This must mean that first-time buyers more often than not can not purchase a median-priced house, (ie. the median-priced housing segment is largely unavailable to first-time buyers because either the median price is too high or the capital of first-time buyers is too low).
If that's what the author is trying to say, my response is still, "So what?"
Is that a problem? If not, why bother reporting it?
I would expect a first time buyer to be in the market for a "starter" home - old, not-updated, small, slightly less desirable neighborhood, etc. Or, a condo instead of a single-family unit.
I thought America was over the house-horniness of the early 2000s?
Why is the inability to buy a home in one of the most expensive areas of the US a danger sign? Do you read articles about not being able to afford homes in Manhattan? It's a given!
A couple figures that would help here:
- how much is "fewer than half" (49% and 1% are both "fewer than half")?
- what is this metric in other places? (In general that's a good idea whenever anybody starts slinging unfamiliar statistics.)
I had the same reaction. I actually stopped reading after that. It was clear from that point that the article was pushing an agenda and would twist(probably from a lack of understanding) to support that agenda.
You're comparing the price people can afford to the price people are actually paying. For example, practically everyone can afford the median price of a pack of gum, but few car buyers can afford the median price of a Jaguar.
Also worth pointing out: the median-price is the price among all homebuyers. It's not necessarily true that half of a subset of those homebuyers can afford the median. For example, 100% of the highest-income homebuyers can afford the median-priced home, but roughly 0% of the lowest-income homebuyers can afford a median-priced home.
According to the study referred to by the NYT article, the Silicon Valley Index, they are actually referring to the mean price and not the median. The caption makes sense with that correction.
Still doesn't take away from the improper use of a statistical term, as a journalist should know better (statistics is a required class for most journalism degrees).
>> While whites and Asians are making more money, blacks and Latinos are falling further behind.
What is the author trying to say? The truth is blacks and Latinos need to step it up.
I come from a Mexican-American family, and have ten aunts and uncles. I'm constantly amazed (or is it baffled) with the disparity between each of the grandchildren, even within the same family.
My aunts and uncles all have at least 3, and at most 5 children. Some ended up in prison, some ended up pregnant at the age of 14, some dropped out of high school and some went on to finish college. Most are employed at various levels. But when it comes to which ones are 'successful' and don't have the problems the others have, it basically came down to personal choices they made along the way, and continue to make (the oldest is 42 years old, the youngest are just now finishing high school).
The worst-off grandchildren generally have parents in equally bad situations. But one family has two convicts, a do-nothing, but then a nurse and a teacher. The biggest 'help' seems to be from the parent marrying someone who's from a better situation, but it's not always the case. Only about 5 of the grandchildren are married.
My point is these kids all came from the same schools, same neighborhoods, same families, and some of them managed to make it through while the rest became statistics. Much of the problem is that the majority have all stayed put in this rust-belt city with no jobs and no future.
I know what you're trying to say, and I understand that you believe you have a set of individuals with upbringings that are relatively equal, for all intents and purposes, but as an African-American your comment rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes, even when people come from the same family, you have to realize that each person's situation is unique. Especially when you have such a disparity in age: from 42 years old to 18 years old.
Allow me to present some counter anecdotal "evidence." I have two brothers. We're all 6 years apart; I'm 21, the middle is 27, and the oldest is 33. We've ended up in vastly different situations due to a series of personal choices affected and limited by the environment we were given. The environment that one grows up in, even within their family, is such an important factor.
The amount of money and mobility my parents had, when my oldest brother was born, was an order of a magnitude less than what they had when I was born. As a result, my oldest brother's only option was public school in an underfunded district for grades 1-12. College was out of the qusetion, even if he could make it! On the other hand, my middle brother had the option to go to private school for grades 1-12, and graduated from University of Miami. For me, it was private school for grades 1-8, and when my parents were faced with the decision of sending me to the same public school my oldest brother went to, they moved instead to send me to one of the best public schools in the state. My oldest brother didn't have that option.
So when you see my oldest brother unable to hold down a moderately well-paying blue-collar job, and me working a low six-figure white-collar job, you can't simply say that one of us needs to "step it up." We are largely a product of the totality of our environment.
I understand what you're trying to say. The youngest siblings can have the advantage of seeings their older siblings success/failure and then attempt to emulate, or avoid that. They can also fall into the trap of being taken care of by the older siblings.
>> Especially when you have such a disparity in age: from 42 years old to 18 years old.
You're making the assumption that the successful children are all similar in age. They're not.
>> As a result, my oldest brother's only option was public school in an underfunded district for grades 1-12. College was out of the qusetion, even if he could make it!
None of your brothers classmates made it beyond high school?
Interesting, I'd be all for hearing more about your observations. Feel free to shoot me an email: [HN name].morris1 'at' gmail.
>> None of your brothers classmates made it beyond high school?
I can't say for sure because it's difficult to find the statistics from back then. The difference in expectations between the schools is definitely palpable. (I tutored there throughout HS.) Even in comparison today, his school's graduation rate is 63% and is ranked 482nd out of 489 districts by state assessment scores, while my school has a graduation rate of 94% and ranks in the top 5%.
>Even in comparison today, his school's graduation rate is 63% and is ranked 482nd out of 489 districts by state assessment scores, while my school has a graduation rate of 94% and ranks in the top 5%.
