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Hard work is often touted as the key American virtue that leads to success and opportunity. And there's lots of evidence to suggest that workers buy into the belief: For example, a recent study found that Americans work 25 percent more hours than Europeans, and that U.S. workers tend to take fewer vacation days and retire later in life. But for many, simply working hard doesn't actually lead to a better life.
In the past, economists have acknowledged that citing hard work as the path to prosperity is overly simplistic and optimistic. Ultimately, whether hard work alone can lift people into better economic conditions is a more complex question. The formula only works if an individual's efforts are met with opportunities for a better life. According to research, it's getting harder and harder for Americans to move up the income ladder.
A new poll from the Strong, Prosperous and Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC), an initiative to bolster local economies, found that Americans are quite skeptical of the narrative connecting wealth with personal agency. SPARCC found that 74 percent of those surveyed believed that most poor people work hard, but aren't able to work their way out of poverty due to the lack of economic opportunities. In the U.S., 19 percent of income inequality is attributed to predetermined circumstances such as a person's race, gender, and parental income. The SPARCC report also points to past research showing that economic mobility and health outcomes are greatly affected by geography as evidence that individual hard work won't ensure success because opportunities aren't evenly distributed.
The hard-work argument also plays into the policy discussion around inequality. As Katharine Bradbury and Robert Triest, both economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, write:
Increased inequality may result from increased risk taking and entrepreneurship in an environment of rapid technological change, with some entrepreneurs producing better, or just luckier, innovations than others, and reaping greater rewards. It may also result from increased disparities in work effort, with more industrious individuals earning higher incomes as a result of their greater effort. In both these cases, one could argue convincingly that the increase in inequality is justified and that no remedial changes in public policy are needed. On the other hand, if the increase in inequality results mostly from factors largely beyond the ability of individuals to control or counteract, then a strong case can be made for a public policy response.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:24PM (24 children)
A huge factor seems to be simply being in the right place at the right time.
If it had not been for World War II, would even Einstein or Oppenheimer have been recognized?
The best bosses I have ever had got their respect through the excellence of their work. They knew their stuff and weren't afraid to teach.
The worst bosses I ever had were people hired out of training institutions. All they knew was the "leadership" skill of intimidation. They did not know their technical stuff, and knew the people who did only represented a threat, so he would use any power delegated to him to retard the group by restricting access to needed stuff.
Even rarer yet was those investors with the organizational skills to place leadership skills over technical skills. Soon, all we could do is make presentations, shake hands, and sign contracts. No one knew how to actually implement what we promised the customer, but we did know how to word a contract so we got paid anyway.
(Score: 2, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:29PM (12 children)
True. A lot of people like to call that luck but they're largely wrong. Being able to see where and when the right time and place will be ahead of time means you don't need luck.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:06PM (5 children)
Right, I'm sure that a random tribal African has exactly the same opportunity as the progeny of a billionaire. If the later makes it to the top, it's entirely by virtue of their character, and if the former didn't, it's because of their moral failings.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:07PM (3 children)
It's their tough luck is what it is. The world never has been and never will be anything remotely resembling fair.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:40PM (1 child)
Buzzard... Can you go more than one post deep without contradicting yourself?
>>True. A lot of people like to call that luck but they're largely wrong.
And one reply later
>> It's their tough luck is what it is. The world never has been and never will be anything remotely resembling fair.
So is it luck or isnt it? (spoiler: It is 100% luck all the way down)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:55PM
It's luck when they do it. It's skill when I do it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:41PM
Well those people should make their own jobs! Opportunity is waiting, and didn't you hear about the millions of jobs we can't find qualified workers for?
Haha, man the propaganda machine is amazing. Turn the US into a modern day serfdom and even sell it aad the fault of the serfs!!! GENIUS!
But who would really buy that simplistic bootstrap bullcrap when the real world evidence is literally all around us?????
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:35PM
The definition of "top" varies on the perspective of the individual.
People are different. The Pirahã [wikipedia.org] people are a typical example. They're a partially isolated people who 'we' have made contact with. People have tried to teach them and offer them technology repeatedly and it never amounts to anything. People will teach them to make canoes which greatly improve their lives - the canoes fail and they float around on pieces of bark instead of repairing them or making new ones. They don't even have a notion of numbers in their language, let alone writing. Water wheels? Let's not even go there. These people have reached the "top" in their mind even when people have repeatedly tried to let them move far beyond what they currently have.
