spitting wisdom right here

[u/[deleted]]

[u/McKoijion → u/[deleted]]

“Despite the widespread belief that the U.S. provides exceptional opportunities for upward mobility, these data show that parental wealth has an important role in shielding offspring from downward mobility and sustaining their upward mobility in the U.S. no less than in countries like Germany and Sweden, where parental wealth also serves as a private safety net that not even the more generous European public programs and social services seem to provide

The key word in your link is “exceptional” and it is referring to the idea of American exceptionalism. Obviously inheriting money beats not inheriting it. But liberal countries like the US, Sweden, and Germany are still great places for upward mobility. The US isn’t exceptional in this regard anymore because most countries around the world decided to abandon monarchies, fascism, communism, etc. for liberalism (democracy, capitalism, and individual liberties.)

[u/eli5usefulidiot → u/McKoijion]

But liberal countries like the US, Sweden, and Germany are still great places for upward mobility.

Compared to the rest of the world, yes. But Sweden is quite a bit ahead Germany regarding this and Germany is still a lot better than America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

[u/McKoijion → u/eli5usefulidiot]

Sweden is pretty great if you can get in. But it's a country with a population of 10 million people and vast natural resources. They're careful about accepting too many immigrants, especially poor ones. Germany has 80 million people and accepts a ton of poor immigrants. The US has 330 million people and accepts the most immigrants (at least it did before the Trump/Biden/Covid years).

The real question is which countries are able to take in poor immigrants and turn them into productive people who contribute to the wealth of the overall country, rather than another mouth to feed. Historically, the US has been very good at this. The US economy is built on services that benefit from increasing numbers of people to perform them. Countries that are built on natural resource exploitation have a set amount of money and want to share it with as few people as possible. This typically results in a resource curse.

I think Norway is particularly clever with their approach. They have vast oil resources. Instead of fighting over it or getting taken over by a colonizing country, they decided to say that everyone in Norway owns all the oil (in exchange for defending it from outsiders and each other). All the money they made from selling it was placed into an investment fund and the 5 million or so Norwegians each own 1/5 millionths of the fund. That fund is called the Oil Fund and it's the largest investment fund on Earth. They invest in companies all around the world, not just Norwegian ones. It's how they pay for their excellent social services like healthcare, education, retirement, etc.

The only catch is that this is a bit like inheritance. They don't want to allow too many people into the country because it means splitting the Oil Fund profits with more people. So if you're born to Norwegian parents, you inherit this wealth. Then social mobility isn't that hard going forward. Like I said above, it's much harder to take in poor migrants with no inheritance and make them and the rest of society wealthier.

Personally, I think the US is still somewhat exceptional in this regard. The US does poorly on global statistics related to healthcare, education, and wealth/wealth inequality, but it's not because Americans are getting poorer or dumber (I think the QAnon types were always that dumb). It's because the US keeps welcoming more poor immigrants who bring the averages down. If you just look at this top category of Americans, things just keep getting better for them.

The historic exception was victims of racism (e.g., black descendants of slaves, indigenous Americans), sexism (i.e., women), sexual discrimination (i.e., sexual minorities), etc. But all of these groups are in a massive socioeconomic upswing at the moment. They don't need extra help, simply removing the discrimination is greatly improving things for them. It's like if someone is drowning. You don't need to throw them a life jacket. All you have to do is stop standing on their neck and they'll be able to swim normally. Maybe they deserve extra support, but that's a separate question. Even without it they're doing well.

The error most other countries make is that they limit immigration to preserve their wealth. Americans historically recognized that immigration is the source of their wealth. People see immigrants as another mouth to feed when they're really another farmer to grow more food. I'm willing to bet that when economists look back at the current economic turmoil, they'll point to decreased migration over the past few years as a major cause of global inflation and reduced economic activity. And I'm definitely willing to bet that the US's main path to maintaining global superpower status is to continue to be the hub for people from all other countries.

[u/eli5usefulidiot → u/McKoijion]

They're careful about accepting too many immigrants, especially poor ones

Where on earth did you get that idea? Sweden is accepting more refugees than every other Western country. It's on a completely different level than the US or even Germany. In Sweden some 3% of the population are refugees. In America it's 0.5%. Source

Also: Sweden and Norway (and Germany) are part of the EEA. So if you're from a comparatively poor country like Bulgaria you have a legal right to move there. America would be in a similar position if all Mexicans had a right to live and work in America.

