This is a tautological statement. You are saying that the thing you say is righteous must be righteous because it presents itself as objectively righteous and that it couldn't be is nonsensical because it is objectively righteous to you. And its you who presented an 'objective moral standard' by saying that some things that present themselves as righteous are actually evil, implying some arbiter of good and evil outside human judgement. If there isnt an objective moral standard, and there obviously isnt, then the people who believe that their ideology is righteous are no more right or wrong than you are about yours.
I think this means you have to move now, might as well split a Uhaul since I've been sent packing too
Great, but why does this have anything to do with you and your life? Or pointing out that there are more and better ones in other countries which contradicts what you said?
Teach what? Economic mobility metrics? The most common way is to measure the income quintile or decile you were born into and then measure where you are some number of decades later. The higher the probability that you stay in the same quintile or decile, the lower the economic mobility.
no, teach us how we can make America more advantageous to those who are stuck. How can we help those get unstuck, you know so we can move up in the rankings. Increase taxes?
I guess you never read this? Black Lives Matter co-founder describes herself as ‘trained Marxist’ BLM co-founder describes herself as 'trained Marxist'
that measure is fine. 1 thing that is assumed &/or disregarded in these discussions is people's preferences; they are either ignored or it is assumed that they want to "move up". I'd say this measure is a proxy b/c we know people rarely if ever are income or wealth maximizers - they are utility (happiness) maximizers. I moved up 17 years ago by taking my least prestigious & lowest paying offer....I am not an outlier. Maybe financial mobility would be a better term.
There are many pathways to that, some of which are better or worse overall for the country. Off the top of my head, certain economic redistributive policies, healthcare access policies, environmental policies, and educational policies have all been found to have positive effects on economic mobility. The issue is that many of the people most tied to the myth of economic mobility are also not super eager for the reality of economic mobility, because economic mobility doesn't specify only upward mobility. They prefer a system in which there isn't much economic mobility (providing a barrier against downward mobility for them), but in which they can claim that there are high amounts of mobility (which means the system is fundamentally fair and also that they earned their position in society).
A very fair (and good) point. There is a degree of choice here, and most people are not pure income maximizers. This is especially true in developed countries, where income maximization is not a matter of life and death.
You made a comment about blaming people. I took it as I was placing blame where none existed. I was trying to state the only blame I am placing is on people that want to bitch about what they don't have in the way of opportunity, when there is clear evidence of people in the same gender/racial groups that have succeeded in life. If there is no opportunity, then how have these others succeeded? My suggestion is that it is directly related to decision making and hard work by the individual. These other countries do not provide more opportunity for social mobility, we just have a segment of the population that isn't interested in making good life choices, taking personal responsibility and working hard. I blame the individual for that, not the system.
People don't take advantage of opportunities in other countries with more opportunity and social mobility too. They have screw ups and n'er-do-wells too, its just that the dont bottom out like they do here, or wrack up massive medical debt because they went to the hospital because they did something stupid. They also have extremely wealthy people too, that got that way through birth or perhaps some kind of social advancement. Individual stories tell us nothing about social mobility. Lots of people have linked measurements of this which refute everything you said, and all you have responded with is bootstrapping hokum and anecdotes.
Prediction: Between this post and mine, there will have been a "Well, then why don't you move to one of those places?" post. Edit: And there it was -
It works, no wonder you guys tell people to move when its suggested. You like your cesspool of state repression, inequality and crime.
That is certainly one pathway. Opportunity has an element of commodity to it. A lack of capital restricts options. If a person needs to work to eat and pay rent due to an inability to generate savings, most people aren't going to choose a job training program, for example, because they need to eat and pay rent during that program as well.
Call it what you want, but the word righteousness doesn't apply to or describe anything in Marx's purely materialistic world. The use of the word implies a worldview. You can disagree with the worldview implied by the word, but the word doesn't operate in a world outside of the worldview it references. If all there is is matter and energy then righteousness and unrighteousness are words that are not descriptive of anything. The world of Marx is a world of protons, neutrons, electrons, biological matter, and energy. There are not righteous arrangements of matter and energy and unrighteous arrangements of matter and energy. There are simply arrangements of matter and energy and our opinions are nothing more than arbitrary arrangements of that matter and energy. If you disagree with that, I'd love to hear what righteousness objectively refers to in your world.
