Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Same goalposts. Different view of the field.

re: Same goalposts. Different view of the field.
TB — (archived)

Every attempt in history to eliminate poverty by destroying wealth has simply created equality of poverty.

Your premise was that the rich in this country all basically started out that way. This is not true. You then moved on to show that, well, all the rich started out at least middle-class, or not poverty-stricken.

We could go on like that all day. It's interesting on how flexible the bar for "middle class" becomes in discussions like this, or discussions on taxation.

I have known a number of entrepreneurs. Some became rich. A lot didn't. I don't know much about their family backgrounds. I do know that all of them worked their goddam asses off, and most who succeeded did so only after more than one failure.

This is called "earning it." Several of them were college dropouts (so was Bill Gates, come to think of it.) I only knew one or two well enough to know how they did in regular school, and it was only average.

At some point it has to be acknowledged that success can be a matter of luck, or birth, but often it's a matter of the choices somebody makes. Initiative is not easy to sustain, and giving up and blaming others for your failures is much easier.

Education has its problems, but we put men on the Moon with a lot of people who were originally taught in one-room schoolhouses. At some point, maybe the issue is not so much resources, as methodology.

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