The Truth About Social Mobility

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ค. 2024
  • Many people assume that it is much easier to move between social classes today than in the past. But new research by economist Gregory Clark, based on tracking family names across generations, reveals that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, and that inherited advantage remains a deeply entrenched force.
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ความคิดเห็น • 65

  • @hoado8620
    @hoado8620 10 ปีที่แล้ว +24

    I've only watched this man talk for 20 minutes but I feel he is very insightful. If you feel angry or believe he is stupid, I think you should pay careful attention to what he says and think carefully on your opinions before you set them down. I only believe it is important to be respectful when dealing with ideas about the state of humanity. Freedom of opinion should not be a basis for ignorance.

    • @nillejoslin
      @nillejoslin 6 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      And foremost, pay attention to the data which stands on its own regardless of "opinions".

  • @reygarevkogan7196
    @reygarevkogan7196 6 ปีที่แล้ว +18

    As a low status swede this video makes me very motivated to break the darwinist curse that has been put upon me, get rich or die tryin' as one famous american philosopher once said, wish me luck guys!.

    • @felixb6
      @felixb6 3 ปีที่แล้ว +7

      Good luck

    • @rafalrocks
      @rafalrocks 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      "as a low status swede" - interesting and quite relative along cultural/national lines. I've been to Sweden several times and understand that majority of Swedes are fluent in English, but the fact that you're bilingual would automatically elevate your social standing here in America, for instance.

  • @radiojet1429
    @radiojet1429 7 ปีที่แล้ว +12

    "La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose." - "The more it changes, the more it's the same thing." Jean Baptiste Alphonse-Kerr

    • @GeaVox
      @GeaVox 6 ปีที่แล้ว

      Yep!

  • @soccom8341576
    @soccom8341576 3 หลายเดือนก่อน

    We should be humble and use the gifts we've been given well.

  • @23trillionskidoo
    @23trillionskidoo 10 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    One of the best talks I've ever watched.

  • @nillejoslin
    @nillejoslin 6 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    To clarify, the low correlation in the start of the speech between parent's and children's status in developed countries he is referring to is based on mainstream research. The latter part is from his own research over longer periods of time, using surnames. That data shows high correlation. The difference is not very difficult to explain. Social mobility was big when the public sector expanded and farmer's children, especially their daughters, became public sector managers. This one shot effect will diminish over time.

  • @NakedUndone
    @NakedUndone 10 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    One problem with using surnames to measure social mobility, especially in a class-conscious place like the UK is there's still a lot of social bias towards or against people with certain surnames.

  • @nillejoslin
    @nillejoslin 6 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Listen to 14:30 on to the conclusion at 15:18.

  • @heatherfryling3453
    @heatherfryling3453 10 ปีที่แล้ว +10

    If you're averaging social mobility over 20+ generations, you're going to get the average social mobility over 20+ generations. And I think we can all agree that social mobility was awful for a very long time before it got better. Modern social institutions are a drop in the bucket compared to hundreds of years of history. So, clearly, a long-term average is going to show close to zero social mobility. Maybe the conclusion from this data should be that social policies haven't been in place long enough to override inherited advantages.

    • @GeaVox
      @GeaVox 6 ปีที่แล้ว +3

      Good argument

    • @nillejoslin
      @nillejoslin 6 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      "I think we can all agree" Why not look at actual data rather than ideology?

  • @charliem5254
    @charliem5254 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Robert Downey Jr looks beat up mang

