the same problem as the upward mobility: your success in life is based on your parents income not your own merits.
If you want a meritocracy you have to accept that untalented/unmotivated kids of rich parents may become relatively poor.
Well if you really want to optimize for social churn, couldn't you just randomize all the newborn babies at hospitals or something?
Re:The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
by drjesusphd on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @02:42AM
(#12077172)
This has nothing to do with genetics.
This is completely wrong. People care intensely about their pecking order (looks, money, accolades, etc). Beyond this, there are purely functional reasons to care about your relative income. Limited resources lead to competition.
Nobody cares if their GPA is higher than their parent's was. They care if it's higher than their peers who are trying to get into the same universities. Ditto for housing prices. What matters isn't the dollar value of the property you can afford, only whether or not you can afford to be in a top school district. Politicians don't win by being able to spend more on campaigns than politicians of the previous generation either. They care if they can spend enough to win against their current opponents.
In human society, the relative comparison dwarfs the absolute.