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There is more to succeeding in life than individual effort.
Before anyone starts, let me state in my reply that at age 53, I'm in a comfortable place in life. My law practice--which I established about 25 years ago--gives me a six figure income. I am not a bum, who sits in front of the t.v. complaining about successful people waiting for my welfare check to arrive. On the contrary, my take-home income, this month, is likely greater than what many people earn in a year.
The factors that successful people leave out of the equation in these discussions are these:
1. Timing. Someone born as an early baby boomer (1945 to 1955) had a statistically better shot at success than a later baby boomer (like I am), a Generation Xer, or a Millenial. People investing their money in the stock market during certain years were guaranteed easy returns. Those doing so in the 1980's and from 2000 to 2010 had a rougher time of it. I list timing first because it is usually the most overlooked quality when people try to explain the success of one person and the failure of another.
2. Background. Those coming from homes that did not value education or skilled jobs training are going to have a tougher time of it than those coming from backgrounds that do.
3. Health. This is a very overlooked factor. However, diseases like insulin-dependent diabetes and bi-polar depression take their toll on large segments of the population. Most of these people have huge handicaps to overcome and to even argue the playing field is level for them shows an appalling level of ignorance. Healthy people get cancer. Healthy people die or become disabled due to heart disease and strokes. The consequences of this can be overwhelming to young children reared in such families.
4. Race. Yes, tell me its irrelevant. Tell me it doesn't matter. The opinions of white people saying that minorities don't experience discrimination are barely worth hearing. If you believe racial and color barriers don't hold large segments of people back than I have a bridge to sell you.
5. Sex. This one is fortunately starting to disappear. However, its been a very real reason why there are large numbers of old impoverished women surviving on small social security checks. Women still only earn about 80 cents on the dollar compared to what a man earns.
6. Cost of Education. My state has comparatively low tuition. Yet, a student earning a Bachelor's Degree will pay $3500 a semester currently. If you can borrow the money for tuition you saddle yourself with huge student debts. If you can't you don't go to college. The US Department of Labor statistics still indicate that a college degree is the most important factor in America in terms of increasing earning power. Children who have parents who can help out with tuition (as mine helped me and as I have helped my own son) are at a great advantage compared to those who don't.
7. Innate intelligence, maturity, and other qualities. This gets into the argument over whether "nature" or "nuture" is more important. It is clear to me at this point in my life that some people are simply born with gifts that others do not have. I think the ability to do higher level mathematics and succeed in a field like engineering is often an innate quality. One can improve math skills by study. However, unless one has a certain baseline level to do advanced math, all the study in the world may not help. Some people just don't have these qualities at birth and I wonder--from a moral standpoint--how reasonable it is for society to deny them rewards and opportunities based upon this?
Ultimately, none of this excuses people just giving up and refusing to try to improve their lot in life. Its a great deal more complicated than someone would have us believe though.
If you've succeeded in life, great. Just give credit where credit is due and recognize others may have not have had the same qualities and opportunities you had. Or, they may have had those opportunities and squandered them. Its a very complicated world.
You cannot afford anything you you like, even though you work harder than most and deserve more!
Being poor is like a vicious cycle, it's extremley hard to get out of, despite what people say.
First of all, no one has gotten rich without working hard, so let's just say that that is a requirement for picking one's self up out of poverty.
Many of the other things are variable, like:
1. Getting a good education. Now I am sorry if you attended a substandard school, but you should have known in the first grade that you were behind the kids who attended the elite private school and worked hard to catch up so you could have attended that Ivy League school on a full scholarship.
2. You should have spent your summers as a kid in academic enrichment programs. I know both of your parents probably worked full time, but you could have packed a lunch and taken two buses to get there. Any 10 year old should have the skills to read a bus schedule and a route map. By the time you were 16 you should have been interning at your dad's or mom's work and volunteering in the animal shelter so you could have something to put on your college essays.
3. One more thing: make sure that you are white. It makes bootstrapping so much easier if you are not bogged down in the negative stereotypes people have of people of color.
Hahaa anyone who thinks a worthless POS paper/certificate will make them rich is obviously well beyond their head.
Lets face it, the rich profit from the poor being poor.
