SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.
---
---
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...