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Re:Two leading economists disagree about the flagging Americ... by akhilcacharya on Monday May 18, 2020 @08:37AM (#23221545)
Except of course he only really provided examples of “gifted” people breaking through. I’m not gifted and have the college diploma to prove it - where does he think the ceiling should be for me I wonder?
Re:Two leading economists disagree about the flagging Americ... by esotericn on Monday May 18, 2020 @08:46AM (#23221615)
You're the one talking about ceilings.

His point is that true social mobility would be literally hitting the random button repeatedly. It's obviously not a workable idea.

Someone has to lose, even if you perform a magical full reset once per year, in any given year half of the people will be below average.

The goal of course is that we make sure that everyone has a decent life even if they're not at the top.

I think you've jumped on his comment and assumed that he doesn't care at all about anyone who's not in the top N% which isn't a charitable reading.

Re:Two leading economists disagree about the flagging Americ... by sokoloff on Monday May 18, 2020 @08:43AM (#23221591)
I'm not even sure your argument here is in good faith, but I'll take one more shot at it.

Holding a 4-year bachelors degree puts you in about the top 1/3rd in academic outcomes (meaning you personally are 50/50 to be in the top 1/6th).

It's not for me nor anyone else to define your ceiling, but I would expect based on the limited data presented and, to the extent that academics is a predictor of outcome, that your outcome would be quite likely to be above the average. That you're engaged on news.yc is another generally positively correlated term I would think.