generation) made the transition from farm to office.

When I was a kid there were still people I knew of living without running water and electricy, outdoor toilets, etc., raising a lot of their own food largely outside the market economy.

The WW2 generation, a significant percent, went from those conditions or somewhat better into factories & offices, & sent their kids to college to see them enter the professions. That seemed like a huge improvement, partly due to their own hard work, scrimping, etc, & that memory of 'rising' is still cherished in a lot of families -- even though it had more to do with an overall societal/economic transformation than any individual's hard work.

It sure is a ruling myth in my family & the families of their friends, anyway. It had a huge impact on me & my siblings (somewhat pernicious, I'd say). But less so in the next generation down from mine & on, who never experienced farm life.

I think our belief in self-starting, rugged individualists got started in our frontier society. Anyone who was willing to slaughter a few Indians, or talk the Army or militia do it for him, could start his own farm, and if he worked hard enough, make a go of it (particularly back East, where the farmland was productive without irrigation). Or he could start cutting every tree in sight and get rich in the lumber business -- no one to stop him. If he wanted to start a mine, the gov't made it absurdly cheap and easy to stake a claim and acquire mineral rights -- hey, there was plenty to go around! The advancing frontier meant a constant influx of new land, new mines, new forests, new opportunities, while the growing influx of immigrants provided cheap and abundant labor, which opened up all manner of opportunities for robber barons to flourish. Once the frontier was closed, things were bound to slow down, and as the "empty lands" were settled, things slowed down even more. The endless expansion of opportunity is not there anymore because the mechanisms which provided it are not there anymore.

Making your way in a society where every niche is already occupied means competition becomes a factor in a way it never was before. You can't just move on to new territory and start over anymore. But our mythology has never caught up with the facts.

Boy is that the truth. I can't imagine what it is going to take to shake that myth loose, but I feel it has to eventually. We can't just keep doing this!

Meaning "meaningless story."

It's not. There are still niches to be filled, and for those there's a good chance of upward mobility. But there are fewer than there used to be, so upward mobility, once common, is more restricted.

The key word is "competition." If you can compete, then you can move upwards. By saying there's no chance to successfully compete, you're saying there's no point in preparing for competition.

I teach a wide mix of kids. Some of them have good imaginations and can see themselves competing, they can see themselves moving into jobs that don't exist. Many can't see themselves moving into jobs that they don't see adults around them filling already. Many of those jobs are going to go away, and they can't conceive of an alternative. Unrealistic dreams are more likely to produce something innovative than a relentless prosaicism that merely asserts that what is is and what is will be.

There's not much of an alternative except simply paying people the same for doing something that requires a lot of education and hard work as for doing something that requires no education but still a lot of hard work. That won't wash. You simply don't produce as much flipping burgers and cleaning toilets as you do on an assembly line or producing a new medicine. It would require massive redistribution of income to less efficient companies in order to pay them. We could pay directly through the IRS, but then the risk is paying people to breathe.

We don't like doing that kind of redistribution. It accounts for much of the rising cost of higher ed. Colleges aren't efficient. They have virtually 0% productivity gain over the last 50 years.

To my knowledge, no long-term longitudinal study has ever been performed to see if people are happy as they grow older.

If the purpose of education is not to produce happier people, I wouldn't know what it might be. So let's do a study and discuss it in 40 years.

Productivity is just code for doing more work for the same money, anyway.

Some things are not subject to "productivity." For instance, the damned Moon is still the same distance from the earth that it has been for millions of years. The highly inefficient thing has never gotten a bit closer or farther away (whichever would be defined as productive), and it just does what it always has. On that basis, we need to destroy it and replace it with something more productive.

There's more work to do than can ever be done, period. Problem is, not all work is monetized, so by definition, it is worthless. We need a new paradigm of value. Careful with that cleaning toilets not being worth anything business. I must remind you that a surgeon's highly paid work will come to nothing if there are bacteria left in the operating room that cause a fatal infection in the patient.

And then there are those who are paid lots, but are really cancer on society - bankers, stockbrokers, and other casino operators, for example. Our current pay scale does not reflect value, and we have no current way to measure it.

the more stratified the society, the more losers.

it's not about how well you compete, it's about how stratified the society is.

no matter how much education they have.

Universities and colleges have added massive overhead & administrative costs & questionable building in the past 30 years, too. While cutting the percent of secure faculty they employed.

Perhaps this is part of the reason for their alleged low 'productivity gains' -- though what you mean by 'productivity gains,' i suspect, has to do with things like adding computerized classes.

Isn't "poverty is destiny" another way of saying poverty is genetic?

Head Start Impact Study and Follow-up, 2000–2012 http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs/impact_study/

to ameliorate some of the effects *on children* of living in poverty.

it has an effect but it tends to weaken by later grades. last research i saw anyway.

the minnesota twin study, and *all* studies that suggest people are poor because they have inferior genes, are fascist crap.

Please cite conclusions from the "Head Start Impact Study" that support your assertion. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs/impact_study/

Please cite papers in scholarly journals that refute the Minnesota Twin Study results so I won't classify your statement as an unsupported assertion.

There are literally hundreds of studies, and overall they are positive, showing bigger gains and more long-lasting gains that any other program for children in poverty.

Fuck the minnesota twin study & any & every study designed to link poverty & genes. With a big, sharp stick. And such studies' designers and supporters too, may they rot in hell as they deserve.

help children escape poverty and optimistically believe education is part of the answer but how do we spend money?

Our Democratic Party Platform says

the other like night follows day.

The ruling class wishes to privatize education so they can concentrate wealth even more. That's the politics behind the 2011 head start report, and sad to say, that's the political calculation behind what's going on in education today.

Tests scores on the gold standard test have increased despite increases in poverty overall and in the percentage of poor students being tested (rather than dropping out at earlier ages as was the case in earlier years).

The gap between white and minority students has narrowed significantly.

Obama and more importantly his backers don't want my advice about education. Their minds are made up.

A really nice and fascinating post. This is really very interesting and informative for the readers of this thread. As per my suggestion,
Poverty is such a condition where the deprivation of basic needs including food , shelter and clothing occurs when people cannot satisfy their basic needs. It can be simply be signified as a lack of money or more broadly in terms of barriers to everyday life.
This situation cannot be stated as a destiny defined thing its situation that has been create by the economy and its people.A standardized tests reveals a huge disparity between children from development countries and those from developing countries.The situation of unemployment rates remain high long after a shock, particularly financial crisis, despite and lag economic recovery.

I have a note into a MIRT member to take a look at it, but in the meantime I've blocked it.

If the holder of this account is a human, PM me. Otherwise, ta for now.