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The local plumbers around here charge $150/hour. Customers must be super-nice to them & offer them milk & cookies if they ever want the plumber for follow-on business.
These days they have to pay Google Search or venue which pass them prospective clients,fee is 15-25,if the client does not hire you,you stlll have to pay.
they dont get overtime pay working on weekend,and they dont charge for visit.
yes having good parents and even better wealthy parents gives you an advantage. but crying about other people being born into great situations doesn't make your life any better.
but people make one terrible decision after another and then cry about being poor. buying junk they don't need, having no meaningful skills or education and ESPECIALLY having kids at a young age they can't afford. sure if you have rich parents you can do these dumb things and be ok but who cares. that doesnt mean if someone does them and ends up dirt poor it isn't their fault.
hard work while nice and all is also overrated. working smart and efficiently is a lot more important. if 2 people work just as smart and efficiently as each other but one works a lot harder he will be the better employee. but merely working hard (with exceptions for very few jobs) doesn't make you worth a lot of money in the real world.
You're missing the point, that being we want people to simply check their privilege and stop pretending as though they didn't have advantages in life to get them where they're at now, instead of shaming poor/disadvantaged folks for not being as lucky.
You're missing the point, that being we want people to simply check their privilege and stop pretending as though they didn't have advantages in life to get them where they're at now, instead of shaming poor/disadvantaged folks for not being as lucky.
Assuming that what you write is true and that people "check their privilege," how is that going to make your or anyone else's life better?
There are no guarantees in life. However, if one is young and in decent health there are numerous opportunities to begin building a better life no matter what the current state of economic conditions is at present. I have seen young people start with a discarded lawn mower sitting at the curb, soliciting homes in the neighborhood to cut their lawn for $20 and then growing their neighborhood lawn business into an extensive landscaping business with top notch equipment within 2 or 3 years where they had a small crew working for them.
I personally know people who scraped together $500 to take a RE licensing course and then worked 80 hours a week after getting licensed and within a couple of years they were earning over $100,000 a year with no college education. A few years later they had a team of people working for them and were making $250,000 a year. They continue to work very hard but they are now considered "rich" by many viewing from the outside who have degrees and earn significantly less money.
There are many ways to gain the knowledge and skills needed to succeed including college, trade school, apprentice programs and trial and error from hard work. If the area one lives in limits one's opportunities then there are countless areas in the US (and the world) to move to that offer better alternatives. For those whose age, health or a physical disability places limits on certain types of work there are many agencies, public and private that are willing to help.
You're missing the point, that being we want people to simply check their privilege and stop pretending as though they didn't have advantages in life to get them where they're at now, instead of shaming poor/disadvantaged folks for not being as lucky.
Soooo.... you don't want to change anyone's behaviour. You want to change how people think.
Being the daughter and grandson of top level official in a federal government agency who owned and inheritedna lot of land atop oil and uranium, *PLUS* being the son of a senior engineer in the oil industry who can afford to just give $250K away certainly makes one rich compared to 99% of people.
But you keep on licking those boots while defending these privileged individuals.
If the only people you know that are “rich” as a result of having well off parents, then you must not know that many rich people.
Those so-called bootstrappers almost always have some type of intrinsic advantage that helped him to become wealthy/successful, but they intentionally gloss over it because it goes against the idea that they earned
/achieved what they have all by themselves.
Exhibit A:
If only the rest of us were smart enough to be born to parents who could afford to have us mooch off them as adults.
First of all my father on the best years made $17K/year in the early 2000's. But I guess me stating that grew up in the poorest income quintile didn't fit YOUR narrative so you left out that part and only stated I lived with my parents to save money. Fact is, I chose to live with them in a poor ghetto neighborhood (while helping them with their bills), sacrificed my dating/social life in my early 20's when most people need those aspects and got ahead. Apparently, all you anti bootstrappers only mention "luck" or "advantage" when it fits your agenda. How about the fact that you were lucky enough to be born in a country that offers one of the highest probabilities on the entire planet to get ahead if you are poor? Why do you leave that part of luck out? Obviously it wouldn't fit your agenda of "self pity" and "poor me" to state that you were LUCKY enough born in a country where you have the highest probability to succeed and you still failed. You have zero clue in regards to what an actual system that inherently keeps people down looks like. Hint: that type of system is not present in the US.