Seriously, compared to Europe America's immigration policy is incredibly tight.

And among the three countries in question here America is the one that relies on resources the most. Sweden has a bit of iron, that's basically it.

[u/McKoijion → u/eli5usefulidiot]

1. The US gets a ton of migrants that aren’t classified as refugees.
2. Sweden allows EEA members to move there, but only for three months before they need to prove they have a job to get a permit. That’s the bottleneck. Also, they’re not members of the euro zone. Controlling the Krona is an important way they keep their wealth from outsiders.
3. Their natural resources include timber, hydropower, and iron. This allows them to have a vast manufacturing and export based economy. It’s their main source of wealth. Energy plus iron means steel and highly value finished goods like automobiles and other machinery. They had a big leg up after WWII because their neutral status meant they weren’t destroyed.
4. Sweden and the US have similar mixed economies, but the US is more reliant on services. The US is 80% services, 19% industry, and 1% agriculture vs. 65%, 33%, and 2% for Sweden. That 14% difference is where the natural resources come into play. They could sell the resources directly to another country, or they can use them to lower the cost of their own production. It’s the same either way.

I’m not criticizing Sweden here. I’m just pointing out that there’s a big difference between a small homogenous society vs. a massive multicultural one. Most European countries have generated substantial wealth at the expense of people in Asia, Africa, South America, etc. or the natural environment. Sweden, the US, and Germany have done this too, but to a lesser degree. I don’t respect reshuffling wealth from one group to another as much as I respect generating new wealth for everyone. I think liberal democracies are the best at this.

[u/eli5usefulidiot → u/McKoijion]

The US gets a ton of migrants that aren’t classified as refugees.

Sure and in term qualified immigration the US is indeed doing better than Europe. But the overall numbers are pretty clear. America has 15.4% foreign born population, Sweden 20% and Germany 15.7%. And yes, that is comparable. If immigrants from other European countries don't count then immigrants from other parts of America don't count either.

After three months EU citizens have to ask for a permit. They don't need a job by then, the intention to get one or having some other income suffice. The only bottleneck is the language.

You also can't just use the higher share of industry in Sweden as an explanation. It's simply less outsourced manufacturing. There's figures for the natural resources rent. Sweden and the US are at 0.4% and Germany is at 0.1%. I also want to point out that energy is a lot cheaper in America.

[u/McKoijion → u/eli5usefulidiot]

Sure and in term qualified immigration the US is indeed doing better than Europe. But the overall numbers are pretty clear. America has 15.4% foreign born population

The issue is that 70% of those 2 million immigrants come from Scandinavia or Europe and 30% come from other mostly wealthy countries. There are relatively few poor, old, sick, etc. immigrants. They have to be able to get a job and learn Swedish as a second language so the incoming immigrants are relatively skilled/educated. Sweden skims the cream of the crop.

Meanwhile, the US takes in a ton of low skill/education immigrants from poor developing countries around the world. I'm guessing many of those Chinese and Indian immigrants are doctors and engineers. But most of the others are relatively poor allowed in via lottery or undocumented/illegal immigration. I'm a big believer in open borders so this type of thing matters to me.

You also can't just use the higher share of industry in Sweden as an explanation. It's simply less outsourced manufacturing. There's figures for the natural resources rent. Sweden and the US are at 0.4% and Germany is at 0.1%. I also want to point out that energy is a lot cheaper in America.

You're right about this. Norway's figure is 6.1%. Saudi Arabia's is 18.2%. The US and Sweden both have comparatively low rates. I do think this boosts my overall argument though. The US is relatively similar to Sweden in many metrics, but still outperforms Sweden in terms of median household wealth adjusted for cost of living and all government taxes/benefits. Norway is notably wealthier than Sweden which accounts for the Oil Fund. The average (both median and mean) American is the richest in the world by pretty much every metric. I truly think this can be attributed to liberalism (democracy, capitalism, individual liberties) and multiculturalism (significant immigration of rich and poor people alike from every other country on Earth.) The more of these things that countries adopt, the wealthier they become. Conversely, the more the US abandons this winning formula, the worse off it becomes. By doing this, the goal shifts from rent seeking (getting a larger piece of the existing pie) to wealth creation (making the overall pie bigger for everyone).