I am curious if you believe that this is because the schools was a bad school (under-funded, bad teachers and administrators), or because the parents of the kids that attended there were generally lower than average quality parents? (on drugs, welfare baby mommas, abusive, spend all their free time watching TV and not disciplining or spending any time with their children, non loving, single parent with 3 jobs to make ends meat, ETC.)
The problem is that you cannot say whether your older brother is the way he is because of a lifetime of crummy public schooling or just because he's wired that way. The age old causation vs correlation issue.
All else equal (in this case, primarily your family), I don't think school quality has much to do with whether you are relatively dysfunctional as an adult. Family values, work ethic, and god-given intelligence probably make up 95% of your outcome in life.
School quality absolutely has a big impact on how well you do in life, that's not even a question. If you go to a school where most of your classmates read 2 or 3 grades below grade level and your teachers struggle every day to maintain order in the class, much less teach the actual subjects, of course it hurts the students. When you go to a school that is overrun with gangs and you have to take care when walking home from school lest you get gunned down, that certainly makes it far more difficult to do well in school.
A kid's upbringing and environment at home also play very large factors. Truth is that all of those things matter.
I think whether or not someone does well in life is game of probabilities. If you go to a bad school, it lowers your probability of doing well in life. If they have great parents maybe that cancels out that negative, maybe it doesn't. Some people will beat the odds and do well at a bad school with bad parenting. But that doesn't mean that access to a quality school doesn't have a big impact.
Well, I suppose you are right, but you have to cite an extreme case of literally worrying about getting murdered every day. Do those schools exist? Yes, but they are few and far between, and there is a world of difference between "underfunded" and the case you're citing. Since the original comment made no mention of a gangland war zone at his brother's school (seems relevant to the story) I assumed this was not the case, though I could be wrong in which case I'll concede the point.
Does school quality have an impact? Sure, I think around the edges it does. It can certainly grease the wheels. But over time the people who are wired properly for success (good values, work ethic, god-given intelligence) usually figure out a way. Perhaps more accurately, they don't live relatively dysfunctional adult lives and are unable to hold "neck down" jobs.
Just to provide context, underfunded was my nice way of saying exactly what you describe. Kids have been stabbed and gun fights have broken out inside the school.
That was my fault for not making it clear, I apologize.
Thanks for the clarification. As I said, in these extreme cases then yes, I do believe school plays a larger role than normal.
Also, to further clarify, I think the more important issue with school isn't so much the quality of the learning going on or what material is being taught or whether every classroom has smartboard or whatever. I think it has far more to do with the nature of the kids you're surrounded with, whether one starts hanging out with the wrong crowd which can corrupt all those other things (iq, family values, etc).
Yes but do good values and work ethic come from genetics? I would argue no. That comes from the enviroment you grow up in, from your parents and siblings, to your peers, to your community.
When we're talking school quality there are a couple of different components. Funding isn't a good metric as the United States spends a lot per student but gets worse results than many other countries (not unlike our healthcare system). I think there are a lot of systemic improvements to be made on that front.
When we're talking about the significantly below average schools in the United States, those are absolutely producing worse outcomes for the kids that come out of them. Some of them will succeed anyway but that doesn't mean improving the school wouldn't lift up many of the others who struggle now.
> A kid's upbringing and environment at home also play very large factors.
I think you vastly overestimate the importance of those things. Decades of twin studies show the impact of shared environment on life outcome to be pretty small. See Judith Rich Harris' work for more info.
I'd have to view that with a large grain of salt. I'm sure there are a lot of innate components of personality that are genetic. And those components of personality do make a big difference in life outcomes. But at the same time there are a lot of home enviromental factors that I've seen make a big difference in children's lives.
For one, if you have parents who got you started reading and doing math early, you're going to have an advantage going into school. If you get school and are ahead of your peers, you're more likely to get extra attention or to be put into gifted and talented programs, which will in turn, reinforce that advantage.
Kids who come from disrupted or abusive households are going to be at an undeniable disadvantage. Kids from families that don't teach them the value of education are more likely not to value education. Kids from families with poor work habits are more likely to have poor work habits.
Again, it doesn't mean that 100% of kids who don't learn to read by 2 and have 2 perfect parents are going to fail, it just means it is harder for those kids to succeed. If that wasn't the case, parents shouldn't bother putting much effort into parenting at all. "Welp son, I hope the genes I gave ya will do ya some good, you're on your own. I'm sure you'll figure out how to feed and clothe yourself..."
Value of education depends a great lot on other aspects of personality and circumstances and at least to me, is not undeniable (while for most people, it has some value).
Education gets you some extra miles in the low-middle class range, like, you are more likely to get to mid-middle class if you were low-middle without it. It won't save you from poverty, and it won't make you rich. None of the moderately rich/high middle class people i know are well-educated. If they have anything in common then it's that they are smart and sociopathic.
Education itself even doesn't much improve chances to get a good career as an employee, most Ph.D. and MBAs i know are wasting their time doing mundane pseudo-intellectual work for meager pay. While i know senior and top management in large and powerful corporations, earning ca. million a year, without any business or economic degrees (one of them has a programmer diploma by the way). Just people who have a habit of getting work done, reliable and proactive. Be like that and nobody will ask you which school have you finished.