BTW the other point you anti-bootstrappers make is also moot. I'm talking about "oh some people don't have the mental capacity to be anything but below average financially." First of all, that statement is just plain silly. Should a 4'10" midget be entitled to an NBA career regardless of their ability in that skill? Of course not. If you are hindered by your intellectual capacity that's just tough. Why should someone like that get an above average lifestyle with below average skills? Thats just silly. They should of course have the rights to the basics: Shelter, food, medical care etc. But that's it.
More importantly, even if you are a below average you can be moderately successful if you follow the principle of bootstrappers. My wife is a perfect example. She has never made more then $15K/year. But she listened to me on not spending her money on silly things that many people regardless of income class waste their money on. She didn't go on regular shopping spree with her friends, she doesn't eat out all the time, she doesn't spend money every month on getting her hair/nails done etc. So she has been able to pay for a brand new car in cash and has a sizeable savings. In fact, by the time she hits 50 she will have a networth that's higher then the median networth of the group that is number #1 in that category (62-70 with $260K these are the approximate numbers). Wow who knew that you can make more money 12-18 years earlier on a $15K income then the richest group in the USA in terms of networth. I for one knew because unlike those of you that want to complain about how "its everyone else's fault but your own" I know its possible to make something of yourself regardless of your socioeconomic background.
Last edited by griffon652; 10-26-2020 at 02:56 AM..
It's also called DEPENDING ON YOUR PARENTS to pay for things for you ... although you are writing as if you did it all on your own. How much rent were you paying them? How much for groceries, utilities, etc.? I would not be surprised if you came back now and said "oh of course I paid them" but that will be hard to believe since you did not mention that at all in your post.
And before you say "She [i] must be one of the whiners," I am basically in the same position as you, having gone from a lower-middle-class upbringing to being at least upper-middle-class now, but I don't attribute it all to myself (even though, UNLIKE you, I did not get anything from my parents after I finished high school -- it's a totally bizarre notion to me that they would support me after that, as YOUR PARENTS did to some extent). There was a lot of LUCK involved (which you don't mention at all), plus simply thinking that some things were too stupid to do (like getting pregnant at 16), so I didn't do them. And yes, I worked very hard. But it takes MUCH more than that to "make it" in this "land of opportunity." (And I always found it puzzling that we expect the MOST out of those who start with the LEAST. If they don't "succeed," it's all their own fault -- which is an utterly ridiculous statement.)
I'm not going to write an essay about my life in every post. I have mentioned many times in the past that my parents made less then $17K/year their entire life in the 2000's. I have mentioned that "living with them" meant living in the ghetto and in a small apartment where I could not have a social life. I mentioned that they taught me nothing about the system in America because they knew nothing since they were immigrants. I literally taught myself everything I know. I had no connections, no advantage or any "leg up" on anything. Furthermore, I not only helped them with their bills when I stayed with them because my father worked less because of his old age; I only had a chance to "live with them for 3 years from 21-24." After that my father could not work so I took them into my house and paid all their bills and my little sisters. So yeah I think I more then made up for "living with them" by supporting 3 adults on one income for years. There is a lot more but like I said, I'm not going to write an essay for every post. By the way I see you conveniently ignored the part of my post that does not fit your agenda. Why did you ignore the part of my post about the $40 in haircuts. I don't know anyone poor who gets their own haircut. They could save time and money by doing this and are virtually guaranteed to make over $200K by this one savings measure. But because they choose to stay ignorant regarding financial education and other skills that us bootstrappers use, they only see that they are "doing everything right but not getting ahead" when nothing could be further from the truth.
As I said to the previous poster; people like you that think the US has an unfair system as far as social mobility have no clue as to what actual inequality looks like. The bootstappers that made it understand the value of hard work and how good we have it in the US compared to the rest of the planet. Ironically, its people like you who complain about how "unfair" the system in the US is that are the most coddled, sheltered and ignorant in terms of how hard it is to succeed in "the real world." And by the real world I mean those countries where you literally have no chance of success no matter of smart, talented or hard working you are.
I'm not going to write an essay about my life in every post. I have mentioned many times in the past that my parents made less then $17K/year their entire life in the 2000's. I have mentioned that "living with them" meant living in the ghetto and in a small apartment where I could not have a social life.
None of that makes a difference.
You admitted in a prior post that your basic needs were supported by your parents for those 3 years you lived with them, even if they weren't making much. Of course anyone could save a ton of their money with a fairly average job if a similar arrangement was available to them.
Think about individuals who have parents that couldn't/can't even afford to provide for their children's basic necessities. You definitely had an advantage over them.
If the only people you know that are “rich” as a result of having well off parents, then you must not know that many rich people.
Yep, it's a myth that resentful people cling to.
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