sebster wrote:
It's quite amazing that people are arguing that wealth and success is all about luck, or it isn't related to luck at all. There seems to be little consideration that both elements play a part.

I mean, I do pretty well, and yeah I worked to graduate uni, get a professional qualification and work my way through a number of jobs building my resume and skill base. But I also started my career at the beginning of a decade long boom in the state, and that helped me get promoted and helped massively with my early investments. I have younger friends who did everything I did, but they're finding promotions much harder to come by, and are stuck with very high mortgages in a flat property market.

Really, I think the issue is that people tend to see the luck other people had but not their hard work, and tend to credit their own hard work but not their luck. The whole thing becomes a process of self-congratulation, instead of a means of understanding how the world actually works.

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
We'll never legislate our way into a fair world. Something will always be unequal.

False objective. We don't need to create a completely fair world in order to have been successful, we only need to create a more fair world.

And if anyone wants doubts how much more equal the developed world has become, I'd ask them to go and read about the horrific conditions that the bottom of society lived in 100 years ago, especially children. It was common and accepted that dhildren would die of malnutrition, or having lifelong stunted growth and mental development. Now those things are incredibly rare, and never happen through a simple lack of resources. We have produced a much more equal world by building the safety net.

 sebster wrote:
It's quite amazing that people are arguing that wealth and success is all about luck, or it isn't related to luck at all. There seems to be little consideration that both elements play a part.

I mean, I do pretty well, and yeah I worked to graduate uni, get a professional qualification and work my way through a number of jobs building my resume and skill base. But I also started my career at the beginning of a decade long boom in the state, and that helped me get promoted and helped massively with my early investments. I have younger friends who did everything I did, but they're finding promotions much harder to come by, and are stuck with very high mortgages in a flat property market.

Really, I think the issue is that people tend to see the luck other people had but not their hard work, and tend to credit their own hard work but not their luck. The whole thing becomes a process of self-congratulation, instead of a means of understanding how the world actually .

 sebster wrote:
It's quite amazing that people are arguing that wealth and success is all about luck, or it isn't related to luck at all. There seems to be little consideration that both elements play a part.

I mean, I do pretty well, and yeah I worked to graduate uni, get a professional qualification and work my way through a number of jobs building my resume and skill base. But I also started my career at the beginning of a decade long boom in the state, and that helped me get promoted and helped massively with my early investments. I have younger friends who did everything I did, but they're finding promotions much harder to come by, and are stuck with very high mortgages in a flat property market.

Really, I think the issue is that people tend to see the luck other people had but not their hard work, and tend to credit their own hard work but not their luck. The whole thing becomes a process of self-congratulation, instead of a means of understanding how the world actually works.

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
We'll never legislate our way into a fair world. Something will always be unequal.

False objective. We don't need to create a completely fair world in order to have been successful, we only need to create a more fair world.

And if anyone wants doubts how much more equal the developed world has become, I'd ask them to go and read about the horrific conditions that the bottom of society lived in 100 years ago, especially children. It was common and accepted that dhildren would die of malnutrition, or having lifelong stunted growth and mental development. Now those things are incredibly rare, and never happen through a simple lack of resources. We have produced a much more equal world by building the safety net.

 skyth wrote:

 sebster wrote:
It's quite amazing that people are arguing that wealth and success is all about luck, or it isn't related to luck at all. There seems to be little consideration that both elements play a part.

I mean, I do pretty well, and yeah I worked to graduate uni, get a professional qualification and work my way through a number of jobs building my resume and skill base. But I also started my career at the beginning of a decade long boom in the state, and that helped me get promoted and helped massively with my early investments. I have younger friends who did everything I did, but they're finding promotions much harder to come by, and are stuck with very high mortgages in a flat property market.

Really, I think the issue is that people tend to see the luck other people had but not their hard work, and tend to credit their own hard work but not their luck. The whole thing becomes a process of self-congratulation, instead of a means of understanding how the world actually .

I never argued that hard work doesn't matter...I've always said that it has a hygeine effect on success. Success is harder to get without it(it is pretty much required for it) however, you can also work hard and not suceed. Hard work does not guarantee success and I hate the myth that the lower income people are just lazy which is not true.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Interest


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Interesting article...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-4-types-people-welfare-nobody-talks-about/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=SR&utm_campaign=SR&sr_source=lift_facebook

And yes, I know it's Cracked...

Helping people that want to succeed is always worthwhile but unfortunately we typically have govt that tries a one size fits all approach so we help the people that don't care as much as the people that do care so there is always ample fodder for either side to spin to support whatever narrative they want to create.

Prestor Jon wrote:
I don't think anyone is arguing that luck has nothing to do with it. I'm certainly not.

It's rare to find success stories where luck and hard work weren't both involved.

 skyth wrote:
I never argued that hard work doesn't matter...I've always said that it has a hygeine effect on success. Success is harder to get without it(it is pretty much required for it) however, you can also work hard and not suceed. Hard work does not guarantee success and I hate the myth that the lower income people are just lazy which is not true.

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
I can agree with this. I'd rather us move toward a more fair world. There have been several instances where I wasn't rewarded for working hard, or worse, someone else was rewarded. There will always be factors beyond control, and I've learned to let go and not worry about it at night. Good people get the short end of the stick all the time, and it sucks.