Proof: median income of a Ph.D. is not even 2x the median income of an American in general.
And Ph.D. are a high elite when an education attainment in concerned, under 50,000 are graduated each year, compared to 4.1 million Americans reaching age of 25 each year. So Ph.D.s are top 1.2% and getting under 2x as much as median. Top 1% population gets 1.6 million a year on average compared to under 50k median - a difference of about 30x. Even if you compare thresholds it is over 10x. So an highly elite education does not get you into a highly elite social class, or does not get you even a marginally comfortable life. It definitely gets you SOMEWHERE, but probably to a very, very low degree (difference is not even 2x if you remember that an average guy is mentally incapable of becoming a Ph.D. - he is just plain too dumb. so if someone capable of making it did something else instead he will anyways earn somewhat more than median guy will, it is impossible to tell how much more, but somewhat more for sure). In my opinion it is 1.5x difference max.
But it is fair to say, "you are assuming the kids had equal opportunities and environments, here is my story in which they clearly did not". Maybe the schools were of equal quality, but we can't assume that.
Really? You don't see why being warehoused and told to shut up for 12 years, as opposed to being gently cultivated like an orchid, provided with interesting literature and opportunities for scientific observation and experimentation, might be different?
I had a pretty good public school education. But I got to go to a fancy private school for one day when my parents were searching for options that would challenge me -- I was bored in one of my schools (even though it was in a foreign language) and they were afraid I'd start performing poorly just because I was bored. That one day at the private school... it was so pretty, and the chairs were comfortable, and there were so many books, and there was a tasty lunch cooked there at the school, with vegetables, and they had small classes, and people were so nice, and there were so many books! And their science labs worked!
My high school gave me a great education despite the fact that we had so many students in classes that we sat on the floor or in the windowsills, we only had one set of history books for three classes of European history so we couldn't take them home, I never sat at a table during my 18 minute lunches because there weren't enough tables (and lunches were 18 minutes because they split the school into 3 shifts so we could all fit in the lunchroom more or less). It was a great education because of the teachers in the "good" classes. In the "lower" classes the teachers were not good and I still get crap for bringing a pillow to school so I could sleep in first period health.
Yeah I'm super-great & made good choices & am virtuous and hard-working and "wired right." But I also didn't have to eat the school lunch crap, got some great teachers to counteract some of the warehousing I experienced in our public schools, and got exposure to STEM possibilities through a nearby college rather than wasting 5 years in stultifying math classes that my friends went through. Classes in which their grades went up once they started skipping and working with me during study hall instead.
Interestingly, both of you highlight other factors aside from your ethnic background as the main reason for success or failure. So then, what is the difference between white and east Asians vs black/latino/south east Asians?
(I add the split between Asian groups because there is definitely a difference in prosperity)
Good question. It's one that puzzles me every day. While my ethnic background appears to have had no bearing on my life, it most certainly affected my parents' lives.
>> While my ethnic background appears to have had no bearing on my life
Of course it has. You have to realize that everyone you encounter in your life is going to judge you differently based on your height, weight, clothes, skin color, hairstyle, and even your name.
When you go for a job interview or on a sales call, people are going to have pre-concieved notions and their judgement affected by the name on your email signature. If you're 'Tom Gomez' or 'Dave Johnson' you're going to have pretty good head start over someone named 'Alejandra DeJesus Valtierra' or 'Wumi Hassan Abdullah'.
If you're good and you can get past that, people don't care. You'll become 'my friend Hassan', or 'I know that guy with the dreads, I should introduce you'. But as unfair as it is, and it shouldn't be, it does affect first impressions. We're all guilty of it.
Your typical 'successful' Asian student most likely had the stereotypical strict Asian parents who placed school success very highly. Obviously all the parents aren't like that and you get Asian kids who join gangs and such.
>> The truth is blacks and Latinos need to step it up.
This generalized statement, specifically. I don't enjoy treating "blacks" as a group anymore than I like seeing "latinos" or "whites" treated as one. Most situations are unique to an individual.
So your parents sent your middle brother to private school from first grade on and simultaneously kept your oldest brother in a stink hole situation?
That sounds pretty rough. Why didn't they put the oldest in private school instead? Surely by 7th grade you can see that there are problems there. Perhaps by 12 grade in the private school, he could have turned things around.
Perhaps it was the mere fact that the younger brother was given such preferential treatment that the older never became successful.
Perhaps it was the fact that your parents became better parents with more experience, or because they were less stressed out since they did not have the financial hardship that they had before.
I am not trying to discount your story, but the problem lies in the fact that it can be compared with plenty of other similar situations as yours but having completely different results (the kids in public school fared better in life).
Quality of school definitely CAN have a profound effect on a child's life. But in my experience and personal observation, this is only because of a failure on the parenting side. If a child is reared with enough love and enough wisdom, discipline and vision is imparted into them before, and during the school years - they will do fine if they are in a run down inner city school, or a middle class private school.
So maybe you say that this is unfair that some parents have to raise their kids with such diligence to have them succeed, while some others don't (because of economic factors).
Trust me, the kid and parents in the situation where extra attention is needed to enhance the likelihood of success in the child's life are better off and happier people than a wealthy parent that hires a nanny to raise their kids and sends them to private school. Which situation is true parenting after all? Which kid will carry on a true legacy of their parents and hold their ideals and values continuing their legacy?
