I did not mean legal obstacles, since there can be societal, cultural and other "structural" impediments to advancement. But, if I'm missing something, please enlighten. Thanks.
Your first paragraph is a denial of biological reality, which is highly ironic on this blog given Freddie's work on that topic. re: education (have you never read his work on that?). Chetty's work tends to ignore the known effects of genes on outcomes by embracing blank slateism. For example: Wow, neighborhood quality matters for income mobility! I wonder if certain kinds of people select into certain kinds of neighborhoods over time and that this corresponds to heritable traits? (Yes, yes they do.)
DEI is ineffective (mostly) because of biological reality.
If nurture worked sufficiently to change the outcomes you've mentioned we would have already figured out an intervention that works at scale. Surely (we've certainly tried throwing money at the problem). As Freddie has detailed, we cannot use at scale policy interventions to change biological reality for educational outcomes. So too can we not affect income outcomes.
Obviously, biology is "only a partial story." But for the most part we've long since removed outright barriers or attempted nurture interventions to help historically disadvantaged individuals and hit diminishing returns a long time ago. The more even a playing field we construct the more inherent differences from biology explain the remaining gap in outcomes. That issue plagues blank-slate progressives because the more success they have in removing barriers to inequality via law/policy/redistribution the more the remaining inequality is inherent to the person.
When an environment has effects that drag someone down below their baseline potential, then yeah moving would help. If you're starving, proper nutrition matters a ton. See also: lead, air pollution, communism.
Given the well-known downsides of public housing, I'm not remotely surprised Chetty found positive effects when kids were removed from that environment.
However, "making things better" and "removing gaps entirely" are not the same thing.
Re: switching babies in maternity wards, are you really unware of all of the research on adopted kids that shows the preeminence of nature over nurture?
Have you ready anything by Freddie on educational interventions? It's hard to take you seriously on interventional absurdities when you propose that we just haven't yet found the right educational intervention given we're debating on this of all blogs.
I find Freddie incredibly wrong on economics (except for when he admits capitalism has been successful enough at redistribution that it's taken the wind out of Marxism's sails), but I find him very insightful and almost entirely correct on the very issues you list: education, mental health, and wokeness.
So yeah it's really funny that you're essentially taking a Blank Slate position on this of all blogs.
Of course, I'm a classical liberal and think that's the best way to respond to biological reality creating differences between individuals and Freddie thinks it's Marxism that we need. But at least we can agree the Blank Slate position is clearly wrong on obvious and long-established empirical grounds.
I have to say, I am at a loss trying to think of any structural obstructions currently operative in the US.
I did not mean legal obstacles, since there can be societal, cultural and other "structural" impediments to advancement. But, if I'm missing something, please enlighten. Thanks.
Most of these views cannot be backed up by empirical studies, where in fact the reverse is true in terms of opportunity provided.
You're acting like the last 30 years of DEI initiatives didn't happen.
Also, you're here on a blog that takes the biological reality of individual differences seriously, especially in educational outcomes.
Your first paragraph is a denial of biological reality, which is highly ironic on this blog given Freddie's work on that topic. re: education (have you never read his work on that?). Chetty's work tends to ignore the known effects of genes on outcomes by embracing blank slateism. For example: Wow, neighborhood quality matters for income mobility! I wonder if certain kinds of people select into certain kinds of neighborhoods over time and that this corresponds to heritable traits? (Yes, yes they do.)
DEI is ineffective (mostly) because of biological reality.
If nurture worked sufficiently to change the outcomes you've mentioned we would have already figured out an intervention that works at scale. Surely (we've certainly tried throwing money at the problem). As Freddie has detailed, we cannot use at scale policy interventions to change biological reality for educational outcomes. So too can we not affect income outcomes.
Obviously, biology is "only a partial story." But for the most part we've long since removed outright barriers or attempted nurture interventions to help historically disadvantaged individuals and hit diminishing returns a long time ago. The more even a playing field we construct the more inherent differences from biology explain the remaining gap in outcomes. That issue plagues blank-slate progressives because the more success they have in removing barriers to inequality via law/policy/redistribution the more the remaining inequality is inherent to the person.
When an environment has effects that drag someone down below their baseline potential, then yeah moving would help. If you're starving, proper nutrition matters a ton. See also: lead, air pollution, communism.
Given the well-known downsides of public housing, I'm not remotely surprised Chetty found positive effects when kids were removed from that environment.
However, "making things better" and "removing gaps entirely" are not the same thing.
Re: switching babies in maternity wards, are you really unware of all of the research on adopted kids that shows the preeminence of nature over nurture?
Have you ready anything by Freddie on educational interventions? It's hard to take you seriously on interventional absurdities when you propose that we just haven't yet found the right educational intervention given we're debating on this of all blogs.
I find Freddie incredibly wrong on economics (except for when he admits capitalism has been successful enough at redistribution that it's taken the wind out of Marxism's sails), but I find him very insightful and almost entirely correct on the very issues you list: education, mental health, and wokeness.
Freddie just had this post: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-and-genes-grab-bag
Plus a whole book and a plentitude of other posts on the topic. I don't think there's much daylight between him and Kathryn Harden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genetic_Lottery
E.g.:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/genes-believe-in-you
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/like-the-validity-of-intelligence-testing-the-heritability-of-intelligence-is-no-longer-scientifically-contentious
So yeah it's really funny that you're essentially taking a Blank Slate position on this of all blogs.
Of course, I'm a classical liberal and think that's the best way to respond to biological reality creating differences between individuals and Freddie thinks it's Marxism that we need. But at least we can agree the Blank Slate position is clearly wrong on obvious and long-established empirical grounds.
In the construction trades: seroius cronyism, old boy networking, corruption, selective enforcement, and in big cities, organized crime.