Glass half empty or half full, we all can agree that not everyone's glasses are the same size.
Correct. Many of us here are privileged and don't realise it. This is usually responded to with indignant howls of "but I work so hard!" But "privilege" or lack of it doesn't mean you don't work hard or do, it simply affects how much you'll get out of your hard work.
Anyone involved with sports knows that there exist "natural athletes" - the person with a big vertical jump and who can simply watch a movement and reproduce it well. This is why in my gym we'll get women who after 3 months of training squat 60kg, and others who squat 100kg. All of them show up every time and lift, but some simply get more out of their 39 sessions in 13 weeks than do others. They have talent.
Likewise people with a degree of privilege. The other day in the paper there was a young guy, son of a very wealthy family, talking about the apps he'd made and sold, and he proudly said "my parents never gave me a cent." He'd gone to Geelong Grammar, a school which costs about $37k a year - so his parents had spent the equivalent of a full-time minimum wage before tax on his education every year. What a cleaner or waitress working full-time (few do) earns in 13 years had gone on his education (there was no mention of if he'd gone to university). Not on;y this excellent education, but of course places like that have a lot of other privileged kids who can introduce you to people to invest in your work; this is why so many of the leading CEOs, high court judges and so on come from just a few schools.
"My parents never gave me a cent." They didn't have to. The kid worked hard - but because he had that start with an excellent education and knowing the right people to help him make things happen, he got a lot more out of his work than would a son of a single-mum part-time casual cleaner, the son who'd gone to a state school in Woop Woop.
Yes, if you're earning $40k you can save half of it. But then you're missing out on a lot of things, and not the things you miss out on when you're getting $100k and save half of it, more vital things. And you're relying on nothing going wrong for 20 years or so - no hospital visits, no sudden evictions, no deadbeat brothers-in-law who need a loan but will never pay it back, no periods of unemployment, and so on.
A lower income does allow saving, but a lower income is more fragile. And lower-income jobs tend to be less secure. People with lower incomes have more frequent and longer periods of unemployment than do those with higher incomes. This was a point missed by Geelong Grammar App Boy - sure, his parents didn't invest in his apps. But if it all failed miserably he wouldn't end up on the street. He had the freedom to take the risk of a big fuckup, a freedom that his Woop Woop State School son of a part-time casual cleaner peer wouldn't have.
I am acutely aware of these issues because I grew up poor, but am now doing well. I was able to do a career change and start a small business because of my wife doing a full-time professional job; she gave me the security, the fallback in case the risk turned out bad. I could have done it without her, but it would have been much harder, and the risks of failure would have been much greater. As someone who has literally slept on the street at one point, I am acutely aware of what "risk of failure" means for some people. The change and the business worked and now we're doing well.
This is why MMM speaks of giving to charity. Those of us who have more have a responsibility to give so that others may have opportunities like ours. Part of this is accomplished by taxation, which pays for public schools and so on, but whatever your politics, most can agree this is less efficient and effective than it might be, and so we should give to charities.
Originally the definition of "middle class" was "well-off to hire servants." In the Third World it's considered a social obligation (as well as a sign of status), so this is why you'll get a single professional in Beijing, Manila or Nairobi with a tiny apartment - but they have a maid. You have a lot, now you should pass it on. In the West few people have full-time servants, but some of us have businesses and we can hire people for them, and all of us have all sorts of jobs we can hire people for occasionally. In Judaism as in many faiths, charity is a duty, and the best charity is giving someone a job.
it's just plain evil to teach people they can't possibly succeed when it's been proven that people can.
Saying that some people will find success more difficult and requiring more luck than others is not saying that success is impossible for some people.
Americans are terrible at nuance and degree.
"I'm against the death penalty."
"What?! So we should just let them all go?!"
"I'm in favour of the death penalty."
"What?! So we should execute people for jaywalking?!"
Nuance. Subtlety. Degrees of this and that. Set aside this lazy black & white thinking and contend with what people have actually said: nothing is impossible, but some things are harder than others. "Well, just work harder." Yes, that works. But some people still need to be lucky.
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