So this article was making the rounds on reddit about how people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life. And all I could think was “duh.” Have any of you been paying attention?
That is the problem with capitalism. It promises that anyone can make it if they just work hard. And conversely anyone who is poor is a loser with no ambition who just isn’t trying hard enough.
Except of course, that is bullshit. The “American dream” is a lie. In fact it is easier to achieve in other countries than it is in America. Probably because most of these countries have some sort of socialist bend. Germany, France, Canada, Japan and the UK who all rated higher in social mobility, all have things like socialized health care, welfare, unemployment insurance.
There is a lot of research that shows how difficult it is to work your way out of poverty. My pet peeve is the saying, “to pull yourself up by your bootstraps” because it is, quite literally impossible; like giving 110%. We all know they mean try harder but in reality they are nonsensical statements.
However, the system cannot acknowledge its own failures. If it acknowledged that it was rigged then people might be tempted to pull the whole thing down.
This is in part why the media spends so much time focusing on those who do manage to get out of poverty. Those rare Michael Jordans, Jay-Zs, or Leonardo DiCaprios who are born poor but whose talent lifts them out of those circumstances. They get held up as shining examples of what you can achieve if you just work hard. But most of us are not that talented. We can’t play ball like Jordan or spit rhymes like Jay-Z.
This is also why there is a plethora of “talent” shows featuring average people who can sing, or dance, or juggle or whatever. We have to maintain the illusion that anyone can achieve anything if they just believe in themselves. What they fail to show is the thousands of people who get rejected. I love Bo Burnham’s take on talent. Especially since he not only acknowledges the good fortune he’s had but also acknowledges he is a “tall white male” and there are inherent advantages to that.
It’s shockingly refreshing because no one who is rich wants to tell you that their success is due to luck. Or tell you that they didn’t do it on their own. There is no such thing as a self-made man. Elon Musk’s parents owned an emerald mine in Africa. Donald Trumps father gave him millions of dollars in loans. Bill Gates grandfather was a bank CEO, his dad was a partner in a law firm. Warren Buffet’s dad was a congressman. Jeff Bezo’s parents lent him $250,000 to start Amazon. The Harley Davidson brothers got help from a rich uncle.
If more people were honest and open about their success then we would all want to change the system rather than crossing our fingers and hoping we win the proverbial lottery. Sadly though people are either ignorant of their own good fortune or biased against it.
Listen to how the rich players talk about how they won this rigged game of Monopoly in this TED video:
What we’ve been finding across dozens of studies and thousands of participants across this country is that as a person’s levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deserving-ness, and their ideology of self-interest increase. In surveys, we’ve found that it’s actually wealthier individuals who are more likely to moralize greed being good, and that the pursuit of self-interest is favorable and moral.
Okay a little dig at evangelists but seriously WTF. Read your bible Joel, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. Luke18:24.
But I digress, the point is that if you know the game is rigged, why keep playing? Because your only other choice is to be homeless and hungry.
But what if that wasn’t the only choice. What if you had viable alternatives? The older I get the more I like the idea of universal basic income. Someone once said to me, “If we give people money they won’t have an incentive to do anything.” I pointed out that she was retired and led a full and active life despite not working.
Working so you can eat is not a good thing to me. Working so you can have a roof over your head is not a good thing. Working so you can pay for an education is not a good thing. These should be basic human rights that everyone is entitled to. And if we have to eat the rich to get it, then so be it.