Every one of your posts are spot on, but you are whispering into a strong headwind. Politicians have made careers fostering hate of wealthy or well-off people, calling them greedy, saying they climbed on the backs of the poor, called them lucky, or many other things. I for one never got a job from a poor or lazy individual. The owner put in more hours than anyone else, and made huge sacrifices to get their wealth. Others expect the government to make all even while they sit at home doing drugs or watching TV, all the while complaining that life isn't fair because those rich folks are crapping on them. Others do work hard but fail to realize opportunities when they turn up or are unwilling to take the risks to raise themselves out of poverty.Ah, but therein lies my point, it's still a choice.
At one point I worked my *** off and got paid squat, I understand how that works. There are trade offs with every job and working hard to one person doesn't mean the same thing to another. I work hard at my jobs but it's not the same kind of working hard as someone digging ditches. You want to talk about the military, they don't get paid much but they have free housing and free food and free lots of other stuff so they could basically save all of the money they make if they wanted to which is more than what the average American has available to save if they wanted. Firemen/paramedics have about 20 days off a month and lots of them use those days off to start other businesses that make more money than they do at their normal job. My sister is a teacher, she started off not getting paid much but she kept teaching and going to school and working hard at her job and now she has her doctorate and makes a lot of money as the director of education at a hospital. The opportunities are there, it's a choice whether someone wants to take advantage of them or not.
Everyone's life hinges on their choices and everyone has an opportunity to succeed. Just because you work hard doesn't mean you're going to be what's considered successful, you have to work hard and make the choices you need to make to better yourself or to attain your goal.
"Working hard to make a lot of money is not a hard choice. It’s an easy one."
If that's true then why doesn't everybody make a lot of money if that's what they want? Working two jobs while going to school full time and only getting a handful of hours of sleep for a few years certainly wasn't an easy choice for me because it was grueling. I certainly wasn't happy much during those times, I was tired. I didn't want my kids in daycare so my wife stayed home and I was the sole income to what turned out to be my wife and I and five kids. That's why twenty something years later, I still work hard. At one point a couple of years ago I worked in some manner every single day for 8 months straight which included a few hours of work on Christmas day. A 100 hour workweek is nothing for me.
It's not bragging or extolling my work ethic, it's explaining what it takes to dig yourself out of the gutter and get on your feet. The world owes you nothing, if you want something then you have to get it yourself. If you sit around thinking that everything is just going to be given to you then you're sorely mistaken because it's not going to happen unless you win the lottery.
I've been at the bottom wondering how I'm going to get money to pay rent. Not eating so that there's money for baby food and diapers. Working on my own car in the parking lot because there's no money for a mechanic. The first car my wife ever had that I bought her after we had been married two or three years cost $500. We lived below the poverty line until I worked us out of it.
The real problem are the people at the top feeling sorry for the poor people and giving them money and taking away their incentive to work hard and better themselves. They are the ones that are keeping them in poverty because humans along with every other animal are inherently lazy. Why work when there's a free place to live and free food to eat and free money to spend on things. It might not be much but it's free and enough to get them by. Instead of inspiring them to work hard and dig themselves out they're instead eternally destined to be poor and dependent upon the government and the taxpayers. It's a perpetual cycle that affects a large part of the population and until that cycle is broken most of those people are never going to rise out of poverty.
The point is, they still have a choice, they just choose the easy road instead of the hard one.
The exception does not make the rule. For every Ben Carson there are hundreds and thousands of people who work their butts off, do everything right, and never make it out of poverty. Read some academic research on the subject instead of referencing anecdotes.
You can't paint everyone with one brush. Certainly there are those who work hard and build up a strong business or succeed in their field. There are also those whose businesses fail or who work hard in a company and yet are passed over. Not everyone can be at the top and things happen.
Also, those people who work at various jobs that might seem beneath those at the top are quite necessary. A good CM is worth his or her weight in gold and there is nothing wrong with someone in that field striving for a better wage. Everything isn't only about guys like Iger and stockholders. Every good worker is valuable and needed imo.
The point of recognizing the systematic issues that prevent people from succeeding is not to discourage people but to see where we can help.
Lots of businesses fail, that's the nature of business. Then you have to start over again and maybe again and maybe again. That's how wealthy people get wealthy, they never give up. The people who work hard at a company and are good at their job but get passed over might need to look for another company and not just give up because they aren't moving forward. That's the whole basis of my comments, if you aren't moving forward then you should be thinking about what you need to do to move forward. Nobody in this world is going to push you ahead, you have to climb there yourself.
Except that the biggest determinate of whether you get "wealthy" is how much wealth your parents have, not how hard you work. Again, exceptions don't make the rule. Because something is "possible" doesn't mean that's "how its done". It's POSSIBLE to come from nothing, and become immensely wealthy, but its unlikely, and there is only a very weak link to "hard work" resulting in wealth. These are just facts, you can attempt to dispute them all you want, but that is reality.
Except that the biggest determinate of whether you get "wealthy" is how much wealth your parents have, not how hard you work. Again, exceptions don't make the rule. Because something is "possible" doesn't mean that's "how its done". It's POSSIBLE to come from nothing, and become immensely wealthy, but its unlikely, and there is only a very weak link to "hard work" resulting in wealth. These are just facts, you can attempt to dispute them all you want, but that is reality.
Except that the biggest determinate of whether you get "wealthy" is how much wealth your parents have, not how hard you work. Again, exceptions don't make the rule. Because something is "possible" doesn't mean that's "how its done". It's POSSIBLE to come from nothing, and become immensely wealthy, but its unlikely, and there is only a very weak link to "hard work" resulting in wealth. These are just facts, you can attempt to dispute them all you want, but that is reality.