 MattofWar wrote:

Helping people that want to succeed is always worthwhile but unfortunately we typically have govt that tries a one size fits all approach so we help the people that don't care as much as the people that do care so there is always ample fodder for either side to spin to support whatever narrative they want to create.

The problem isn't a one size fits all solution at all, the problem is a network of individual means tested programs that take away any incentive to increase one's income. It's this patchwork of programs that people have to navigate to where earning any money on your own can have disastrous effects rather than be rewarded and encouraged.

I say tear it all down and replace it with a guaranteed minimum income for everyone slightly higher than current welfare rates. This idea of paying out $3500 in Switzerland when their welfare rate is around $950 is totally stupid. The first goal should be the alleviation of poverty with a program that doesn't get clawed back when people earn more on their own.

When you say "help the people that don't care as much as the people that do care" I hear more means-tested nonsense that keeps people in poverty. As if we can evaluate how much someone cares and have that be a factor and dump anyone who we don't feel "cares enough."

Starting in 1977, in what became known as the Gautreaux program, hundreds of families relocated to suburban neighborhoods—most of them about 25miles from the ghetto, with very low poverty rates and good public schools. The authorities had screened the families carefully, inspecting their apartments and checking for good credit histories. They didn’t offer the vouchers to families with more than five children, or to those that were indifferent to leaving the projects. They were looking for families “seeking a healthy environment, good schools and an opportunity to live in a safe and decent home.”

A well-known Gautreaux study, released in 1991, showed spectacular results. The sociologist James Rosenbaum at Northwestern University had followed 114 families who had moved to the suburbs, although only 68 were still cooperating by the time he released the study. Compared to former public-housing residents who’d stayed within the city, the suburban dwellers were four times as likely to finish high school, twice as likely to attend college, and more likely to be employed. Newsweek called the program “stunning” and said the project renewed “one’s faith in the struggle.” In a glowing segment, a 60 Minutes reporter asked one Gautreaux boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. “I haven’t really made up my mind,” the boy said. “Construction worker, architect, anesthesiologist.” Another child’s mother declared it “the end of poverty” for her family.

In 1992, 7-year-old Dantrell Davis from the Cabrini-Green project was walking to school, holding his mother’s hand, when a stray bullet killed him. The hand-holding detail seemed to stir the city in a way that none of the other murder stories coming out of the high-rises ever had. “Tear down the high rises,” demanded an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, while that boy’s image “burns in our civic memory.”

HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros was receptive to the idea. He spent a few nights in Chicago’s infamous Robert Taylor Homes and subsequently spoke about “these enclaves of poverty,” where “drug dealers control the stairwells, where children can’t go outside to play, where mothers put their infants to bed in bathtubs.” If people could see beyond the graffitied hallways of these projects, they could get above that way of life, argued the researchers, and learn to live like their middle-class brothers and sisters. Cisneros floated the idea of knocking down the projects and moving the residents out into the metro area.

The federal government encouraged the demolitions with a $6.3billion program to redevelop the old project sites, called HOPE VI, or “Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere.” The program was launched in the same spirit as Bill Clinton’s national service initiative—communities working together to “rebuild lives.” One Chicago housing official mused about “architects and lawyers and bus drivers and people on welfare living together.” Wrecking balls began hitting the Chicago high-rises in the mid-1990s. Within a few years, tens of thousands of public-housing residents all over the country were leaving their apartments. In place of the projects, new developments arose, with fanciful names like “Jazz on the Boulevard” or “Centennial Place.” In Memphis, the Hurt Village project was razed to make way for “Uptown Square,” which the local developer Henry Turley declared would be proof that you could turn the inner city into a “nice place for poor people” to live. Robert Lipscomb, the dynamic director of the Memphis Housing Authority, announced, “Memphis is on the move.”

When the Dixie Homes housing project was demolished, in 2006, a group of residents moved to a place called Springdale Creek Apartments in North Memphis, on Doug Barnes’s beat. They were not handpicked, nor part of any study, and nobody told them to move to a low-poverty neighborhood. Like tens of thousands of others, they moved because they had to, into a place they could afford. Springdale Creek is not fancy, but the complex tries to enforce its own quiet order. A sliding black gate separates the row of brick buildings from busy Jackson Avenue, where kids hang out by the KFC. Leslie Shaw was sold when she heard the phrase gated community mentioned by the building manager.

When Shaw saw the newly painted white walls, “so fresh and clean,” with no old smudges from somebody else’s kids, she decided to give away all her furniture. “I didn’t want to move in here with any garbage from Dixie,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘Might as well start over.’” She bought a new brown velour couch and a matching loveseat. She bought a washer and dryer, and a dresser for her 8-year-old grandson, Gerrell, who lives with her. The only thing she kept was a bookshelf, to hold the paperbacks coming monthly from the book club she’d decided to join.

Shaw is 11 years crack-free and, at 47, eager to take advantage of every free program that comes her way—a leadership class, Windows Vista training, a citizen police course, a writing workshop. What drove her—“I got to be honest with you”—was proving her middle-class sisters and brother, “who didn’t think I’d get above it,” wrong. Just after she moved in, one sister came over and said, “This is nice. I thought they would put you back in the projects or something.”