I think people never really consider that culture is a big part of what helps people advance, or retards their development. Many places in Africa still have slavery [wikipedia.org] for instance even though the vast majority of other cultures realized this was the wrong direction centuries ago. It's not the lack of medicine and solar cells that's stopping these people from advancing but their own cultures. When they do advance they absolutely should be granted every opportunity available, but I think implying the reason for the lack of advancement in many places around the world is a lack of resources (which is essentially what those billions of dollars represent) is rather missing the point.
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Now the interesting thing is that though some may label this as some sort of ism or obia, we can also apply it equally to ourselves. I think it is safe to say that if there are any advanced species aware of us, it may be likely that they've chosen to make their presence aware for the exact same reason. Our problem is not a lack of access to their goodies and technologies, but ourselves and our collective culture. We still attack and label each other for having different views and even kill each other when we get emotional enough, or greedy enough. We silence words we don't like to hear and value profit over progress. We have our own problems to overcome. And so do other cultures. Perhaps it's time we spend a bit more time looking inward and give others the opportunity to do so, of their own accord, as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:32PM (5 children)
You're full of shit as always Buzzy. That works for a portion of the population, but it doesn't work for everybody. There's literally not enough high paying jobs for that to work out.
Seriously, there are fewer living wage jobs than there are people who need to earn a living wage, let alone people who want to get ahead. I'm guessing that you must sleep really well at night, because ignorance is bliss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:30PM (4 children)
You would think he sleeps well at night based on his apparent conviction, but his brain isn't worthless so his subconscious is busy ticking away. I'm guessing he's living a sort of constant existential crisis where his Ego fights against his Id, ignoring reality and doing its best to rationalize his egotistical beliefs. Eventually it will fail, hopefully before it results in a massive breakdown that ruins his life. Or he could get "lucky" and be one of those old guys that looks around with a certain hunger in their eye and shits on everyone else dying "happy" by bringing a misery to others that he doesn't realize comes from within himself.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:32PM (3 children)
He's just a sociopath, full stop. A normal, healthy human being with a functioning set of mirror neurons simply does not believe these things. I'm just glad to see this forum finally hitting critical mass on Chief Shitting Bull here and giving him en masse what I've been doing all alone for months. Took a while, but he's finally getting his comeuppance.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:53PM (2 children)
Based on TMB's comments in the recent electric motorcycle thread, I'm wondering if he isn't a loner version of a biker (Hell's Angels style).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:08PM (1 child)
He is a liar, or a troll who lies for the lulz.
He has spouted off about running his own business and saying his employees like him in order to prove some point, then he claims to be an employee somewhere not weeks later. For all we know this site is just a pet PR project of the NSA/CIA! haha hmmmmm
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:35PM
If he were lying about that that wouldn't surprise me, but that's small potatoes compared to the real problem IMO...which is that he's a total sociopath. Almost a textbook case. Since he's not physically here in front of me I can't sense it through the air like with the other socio/psychopaths I've run into (horrible, it's like they're surrounded by this corrosive, rusty cloud...) but the words alone are enough. They feel entirely sincere, too; when he's at his worst he is truly, as it is written, speaking from the fullness of his heart.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:37PM
Wrong example.
Both of them were recognized even before WWII.
Letting Einstein aside (do I need to make the case for him?), you have:
Born-Oppemheimer approximation [wikipedia.org] in quantum chemistry - 1927
Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit [wikipedia.org] - mass limits for neutron stars - 1939
On Continued Gravitational Contraction [aps.org] - 1939- predicts the existence of black-holes - had he lived long enough, he'd be a Nobel prize winner for this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:32PM (8 children)
Einstein had quite terrible luck. His initial applications to university were at a young age but that is something that was not particularly atypical for the time. He was rejected. Following his admittance after continuing his basic education and later graduation he was unable, two years, to find any academic post that would have him. He ended up left working as an assistant patent examiner - a job he was only really able to find thanks to a friend of a friend relationship. Much of his early work was laid out in this situation. His works alone is what would eventually propel him to 'scientific stardom'. And of course during his early life he was constantly country hopping and developing all sorts of strategies to avoid conscription.
