I'm not familiar with the differences between the US and the UK; here in the US, hard work won't get you to the top, but it is a required part of the formula. It seems to me that 'hard working' is just one component of a personality type that lends to success. Risk-taking and a drive to assume more responsibility are part of it. Of course, if you are poor, a woman, or a minority, in the US, the deck is stacked against you. It is significantly more difficult for you to 'get to the top'. Unfortunately, because we invest so little in the education of our poor, by the time they grow to become their own advocates, they are often so far behind that there is little hope of ever catching up.
I read this passage last night, from the close of Malcolm's portion of The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley:Of course, if you are poor, a woman, or a minority, in the US, the deck is stacked against you. It is significantly more difficult for you to 'get to the top'. Unfortunately, because we invest so little in the education of our poor, by the time they grow to become their own advocates, they are often so far behind that there is little hope of ever catching up.
My greatest lack has been, I believe, that I don't have the kind of academic education I wish I had been able to get -- to have been a lawyer, perhaps. I do believe that I might have made a good lawyer. I have always loved verbal battle, and challenge. You can believe me that if I had the time right now, I would not be one bit ashamed to go back into any New York City public school and start where I left off at the ninth grade, and go on through a degree. Because I don't begin to be academically equipped for so many of the interests that I have.
The UK is even worse than, but very close to, the US in terms of social mobility. Your assessment that hard work + other things is required to get to the top is probably equally valid in both countries. http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/I'm not familiar with the differences between the US and the UK
Social mobility is very regional/national. In some countries its possible to move between lower and middle class in others it is not. In the US the easiest method was always the military, if you went to the military and you didn't end up with PTSD or any bits blown off and you worked hard you were basically guaranteed middle class life. Now transitioning between middle and upper class... I have no idea how that works or if its possible. I dont know anyone that has made that leap, perhaps if I worked in the valley I might but the bar to get to upper class is pretty huge these days. Only way I can think of getting there is to basically be upper middle class and use lots of leverage or other peoples money. Even then going back through my own life and all my decisions using maximum available leverage, I at best could have made a million bucks, which wouldn't really get me very close to upper class.
It seems to me the best avenue to move from middle to upper class in the US has been real estate. If you start early, you can continually leverage your building equity to get loans for purchases of more property. US tax law is extremely landlord friendly, allowing you to write off "depreciation" of real estate, while you can also write off any cost of improvements, even as the market appreciates. Aggressively working on a real estate portfolio for 30 years gives a good chance of breaking out of the middle class. I can point to a couple of people that have done so. I bought a house with two other friends and rented it for a while. It was an enlightening experience. I wouldn't have been able to get started on my own, but after we flipped that house, I could have gone off on my own and expanded if I wanted to.
I noticed that as well. Real estate loans in the US are also non-recourse in most places so you can leverage yourself to the hilt with minimal downside risk. If the market goes up you get all the benefits, if it goes down... to bad you walk away and get locked out of the credit market for a while. As you said tax treatment is very favorable so that helps a lot as well. Starting your own company is a possibility, but I dont think its very practical these days. International competition makes it hard to get into the any of the low end / simple businesses. If you have some sort of super specialized skills and knowledge maybe you could provide a lot of value but even then you need that good marketing/connections money to start. I heard of a few people making it big on construction companies, but many of them also went bust big time when 2008 hit, I expect a similar problem soon. I think I could make enough to get by, but not enough to get rich. Once you factor in hours spent/time not spent with family, or doing non work stuff its not really a great deal. Also you already have to be middle class with some sort of cash in the bank to afford to take that risk. Dot-com stuff was a big money maker for certain people because you didnt actually have to show profit. People would just buy into pie in the sky ideas. Ponzi schemes or similar are super effective, just need to be legal so you dont loose it all in the end.
So we shouldn't teach them to look at statistics, in this case? :( Perhaps the best thing really is to tell them nothing at all, the current model, but we all know that telling children nothing about important subjects is one menacingly small step away from actively lying.
Worst of all is the guy who comes out on top and does nothing, though he sees many glaring problems. That's a lot of guys. They may, but two major problems here (as is so oft in the social sciences) are the metrics we're using and the integrity (a more specific word would be "completeness") of the data. Statistics are hard to trust in this arena (how do you measure "hard working"?), and so often up to interpretation, though all of the "experts" tend to lean to one side of the political spectrum. Edit: I'm not implying anyone's cooking data, I just think it bears mention. (sidenote: It would be interesting to inject a bunch of diehard conservatives into university faculties and see what happens, how's that for a social experiment?) If I have kids, I sure hope they're born with a drive to learn, because if they're not, they're gonna hate me. Sorry, I've been a little sloppy around here lately, but I very much appreciate you engaging me. Last thing: I generally hate it when people contaminate a system, so systems of people, ugh. Doesn't matter. We MUST figure out our education problem. Case in point: the prez.And the guy who sits around blaming society for his problems is always worse off than the guy who actually does something about his problems.
Unless the statistics really do say that people who work hard are just as well off economically and psychologically as people who sit around complaining...
So 1% by state varies widely. In New Mexico it's only $241,000 per year. Where I live, in Missouri, it's $309,000. The way things are going, I'll be in the 1% for New Mexico within 5 years. The way I did this was pretty much hard work, education, and working toward making money with a long-term goal of income generating properites. Within 10 years, I'll be top 1% for Missouri, and the goal is to click through that list until I'm top 1% in the top state (CT, $678k). I'm not saying I did this by myself. I went to school on the GI Bill with my time in the Air Force. It is no exaggeration to say I killed for my education. I hold two Masters, one in Operations Management and Business Administration, and one in Marketing. I woked a job in Marketing where I was making 15 an hour while I was in school and it got me the job I have now. I still took student debt to do this and maintain my standard of living. As well, my girlfriend, makes good money having taken a lot of student debt and going to grad school after being on a full-ride scholarship to go to undergrad. She went to public school in Broward County, so she's one of the few that 'got out.' She did internships, and she worked the whole time through undergrad and grad school to pay rent because her mom didn't have anything. I don't know what hard work looks like, but I bet it's pretty close to that. I like to think that I worked as hard as her when I was 26, but I'm not sure. So our parents weren't going to loan us a million dollars. They didn't have it anyway. My parents do now, but it's from the same way as me. They both work (dad is a mechanic and mom is very high up in the insurance industry) and my mom went to night school while working a cubicle job until she had the corner office job. And I don't care for my mom as a person, but her work ethic is unquestionable.
"I slept and dreamt that live was joy. I awoke and found that life was duty. I acted and behold, the duty was joy."
Edit: My original comment pertained to the situation here in the United States, and this is a Guardian article. Sorry, here, let me waste some more of your time, k, done
Interesting, this came up in my news feed shortly after your comment.
The author is a political scientist, so I'm not able to comment about his neck of the woods. It could be that the selection conditions for the STEM kids are entirely different these days. Sorry, I removed the original rant, it didn't belong in the context of OP's article.