Comparing Vickies with Thetes

Dave Ramsey, citing Tom Corley, has a list of twenty differences.

63% of wealthy parents make their children read 2 or more non-fiction books a month vs. 3% for poor.

I don’t recall making my children read 2 non-fiction books a year…but I’m pretty sure they did.

Here’s an interesting one that ought to make Robin Hanson’s antennae twitch:

6% of wealthy say what’s on their mind vs. 69% for poor

Here’s an obvious one:

86% of wealthy love to read vs. 26% for poor.

I think I’ve said before that fifteen years ago, when I had a relocation web site and we acquired some data on neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics, the consumer purchase most correlated with affluence was hardbound books.

3 thoughts on “Comparing Vickies with Thetes

  1. What are “hbd calls?” Its probably not a good sign for my future earnings potential that lots of rich people are doing this and I don’t even know what it is.

  2. I didn’t know what hbd is either: one guy on an internet forum says it stands for “Happy BirthDay,” not sure why that needs an acronym. Someone needs to introduce the author of this list to the concept of correlation versus causation and that in our increasingly dynamic economy, things change fast, ie even if some of these traits have helped in the past, they likely won’t in the future.

    • But Ajay, it’s an official fact. Middle Class people have mortgages, so if can give mortgages to Poor people, they’ll become Middle Class too. Imitation is the new Reification.

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