upward mobility is a "myth"?

[newarkhiphop]

How much mobility do you have to have to have been considered upward mobile?

Is coming from a poor African country making nothing and work at McDonald's here counted as upward mobility?

 

[Kritic]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013...-how-macklemore-got-thrift-shop-to-number-one

 

[Robbie3000]

Statistical "brackets" are made up of "flesh and blood" stories....they're stats covering people, not robots. How you are able to cognitively draw this fine distinction between the two is beyond me.

What Sowell is attempting to accomplish is to selectively made outliers representative of the whole in order to fulfill a political bias. It would be like me saying..."oh, five foot nothing white guys have just as good of a chance to get to the NBA as 6 foot eleven, athletic black man. I saw Steve Nash thrive in the NBA, which is a flesh and blood story that disproves statistical brackets"

Thank you. The whole time i'm reading this thread I'm wondering how he is differentiating between "Statistical Brackets" and "Flesh and blood" stories.

 

[Mr. Somebody]

he presents a compelling argument here.

Alot of immigrants come from families with money, have foreign backing or already have a pre established network of opportunities waiting for them here.

 

[DEAD7]

How can something you disregard for not confirming your bias change your opinion

i dont disregard it. I'm a lot mor eopen than you think, and have admitted to being wrong on several occasions...

Where is dude getting all his numbers from...?

It's pointless to regard the article you posted without the original sources of data...It reads like propaganda to me...

Statistical "brackets" are made up of "flesh and blood" stories....they're stats covering people, not robots. How you are able to cognitively draw this fine distinction between the two is beyond me.

What Sowell is attempting to accomplish is to selectively made outliers representative of the whole in order to fulfill a political bias. It would be like me saying..."oh, five foot nothing white guys have just as good of a chance to get to the NBA as 6 foot eleven, athletic black man. I saw Steve Nash thrive in the NBA, which is a flesh and blood story that disproves statistical brackets"

Thank you. The whole time i'm reading this thread I'm wondering how he is differentiating between "Statistical Brackets" and "Flesh and blood" stories.

Let me try to explain. When you look at brackets, your looking at people, but in a snap shot. The flesh and blood people in the bottom 20% or top 10% may not be the same from year to year, even though the bracket stays the same.

If your in the lower bracket, and move to the upper bracket, and some on else take your place in the lower bracket, the data will not reflect this, it will reflect that there has been no change and no mobility.And thats on top of it not accounting for wealth and timing.

If Will Smith took a year of and made zero dollars, absolutely nothing. The income statistics would place him in the bottom bracket Having made zero he'd be even lower than those on welfare, yet we all know he is rich...

Its not that Sowell said it, its that it checks out, statistics should be taken with a grain of salt cause most are bullshyt.

 

[Robbie3000]

i dont disregard it. I'm a lot mor eopen than you think, and have admitted to being wrong on several occasions...






Let me try to explain. When you look at brackets, your looking at people, but in a snap shot. The flesh and blood people in the bottom 20% or top 10% may not be the same from year to year, even though the bracket stays the same.

If your in the lower bracket, and move to the upper bracket, and some on else take your place in the lower bracket, the data will not reflect this, it will reflect that there has been no change and no mobility.And thats on top of it not accounting for wealth and timing.
If Will Smith took a year of and made zero dollars, absolutely nothing. The income statistics would place him in the bottom bracket Having made zero he'd be even lower than those on welfare, yet we all know he is rich...

Its not that Sowell said it, its that it checks out, statistics should be taken with a grain of salt cause most are bullshyt.

That's not what they do. I think you are misunderstanding the studies. They study individuals cases over a period of time and then create an aggregate of all that data to produce meaningful reports. For example, they take a statistically meaningful population of a poor, middle and upper middle class. They then track their incomes over time and observe the mobility of each group.

It's the only logical way to report the results of a study that may include hundreds or thousands of people.

How else can you communicate the data in any meaningful way without using statistics?

