1. Any of the creative professions have way more applicants than positions so nepotism dominates. It's almost shocking how many nepo babies there are in Hollywood. It infects every level. It could be that some rich person will fund your indie movie as long as you give a major role to their child. It can be family connections to studio decision-makers,. It can be currying favor with Hollywood heavyweights. Whatever. Either way, getting in as a nobody is increasingly difficult;
2. Education. First, you have legacies. Roughly a third of Harvard's undergrad class are legacies ie the children of wealthy donors. That's the real DEI. But also it's the cost. The wealthy can absorb the cost of an elite education.
This is a real issue with medical school. Someone can often graduate with $300-600k in student loan debt. By the time they finish residency they may owe $500k-1M. The wealthy can absorb this. There are a few medical schools now that offer free tuition thanks to some large endowments. Many medical schools try and have people from more diverse economic backgrounds but it's difficult. Not having to worry about money means you caa afford to spend a year doing unpaid research to pad your resume. The free tuition schools seem to have skewed more to students from wealthier backgrounds because they're simply better connected and better able to game getting into such schools;
3. Housing costs specifically and the cost of living generally. 30 years ago if you were trying to make it as a musician in LA you could rent an apartment for $300-400/month. You could live cheaply. You could chase that dream. Now? The average apartment seems to be near or over $2000/month.;
4. The disappearance of third spaces. Higher housing costs mean the higher cost of businesses. If a bar or a coffee shop needs now absorb rent of $200,000/year where once it was $10-20k, that affects what busineses are viable and for those that are, it's an input to the cost of everything. Well, those were performance spaces for up and coming acts. You see this in the UK, for example, where the number of pubs just keeps going down as they sold and converted into apartments. Community spaces just cannot survive with the high cost of property; and
5. The freedom to fail. I saw a clip of Allison Williams recently who acknowledge this. For those that don't know, she was one of the main cast of HBO's Girls. She's the daughter of Brian Williams, a long-time news anchor. Fun fact: the entire main cast of this show were all nepo babies. It cannot be overstated what relieving the fear of becoming homeless can do to your opportunities.
Now some, particularly here, have long pointed to tech as their key to social mobility. That's been true for a long time but I suspect many here are in for a rude shock. We're already seeing it with the layoffs and how many people apply for any given job. AI will make this worse.
And who do you think will get positions in this shirnking pool of opportunities? It'll be the same children of wealthy people. It'll be connections, access to funding and other factors that give you opportunities.