[plib]

Originally Posted by DarkScribe

I have clearly been lacking in my research into life's available choices. How exactly does one "choose their parents"?

Obviously whatever you studied at university it did not include irony.

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.

It really helps when criticizing someone to actually read what they have written, preferably before putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. If you could point out where exactly I said that choices in life have little to do with success I'd greatly appreciate it. I realize my reading skills may be faulty but this is what I see when I review what I wrote:

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.

Please show me the word success in that quote? Please show me anywhere in the post where I talk about success? I specifically mentioned becoming part of the 1%. That is a very different matter from success, as normally defined. Many people have successful careers, not many of those become wealthy enough to be in the top 1%.

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?

I am a little lost as to how to respond to this, particularly as it bears no relationship whatever to anything I said and appears to be the product of an inadequate comprehension of what was actually written combined with an incoherent thought process in compiling the response. So I'll just pass it by and leave it in peace.

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.

Again, the issue is not earnings but wealth. Two very different metrics. I'm very pleased that your hard work and education (apart from the unfortunate omission on the irony front) have benefited you. It's what I would expect and, again, if you actually read what was written and took the time to read the article, I wrote nothing which would conflict with that. If you are in the top 10% of wealth owners in Oz then good for you, if you are in the top 1% then you should get off here and go cruise the South Seas in a 250 foot yacht. If you can't afford a 250 foot yacht then maybe you could have worked harder on that whole parent thing, or studied golf at college. The leap isn't impossible, just very difficult.

Gee, if only I had known.

(Sorry if I seem a little sarcastic, but that is my natural reaction to your very strange claims.)

That's OK. I seem to have learned to make allowances for what you know, and what you're prepared to research.