>> Surely by 7th grade you can see that there are problems there. Perhaps by 12 grade in the private school, he could have turned things around.
My parents didn't have the money to pay for private school. Both myself and my middle brother earned fully paid scholarships. They tried to send my oldest brother to the same private school, but due to his entrance exams, that would've required $20K a year that they didn't have.
You're right, we don't know what the cause is. Whether it's the school or the parents, my point was that you can't just look at an individual and tell them to "step it up." It's not that simple.
Are blacks and latinos in silicon valley falling behind compared to blacks and latinos in other parts of the country?
If your population includes Facebook and Twitter and Google employees, almost everyone is going to appear to fall behind them, but it doesn't mean they are doing worse.
As a general rule of thumb, any organism's behavior is the result of a combination of its individual choices and the environment those choices are made within. I don't doubt that you have family members who have fallen behind as a result of their own choices. But as someone coming from a middle-class white family, I can tell you that I have many relatives who have made equally poor decisions and aren't in jail, didn't get pregnant at age 14, and didn't drop out of high school.
Now put those same family members in a lower-income and higher-crime environment (as minorities are more likely to live in), and I don't doubt that members of my family would have ended up in much the same situation. People make bad decisions to be sure, but it's silly to say that what happens to people is solely the result of their own decisions.
"People make bad decisions to be sure, but it's silly to say that what happens to people is solely the result of their own decisions."
Amen. I don't have to speculate -- I've seen it happen. My family isn't many generations out of blue collar, and I have a lot of distant relatives who fit the description. Circumstance matters immensely. People that I knew as normal kids veered wildly off the tracks once they got older and the consequences of their decisions were amplified by their surroundings.
So I suspect you believe in free will as the ultimate arbiter of success? Are you a scientific man? If so, where do you see where free will fits in the matter of physics?
Can someone explain why we do not see the "us vs. them " in NY/NJ/CT. I used to live in LI , where a lot successful Wall Street Bankers lived and never once did I hear about this kind of resentment. I am just puzzled .
You must not be watching NYC politics. Watch all of yesterday's episode of The Daily Show [1] with Mayor DeBlasio. Don't worry, you won't need to read into any subtext, it's the whole focus of the episode.
I lived in NYC for 12 years prior to moving to Silicon Valley and spent 8 of those years in the finance industry.
NYC government created a symbiotic relationship with the finance industry. NYC used the tax revenue from the high income earners to build up local infrastructure and make the city a better place. In the 12 years that I was there and the many more that I've been there in the region, the city had improved drastically. This was to the betterment of everyone.
Part of what made NYC great was its transportation infrastructure. It moved millions of people around the city at all times of the day. There was no class structure in the Subways; the 1% rode the subways alongside the service workers. People got a sense that everyone benefited from the increase in income and tax revenue.
This was dramatically different on the west coast. In the Bay Area, the local government create policies (limiting housing specifically) that don't benefit the long term future of the region. Compared to NYC, SF governance is pretty dysfunctional.
When I first moved out here, I was shocked by how lacking the transportation infrastructure was. I always had the vision that Silicon Valley and SF was high tech and that the public transportation infrastructure must be better than NYC. This was not the case. This lead to the high income earners to create a separate transportation system that benefit them (Uber, corporate shuttles, etc). This leads to a lot of friction between the haves and have not.
You hit the nail on the head about transit, because the Bay Area's poor transit system exacerbates the problem creating by gentrification and rising rents.
I used to work in Midtown, and commute in from New Rochelle, a city that's mostly working class hispanics with a few yuppie high rises near the train station. The ~18 mile trip used to take just over 35 minutes on Metro North, and the service was highly reliable as well as highly available (8 trains to GCT between 7:02 am and 8:47 am). One stop closer to Manhattan was Pehlam, an upper middle class white area. The next stop after that was Mt. Vernon, a working class black area. There were two other lines through Westchester, each stopping in dozens of towns and with similar service. In sum, it was very practical to work in Manhattan but live in a town where rent wasn't totally unaffordable for people outside the upper middle class.
There is nothing comparable in the Bay Area. Rising rents don't just mean moving a slightly longer walk away from the train, or down another stop, but possibly moving somewhere else entirely.
Because the tristate area has far better infrastructure and housing options that includes low-income areas. There is a housing option for almost any income bracket that includes accessible public transit with reasonable commutes to the city, and thus, employment.
There is an "us versus them" mentality in NY/NJ/CT, but there are a few countervailing factors:
1) Liberals on the east coast are more pragmatic/less idealistic than those on the west coast.
2) NY/NJ/CT has had a long time to get used to the negatives of having the banking industry there, and has had a long time to figure out and leverage the positives.
3) In NY/NJ/CT, there is more reliance across classes on shared infrastructure. Those bankers in Long Island take LIRR to work, and pay into a system everyone uses.
4) People who work on Wall Street embrace that they're just in it for the money and are doing "business as usual." Silicon Valley does "business as usual" but puts on this air of "saving the world!" That hypocrisy rubs people the wrong way.
