Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR

Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by soVeryTired on Saturday July 27, 2019 @07:18PM (#20544843)

> The authors examine a number of empirical studies for different countries. Regression to the mean in earnings in rich countries appears to be rapid. Almost all the earnings advantages or disadvantages of ancestors are wiped out in three generations.

That's deeply at odds with what I know about the world (think about the existence of the "middle class", and how middle class parents tend to have middle class children). That, and the fact that the article was written by Gary Becker (he of "all crime is a rational cost / benefit tradeoff" fame), and published at a time when economists did very little emperical work, make me more or less immediately dismiss the claim.

But if anyone could give me the gist of the argument they make, I'd love to be proven wrong.

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Re:Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR by xvedejas on Saturday July 27, 2019 @08:23PM (#20545117)

My guess is that you can put the bar for "wealthy" as high as necessary to get any percentage you want. Illustrating by reductio ad absurdum, you can make the argument that 100% of "wealthy" parents have no wealthy children, if your definition of "wealthy" is only the single richest person in the world. Expand the definition incrementally, and you can probably get nearly any percentage statistic you want between 10% and 100%. So the fact is "not even wrong" without more context.

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