Context is discussion that higher SES folk systematically get more net out of SS than lower SES folk. Feel free to join there to talk about that. But the bit I am pulling out is this, a defense of the difference in outcomes that I consider an inequity:
To me this is the “I built it.” meme and drastically underestimates the impact of institutional and implicit bias factors on our individual outcomes. I don’t mean to undersell the accomplishments of what we have each built, how hard we have worked, the sacrifices we have made, the talents we have; this is not a “born on third base think you scored a triple” position. More born on second, now on third, and think you’ve scored a triple. Not as good a meme I know!
How much of inequity is due to our individual effort and deserved, and how much is based on privilege and benefiting from what we all built?
Clearly both are true to some degree and completely flat is silly …
Differences in opportunity make more of a difference than often admitted: the “born on second base” effect.
Some folks have better outcomes for comparable effort than others simply because they had more opportunity, a better start, or more help (e.g., a more effective network of helpful associates).
Fairness becomes complicated because of that. I don’t pretend I have any answers to the questions.
Someone born in Canada will start out with a massive built-in advantage over someone born in North Korea, regardless of talent, work ethic or character. And in some places, like ISIS territory or the Taliban, it may be flat-out impossible for someone like a woman to rise to any sort of prominence without being squashed by the gender views of her society. In general, though, I’d say that, regardless of one’s station, within that society, about 2/3 is probably up to oneself and 1/3 is due to factors outside of one’s control.
But there are countless instances of people born into basically identical circumstances and society, cases of being born into same family, yet some vastly succeeding and others remaining mired in failure.
Michael Irvin had 16 brothers and sisters, all born into abject poverty like him, but he was the only one in the family who became an NFL Hall of Fame player with many millions of dollars. He grew up so poor that he had no milk for his breakfast cereal and would have to eat cornflakes with tap water, and didn’t have a proper bed to sleep on until college.
My father came from a family of five; most became somewhat affluent and successful, but his oldest brother (my uncle) became a moocher and…well, kind of a sad failure, despite him having just as much aptitude, opportunity and same circumstance as the other four. There was nothing really blocking him from success; he wasn’t disabled. He was even headed for a decent career in the army as an officer before he quit the military.
I’ve just not seen any strong correlation here. If it actually seemed like the harder working, more intelligent people were the ones who got ahead, I could see this argument. And that’s even with knowing that some people have a higher opportunity for the education about how to think and work.
The effect isn’t completely not there. I do notice people who are worse off than they would need to be, and think “if I had their means, I would be doing so much better.” But it’s so completely overridden by opportunity and circumstance and just plain luck.
Which comes down to luck and the structure of society. Having the genes to be a good athlete is luck, and it’s a quirk of our mass-media society that make it possible for a sports star to become wealthy. Lacking either of those things he’d have stayed poor no matter what he did.
OK, but even then, if we focus on athletes as an example. there are plenty of times when it’s not the physically-most-gifted athlete who prevails. but the one with the best attitude and mindset. A whole lot of physically-talented freaks become busts in the pro leagues while those with more “average” bodies become the longterm stars.
Imagine two equally good athletes competing in a match. Only one of them can win, and since they are equally good, it’s a matter of chance which one that will be. From one success/failure will come vastly different opportunities - and though we’ll never know for sure that the one who happened to lose the first match wouldn’t have capitalized equally well on a success as the one who happened to lose. The fact that one person out of 16 in a disadvantaged family managed to succeed extremely well doesn’t mean that he was exceptionally better than the others - it’s just as possible that all 16 were extremely talented, and with different luck a different one would be the superstar (or that in different economic circumstances, all might have become enormously successful)
I am going to argue for luck too. Certainly in my case. The most important was applying for a job as a lab tech, only to learn that it was at a university lab and offered a golden opportunity to work my way through college.
I could never have imagined studying mathematics. It was boring and easy. Things like trig, analytic geometry and even calculus. And then one evening (I worked partly in evenings to make up for the time for courses) I overheard two grad students discussing what turned out to be the beginnings of group theory. Intrigued, I learned more about it and immediately discovered my true vocation of abstract algebra. I was also lucky to have the talent for it. But I occasionally muse on what my life would have been without these two pieces of luck.
On a macro level, the mainstream economist J. Bradford DeJong noted in an interview about his book Slouching Towards Utopia that "There’s someone in Bangladesh who would almost surely be a better economics professor than I am and is now behind a water buffalo. The market gives me and my market preferences 200 times the weight of his. If that isn’t the biggest market failure of all, I don’t know what your definition of market failure could possibly be.”
Rather than speculate about luck and chance and hard work, surely we could create an economic system that provided enough, even lots, for all. Then we could see what happens and make a better assessment of the luck/work etc. formulation.
So is the Great Debate here on the entire field of Economics?