We aren't discussing generational wealth. Of course wealthy parents often have kids that end up being wealthy that is not a groundbreaking discovery you've made, it's common knowledge.
We're discussing normal people that don't come from wealth who work themselves out of poverty. The US is full of them. They reside in probably every city in the country. They aren't some rare anomaly. People who work themselves from poverty to the middle class are even more prevalent.
To say that everyone who works hard and makes good decisions is going to become one of the 1% or even the 10 or 25% isn't realistic and I never said that. But it's completely possible for them to work themselves into a comfortable position where they don't have to protest for $15/hr. It isn't always easy but it's not impossible like you want to claim.
I'm a normal guy. I don't particularly like most people who grew up extremely wealthy. I like nice things but I also like to chew tobacco, go hunting, go outside and get dirty. I can dress up and hang out at fancy social functions but I rather be in a bar wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I don't really fit into their cliques. That said, I have several wealthy friends, some of them extremely wealthy and we get along well because most of them came from nothing similar to me and every single one of them, to a T, worked very hard to get there. One of my friends recently sold 51% of his business for $17M. He worked 5 different jobs saving up money to start it and I used to help him package stuff for shipments in his basement.
How is it that I somehow found all of these super rare people that worked hard to make their money? According to you I must just be the luckiest guy on the planet to find all of the aberrations of society. One owns a machine shop he started with his dad, they were dirt poor growing up. They started off by saving and buying a trailer and starting a residential gutter business and then got more into the metal aspect as they went along. Another one started a business working on cell phone towers and eventually saved up enough to build a small tower himself then another then another and now they are all over the country. One friend started a medical supply business from the money he made from building a snow cone stand in high school that he worked all summer long every summer. One worked construction and after a few years he started his own subcontracting company until he started building houses now he has a big construction company. Another owns a commercial construction business and he started off driving a bulldozer for a road company and then started doing the same thing on the weekends as side work and saved that money until he could buy his own so he could charge more.
One thing that all of these people have in common is that they all worked extremely hard, they didn't spend their money on frivolous stuff and saved it and they made good decisions to better their position in life. This theme is repeated over and over and over again for people that are successful and the definition of successful is different for everybody. Some people want a million dollars in the bank, some people just don't want to have to worry about paying their bills every month. Not everyone will make it but most that actually try will get a lot closer than where they started off. Those are also the people that you wouldn't have any effect on. They wouldn't care if you told them it was impossible or not, they would try harder just to prove you wrong.
Can't wait for the changes that will make everyone wealthy.
I mean, just work hard I guess ?
Wow, just wow. You know what separates the ones you say worked hard and didn't get ahead vs those that do? Complacency. They failed to take a step to get out of their situation, or they like where they are. Sure some are incapable of getting out of their situation due to factors like health issues, intelligence, mental illness, but those that are able can make choices to get a new job if they are not making what they want, or start a business, or take other risks. They also might not have a sufficient drive to change their circumstances and give up too easily, or, and most likely, have very poor financial literacy. This country has terrible saving habits, people blow all kinds of money on wants and junk and wondering why they continue to live paycheck to paycheck.You just don't get it. You know what the US is MORE full of, a whole LOT more full of ? People who have worked their butts off, done everything "right" and are still broke / struggling to make ends meet. For every one of those who have gotten wealthy there are hundreds, thousands, who haven't. But, not surprising here, in a country of 330 Million people, if 1/10th of 1% of people "make it" that's hundreds of thousands of people, if 1% of people do, that's literally MILLIONS of people. And again, not surprising, they tend to run in the same circles, so no, its no surprise that if you know one such person or are such a person, you know more of them ... this is like any social circle.
But you know what else, that means the other 99.9% (or just 99%) of people didn't "make it" - i know that's hard to grasp, but that's the reality you are trying very hard to ignore. It's not because they didn't "work hard" or "try" its because that's how the system you live in, we all for the most part live in, works. There isn't a strong link between "hard work" and "success" or wealth.
Also, just again as a matter of fact, you are more likely to come from nothing and "make it" in other countries than the US, social mobility is actually pretty terrible there, again the best predictor of your wealth, education, etc in the US is your parents .... but again, with hundreds of millions of people, exceptions happen.
What separates the successes from the failures- a million little things we discount every day. I had parents who fought for me. We weren’t wealthy, but they made it clear that I would go to college and contribute to the world. Despite lack of money, I had a whole community who looked out for me, teachers who expected things of me, neighbors who reported every dumb thing I did to my parents, a school that paid for all my college tests when my parents couldn’t afford to. Some generous soul paid for me to go camping when my mom didn’t have the money. I had clean drinking water, healthy food, air without toxins. I had overall good health and was lucky enough to have good genetics, leading to a good iq, with none of the bad environmental events that ruin that start. I had food stability- I knew I would always eat, we didn’t have much, but there was always food (my sister worked through high school to supplement our food budget but I never felt it). Oh- that’s another thing- I had a big sister who looked out for me.
I didn’t control any of those things. They were all things I was lucky to have, that a lot of people don’t have. But I look back at my life and I think, what it. What if I didn’t have the parents I had, my sister, those neighbors, good genes, etc? Maybe that person in poverty wouldn’t be if they had just had my sister, or my neighbor or my parents. When I judge those people, when I say I deserve my successes and I did this why can’t someone else, I discount all the good people in my life did for me.