SolitaryWalker
Tenured roisterer
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2007
- Messages
- 3,504
- MBTI Type
- INTP
- Enneagram
- 5w6
- Instinctual Variant
- so/sx
very good studies.
What defines "good studies", just membership in an elite university or the intellectual competencies it is supposed to impart upon the student? How important of a role does the latter play in one's abilities to secure membership in the upper class?
According to statistics, the first corollary of a high socioeconomic status is education.
Such "education" leads one to build the vital social and professional connections with members of the upper-class. It is questionable that most institutions of the American Ivy League schools provide the quality of education that cultivates their students' abilities to rigorously analyze complex theoretical problems, which is certainly one of the hallmarks of true education. Nonetheless, even if they did that, it is far from clear how much of an advantage an intellectually sophisticated member of the upper class would have over his less sophisticated peer. To be sure, the ability to think critically is much less useful in the world of business and politics than it is in a genuinely challenging academic setting. Few could argue that members of the American upper class employed in the financial sector would excel at philosophy, physics or mathematics, but they are certainly capable of securing their membership in the highest echelons of America's socioeconomic hierarchy. Although many of such individuals may have attended highly prestigious academic institutions and achieved "good studies", most of them did not specialize in the highly rigorous academic undertakings such as mathematics, physics, philosophy or even the social sciences.
In short, I am inclined to suspect that prestigious education is highly correlated with advanced socioeconomic status because it is the gateway to milieus where one may cultivate connections with members of the upper-class. What do you think?
Basically, even with the best legal system, when you're born poor, chances are you will stay poor your entire life.
This also seems to be true in the United States because the elites have a vested interesting in ensuring that the socio-economic hierarchy remains stratified. I would imagine the situation is much more extreme in the severely underdeveloped countries because the elites are far more powerful. Obviously, enhancing the legal system simply is not the answer, but would minimizing the power of the elites be of any help? To be sure, the poor in the U.S have marginal chances of achieving upward socio-economic mobility, but they may be more likely to succeed in that respect than they would have been in Chad or Niger. Enhancing the legal system won't help because the elites will simply find a way to achieve their goals at the expense of the poor in a covert fashion, but perhaps minimizing corruption, enhancing education and strengthening the health-care system could be a step forward. These changes might give the indigent an opportunity to achieve minimal socio-economic upward mobility and slowly begin building up the middle class.
There are lots of other factors involved, and most of them aren't that "local": We live in a global system. The way rich countries interact with poor countries also matters a lot.
The World Bank forgave Poland's and Spain's debts in the early 80s and that played a significant role in the economic growth these countries achieved. However, the aforementioned changes I've suggested will be unlikely to happen if the world bank begins to attenuate the debts owed by the severely underdeveloped countries. That is rather unlikely because the U.S is more likely to exploit these countries' work-force and natural resources by keeping them deep in debt and heavily dependent on the international financial institutions.