This is not chicken soup or arsenic, but starting from the complicated current situation, grasping the undercurrent behind it and analyzing the future we will face:
Society is about to be stratified. What floor will you be on?
1. Will your next generation be forced to flee their hometown?
Give him whatever you have, so that he can have more. No, even what he has will be taken away from him. "
This sentence comes from Matthew 25: 29 in the Bible. Later generations took this as an allusion and summarized the "Matthew effect", that is, the stronger the strong, the weaker the weak.
Matthew effect is the coldest rule in the world, but it is everywhere.
When topics such as "escape from the north of Guangzhou" and "escape back to the north of Guangzhou" were hot on the Internet, the official WeChat account "City Data Group" published an explosive article "Escape from your hometown that will eventually decline". Based on the big data of population movement in various provinces, this paper draws a cruel conclusion:
A metropolis is like a water pump, constantly pumping labor from backward provinces. Perhaps one day, like Japan today, countless villages and towns will wither and decline, but Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas will remain prosperous.
In the era of negative population growth, metropolises will mercilessly suck the blood out of the surrounding areas in order to survive. Cruel? No, because this is the result of young workers' own feet (voting).
(Image from "City Data Group")
? Metropolis has high-quality political resources, commercial resources, educational resources and human resources ... These high-quality resources have attracted countless outstanding young people, and outstanding young people will promote the prosperity and development of metropolis, so that metropolis can obtain more resources, thus forming a virtuous circle of advantage iteration, that is, the stronger Matthew effect.
The inference drawn from population migration is even more shocking:
You can still hesitate between these choices (fleeing from the north to the north or fleeing back to the north), which shows that you are extremely happy, because your next generation and the next generation may have no choice. If you finally choose to stay in a comfortable and picturesque town, you may be very happy; But when your children reach your age, it is very likely that they have only one and only one choice, and that is to escape from the hometown that will eventually decline.
The so-called "incomparable happiness" in this article is actually "extremely cruel", because metropolises are taking advantage of high housing prices and household registration system to push thousands of ordinary people in Qian Qian to the edge of the bustling city, driving them to cramped basements and messy rental houses until the day when their dreams are shattered, and then their next generation will pack their bags and flee their hometown.
This is the other side of Matthew effect, the weaker the weak.
The richer you are, the faster your income will grow!
Thomas Piketty, the author of Capital in 2 1 Century, believes that the current rate of return on capital is greater than the economic growth rate, which will lead to the accumulation of social wealth to a few people.
In the last 30 years, the incomes of high-income groups and low-income groups in developed countries such as Britain and the United States have increased, but the incomes of high-income groups (government and enterprise managers, financial practitioners and IT practitioners) have increased even faster.
The accumulation of investment wealth is like snowballing. At the same speed, the bigger the snowball, the faster the volume increases.
When Wang Jianlin's small goal of "making a hundred million first" was screened, did you ever calculate that Wang Jianlin's net worth was 260 billion, and one hundred million only accounted for 0.04% of his total assets, which was really just a small goal for him!
For young people with no property and an annual income of 100000, a small goal of 100 million is not too difficult, that is, not eating or drinking, working1000.
3, it is difficult to have a child in a cold door.
1980, a farmer's child stepped into the school gate of Peking University, and all the neighbors were proud of him. But after arriving in Beijing, he found that he had not read extracurricular books and could not keep up with the chat topics of his classmates. Dressed very rustic, the girl asked him to carry a bag to fetch water. The reason turned out to be to let her boyfriend rest. When he introduced himself, he was laughed at in public, saying that he spoke Mandarin like a Japanese. He knows nothing but transplanting rice seedlings.
It is such a farmer's son who founded the first China educational institution listed in the United States. He was selected as one of the "50 most influential business leaders in China", and his name is Yu.
Poor families make noble children, and adversity makes talented people. Yu's life experience has written the legend of reading to change his destiny.
However, what if you were born a few years later?
Liu Yunshan, an associate professor at Peking University Institute of Education, found out the family background of Peking University students from 1978 to 2005;
In the middle and late 1980s, it was the golden age for farmers' children to change their fate with knowledge, and more than 30% of Peking University students came from poor families. In the mid-1990s, the proportion of farmers' children began to decline; After 2000, only 10% more rural children were admitted to Peking University. The channels for children from poor families to enter famous schools are getting narrower and narrower.