And that's the way it is. Poor and poverty line grade of people outnumber the 'well off' and really I think it's time to blame the system. Not the individuals.
You're obviously highly intelligent and anyone who makes into medical school generally fits that category. None of the qualities I've outlined preclude success. However, if you are familiar with correlation, I could correlate lower earnings with each of the qualities that I enumerated. There will always be exceptions to every rule. However, if only one or two people out of 100, or even 10, manage to earn a decent living for themselves than we need to look at the system itself.
Ultimately, there are those who try to understand a given situation and those who simply choose to ignore it.
I don't recollect him asking for advice, but there is always room for little bit of narcissistic bootstrapping, so don't be shy. I guess the only hope is for the poor to become "personally responsible" that's, in its turn, should trigger social revolution as no other in human history.
What would that social revolution accomplish? Of which groups would it consist? What would be its goals?
BS, pure unadulterated BS. Do you leave your gated bunker community at all?
You are clueless. I live in a low SES area, and yes, 85% of the poor people in this town have exactly those things, if not more. They are the same ones who are drawing every public dollar that you can imagine, free school lunch programs, CHIP, WIC, you name it. And you have nooooooo idea how much under-the-table cash is thrown around that never gets accounted for in these poverty statistics. Come and live in my world for awhile, and I guarantee you that your eyes would be opened- big time.
I am willing to admit I am not doing what it takes to get farther ahead than I am.
I am willing to admit my willingness to take risks and put myself out farther than I have...well, I am not going there anymore.
I am willing to admit that whatever it is I don't have is because I don't want to work for it. I have reached the limits of my comfort zone, I am exhausted, and I have all the brass ring I am planning to get off my butt to get.
Have the balls to admit the same. Instead of whining like the op or egging on the small-minded entitled folk out there that think they got cheated out of something.
Is this self-help forum or economics forum i.e. forum dealing with systematic social issues. Again, bootstrappers paint realistic individualsolutions as universal social panacea. It just doesn't work that way in a hierarchical socioeconomic pyramid built around "winners" taking advantage of the "losers' " desperation and survival instincts (in addition to simple dispossession of the losers, when winners appropriate bulk of the formerly common resources required for physical survival).
OK, if we to assume that each and every poor individual embrace your suggestions, what's next? First, it's plainly obvious, that people peddling drugs (including legal ones), alcohol, mass cult etc. to the poor (seeking to escape their perpetual state of stress and status anxiety) would lose significant share of their income (and it could be YOU, btw). Let's even assume that the money poor saved will be invested in "education" and proper professional labeling. So what? What's next? The only difference - each janitor and homeless will have BS as the very least. Of course, it would be much more difficult for the propagandists to blame the poor for their lot, but I'm pretty sure they'll find a way.
You are clueless. I live in a low SES area, and yes, 85% of the poor people in this town have exactly those things, if not more. They are the same ones who are drawing every public dollar that you can imagine, free school lunch programs, CHIP, WIC, you name it. And you have nooooooo idea how much under-the-table cash is thrown around that never gets accounted for in these poverty statistics. Come and live in my world for awhile, and I guarantee you that your eyes would be opened- big time.
I'm kinda sure that you just paraphrased what you've heard from somebody who heard from somebody else who has a third cousin living lavishly (allegedly) on a public dime. You don't really know (personally) what it takes to draw every public dollar, especially if you are a single childless male. GOOD freaking LUCK to just survive somehow if you have no family that gives a dime.
A woman I know, recently described being poor while growing up. They lived in a shanty near a railroad track some of the time. 4 horses got on the tracks and were killed by a train. Someone butchered those animals, passing out the meat to those who wanted it. It's the only time this woman remembers eating meat during those years. She's never been able to tolerate meat as an adult. After the age of 9, her mother and 6 siblings moved to southern Alabama where the first lived in a one room house with a lean-to holding some kitchen needs. She never knew but what they would be moving the next day and always kept her box handy. She opted not to have children, realizing there would be more of a chance to escape without them. She is now 60. She began saving to own a home as soon as she made enough on her first jobs and her first one was a mobile home. It wasn't long before she had a mortgage on a frame house where she lives today with it fully paid for. She hasn't had to move for many years.
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