| I think our impressions are colored about by our different observations of those around us, and this conversation is probably colored by our definitions of success. This thread kicked off with someone who escaped poverty and made it to the middle class. I am not talking about the fetishization of the hyper-rich. I do think that with persistence, hard work, and an average allocation of luck most people are capable of achieving a comfortable job and a happy middle class life. In my observations, a lack of personal responsibility for improving your situation is much more harmful than idealizing the successful. For every person I know held back by some sense of inferiority, blaming themselves, I know 10 stuck in a shitty situation by complacency. I see skilled people in miserable jobs who could be interviewing, people lonely or shitty marriages they should change. I see people who are unhappy with their heath but make no change. Many of these people think, "I am just unlucky" and resign themselves to their situation. While you don't think people will ever stop struggling, I'm not convinced. People can become disillusion and hopeless if you tell them their effort has no correlation with their success in life. Some say that the "American Dream" of getting ahead with hard work is a lie, but I think the idea that your efforts have no impact on outcomes is an even bigger lie, and a more dangerous one. |
None of this is accidental: it is the consequence of a specific program started about 1970, outlined in the Powell Memorandum, to grab control of the levers of power. Perhaps the most important factor was using military-grade propaganda methods to get the poorer half of voters voting against their own interests. It has been running for 50 years now, and has been a roaring success.
Kids come out of college now saddled with decades of crushing debt, facing homelessness after one medical or legal hiccup; scared voters are easily manipulated. Half the nation actually voted for an out-and-out con man--twice!--pretending to represent them while doing everything imaginable to grind them down further. Meanwhile the opposition has been forced to pray to the same gods, and depend on hedge funds to finance a half-hearted alternative that has to use a vocabulary created by the propaganda machine.
The amount of money generated by the US economy has gone up and up and up since 1945, but the amount collected by regular people--the less-than-99%-ers--leveled off in 1975. All the rest has gone straight to the pockets of those at the very top, even minting billionaires left and right. Make no mistake, we could all be fantastically better off given pretty small policy changes.