5) I think there is more shared culture in NY/NJ/CT, at least among certain key groups. Remember, this foment about "haves versus have nots" isn't raised by the poor people themselves. It's raised by an intellectual elite. I think there's a much bigger cultural gap between the crunchy hippies at Berkeley that write these sorts of articles and the engineers in Silicon Valley, then there is between the crunchy hippies at Columbia and the bankers on Wall Street.
My point is that narratives about the friction that exists in a society are created by the intelligentsia. For example, Mr. Vindu Goel, author of this article, is a Harvard graduate. So it's important to look at the culture of the intelligentsia in a community (those who are educated there or choose to settle there), relative to the culture of the "haves."
New York has groups of people leading the charge on behalf of the "have nots." But if you look at the background of someone in that camp, you'll often see say a Columbia or NYU grad who has family who works in finance or one of its ancillary industries. A lot of the journalists who might cover the issue of "Wall Street versus Main Street" come from privileged backgrounds themselves and eat at the same restaurants and go to the same nightclubs as people who work on Wall Street. In the Bay Area, I think you see more of a disconnect. I think a stereotypical member of the opposition might have a background like my wife's uncle: mom was a professor at Berkeley and grow up in town. That person doesn't have a lot in common with a Google engineer who moved into the city from the east coast and takes a shuttle bus into the suburbs every day for work.
I have a hard time taking these kinds of articles seriously, because the main premise seems to be "you should feel some sort of moral guilt because you're not solving problems that are important to the author."
Why worry? Every boomtown in history had the same things happening, pricing out its original population (if one existed). At least they enjoy the ability to sell their homes for many times the price they paid for it, and buy way better ones elsewhere (especially now when home prices nationwide are quite low on average), this way ripping a great lot of boom's benefits (i'd even say, more than a median techie-newcomer will ever get from it).
> Otherwise, the only people left will be the entrepreneurs and engineers.
> “The bar is so steep, the only people who can locate here are the high-income earners,” Mr. Hancock said. “We’re losing our middle class in Silicon Valley.”
I don't get it. Does being a engineer automatically make me upper-class? Because I'm an engineer and I certainly make a middle-class income (albeit likely being an upper middle-class income). I'd be willing to bet the average engineer living in Silicon Valley does as well.
The main problem with the article, I think, is that it tries to align the oppositions between native-born and new comer, tech and non-tech, rich and poor, educated and not, advantaged ethnic groups and disadvantaged. They don't really align very well, though they do some, and each deserves its own discussion, if one is really going to talk about social problems.
>rents are increasing faster than incomes, especially for the middle class.
This bothers me constantly. The middle class is the "Haves." It would be really useful if more people were aware of and honest about where they actually stand in society, but poor people don't want to be called poor and rich people don't want to be called rich.
I'm not sure why but somehow it hard for non-white to succeed in white society... It is vicious circle.
But I want to point out that belief of newly rich white libertarians that market will solve this in peaceful way is a very dangerous dream. Trotsky said "not believing in force is like not believing in gravity".
>> Fewer than half of first-time home buyers can afford to purchase a median-priced home, and rents are increasing faster than incomes, especially for the middle class.
“We have to be intentional as a community about addressing inequality."
Whenever I read someone making a statement like this or an article about "inequality" I wonder if the author of the statement or article actually believes the bullshit that he's spewing out. People pay so much lip service to the idea of inequality that one would think it appears on some political agenda or another. I suppose it's the expected topic of conversation, even as nothing is done about it. Ever. Call me cynical, but I have yet to see any action to remedy this and I simply do not believe that action on economic equality is anything but lip service.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadHalf of people purchase homes that are below the median price.
Thanks for the insight there, NYT.
Is that a problem? If not, why bother reporting it?
I would expect a first time buyer to be in the market for a "starter" home - old, not-updated, small, slightly less desirable neighborhood, etc. Or, a condo instead of a single-family unit.
Why is the inability to buy a home in one of the most expensive areas of the US a danger sign? Do you read articles about not being able to afford homes in Manhattan? It's a given!
Also worth pointing out: the median-price is the price among all homebuyers. It's not necessarily true that half of a subset of those homebuyers can afford the median. For example, 100% of the highest-income homebuyers can afford the median-priced home, but roughly 0% of the lowest-income homebuyers can afford a median-priced home.
Still doesn't take away from the improper use of a statistical term, as a journalist should know better (statistics is a required class for most journalism degrees).
I think the term has been eroded, but historically, white collar was the middle class. Blue collar, white collar, rentiers.
What is the author trying to say? The truth is blacks and Latinos need to step it up.
I come from a Mexican-American family, and have ten aunts and uncles. I'm constantly amazed (or is it baffled) with the disparity between each of the grandchildren, even within the same family.
My aunts and uncles all have at least 3, and at most 5 children. Some ended up in prison, some ended up pregnant at the age of 14, some dropped out of high school and some went on to finish college. Most are employed at various levels. But when it comes to which ones are 'successful' and don't have the problems the others have, it basically came down to personal choices they made along the way, and continue to make (the oldest is 42 years old, the youngest are just now finishing high school).
The worst-off grandchildren generally have parents in equally bad situations. But one family has two convicts, a do-nothing, but then a nurse and a teacher. The biggest 'help' seems to be from the parent marrying someone who's from a better situation, but it's not always the case. Only about 5 of the grandchildren are married.
