[tomhoward]

There are ways that your comment and the parent are both right.

I’m very much on board with the idea of eschewing victimhood thinking, and I generally see the invocation of survivorship bias as a pretty sad indicator of someone’s attachment to victimhood.

However I also recognize that the world isn’t great at empowering people to get out of difficult situations in life. Once you’re down, the world has all kinds of ways of keeping you down. “Just work hard and save money” seems like simple stuff that anyone can do but it doesn’t get you very far if you’re at the bottom of the heap, especially if you’re dealing with illness, family problems, or other burdens.

I do believe there are things that almost anyone (without irrevocable health problems) can do to go from a bad situation to a very good one over the long term (I’ve done them), but these things are not widely known or accepted by mainstream society.

So I sympathize with the sense of futility that many people hold.