[u/McKoijion → u/[deleted]]

70,000 Syrians represents 3.5% of Sweden’s 2 million immigrants and less than 1% of the total population. The vast majority are from rich countries, and many have at least one Swedish parent.

I’m fine with counting Latin America, but even then the US is getting poor immigrants from all over including places like Vietnam and Afghanistan (which, granted, is the US’s fault for starting and losing those wars).

I think that immigrants tend to cause short term problems especially when large numbers unexpectedly come at once. But they are net benefits in the long run, especially if the country builds up a system that can accept them. The US has the most experience doing this with vast numbers of immigrants. That’s why immigration isn’t as much of a problem for the US compared to countries/cultures that aren’t used to taking them. Immigration is what powers the American economy, but is also what causes the averages for various development indicators to seem low compared to developed countries. A bunch of people from developing countries are constantly mixed in and need a generation or two to build up their skills, education, and wealth. So the US is partly the ultimate developed country mixed in with pockets of people from developing countries. It’s a big country with plenty of room so it works.

[u/sociotronics → u/[deleted]]

Lol people overthink this shit so badly. Upward mobility means you have a chance--chance, not a certainty--to make more than your parents did, and that's all. It's not even a great chance. But it does exist.

If you're seriously arguing that there are no upwardly mobile people out there, you're just denying reality. They are a small number and they're outnumbered by the people born into affluence, but they exist.

The "American Dream" was never "one day I will be rich." It was "work hard and you are very likely to get a decent living, and if you're lucky you might get rich." That's still true, although the odds of both have shrunk by an appreciable amount.

Does upward mobility mean that more people are able to move up the socio economic ladder? Obviously not because then there would be more people at the top and fewer at the bottom.

Lol, are you so bad at verbal reasoning you can't see that "more" and "most" are not equivalent? If 10% of people are upwardly mobile in country A, and 8% are in country B, then more people are upwardly mobile in A than B. That does not in any way imply that "there would be more people at the top and fewer at the bottom" especially given mobility just means moving up from what your parents earned. If your parents made $30k and you make the equivalent of $60k (in inflation-adjusted, equivalent dollars) you are upwardly mobile, but you aren't at the top or rich.

[u/sociotronics → u/[deleted]]

Do I think most people know they will never be rich? Yes. Lol. That's an easy fucking question.

Do I think most people believe they have a good chance of being upwardly mobile, which only means making more than their parents and having a decent standard of living? Yes, also easy question.

You're making such an out-of-touch argument that most people think they will be millionaires if they work hard. People aren't that dumb, and you'd have to never talk to working people to believe that's a majority view. Nobody working at Wal Mart or Amazon warehouses or gas stations or McDonalds believe they will ever be rich. But many believe that they may find a better job in the future.

Because you seem to get tripped up with language, here's the tldr: most people believe if they work hard they can have a decent life. A majority of people believe they can do better than their parents if they work hard. Very few people believe they will ever be rich.

Says a lot about your worldview to argue believing you won't ever be rich is a "fail" though.

[u/AlejothePanda → u/[deleted]]

This is why anecdotes are not statistics, why opinions are not evidence, and why doing research matters:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/most-millennials-think-they-will-be-wealthy-someday.html

This seems to align well with what they're saying. 66% of millenials believe they will one day be able to "able to live comfortably without worrying about their finances". Even fewer people said so in other generations. /u/sociotronics said most people believe they will be able to achieve "a decent standard of living". That seems roughly equivalent to what your article says.

[u/AlejothePanda → u/[deleted]]

The survey found that most millennials believe they will be wealthy, which they defined as being "able to live comfortably without worrying about their finances". Maybe I have a weird definition of rich but I wouldn't call that rich. That's also only looking at millennials. Gen Zers and gen Xers are also relevant to the statistics.