If anything really changed his life, it was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment). That experiment is what led more or less directly to the discovery of relativity which is what would propel Einstein to immortality. But again Michelson-Morley was in 1887, when Einstein was 8 years old. Einstein's first publication on relativity was in 1905. So it's not like he just happened to be the first to grab onto something that anybody of fine intelligence could have given comparable circumstance. [soylentnews.org]
If there was ever an argument for the success of merit over condition, Einstein would be it.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:00PM (7 children)
I would say he got enough brains such that he could succeed even as a patent clerk..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:52PM (6 children)
I'd absolutely agree, but that's another topic altogether. It's also one that I think is really bizarre in American politics. Both sides seem to be logically broken.
- The right tend to argue that people are inherently unequal yet everybody can improve their position in their lives if they just try a bit harder.
- The left tend to argue that all people are inherent equal yet we need to provide protections for any not doing well.
If we're all equal then it's true that your results are simply a matter of your own personal effort and work. The white pieces or black pieces in a chess game don't win because of any inherent difference in the pieces, but because they were used more effectively. Complete equality is a great argument for more of a dog-eat-dog style system. On the other hand if we're inherently unequal then that's the exact opposite situation: some individuals, no matter their effort, would never be able to effectively compete against other individuals. That is a strong argument towards providing special treatment and care for those who have shown themselves unable to otherwise achieve success in society.
We can even see the sad results of this play out in reality. Individuals who would not score particularly highly on IQ exams work themselves to the bone convinced that one day they'll get their just deserves - which they never do. And on the other side of things we have individuals demanding government enforced equality in areas where that seems to be the only possible way to achieve equality, even all the while claiming everybody is indeed completely equal in every way. It's quite bizarre.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:43PM (4 children)
People are not equal, but the governement should treat people equally under the law. There are intrinsic factors (genetics, work ethic, etc.) and extrinsic factors (parental income, location, etc.) that contribute to people not being equal. Equal opportunity is about trying to level the playing field by making up for negative extrinsic factors (ESL classes, financial aid for college, etc.).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:23PM
I am pretty sure this just wooshed past anyone who dislikes "liberals" because it relies on details that are annoying to have to consider and deal with. Most humans just want the easy blanket answers that don't require much thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:40PM (2 children)
I think most of everybody on all sides would agree with working towards equality of opportunity even if the proposed means of doing so might be different.
Where things get weird is what I actually mentioned in my post: enforced equality of result. Companies can be sued for hiring too many "blues" or not enough "greens" or paying "oranges" more than "purples" or other such ways where any group ends up with a better outcome all the while arguing that everybody is equal. For instance the gender gap is just completely illogical. If I can hire a woman who can otherwise perform identically to a man for let's say 7 units of money whereas it costs me 9 units of money to hire a man - I'm going to hire literally nothing but women. I mean at this point just about everybody has heard of the alleged wage gap. Yet it's strange. Look at just about every successful company. For some reason they're keeping those allegedly overpriced males around. If you assume rough equality in this case you're left, almost immediately, with numerous logical contradictions.
To be fair, let's also pick on the right. The argument against ensuring a livable wage is that people should just get better jobs. There's a lot of ways to refute this but to keep it on theme let's drag up the right's general embrace of extreme inherent differences between individuals. A common statistic being thrown about is the abysmal performance on IQ tests by "pinks" that leaves many in the mentally challenged range. Yet "pinks" also tend to be heavily overrepresented in the sub livable wage jobs. So their argument ends up appealing the competence of groups they view as incompetent. Again the logic doesn't really work there without some mental gymnastics or going full sociopath.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:18AM (1 child)
For instance the gender gap is just completely illogical. If I can hire a woman who can otherwise perform identically to a man for let's say 7 units of money whereas it costs me 9 units of money to hire a man - I'm going to hire literally nothing but women.
The problem is that the person who pays a woman 7 units instead of 9 honestly believes the man is more valuable, often for illogical reasons and might actually believe the woman is only worth 5 units so is overpaying at 7 units. Bigotry is not logical.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @08:39AM
Yet is seems no person pays a woman 7 units instead of 9 and in fact they will rather hire an unqualified woman than a qualified man [theguardian.com] because most companies don't require entry level employees to be top of the crop but they are required to maintain a better gender ratio. For no reason but to placate the next moron who says 'bigotry' to get some vagina credit.
(Score: 2) by TK on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:39PM
Did you really use a chess analogy? White has an advantage [wikipedia.org] because that player goes first.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 12 2017, @11:49PM
> If it had not been for World War II, would even Einstein or Oppenheimer have been recognized?
Special Relativity : 1905
General Relativity : 1907-1915
Yup, this shit's over a hundred years old.