Just a thought I had, like what can a ten year old do(besides mass murder & accidents) that messes up their life so badly that it is unrecoverable?
It has to be something that is self inflicted and not something that is the cause of others around them.
If, when you’re born, you don’t choose to be rich, that messes you up forever.
If you’re not born rich you can become rich (or “comfortable”) later in life. It doesn’t mess you up forever.
And you become a successful businesswoman carrying a chocolate bar with her at all times because of your childhood fear of starvation. Sure, that doesn’t sound messed up at all.
Your comment makes no sense.
Oh gee, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll go tell the African children. /s
Just eyeballing the life stories I know, and looking at the actual statistics on social mobility, if you do everything right you can expect to climb up like a single rung of the socioeconomic ladder. On average. There’s a great deal of luck involved there, even, and it’s possible to do everything right and go down the ladder if, for example, something unexpected cripples you.
I think the changes of that happening are statistically neglible, though (comfortable maaaaybe if you’re really lucky but becoming rich is probably a one digit change, if that).
It takes work, and if people don’t want to put in the work then they will never get there.
It takes education, you can work your whole life at being a pro golfer, but if you never receive guidance, you will not reach your potential.
Being a pro golfer isn’t the only way to make money.
Working isn’t the only way to amass capital either. In fact, it is surely the slowest method.
Socioeconomic mobility over a lifetime in the U.S. has always been dramatically overstated, but in the past 20 years its gradually gotten worse
2012 was 12 years ago, mind you.
Also found this 2021 Guardian Article that claims
Thanks for that! So my hunch seemed to be oretty right, unfortunately (not sure if it should be everybody’s goal to become rich, that seems unsustainable but I wish it would be possible for more people to live a happy life …)
No, sorry, we actually just sold out of upward mobility. Our next shipment comes in never though, maybe you can come back then?
Despite declining social mobility, mke_geek makes a fair point, being born poor isn’t absolutely guaranteed to mean that you won’t be able to have a meaningful or fullfilling life. I’m sure that many people who are born in remote villages with a subsistence lifestyle, that we would view as living in poverty, are happier than many people who are born in “first world” countries.
Anyway, OP is asking about choices, not situations that are inflicted upon them.
Quite frankly, the idea that it’s likely that you can get rich through your own work/intellect/ingenuity is more and more false. Social mobility is not at all on the up and up.
You can also easily fuck up your life by failing at the attempt to become rich, or by ordering your life around that attempt. See crypto bros etc.
I’m confident it was never true. Case in point, for America: Most people are either black or female. Even looking at white men, “mysteriously”, the vast majority of the great men of the past came from fancy backgrounds.
Very true, good point.
Hey now, that sounds like a lot of work that’ll get into the way of my doom scrolling and being a miserable bastard time