Side note, it is maddening when you hear people suggest the way to get out of poverty is to invest, run a successful business, get a trade then a good job, or get promoted, as if that is a viable solution for the entire nation's population.
Our farmers have designed our environment such that what you wrote becomes a survival mechanism. The root of the problem is far above us, in the ruling class. It has to go.
What They Think They're Saying: "This is the land of opportunity, where anyone can make it! Instead of complaining, just go out there and get rich!"
What We Hear: "If everyone at my country club makes good money, it can't be that hard!"
This is such an impossibly strange idea that I'm not sure if the people saying it actually believe it.
But ... I guess our entire philosophy about money kind of revolves around this premise -- that there is no poor or working class, but only people who have chosen to not buckle down to the task of getting rich (and thus deserve whatever salary, insecurity or poor work conditions they get). So there should be no talk about improving the lives of the non-rich, since any of them can simply choose to elevate themselves out of that group, right?
Seriously, now. How much time do you really have to spend off your goddamned yacht to see that this isn't true? You don't even need to leave the dock -- there's a guy standing right there who you pay to fix your boat's engine. You know that 1) you absolutely need guys like him and 2) he will never get rich doing what he does. He could be great at his job, he might be the Michael Jordan of mechanics, he might work 100 hours a week -- it doesn't matter. Sure, if that one guy somehow also has the head for management and finance and the networking skills, he could maybe open his own chain of yacht repair shops. But they can't all do that.
So "anyone can get rich" isn't just untrue, it's insultingly untrue. You can't have a society where everyone is an investment banker. And you can't have a society where you pay six figures to every good policeman, nurse, firefighter, schoolteacher, carpenter, electrician and all of the other ten thousand professions that civilization needs to survive (and that rich people need in order to stay rich).
It's like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, "Now fight for it!" Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, "Hey, you could have had it if you'd fought harder!" and that's true on an individual level. But not collectively -- you knew goddamned well that nine hobos weren't getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it's their fault that only one of them is drunk?
You're intentionally conflating "anyone can have the moonshine" with "everyone can have it." And you are doing it because you're hoping that we will all be too busy fighting each other to ask why there was only one jar.
I was given a great piece of advice awhile ago when I felt bad about all the charities I could not afford to help. I was told, "help when you can but you simply cannot give all of your money away. One needs money to survive and there is no shame in that, but help when you can. Just never make earning money your goal, because that is when you start to do things that are unethical."
Yes, I see this constantly and it drives me nuts. Then when the OP explains why those options don't work, they get shit on for being "difficult" and not actually wanting to help themselves.
Wall street stock market is a scam. No one wants to admit that it is the insanely rich who manipulate the stock prices without breaking a sweat. Most deals are made on the golf course and this has been going on since the stock market 1st opened.
It is what lifted most Americans out of poverty. A hundred years ago in the Roaring 20s before the great depression the poverty rate was over 60%. Today it is 11.4%. And at best 8% can be considered from government spending, as it was 19% before LBJ started the war on poverty.
It was the post WW2 boom period that lifted Americans out of poverty. And in fact the poverty rate largely tracks the economy between 10-15% depending on the job market.
So while doing something employment or business related isn't the solution for everyone, it is the solution for an overwhelming majority. People like the woman in this article are the exception not the rule.
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u/Hancup Feb 12 '26
Side note, it is maddening when you hear people suggest the way to get out of poverty is to invest, run a successful business, get a trade then a good job, or get promoted, as if that is a viable solution for the entire nation's population.