There are entire industries that try to figure out how to organize societies in order to maximize the alignment with skills, expertise, and natural resources in order to meet the needs and wants of the people who live in those societies, while balancing how to support those individuals who are unable or in some cases unwilling to meaningfully contribute.
Also keeping in mind that human nature tends to view anyone wealthier as a “rich jerk” and anyone with less wealth as a “loser”.
I will answer your question in the form of more questions:
What spoils do you think you should have?
Who do you expect to give them to you?
And where do you expect them to get those spoils from?
I’m not understanding what those questions have to do with the OP?
I do think that some stratification of reward for effort and ability is reasonable. And that systems predicated on “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” are unworkable beyond the level of a commune.
The OP is presuming that most of us here are well educated and above the median SES with an over-representation of the top two quintiles. Certainly not everyone here but more than the general public.
No one is giving that group greater life and healthspan than the lower quintiles but we have it. Our families and society gave us greater opportunities, some just by our identities. We are more likely to have had careers that made saving in tax deferred accounts a near automatic decision, easy to do, and have retirement resources.
The OP spun off from the fact that given this group’s greater longevity they are getting much out of SS per amount put in than the lower quintile group, especially the unskilled laborers group. And frankly they need it the least on average (mileage may vary).
That’s an example of “the spoils” of being higher SES. Being higher SES itself is to some degree a spoil of already having some intersectional privileges. Yes it is exponentially more so for the one percent, let alone the 0.1%, but even below that the system is set up such the relatively rich get richer. K shaped and that jazz.
Again not dismissing that effort and talent and sacrifice impacts outcomes. Of course they do.
I don’t personally agree, I think genetics and environment are bigger factors than just 2/3. Terman’s study of the gifted looked into high IQ children of the 1920s, but they were mostly white and their gender ratio was mostly equal.
The men went on to a lot of professional success, but the high IQ women didn’t. The high IQ women got tertiary education, but due to social rules weren’t able to pursue professional careers the way white men could. Someone like Barack Obama in the 1820s wouldn’t have gotten far in life due to his race limiting his options in the public and private sector.
There were endless intelligent people in human history, and most lived and died as farmers since there were no opportunities to put their talents to use.
I feel like the actions section is just the actions you take within the framework of genetics and environment. A mentally disabled black woman in 1870 likely wasn’t going to become a doctor or professor no matter how hard she tried.
I don’t see how you could possibly put a universal figure on it. At the extreme end, any of those factors- genetics, environment or decisions- could mean you don’t even make it to adulthood.
I am reminded of an article I read a bit ago, about two pairs of identical twins who were accidentally mixed up as premature babies, in Colombia. One pair was raised in a huge, poor, rural family, who were kind and did their best, but lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere with no way to get to a high school, while the other were sent home with a supportive middle-class family who pushed them towards a good education. The mixup wasn’t discovered until they were adults.
The part I remember was that of them had always proudly believed that his success was all down to his drive; he was able to achieve whatever he put his mind to. Whatever the challenge, he’d always find a way… Until he met his identical twin, brought up in the middle of nowhere, who if anything had even more drive. The twin had tried to use many of the same routes to a good job and financial stability, but had just had door after door slammed in his face, due to being poor, not having access to good advice, and not having attended high school. He was forced to acknowledge that no, he wasn’t able to overcome everything, he’d just been in a better position than he’d ever realised.
Most of us don’t have a ‘control me’ to compare to.
This is a false dichotomy. Here is a pig bred by a pig farmer; how much of the pig exists due to the efforts of the pig farmer and how much of the pig exists because of the efforts of its parents?
To take a different angle - I accept that I have benefited from structural inequities and intersectional identity biases, good schools, so on. Highly doubtful control me without those advantages woukd have grown up to the same SES level I am now, working just as hard, just as dedicated and tenacious, same native abilities.
And?
I still have done a job that our society values and rewards in keeping with the value it places upon it.
I don’t think I deserve an inordinate slice of the SS pie on top of everything else, but while, sure, my having gotten there compared to imaginary control me is just that “life isn’t fair”, should I not have gotten the spoils?
I chose equal weights because I can’t justify anything more precise. These factors are so interrelated, I don’t know how they could be untangled without tons of statistical analysis.
For example:
Having a baby as a teen limits one’s opportunities and potentially one’s future success. But how much did each factor contribute?
A genetic predisposition to risk taking?
An environment that encourages it?
An individual’s choice?
But you’re right that the weights are not going to be even across demographics (gender, race, etc.) and I could have made better starting guesses for those cases.
My answer was influenced by the parent thread about adjusting SS start dates by occupation where the difference is, for example, whether someone makes a career as an ironworker or a telemarketer. I wasn’t imaging such a disparity for a single individual.