  • @GM4ThePeople
    @GM4ThePeople 10 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Interesting stuff. Seems to me that this relatively constant level of social mobility across societies (if in fact this is truly the case) must be underpinned by stabilising phenomena, which I would agree are likely genetic as well as socio-economic.
    Given:
    1) the dysgenic effect observed broadly by Lynn & others throughout history, in which those of high IQ ("elites") generally have lower fertility rates than the common (lower-IQ) folk, &
    2) a high (~0.8) heredity of intelligence, &
    3) a simplification that elite populations are selected on by various processes positively for intelligence, & thus "elite" = "high-IQ",
    then these biologically high-IQ elites have constantly been shrinking in relation to the rest of society throughout history. They will thus need to be replenished by the "next guys in line" from the non-elites, in order to maintain a constain proportion of elites in the society.
    Now, if you were able to test the strong bio-deterministic hypothesis, by measuring the extent that "mixed-caste" (or "class") offspring between elites & non-elites achieve outcomes in subsequent generations intermediate between those of their parents' castes, that would really be something. But for this, you could not rely on surnames alone, for these will (generally) remain the same, even as inter-caste miscegenation occurs.
    Of course, if high(er) cognitive abilities are important to social outcomes we value (e.g. the "forward march of Western civilisation"), & if we are at an accelerating pace breeding these qualities out of our populations (as we certainly are), well then, our political values don't seem to be consistent with our notional societal values, do they?
    People have understood these things well enough for many years. But such people are no longer in power, & in the not-so-long run, we will suffer for it.

  • @dexterspeights3484
    @dexterspeights3484 ปีที่แล้ว

    Economic Cast System is social mobility!

  • @gukes-njd
    @gukes-njd 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Then we should ask Nordic people for advice on this problem.

    • @TrappedInFloor
      @TrappedInFloor 11 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Is it a problem? What's wrong with more intelligent and "socially competent" bloodlines ending up on top?

  • @Jurmyhyle12
    @Jurmyhyle12 10 ปีที่แล้ว +7

    100% inheritance tax and anti-trust fund laws. Coming for you.

  • @FreeBornJohn1600s
    @FreeBornJohn1600s 8 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    look up "Review of Gregory Clark, ‘The son also rises" by Mike Savage (a sociology professor) at London School of Economics. I also looked this guy up and he has a bit of a habit of putting things down to genetic determinism, which is a strange thing for an economics professor to do. in his book 'A Farewell to Alms' he blamed the poverty of poor nations on genetics, totally ignoring colonialism. he should probably stick to what he knows best which is economics and leave the rest to geneticists, historians and sociologists. i would guess that the success of certain surnames is probably more to do with social, cultural and economic capital rather than genetics.

    • @ogunsiron2
      @ogunsiron2 7 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      yeah because families and lineages have nothing to do with genetics, for sure.

    • @FreeBornJohn1600s
      @FreeBornJohn1600s 7 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      look up genetic determinism and read a little sociology, especially parts on educational attainment and social mobility. also study some historiography on colonialism. before the early modern age muslims were more advanced than europeans. how do you explain that? at one time britain became the leading country in the world because of it's empire and the industrial revolution. i can remember writing a paper on why it became the first country in the world to industrialise. i went through the historiography on the topic and not one historian i found dared claim that it was because british people were genetically superior to others. that's because historians stick to history. this economist guy should stick to economics. i would say IQ is influenced most by environmental/cultural factors than by innate ability.

    • @FreeBornJohn1600s
      @FreeBornJohn1600s 7 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      look up "Robert Sapolsky - Identical twins separated at birth." on youtube if you wanna hear an expert tell you the iq is 50/50 nature/nurture.

    • @barbellsamurai8014
      @barbellsamurai8014 7 ปีที่แล้ว

      www.quillette.com/2017/03/27/a-tale-of-two-bell-curves/ read that and you might learn something or you could blindly keep pretending 'we are all exactly 100% the same' idiot

    • @barbellsamurai8014
      @barbellsamurai8014 7 ปีที่แล้ว

      " i would say IQ is influenced most by environmental/cultural factors than by innate ability" - "look up "Robert Sapolsky - Identical twins separated at birth." on youtube if you wanna hear an expert tell you the iq is 50/50 nature/nurture." - so the expert says that iq is 50% innate but you say 'IQ is influenced most by environmental/cultural factors than by innate ability' so which is it bub?

  • @emilboehme6813
    @emilboehme6813 4 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I'm not sure whether this data is really reliable because Chetty and al. (2014) put forward a strong decline in absolute social mobility measured by income from 1940 - 1980 from ca. 90% to almost 50% within the USA. So not sure if you can really rely on this steady persistence of status over century's as Clark assumes...