 

[DEAD7]

That's not what they do. I think you are misunderstanding the studies. They study individuals cases over a period of time and then create an aggregate of all that data to produce meaningful reports. For example, they take a statistically meaningful population of a poor, middle and upper middle class. They then track their incomes over time and observe the mobility of each group.

It's the only logical way to report the results of a study that may include hundreds or thousands of people.

How else can you communicate the data in any meaningful way without using statistics?

All I said was I wish the guy in the interview would have explained that... what got you niqqas all disgruntled?

Also, income statistics don't account for net worth/wealth.




Edit: Do you have a link to his study or are you just speaking in general?

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

i dont disregard it. I'm a lot mor eopen than you think, and have admitted to being wrong on several occasions...






Let me try to explain. When you look at brackets, your looking at people, but in a snap shot. The flesh and blood people in the bottom 20% or top 10% may not be the same from year to year, even though the bracket stays the same.

If your in the lower bracket, and move to the upper bracket, and some on else take your place in the lower bracket, the data will not reflect this, it will reflect that there has been no change and no mobility.And thats on top of it not accounting for wealth and timing.

If Will Smith took a year of and made zero dollars, absolutely nothing. The income statistics would place him in the bottom bracket Having made zero he'd be even lower than those on welfare, yet we all know he is rich...

Its not that Sowell said it, its that it checks out, statistics should be taken with a grain of salt cause most are bullshyt.

Point us to a study that is flawed in this manner.

 

[Robbie3000]

All I said was I wish the guy in the interview would have explained that... what got you niqqas all disgruntled?

Also, income statistics don't account for net worth/wealth.


Edit: Do you have a link to his study or are you just speaking in general?

In general this is how these studies work, but here is a link to an article where various studies are cited.

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc262g.pdf

 

[DEAD7]

Point us to a study that is flawed in this manner.

I've never seen a income study that accounted for worth, so I'll say all, and toss it back to you to produce evidence...

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

I've never seen a income study that accounted for worth, so I'll say all, and toss it back to you to produce evidence...

That's because they are income studies, not wealth studies.

And your Will Smith example is bogus as well. Dude is an 0.001%er. In other words, a statistical outlier. 99% of people making 5 figures are not multimillionaires, and on average multimillionaires make hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars a year. Which studies account for. So "accounting for worth" is hardly a valid reason to write off studies looking at millions of people.

 

[Starman]

-Thomas Sowell

Why no link?

 

[DEAD7]

That's because they are income studies, not wealth studies.

And your Will Smith example is bogus as well. Dude is an 0.001%er. In other words, a statistical outlier. 99% of people making 5 figures are not multimillionaires, and on average multimillionaires make hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars a year. Which studies account for. So "accounting for worth" is hardly a valid reason to write off studies looking at millions of people.

I see your taking my "grain of salt" as "writing off". I cant defend the writing off position cause thats not what Im saying. I'm pointing out that if some one wealthy made nothing in a year, like say a rich kid(18-19yrs) he would be in the bottom bracket despite being quite well off.

Whats wrong with admitting the study is flawed in some ways? I never said it was worthless or meaningless, just that it should be taken with a grain of salt...

 

[DEAD7]

Why no link?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342221/how-measure-social-mobility-thomas-sowell

Cant find original column, ill edit when I do

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

I see your taking my "grain of salt" as "writing off". I cant defend the writing off position cause thats not what Im saying. I'm pointing out that if some one wealthy made nothing in a year, like say a rich kid(18-19yrs) he would be in the bottom bracket despite being quite well off.

Whats wrong with admitting the study is flawed in some ways? I never said it was worthless or meaningless, just that it should be taken with a grain of salt...

No study is perfect, unless it includes every person in the world and has no error. Again, your example is irrelevant because its an outlier. If there are 100 Will Smiths out of 300 million people they are not going to skew things one way or another significantly. Bottom line, upward mobility is on a downward trend in the US.