My point is these kids all came from the same schools, same neighborhoods, same families, and some of them managed to make it through while the rest became statistics. Much of the problem is that the majority have all stayed put in this rust-belt city with no jobs and no future.
Allow me to present some counter anecdotal "evidence." I have two brothers. We're all 6 years apart; I'm 21, the middle is 27, and the oldest is 33. We've ended up in vastly different situations due to a series of personal choices affected and limited by the environment we were given. The environment that one grows up in, even within their family, is such an important factor.
The amount of money and mobility my parents had, when my oldest brother was born, was an order of a magnitude less than what they had when I was born. As a result, my oldest brother's only option was public school in an underfunded district for grades 1-12. College was out of the qusetion, even if he could make it! On the other hand, my middle brother had the option to go to private school for grades 1-12, and graduated from University of Miami. For me, it was private school for grades 1-8, and when my parents were faced with the decision of sending me to the same public school my oldest brother went to, they moved instead to send me to one of the best public schools in the state. My oldest brother didn't have that option.
So when you see my oldest brother unable to hold down a moderately well-paying blue-collar job, and me working a low six-figure white-collar job, you can't simply say that one of us needs to "step it up." We are largely a product of the totality of our environment.
>> Especially when you have such a disparity in age: from 42 years old to 18 years old.
You're making the assumption that the successful children are all similar in age. They're not.
>> As a result, my oldest brother's only option was public school in an underfunded district for grades 1-12. College was out of the qusetion, even if he could make it!
None of your brothers classmates made it beyond high school?
>> None of your brothers classmates made it beyond high school?
I can't say for sure because it's difficult to find the statistics from back then. The difference in expectations between the schools is definitely palpable. (I tutored there throughout HS.) Even in comparison today, his school's graduation rate is 63% and is ranked 482nd out of 489 districts by state assessment scores, while my school has a graduation rate of 94% and ranks in the top 5%.
I am curious if you believe that this is because the schools was a bad school (under-funded, bad teachers and administrators), or because the parents of the kids that attended there were generally lower than average quality parents? (on drugs, welfare baby mommas, abusive, spend all their free time watching TV and not disciplining or spending any time with their children, non loving, single parent with 3 jobs to make ends meat, ETC.)
All else equal (in this case, primarily your family), I don't think school quality has much to do with whether you are relatively dysfunctional as an adult. Family values, work ethic, and god-given intelligence probably make up 95% of your outcome in life.
A kid's upbringing and environment at home also play very large factors. Truth is that all of those things matter.
I think whether or not someone does well in life is game of probabilities. If you go to a bad school, it lowers your probability of doing well in life. If they have great parents maybe that cancels out that negative, maybe it doesn't. Some people will beat the odds and do well at a bad school with bad parenting. But that doesn't mean that access to a quality school doesn't have a big impact.
Does school quality have an impact? Sure, I think around the edges it does. It can certainly grease the wheels. But over time the people who are wired properly for success (good values, work ethic, god-given intelligence) usually figure out a way. Perhaps more accurately, they don't live relatively dysfunctional adult lives and are unable to hold "neck down" jobs.
That was my fault for not making it clear, I apologize.
Also, to further clarify, I think the more important issue with school isn't so much the quality of the learning going on or what material is being taught or whether every classroom has smartboard or whatever. I think it has far more to do with the nature of the kids you're surrounded with, whether one starts hanging out with the wrong crowd which can corrupt all those other things (iq, family values, etc).
When we're talking school quality there are a couple of different components. Funding isn't a good metric as the United States spends a lot per student but gets worse results than many other countries (not unlike our healthcare system). I think there are a lot of systemic improvements to be made on that front.
When we're talking about the significantly below average schools in the United States, those are absolutely producing worse outcomes for the kids that come out of them. Some of them will succeed anyway but that doesn't mean improving the school wouldn't lift up many of the others who struggle now.
I think you vastly overestimate the importance of those things. Decades of twin studies show the impact of shared environment on life outcome to be pretty small. See Judith Rich Harris' work for more info.
For one, if you have parents who got you started reading and doing math early, you're going to have an advantage going into school. If you get school and are ahead of your peers, you're more likely to get extra attention or to be put into gifted and talented programs, which will in turn, reinforce that advantage.
Kids who come from disrupted or abusive households are going to be at an undeniable disadvantage. Kids from families that don't teach them the value of education are more likely not to value education. Kids from families with poor work habits are more likely to have poor work habits.
Again, it doesn't mean that 100% of kids who don't learn to read by 2 and have 2 perfect parents are going to fail, it just means it is harder for those kids to succeed. If that wasn't the case, parents shouldn't bother putting much effort into parenting at all. "Welp son, I hope the genes I gave ya will do ya some good, you're on your own. I'm sure you'll figure out how to feed and clothe yourself..."
Education gets you some extra miles in the low-middle class range, like, you are more likely to get to mid-middle class if you were low-middle without it. It won't save you from poverty, and it won't make you rich. None of the moderately rich/high middle class people i know are well-educated. If they have anything in common then it's that they are smart and sociopathic.
Education itself even doesn't much improve chances to get a good career as an employee, most Ph.D. and MBAs i know are wasting their time doing mundane pseudo-intellectual work for meager pay. While i know senior and top management in large and powerful corporations, earning ca. million a year, without any business or economic degrees (one of them has a programmer diploma by the way). Just people who have a habit of getting work done, reliable and proactive. Be like that and nobody will ask you which school have you finished.
