The massive investment gap in education ($75k/year at elite private schools vs. $15k at average public schools) creates an insurmountable advantage for the wealthy. This financial disparity, which translates to a 370-point SAT gap, is a more powerful determinant of future success than individual character or talent.
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The wealth divide is exacerbated by two different types of inflation. While wages are benchmarked against CPI (consumer goods), wealth for asset-holders grows with "asset price inflation" (stocks, real estate), which compounds much faster. Young people paid in cash cannot keep up.
Young employees' perceived lack of resilience isn't a generational flaw but a result of parenting that shielded them from hardship. The decline of teenagers working difficult, blue-collar summer jobs has created adults who are less prepared for the realities of the workplace.
Extreme wealth creates a dangerous societal rift not just through inequality, but by allowing the ultra-rich to opt out of public systems. They have their own concierge healthcare, private transportation, and elite schools, making them immune to and ignorant of the struggles faced by the other 99.9%, which fuels populist anger.
Extreme wealth inequality creates a fundamental risk beyond social unrest. When the most powerful citizens extricate themselves from public systems—schools, security, healthcare, transport—they lose empathy and any incentive to invest in the nation's core infrastructure. This decay of shared experience and investment leads to societal fragility.
The narrative that vast tech fortunes are built on individual grit alone ignores the critical role of luck, timing, and systemic tailwinds. Recognizing fortune is key to humility and social responsibility, contrasting with the "obnoxious" belief of being purely self-made and entitled to the winnings.
Increased economic disparity makes parents intensely anxious about their children's future success. This fear drives them to over-schedule and micromanage their kids' lives, focusing on resume-building activities rather than free play, which contributes to a more stressful childhood.
Economist Joseph Hotz theorizes that parents subconsciously enforce stricter rules on their firstborn as an efficiency play. By maximizing the oldest child's success, they create a role model whose achievements and behaviors will 'spill over' to younger siblings, maximizing the return on total parental investment.
A study by sociologist Emma Zhang found an older sibling's arbitrary academic advantage (from being old for their grade) boosts the younger sibling's performance. This demonstrates a powerful non-genetic, non-parental mechanism through which family-level advantages compound and perpetuate broader societal inequality.
The most impactful gift a parent can provide is not material, but an unwavering, almost irrational belief in their child's potential. Since children lack strong self-assumptions, a parent can install a powerful, positive "frame" that they will grow to inhabit, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Parents don't need to formally teach kids about money. Children form powerful, lasting mental models by observing their parents' daily actions—every offhand comment about affordability, every choice of vacation, and every remark about neighbors. They will either mimic this behavior or, if they see it as flawed, aggressively rebel against it.
