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I worked at a Fortune 50 and we hired a lot of interns.

After I left, I thought back on the kids we hired, how talented they were, and what they went off to do afterwards.

The 'rich kids' were better prepared, more responsible, better communicators, had a better sense of the vision for the company and the consequences of what we were doing.

'College education' is surely causative to some degree, but in America, most wealth is not inherited, and those parents who can afford 'activities' for their kids are probably far, far better parents than others. It's not the 'activities' that I think develops the kids, I think it's the very fact that these parents are investing a lot of time and energy in their kids, teaching them positive behaviours that matters much more.

I wish I had the link but I read a study a while back that showed that 'rich parents' were far more conscientious than other parents.

I don't doubt that money is a big advantage, as well as social class, but it would be foolhardy to think that these are the fundamental issues.

Rich kids are posited as 'brats' in films and TV because it's populist - most viewers are not rich. And of course - those douches exist. By by enlarge, upper-middle class kids are great. I would bet they make better players than otherwise on average.

I should also point out that kids from communities wherein they were not seen as lower class - i.e. rural communities, seem to have decent dispositions as well, and at least by the numbers, they didn't have a lot of money. But it doesn't cost a lot to have a stable home / good parents out in the sticks.




Blaming "culture" is often an excuse for shoddy research.

How would you measure "conscientiousness" if you were designing a study to correlate that with wealth?




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