War on Thanksgiving: Mission Accomplished
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So, the privileged are more likely to benefit from their privilege and be successful, while the others are less likely be successfulâŚ
How is this news?
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The news is that they arenât aware of this fact. How is that news?
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I had an uncle from Eastern Europe who considered paying taxes a privilege. He never saw it as a burden. He saw it as his way of repaying the debt he owed to a society that had given him opportunities. I wonder if he would have felt the same way if he knew how much being able to rise to part of the middle class was due to luck.
Maybe he knew.
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Luck helps. An education system open to everybody, etc, sure as hell helps too, tho⌠Now, having it all open, and not gating the higher parts, that might help even more.
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Canât tell if this part was sarcastic but in any case it doesnât follow. A huge component of
rise-to-the-middle-class luck is living in a country with stable governance and good infrastructure and public services and a strong enough technology base⌠so your uncleâs reasoning is still valid.
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Great way to put it. Any elite community will eventually decide that it needs to protect itself. And will gate everything they can.
Thereâs an interesting phenomenon in the UK. Fee paying schools have traditionally been accessible to the ⌠15% who could afford them. You also had grammar schools, which charged a little (very little by comparison), but had high educational standards.
Now, the influx of oligarch money means that a lot of people I know recognise that getting their kids into private education isnât even any kind of possibility - whereas for my parentsâ generation, if their family bust a gut and maybe had a doctor or lawyer earning cash, they could do it.
And the grammar schools - ha! - fuckinâ disappearing species. Why? Who knows - but they surely do educate kids well.
I might be becoming a marxist as I age. The sumbitch-ich.
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Youâre apparently blissfully unaware that this is a highly contentious assertion to most Americans (and especially the wealthy and influential ones)?
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Cheeses, the last thing you want as a successful elite group is anyone figuring out how you did it.
Movie credits are a great way to see whoâs who. Watch them, and focus, and remember. Weâre lucky the various unions banded together to ensure EVERYONE gets credited.
Soon you start seeing common names. Shapiro stands out (ever noticed how many lawyers are Shapiros?). Garland. That kinda thing.
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This comment wins the thread.
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I agree that becoming a tycoon or famous artist is mostly about luck. But for most of us, hard work and smart choices go a long way towards reasonable financial security. You are never going to convince me that making a series of wise decisions is not a significant factor in success. Choosing to always go to class, some amount of studying and always turning your homework in on time will make a difference when it comes time to apply for college. Once you get there, choosing a major that will likely lead to employment is better than choosing dance theory or whatever, if your goal is gainful employment. And once again, showing up for class is a better choice than not doing so. Of course random good or bad luck can set you back or send you forward in the process, but most people can do fine by working hard and making the right decisions.
I understand how many people are comforted a little by the idea that everything is about luck or privilege. Some people would rather not believe that their bad decisions may have played a part in whatever situation they are in. Other people are committed to bringing down the current system, so they cannot accept any narrative whereby success or failure is in the hands of the individual. I donât really know what the mega rich tell themselves about their success. But they are such a tiny percentage of the population that they are just statistical outliers, and irrelevant to any discussion about how most people should plan their lives.
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Of course itâs a significant factor. Itâs just not the most significant factor.
It would be virtually impossible for someone born into a family of billionaires to screw up badly enough that they would end up losing everything and living on the street. By the same token, the most brilliant and hard-working subsistence farmer in Namibia probably isnât going to spend their sunset years living in comfort and luxury.
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But you are talking about outliers, and their situation is irrelevant to the majority of people, especially as the article was about Americans.
It wasnât meant to be sarcastic. My own reasoning was flawed there. Thank you for pointing that out.
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Itâs not just true for the people at the extremes though. If youâre born poor, youâre likely to remain poor. If youâre born rich, youâre likely to remain rich. If youâre born in a middle-class family youâre likely to remain in the middle class.
Obviously there is some degree of upward and downward mobility, but if anything itâs the people who BREAK the cycle of wealth/poverty who are the outliers. For every ârags to richesâ story (or âriches to ragsâ story) there are countless âstaying in the same social class I was born intoâ stories.
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Because they were as classist as the fee paying schools. Your chance of getting in increased the more white and middle class your family was, helped by an exam that was biased in favour of those groups. Comprehensive schools were broken in many ways, but going back to the old system would not be a real world improvement.
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I hear that a lot; but the local grammar schools to me are dominated by Tamils.
Asian families, with their (quite correct, albeit potentially emotionally damaging) emphasis on education, figure out the scholastic system quick damn smart, and get their kids to the top of the pile.
The comprehensive system I saw was stuffed with glue sniffing thugs. Iâve never made up my mind if that was good preparation for the realities of commerce, or prison.
Itâs also specifically the Horatio Alger mythology thatâs a foundational myth here. Itâs completely, uncritically accepted.
It all seems so unlikely, given how much people were freaking out about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour here in California. The local newspaper just pointed out that working 40 hours a week, that was only about $200 a month more than the average cost of a studio apartment locally, i.e. still not even remotely a living wage.
Your whole example is based on the assumptions of privilege, though. Having parents educated enough (and with enough time) to help you with your homework when you were a child. Having a stable enough family life that you had a safe, consistent home where you could actually do your homework. Not being afraid to go back to school after being sexually assaulted by other students. Not having parents so dysfunctional that youâd regularly have to stay home from school to take care of your siblings/your parents. Having a family that considered an education something worth getting (and not a luxury that âpeople like youâ couldnât afford and wouldnât benefit from). Not having to work full time to help support your family. My sister taught at a school where at least several of those things (and too often all of them) werenât true for every single student. And those are just the things that would make it hard to actually graduate from high school. Then thereâs not having to work full time and take out ruinously expensive student loans to be able to afford to go to college (that youâll be paying back your whole life), etc. In the US, at any point in oneâs life, a big one is: not getting seriously ill. Most Americans are one serious illness away from being homeless.
I mean, FFS.
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He also seems to think Dunhills and a disposable lighter are icons of wealth. I mean, I appreciate Dunhills but theyâre not that expensive.
And whatâs with the bear? I had a fling with a British camp counselor whoâd been mistakenly assigned to our otherwise all-boys camp; she had a bear that had been accidentally doused in Paco Rabanne and was named thusly, so every time I see the name or smell the scent I think of a plush bear and humid summer nights broken by sudden thunderstorms
and boobs
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Not trying to rile up any theological fight , but⌠It is interesting that most of our ancient traditional wisdoms warn people to not forget to be grateful for their fortune⌠and to reflect on how at least some of the credit goes to something beyond themselvesâŚ
Thats a lot like the advice given in the articleâŚ
One of Frankâs broad goals is to figure out how to get wealthy, fortunate people in particular to understand that good fortune is part of why they are where they are â in his view, that might help spur the sorts of more egalitarian policies many of them have traditionally, and vociferously, opposed.
He pointed out that, in his experience, telling rich people theyâre lucky tends to be a surefire way to evoke defensiveness (Fox Businessâs Varney is a pretty compelling example). If, on the other hand, you ask them to come up with times when they were lucky, Frank believes it often gets them thinking about their own life and the path they took to get where they are. Everyone who is successful can point to some way in which they were lucky â they will always have some kind of answer, and it might spur them to think about the concept in a new, helpful way.
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