Who occupies the position of farmer's children?
In 20 12, the authoritative journal China Social Sciences published a research report, Silent Revolution: A Study on the Social Sources of Students in Peking University and Soochow University (1952-2002). By studying the data of 50 years, the report reached a conclusion that made the whole society stunned:
After 1990s, the proportion of elite children admitted to Peking University increased rapidly. These social elites only account for 1.7% of the total social population, but 40% of Peking University students are born in such elite families.
It is no longer difficult for the poor to have expensive children, and the elites gather in famous schools. This is another victory of Matthew effect.
Why was the 1980s the golden age of peasant children? Because 1977 resumed the college entrance examination, the Matthew effect became more and more obvious with the passage of time. )
4, the bottom of despair, shouting that reading is useless.
? A few days ago, a reader forwarded an article to me through the official WeChat account, the magazine of Asia Newsweek, entitled "The bottom class gives up education, the middle class is overly anxious, and the upper class does not play the Chinese college entrance examination."
? Before that, I had already brushed this article in the circle of friends, because the title was too dazzling. What is stinging is, didn't it reflect the reality?
The author Yu draws a conclusion from the postdoctoral survey of sociology in Chinese Academy of Sciences: The poorer people are, the more they agree that "reading is useless". The recognition degree of the poor in the village is 62.32%, the recognition degree of the rural middle class is 37.24%, and the recognition degree of the annual income is the highest, so the author uses such a subtitle to describe the attitude of the bottom people to education-desperate bottom people: simply give up higher education.
Is the author's conclusion correct? That's right. Although it is difficult to understand, it is expected. Do not believe me to show you:
One of the arguments: the poorer the family, the higher the cost of reading.
A report in The Economist 20 14 pointed out that the tuition fees for three years of high school, including books, often cost thousands of dollars-which often exceeds the income of poor families in rural areas for one year.
Argument 2: The lower, the harder it is to learn.
In 20 14, a statistical report by Benjamin Lillebrohus of Lund University in Sweden showed that in 20 12, the proportion of new rural students in Fudan University was 10.36%, Tongji University was 18.98%, and Tianjin was.
As mentioned in a report in Southern Weekend 20 1 1, "The lower your family background, the worse your school is", and this trend is hard to reverse.
Argument 3: The worse the school, the harder it is to find a good job.
When the starting point of social education is getting higher and higher, there are more and more fresh graduates, and the threshold of good jobs is bound to be higher and higher. The competitors that graduates have to face are all people competing for the same position in the talent market, so "Adventure Island" is no longer a joke for the graduates of third-rate universities.
On the other hand, no matter how much the poor students owe and how much they have paid for going to college, enterprises can only express regret at most, that's all.
For the bottom people, the high cost and low income of education lead to their despair of education.
When the voice of "reading is useless" is rising at the bottom, the investment in education by the upper and middle classes in society is even crazier.
In the first half of this year, an article entitled "Beijing's Helplessness: How to Fight Baby in Haidian" was madly forwarded in the circle of friends of parents from all walks of life.
When the mainstream media bombarded extracurricular classes as a machine to cultivate exam-oriented education, the author revealed his children's courses in remedial classes:
Chinese is taught by the teacher of Peking University, and the children read the university and The Spring and Autumn Annals, but many of them are actually about history, which is a horizontal comparison of what happened in China's history and foreign history, with cultural and philosophical enlightenment.
English is taught by famous teachers in New Oriental, and children begin to spell naturally, not by rote, but by telling English stories.
Mathematics is taught by graduates from 985 famous schools in China. The Olympiad in the lower grades of primary school is enough for liberal arts students to surrender their guns, but children will be very happy when they learn it.
The author claims that his son gets up at 7: 30 in the morning, finishes class at 8: 00 in the evening, and has to do his homework when he gets home. After finishing his homework, he also has to read extracurricular books, usually children's books. He finishes reading one book every week, and one in Harle, including science and technology, history, geography and so on.
Maybe you will think that such parents are cruel and make their children suffer so much. What about a good happy education? What is even more cruel is that these are all requested by the children themselves.
