Sam Parr  ⚪️

Your grandma ran up a tab writing naked puts, and now you are legally required to pay? Sounds okay to you?

if that’s the hand I was dealt, then oh well. If I do something great and want to pass it on to my kids, I want to have that choice. That’s the price for being free to create the life you want. Good and bad.

Presumably you also believe in the inalienable right of hereditary nobility, too? After all, if that's the world order, and those are the cards dealt, that should be good enough for everyone! Your worldview is at least consistent, so points for that!

I believe in America you can mostly make your dreams a reality. There are for sure bad accidents that happen. And it always doesn't work out. But the fact that anyone can give it a go and there's little holding you back, that's wonderful. And it should go the other way too...

If you're born into a shitty situation, you can give it a go and get yourself into a better place. If you're born into a great situation, you got lucky and that's great too. No one should take what you have away from you.

That was the case in the first half of the 20th century, up until about 1980. The US has significantly less social mobility than other Western nations now. The main difference between 1980 and now is lower top tax rates and less financial regulation.

There's another major difference: you can use the internet to start a business with close to $0. You can also work from anywhere with a laptop. You can do side gigs much easier as well.

You do realize that those options aren't available for the 60% of Americans who don't have a family or savings to fall back on if things don't work out, right? Anyway, Sweden has more dollar billionaires per capita than the US now. US social mobility has cratered. Data are data.