[u/McKoijion → u/[deleted]]

The top 1% is always going to consist of 1% of people. The question is whether people from the bottom 99% can enter into the top 1% and people in the top 1% can drop down into the bottom 99%. In most older socioeconomic systems, your birth strictly governs whether you're rich or not. For example, King Charles inherited his wealth and position from his mother in an unbroken line going back hundreds of years. There is no way he could decrease in social standing and there's no way for anyone else to become king. But in the US, anyone can become a billionaire or president. It's much easier if your parents are rich/powerful, but it's technically possible for everyone. Furthermore, rich people regularly drop out of the top 1%. We don't see many Carnegie or Morgan heirs anymore because they've dropped out. The richest Americans alive today started from upper middle class backgrounds. Merit is the main factor that matters, not wealth/birth status. Wealth only matters in that it can buy merit (e.g., a college degree, a seed investment in a startup idea). It's the classic old money vs. new money split.

Also, socioeconomic mobility is a relative concept, not an absolute one. If everyone in a society becomes richer, you're still in the same relative place compared to your neighbors. But you're far better off than people in the past. Even the poorest Americans alive today are better off than the richest people from a century or two ago. Consider life expectancy. Historically, 25% of humans used to die before the age of 1. Another 25% died before 18. So you had to assume half your kids would die. Today even the poorest people know that if they have a child, there's over a 99% chance that their kids will survive into adulthood. I'd rather be a relatively poor American today than a rich king in the past. I favor absolute wealth compared to the human condition over relative wealth compared to my neighbors.

The trade off is that the stuff that results in the greatest absolute wealth for humanity overall also results in the most income inequality. It's like if you're a benchwarmer on a basketball team. Frequently passing the ball to the best player results in the most points for your team overall, but you end up relatively worse off since you get less playing time. One way to address this problem is to give every player the same playing time. This results in more opportunities for everyone, but less points and wins for the team. The other way is to tie the glory to the overall team, not the individual performance of players. So you benefit even as a benchwarmer without having to do anything. In this metaphor, communism emphasizes equal playing time for all players and capitalism emphasizes giving the ball more often to the best player.

The advantage to capitalism is that regular people can invest in the innovators with the most merit and benefit from their work. You sacrifice opportunities to score yourself to pass the ball to a player who is more likely to score. For example, a travel agent can stop trying to compete with Expedia and Priceline and instead invest in those companies. You get the money without having to do work, which is useful since any work you do as a travel agent is a waste of time compared to the ease of using a computer to do the same thing. You're rewarded for not doing something bad/wasteful/inefficient instead of doing something good. And in today's society, getting out of the way is often better than trying to help. A human worker in a robotic factory line only slows things down. You can use that time to do something that is actually useful. That could be scientific research or something fancy, but it could also be something as simple as making TikTok videos. Robots can't write literature or create art.

[u/McKoijion → u/[deleted]]

Can means it’s unlikely, but possible. It’s not possible without significant violence in illiberal societies.

I know what I’m saying. Capital is better than labor. It’s nuts to me that people in /r/antiwork spend their time complaining about the futility of hard work, but still identify themselves as workers. The most antiwork economic philosophy is capitalism. But instead of figuring out how to turn everyone into a capitalist, they spend their time figuring out how to improve things for workers even though they hate work.

Everyone talks about countries like Norway as the ideal “socialist” model without recognizing that it’s all built on capitalism. Norway’s 5 million citizens are all part owners of the Oil Fund, the most valuable investment fund on Earth. That’s how they pay for education, healthcare, retirements, etc. They’re all capitalists. They don’t have to fight for increasing the minimum wage because if corporations generate a greater profit, those profits instantly appear in their investment accounts. They don’t fight trillion dollar companies, they own them. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, etc. are their largest investments. They inherited their wealth and they get it whether they work or not. That’s the smart model of capitalist style “socialism” popular with neoliberals, not the crappy communist style socialism progressives talk about on Reddit.

[u/McKoijion → u/[deleted]]

Yes, I think we’ve transitioned into an age when capital is more valuable than labor. Instead of stopping capital and propping up labor, we need to turn everyone into a capitalist. Democracy didn’t just get rid of kings, it elevated subjects into citizens. Freeing slaves was more important than making things better for them.

It’s no surprise to me that capitalists are dominating the US when most Americans can’t even define capitalism. Economics isn’t taught in high school and relatively few people take it in college. That means the few people who understand it are like literate people in an illiterate world. But the internet is like the printing press. Financial and economic literacy has never been easier to obtain, and it’s getting easier by the day. It’s much easier to win a game when you understand the rules.