Proof: median income of a Ph.D. is not even 2x the median income of an American in general.
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm
And Ph.D. are a high elite when an education attainment in concerned, under 50,000 are graduated each year, compared to 4.1 million Americans reaching age of 25 each year. So Ph.D.s are top 1.2% and getting under 2x as much as median. Top 1% population gets 1.6 million a year on average compared to under 50k median - a difference of about 30x. Even if you compare thresholds it is over 10x. So an highly elite education does not get you into a highly elite social class, or does not get you even a marginally comfortable life. It definitely gets you SOMEWHERE, but probably to a very, very low degree (difference is not even 2x if you remember that an average guy is mentally incapable of becoming a Ph.D. - he is just plain too dumb. so if someone capable of making it did something else instead he will anyways earn somewhat more than median guy will, it is impossible to tell how much more, but somewhat more for sure). In my opinion it is 1.5x difference max.
I had a pretty good public school education. But I got to go to a fancy private school for one day when my parents were searching for options that would challenge me -- I was bored in one of my schools (even though it was in a foreign language) and they were afraid I'd start performing poorly just because I was bored. That one day at the private school... it was so pretty, and the chairs were comfortable, and there were so many books, and there was a tasty lunch cooked there at the school, with vegetables, and they had small classes, and people were so nice, and there were so many books! And their science labs worked!
My high school gave me a great education despite the fact that we had so many students in classes that we sat on the floor or in the windowsills, we only had one set of history books for three classes of European history so we couldn't take them home, I never sat at a table during my 18 minute lunches because there weren't enough tables (and lunches were 18 minutes because they split the school into 3 shifts so we could all fit in the lunchroom more or less). It was a great education because of the teachers in the "good" classes. In the "lower" classes the teachers were not good and I still get crap for bringing a pillow to school so I could sleep in first period health.
Yeah I'm super-great & made good choices & am virtuous and hard-working and "wired right." But I also didn't have to eat the school lunch crap, got some great teachers to counteract some of the warehousing I experienced in our public schools, and got exposure to STEM possibilities through a nearby college rather than wasting 5 years in stultifying math classes that my friends went through. Classes in which their grades went up once they started skipping and working with me during study hall instead.
(I add the split between Asian groups because there is definitely a difference in prosperity)
Of course it has. You have to realize that everyone you encounter in your life is going to judge you differently based on your height, weight, clothes, skin color, hairstyle, and even your name.
When you go for a job interview or on a sales call, people are going to have pre-concieved notions and their judgement affected by the name on your email signature. If you're 'Tom Gomez' or 'Dave Johnson' you're going to have pretty good head start over someone named 'Alejandra DeJesus Valtierra' or 'Wumi Hassan Abdullah'.
If you're good and you can get past that, people don't care. You'll become 'my friend Hassan', or 'I know that guy with the dreads, I should introduce you'. But as unfair as it is, and it shouldn't be, it does affect first impressions. We're all guilty of it.
Can you briefly expand on why/how your ethnicity factors into your displeasure with his comment?
This generalized statement, specifically. I don't enjoy treating "blacks" as a group anymore than I like seeing "latinos" or "whites" treated as one. Most situations are unique to an individual.
That sounds pretty rough. Why didn't they put the oldest in private school instead? Surely by 7th grade you can see that there are problems there. Perhaps by 12 grade in the private school, he could have turned things around.
Perhaps it was the mere fact that the younger brother was given such preferential treatment that the older never became successful.
Perhaps it was the fact that your parents became better parents with more experience, or because they were less stressed out since they did not have the financial hardship that they had before.
I am not trying to discount your story, but the problem lies in the fact that it can be compared with plenty of other similar situations as yours but having completely different results (the kids in public school fared better in life).
Quality of school definitely CAN have a profound effect on a child's life. But in my experience and personal observation, this is only because of a failure on the parenting side. If a child is reared with enough love and enough wisdom, discipline and vision is imparted into them before, and during the school years - they will do fine if they are in a run down inner city school, or a middle class private school.
So maybe you say that this is unfair that some parents have to raise their kids with such diligence to have them succeed, while some others don't (because of economic factors).
Trust me, the kid and parents in the situation where extra attention is needed to enhance the likelihood of success in the child's life are better off and happier people than a wealthy parent that hires a nanny to raise their kids and sends them to private school. Which situation is true parenting after all? Which kid will carry on a true legacy of their parents and hold their ideals and values continuing their legacy?
My parents didn't have the money to pay for private school. Both myself and my middle brother earned fully paid scholarships. They tried to send my oldest brother to the same private school, but due to his entrance exams, that would've required $20K a year that they didn't have.
You're right, we don't know what the cause is. Whether it's the school or the parents, my point was that you can't just look at an individual and tell them to "step it up." It's not that simple.
If your population includes Facebook and Twitter and Google employees, almost everyone is going to appear to fall behind them, but it doesn't mean they are doing worse.
Now put those same family members in a lower-income and higher-crime environment (as minorities are more likely to live in), and I don't doubt that members of my family would have ended up in much the same situation. People make bad decisions to be sure, but it's silly to say that what happens to people is solely the result of their own decisions.