"He is usually controlled to sleep at ten o'clock in the evening, but he often sleeps later than this. The child is only seven years old! I'm really worried. Every time I tell him that you don't want to go to extracurricular classes, he always doesn't want to. He has a goal, that is, he can win his father and have something he can't do. "
The last sentence of the article is intriguing: success is really not the accumulation of a generation.
What is even more intriguing is: the tortoise and the rabbit race. What happens when the rabbit runs like hell?
The answer is still Matthew effect.
6. The more developed the society, the more solidified the stratum.
Seven Years of Life is a BBC documentary, which selects 14 British children from different classes to record their life trajectories. From the age of seven, it is recorded every seven years until they are 56 years old.
This 49-year study reveals a cruel fact: the children of the poor are still poor, and the children of the rich are still rich, and the class is passed down from generation to generation.
Seven years old should be a naive age, but children in different classes have shown obvious differences.
Upper class: John and Andrew have formed the habit of reading the Financial Times and The Observer. They clearly know that they will go to a top private high school, then go to Oxford University, and then enter politics.
Middle class: boys will have their own ideas, such as opposing racial discrimination and helping people of color; Girls want to grow up, get married and have children.
Underclass: Some people want to be a horse trainer to make money, others want to have a chance to meet their father. Jack, who was born in a slum, even regards "having enough food, being punished less and being beaten less" as his life wish.
After 49 years, they are 56 years old.
Upper class: John became an entrepreneur and devoted himself to charity, Andrew became a partner in a law firm, and their children continued to receive elite education.
Middle class: most of them are still middle class, and some will slide to the bottom of society.
Bottom society: Jack became a bricklayer and Simon became a driver. They have given birth to many children, and most of them continue to make a living by selling labor at the bottom.
In a society where everything is in ruins, it is possible to overtake in a corner and get rich overnight, but once the society enters a developed and stable stage, the division and solidification of classes will become increasingly obvious.
Harvard open class "What is the starting point of fairness" points out: "Even the effort itself depends largely on the lucky family environment."
Both Roosevelt presidents graduated from Harvard, and four generations of "Bush family" were Yale alumni. Bush even joked during the campaign: "I inherited half my father's friends."
The contacts, wealth, elite consciousness and educational resources of the upper class are all passed down from generation to generation, and future generations.
The children of the middle and lower classes in society, after receiving the so-called "happy education" in public schools, constitute a new generation of middle and lower classes in society. But in any case, the developed society can at least provide them with reliable living security.
This is another form of social stability.
7. Society is about to be stratified. What floor will you be on?
Hao's Beijing Folding won 20 16 Hugo Award.
Hugo Award is the highest award of science fiction in the world, and it can be called "Nobel Prize in Literature" in science fiction. However, "Beijing Folding" is not so much a science fiction as a social metaphor in the cloak of science fiction:
The top layer manipulates the rules and the middle layer operates at a high pace, so the poor at the bottom will no longer have the value of being exploited.
When people at the bottom shouted at their neighbors that reading was useless, Alpha Dog had already defeated Li Shishi, and a revolution of "artificial intelligence" was coming quietly.
It can be predicted that with the development of artificial intelligence, "machine substitution" is an inevitable trend. When batches of "automatic XX machines" enter all walks of life, the social demand for blue-collar workers will be greatly reduced. On that day, where will the bottom people who give up education go?
This is a question for the government to consider.
For ourselves, we are more concerned about the question: is it possible for this society to break the class?
Yes, of course!
Even in the highly solidified British society, in the documentary "Seven Years of Life", there is still a person who broke the ceiling of the class and was successfully promoted to the elite. He is Nicholas, the son of a farmer. He was admitted to Oxford University and then became a professor in a famous American school.
A quarter, in probability, is about 7%.
Coincidentally, american physical society academician Barabashi, an authority on global complex network research, mentioned such a view in his book Outbreak: 93% of human behavior is predictable, and the remaining 7% are unpredictable people who have changed the world.
This book does not give the origin of the figure of 7%, but it at least gives us a revelation:
There will always be such a person in the world who can transcend his family, blood relationship and environment, break free from the shackles of the times and make the world sit up and take notice of him. Such people are called heroes.
Then the question comes: the society is about to be stratified, the class is solidifying, and you, can you be a hero?