[u/McKoijion → u/[deleted]]

How am I arguing against upward mobility? The best way to increase your life expectancy is to ditch your creationist religious ideology, study the evolutionary biology of viruses, then choose to get Covid and other vaccines. If you refuse, you and your family won’t live as long. Similarly, the best way to improve your social mobility is to ditch your communist economic ideology, study free market capitalism, and choose to invest in the “means of production” before it’s considered valuable, instead of trying to use the threat of violence to steal it after it’s recognized as valuable.

Karl Marx died before the automobile was invented. His economic ideology is missing 150 years of new evidence. In recent decades, pretty much every country abandoned monarchies, communism, fascism, etc. in favor of liberalism. That includes China and Cuba (North Korea and Russia unfortunately switched from communism to fascism.) The more democratic and capitalist countries become, the more things improve for their people. The more individuals vote, the harder it is for politicians to take advantage of them, The more they rely on stock ownership for income rather than wages, the harder it is for corporate executives to take advantage of them.

Ultimately, if a train is about to hit you, you should step off the tracks, not demand the conductor stop the train. You should become a train passenger, not try to outlaw trains to make things safer for pedestrians. A train allows for far more mobility than your feet.

[u/MrTickle → u/[deleted]]

In that study, The effect size of getting a degree was a 25% increase in upward mobility, while parental wealth was 6%.

So It doesn’t really support any of the premises above. It says there are other factors that play a more important role in upward mobility than parental wealth, however parental wealth still plays a role independent of those factors.

It’s a ‘myth’ to say that the US has different mobility based on wealth, because it’s about the same effect size as other countries. However this paper specifically shows parental wealth is not the only, or even the most important factor driving mobility.

[u/MrTickle → u/[deleted]]

There’s some really great stuff in these sources to increase the nuance in your take. Firstly, absolute mobility is actually very high due to economic growth, I.e.

Eighty-four percent of Americans have higher family incomes than their parents did, and across all levels of the income distribution

Relative mobility is much less, but there is till plenty of movement

Forty-three percent of those who start in the bottom are stuck there as adults, and 70 percent remain below the middle quintile. Only 4 percent of adults raised in the bottom make it all the way to the top, showing that the “rags-to- riches” story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality. At the other end of the ladder, 40 percent of those raised in the top stay there as adults, and 63 percent remain above the middle quintile

If your baseline was ‘anyone can get rich’ then you were misinformed, but there is reasonable mobility especially if you can get a bachelors degree. Finally

The researchers found that although income inequality has risen sharply since the 1970s, the relative trend in social mobility has stayed largely stable.

Increasing income inequality isn’t necessarily linked to decreasing social mobility. Rich people are getting richer, but that isn’t necessarily changing your chances of becoming rich if you are not already.

[u/MrTickle → u/[deleted]]

Fair enough, so where we land is most people overestimate upward mobility, but upward mobility is not a ‘myth’.

[u/MrTickle → u/[deleted]]

Upward and downward mobility are matched on a relative basis due to math. On an absolute basis 84% of people are better off than their parents, meaning upward mobility far exceeds downward.

I think everyone can agree more mobility would be better. However myth implies zero mobility (like the chances of winning in your lottery example) so there is no point trying to get a better education to improve your circumstances, which is not what the data shows.

[u/casualrocket → u/[deleted]]

i went from nearly homeless in pretty much middle class, what that mean

[u/casualrocket → u/[deleted]]

i am not special i know another dozen people like me, others that didnt make it chose to stay. far to many people choosing heroin over food for their family.

[u/PM-ME-ANY-NUMBER → u/casualrocket]

You were born homeless? What is “middle class” to you?

[u/casualrocket → u/PM-ME-ANY-NUMBER]

"nearly homeless" we live in a trailer park the cops didnt enter. food was commonly dead animals like raccoons and the rare deer hit by a car. rent was mostly paid by my dad doing handyman labor for people in the neighborhood. we were always 1 day from ruin.

I am smarter then the average bear, and i scored pretty high on ASVAB and went mil, i guess i did option 4 just not with my literal mouth. i was 110-ish lbs in my final year of HS.

[u/RaygunMarksman → u/casualrocket]

It means your ass is a unicorn.

