Quote:
Originally Posted by plib
For the vast majority the choices you make in life, other than the choice of your parents, actually have very little to do with whether you are part of the 1% or the 99%. Whether you studied a discipline that is still in demand or work in a growing industry may mean that you still have a job, it doesn't really have an effect on whether you can join that one percent. This article is a little statistics heavy but it has a good historical analysis of what the 1%/99% divide actually means. I very much doubt that any poster on here is in the top 10%, who own 70% of the wealth in America, let alone the top 1%. |
I have clearly been lacking in my research into life's available choices. How exactly does one "choose their parents"?
As for choices having little to do with success, that is possibly among the top half dozen of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard. You believe that someone who chooses not to obtain a high school education, who chooses not to follow that with a tertiary education, who chooses not to work hard in their chosen career path, who chooses not to save and invest wisely, has the same chance of success as a person makes all of those choices? Nothing in the article that you link to supports this.
Did you form your opinion based on the fleeting status of blue collar lottery winners? I am curious - what do you base this almost comical claim upon? How can you believe that effort is not "usually" rewarded? Why do you feel that a person's life is controlled by nothing but chance? That those who are successful are simply luckier than those who aren't?
My wife and I (I earn well, but she earns more as CEO of her own company) are in the top ten percent of households, but we are not in the US. Being in the top ten percent is not too difficult if you are prepared to plan well and work hard, to delay gratification, to not waste opportunity or resources. If I am to believe you, I might have reached the same status if I had dropped out of university and spent my life surfing and having fun.
Gee, if only I had known.
(Sorry if I seem a little sarcastic, but that is my natural reaction to your very strange claims.)