  • @Muskar2
    @Muskar2 10 ปีที่แล้ว

    I live in Scandinavia and he's right to a point. Equality is very important for the health of a society but it's not enough to deal with our global issues. I think the whole pseudo-scientific practice of archaic economics should be highly questioned and put into focus as well. Especially with all the research pointing towards competition's bad performance in cognitive and creative challenges, versus cooperation. And also the vast debunking of the idea that some people are inherently selfish or violent, through sociology, epigenetics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience and probably other sciences I'm not informed on.
    After all, economics is mainly based on game theory and the carrot-on-a-stick principle to drive society. If you eliminate "social mobility" you also eliminate a big part of the rewards. Luckily it turns out we don't need reward when we have necessities covered, have automation to do necessary mundane tasks and passion to improve and work hard through autonomy, purpose and mastery. Obviously it won't be easy but if we align more with the scientific methodology, I think we'll see vast improvements.

  • @roidroid
    @roidroid 10 ปีที่แล้ว

    What i'm confused about is how the original research ever got published, considering how wrong it apparently was.
    Does the field of economics have super low research publication standards?
    I mean, if that's the level of research to come from this field, then who's to say that more new research in 2 years time isn't going to completely overturn the evidence on this theory yet again? So why should have confidence in Greg's work?

  • @petitio_principii
    @petitio_principii 6 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Wealth inheritance explains itself parsimoniously enough without the addition of genetics, specially in long term. In order to make a real argument for genetics you'd need identical starting points, not just socio-economic level, but even at the level of epigenetics regulating the genes from the start. In short-term "genetics" could perhaps have a more significant contribution to different outcomes of siblings, but even then that's kind of sloppy science as identical twins can have tremendously different life courses, they're not robots. The Dionne quintuplets being the most classical example. Ideally you'd have large numbers of twins with knock-outed and functional genes to evaluate the difference, which is quite impractical.
    Institutional oligarchy is a far more relevant contribution than genetics, even if it happens to be also nepotic to a good portion of the time.

  • @viktormaximiliandistaturus7660
    @viktormaximiliandistaturus7660 9 ปีที่แล้ว

    That correlation study is not too well done.
    It should be looked for the highest socially stable names and the highest socialy mobile names. If you hide a trend of surnames in some oscilliations of surnames and some stable surnames: of course you get a random distribution. ;(

  • @GM4ThePeople
    @GM4ThePeople 10 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    It's tough being a racialist in Bolshevik's clothing, but Clarkie handles himself very well.
    Crafty devil, he must believe the Mob will snap out of it sooner or later.

  • @philomath3238
    @philomath3238 4 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Andrew Yang is the only one trying to change what we measure and value in America, including Social Mobility.
    TH-cam Andrew Yang!

  • @bryanoca
    @bryanoca 10 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    This is a confused presentation. This economist tackles humanly contrived social structures seemingly unaware that they are contrived. For instance, he describes "social status" like an astronomer describing what a comet is made out of, except, you know, comets are real.

    • @nillejoslin
      @nillejoslin 6 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      You can try and shoot the messenger, but the empirical facts will not disappear.

  • @aminmarkets8195
    @aminmarkets8195 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    So he’s basically attributing social status to genetics?? His explanation seems unfounded and covertly racist

  • @Thaulopi
    @Thaulopi 10 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Who cares about others? I do not!

    • @miskee11
      @miskee11 10 ปีที่แล้ว +5

      no one cares about your opinions

    • @Thaulopi
      @Thaulopi 10 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      miskee11
      Obviously, you do, Sir

  • @MyCouchpotato
    @MyCouchpotato 7 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    I voted thumbs down for this video mostly because your correlation between genome and social status is incorrect and misleading. I would love to read the research you have conducted to point out where you have bias which has suggested about this correlation. Also, we have to keep in mind that correlation does not mean causation. you are neither a geneticist (which I am) nor a social scientist; thus, your research is suspicious. Therefore, I discredit the rest of your findings Mr. Clark. I wish you all the best.

    • @aminmarkets8195
      @aminmarkets8195 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      He’s not even sociologist wow

    • @shatbad2960
      @shatbad2960 3 หลายเดือนก่อน

      More intelligent people tend to be higher in social status - earn more, higher prestige ect. Less intelligent people are more likely to be criminals or sit on the the lowest rungs of society. We see this down their respective lineages. Intelligence has strong heritability. Are you implying that there is no genetic basis for this?