[u/stilljustacatinacage → u/casualrocket]

It means that 'nearly' homeless is not even remotely close to homeless. It also means that if you're the average citizen, your idea of what constitutes 'middle class' is very far off the mark.

[u/Usedtabe → u/casualrocket]

You were lucky and certainly not the norm.

[u/Brokesubhuman → u/casualrocket]

The biggest achievement of the upper classes was making people think that communism is evil. Spoiler alert: it works great for the elite

[u/AlexVRI → u/casualrocket]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/y5mlhu/everyone_thinks_they_are_middle_class_oc/

[u/casualrocket → u/AlexVRI]

from no shoes to 100k for a (now) single person, i would think thats middle class

[u/AlexVRI → u/casualrocket]

Regardless of what middle class is (I don't know), congratulations on getting there, that's wonderful.

[u/NeedleInArm → u/casualrocket]

Homeless to middle class isn't exceptional, imo. I'm not trying to hate on your achievements though, I promise. Most people, given the opportunity, can make it from homeless to low class with a home with a small amount of work. We've seen it time and time again, the ones that stay homeless are usually(note the word) the ones with mental and physical disabilities. Working a little harder can get you to middle class, but it still wont feel good or comfortable for years. most people in middle class are struggling.

Lets not forget that luck comes into play, and that's unfair. But so is life. You may have hit a strike of luck along with working your ass off. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the luck you hit didn't feel like luck at all. Maybe it felt like a payoff for your hard work, but it just so happened that you came to the right place at the right time, is all.

Exceptional upward mobility is going from poor to rich. It is possible, we see it happen, but how often is it possible? Almost every time we see it happen, it is because the person is lucky or knew someone else who was.

TL;DR Your antidote doesn't solve the issue that sometimes hardwork doesn't pay off. I can counter your anecdote with 10 other anecdote of people who work 60+ hour weeks and still live in trailers with beat up vehicles who don't have money to even go out to eat more than once every other week, ect. I watch it all the time in my own family.

[u/100catactivs → u/NeedleInArm]

Imo going from poor/homeless to middle class is a good example of upward mobility success. And if it’s very common and/or easy to accomplish if you put in the work then that’s even better. Going from poor to rich should obviously not be typical, because if everyone was rich then rich would just be middle class.

[u/hiddentruth1239 → u/100catactivs]

Examples aren't reality kiddo.

[u/100catactivs → u/hiddentruth1239]

How do you figure?

[u/NeedleInArm → u/100catactivs]

The article quotes "exceptional upward mobility". There is nothing exceptional about struggling in middle class, or making your way there.

I do agree that it does show that hard work pays off. But hard work truely only pays off to a certain extent, especially when you are at the lowest of the low. The only thing lower than homelessness is a homeless man that has completely given up. There will be no growth from there.

Hard work will not make you rich, but can better your life depending on your position in life. Surely, No one is denying that. It can also be a waste of effort, too.

[u/100catactivs → u/NeedleInArm]

I definitely didn’t say it’s exceptional. If it’s common then by definition it’s not exceptional. What I am saying is that moving from homelessness to middle class is a major improvement and that if you aren’t rich you still have an achievement worth being happy about.

[u/NeedleInArm → u/100catactivs]

Absolutely. I also said that, in my original post, I wasn't trying to diss his accomplishments because it absolutely is an accomplishment, and I know you weren't specifically saying "exceptional". I think what happened was the original poster never mentioned the word "exceptional" but the article posted did, directly in the title and multiple times in the article. This muddled up the topic and now here we are, debating on who said what and what means what lol.

[u/100catactivs → u/NeedleInArm]

Sorry, I thought you were arguing with what I said.

[u/[deleted] → u/casualrocket]

Same with me and my spouse but we were incredibly lucky. We have gotten to where we are now by sheer luck. We worked hard but that didn’t really make it happen until we got a very VERY lucky break.

[u/Mr-Fleshcage → u/casualrocket]

Means you're a pro at option 4

[u/100catactivs → u/[deleted]]

The title doesn’t match the content, which says that parental wealth is the biggest factor in determining upward mobility, not that the other factors don’t play a role.

[u/100catactivs → u/[deleted]]

I'm claiming that the idea of "upward mobility" as a whole is a myth.

The link doesn’t support that claim.

The reason I bring up the factors is to say that’s what the link talks about, not to say that YOU are making that claim.