Amen. I don't have to speculate -- I've seen it happen. My family isn't many generations out of blue collar, and I have a lot of distant relatives who fit the description. Circumstance matters immensely. People that I knew as normal kids veered wildly off the tracks once they got older and the consequences of their decisions were amplified by their surroundings.
You must not be watching NYC politics. Watch all of yesterday's episode of The Daily Show [1] with Mayor DeBlasio. Don't worry, you won't need to read into any subtext, it's the whole focus of the episode.
[1] Free online: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-february-3-201...
NYC government created a symbiotic relationship with the finance industry. NYC used the tax revenue from the high income earners to build up local infrastructure and make the city a better place. In the 12 years that I was there and the many more that I've been there in the region, the city had improved drastically. This was to the betterment of everyone.
Part of what made NYC great was its transportation infrastructure. It moved millions of people around the city at all times of the day. There was no class structure in the Subways; the 1% rode the subways alongside the service workers. People got a sense that everyone benefited from the increase in income and tax revenue.
This was dramatically different on the west coast. In the Bay Area, the local government create policies (limiting housing specifically) that don't benefit the long term future of the region. Compared to NYC, SF governance is pretty dysfunctional.
When I first moved out here, I was shocked by how lacking the transportation infrastructure was. I always had the vision that Silicon Valley and SF was high tech and that the public transportation infrastructure must be better than NYC. This was not the case. This lead to the high income earners to create a separate transportation system that benefit them (Uber, corporate shuttles, etc). This leads to a lot of friction between the haves and have not.
I used to work in Midtown, and commute in from New Rochelle, a city that's mostly working class hispanics with a few yuppie high rises near the train station. The ~18 mile trip used to take just over 35 minutes on Metro North, and the service was highly reliable as well as highly available (8 trains to GCT between 7:02 am and 8:47 am). One stop closer to Manhattan was Pehlam, an upper middle class white area. The next stop after that was Mt. Vernon, a working class black area. There were two other lines through Westchester, each stopping in dozens of towns and with similar service. In sum, it was very practical to work in Manhattan but live in a town where rent wasn't totally unaffordable for people outside the upper middle class.
There is nothing comparable in the Bay Area. Rising rents don't just mean moving a slightly longer walk away from the train, or down another stop, but possibly moving somewhere else entirely.
1) Liberals on the east coast are more pragmatic/less idealistic than those on the west coast.
2) NY/NJ/CT has had a long time to get used to the negatives of having the banking industry there, and has had a long time to figure out and leverage the positives.
3) In NY/NJ/CT, there is more reliance across classes on shared infrastructure. Those bankers in Long Island take LIRR to work, and pay into a system everyone uses.
4) People who work on Wall Street embrace that they're just in it for the money and are doing "business as usual." Silicon Valley does "business as usual" but puts on this air of "saving the world!" That hypocrisy rubs people the wrong way.
5) I think there is more shared culture in NY/NJ/CT, at least among certain key groups. Remember, this foment about "haves versus have nots" isn't raised by the poor people themselves. It's raised by an intellectual elite. I think there's a much bigger cultural gap between the crunchy hippies at Berkeley that write these sorts of articles and the engineers in Silicon Valley, then there is between the crunchy hippies at Columbia and the bankers on Wall Street.
New York has groups of people leading the charge on behalf of the "have nots." But if you look at the background of someone in that camp, you'll often see say a Columbia or NYU grad who has family who works in finance or one of its ancillary industries. A lot of the journalists who might cover the issue of "Wall Street versus Main Street" come from privileged backgrounds themselves and eat at the same restaurants and go to the same nightclubs as people who work on Wall Street. In the Bay Area, I think you see more of a disconnect. I think a stereotypical member of the opposition might have a background like my wife's uncle: mom was a professor at Berkeley and grow up in town. That person doesn't have a lot in common with a Google engineer who moved into the city from the east coast and takes a shuttle bus into the suburbs every day for work.
Oh, this article is so inaccurate! What cheap journalism! I am so outraged.
In London it is kind of oposite. You can only live in central london if you are filthy rich, or non-white and get social housing.
> “The bar is so steep, the only people who can locate here are the high-income earners,” Mr. Hancock said. “We’re losing our middle class in Silicon Valley.”
I don't get it. Does being a engineer automatically make me upper-class? Because I'm an engineer and I certainly make a middle-class income (albeit likely being an upper middle-class income). I'd be willing to bet the average engineer living in Silicon Valley does as well.
This bothers me constantly. The middle class is the "Haves." It would be really useful if more people were aware of and honest about where they actually stand in society, but poor people don't want to be called poor and rich people don't want to be called rich.
But I want to point out that belief of newly rich white libertarians that market will solve this in peaceful way is a very dangerous dream. Trotsky said "not believing in force is like not believing in gravity".
Dafuq? Isn't that the definition of the median?
Whenever I read someone making a statement like this or an article about "inequality" I wonder if the author of the statement or article actually believes the bullshit that he's spewing out. People pay so much lip service to the idea of inequality that one would think it appears on some political agenda or another. I suppose it's the expected topic of conversation, even as nothing is done about it. Ever. Call me cynical, but I have yet to see any action to remedy this and I simply do not believe that action on economic equality is anything but lip service.