Sannois (love the name) wrote: “The opportunity is there for everyone to succeed. Try getting off your butts and working.”
No, it isn’t, Sannois. I tried to make this point before: times have changed. The opportunity is NOT there for everyone anymore. I mentioned before how, if a student has to work as well as go to school, s/he doesn’t receive anywhere near the education that a student who doesn’t have to work CAN receive (s/he doesn’t even have TIME to take advantage of opportunities that arise that might get her/him ahead).
Yes, back in the olden days of lore people worked and went to school and put in 18 hour days and succeeded. But that was then: the world moved a lot more slowly than it does now.
I feel for my students (albeit, it’s a love/hate relationship). Try teaching–and, mind you, my students are predominantly middle class AND I’ve taught in institutions where they were upper middle class as well. They are all doomed, with the exception of those with the intelligence to become the high techies and those whose families can give them a headstart with funds or at least a loan co-signature. Everyone else is headed into the trenches, never to be heard from again.
The best example of this is the horse world, of course. It USED to be possible to work hard and get ahead, but it isn’t any more. Granted, Snowbird is right to a certain extent: some of what I’m arguing does depend on how you define “rich.” But maybe it’s easier to define “not rich.”
“Not rich” is not having any discretionary income on which to buy luxuries, like horses or show circuits. For the person in the trenches, it means you MUST produce something worthwhile or YOU CAN NOT CONTINUE. You MUST sell or you will go out of business. For the young person with great aspirations, it means you cannot ask your parents to help you (or just support you while you try) and you cannot ask anyone else either because there IS no one else. You don’t even travel in the right circles such that you could encounter “someone else.” You don’t travel in those circles because those circles are so expensive to travel in. And because you are working so hard, you don’t have the time, energy or knowledge to come up with other ways to encounter “someone else.”
[Break time: part of the above comes from personal experience, of course. Everyone says I should marry a rich guy. Oh, heck, I don’t even have the TIME to go anywhere or do anything such that he’d ever notice I exist, whether he’s rich or not. Imagine being too “not rich” to be unable to find a MAN? Geezum. And I KNOW I’m not alone in this problem. It’s one of the sacrifices we make, right other-ambitious-ladies?]
In the olden days of lore–even in the horse industry–the circles where opportunity could be found weren’t that expensive. It WAS possible for someone to notice how hard you work and how talented you are because you’d run into that someone in the barn, the schooling ring, the exhibitors tent, or whatever. Indeed, maybe your trainer would introduce you to that person. But today, your trainer is struggling in the trenches as much as you are and doesn’t have the time or the inclination to help you much (unless you are “worth” helping in that you have contacts/family/whatever that will also help the trainer). That’s not another trainer slight: the person I’m describing IS a trainer.
Today, the distance between the “not rich” and the “rich” is so much wider than it once was that you live in completely different worlds (and they haven’t a clue that you do–they are so distant that they “just don’t get it”). The rich are so rich now that they never need cross paths with the “not rich” at all. They aren’t IN the barn when you are, there’s a different tent for them that you can’t afford the tickets to get into, they don’t hang out on the rail anymore, they do everything through trainers and agents so they don’t interact with a wide range of participants anymore.
[You know what drives me the most nuts? Everyone says you have to “network” in any business if you are to succeed. But no one admits that you have to network with the RIGHT PEOPLE. Networking with other sorryasses like yourself doesn’t get you there, except, occasionally, through sheer luck when that other sorryass makes good.]
Some of you are undoubtedly saying to yourselves: why is she so convinced that the “not rich” NEED interaction with the rich to get ahead? One proof is the networking fact. Also, however, money has to come from somewhere for ANY business, whether it’s through loans or clientele. Even the trickle-down economics of the Republican mantra understands that. But today, the money is too far away: it never makes it ALL the way down. Indeed, it is sort of hoarded at a level somewhere between “rich” and “not quite that rich” in my opinion.
None of this is “their” fault by the way. It is just reality. It takes money to make money these days, except in the techie industries. Give me one, single example that is an exception? Just one (in the horse industry in the last, oh, say, 15 years: someone WITHOUT some connection to $$$ somewhere–Nona Garson, you’ll say, Snowbird. I think not. SOMEONE’s discretionary income enabled her to take riding lessons)?
What about highly skilled and educated people? Like doctors and lawyers and college professors, perhaps? Nope, sorry: Even THEY have little discretionary income if they had to work and borrow for the education that got them ahead: they are too busy paying off loans by taking on whatever jobs will pay their bills. By the time they’ve paid off the bills, they are too tired, old or children-laden to do more.
And, BTW, discretionary income is also that which enables someone to start and maintain a small business. It’s either that or loans, right? But where does the “not rich” get loans from? Oh, right, those baddies, the government and its programs. Hmmmm… Do ya think just maybe there is something to a little government assistance to break the cycle of the “not rich”?
You may hear more about the “poor,” but it’s the plight of the “not rich” that is the real problem. And I haven’t even starting in on the “working poor” (someone else here did though).
It’s nice to be able to soothe your conscience by getting angry at the 300 pound welfare mamma, but she’s actually a minority in this issue (yeah, yeah–bad word choice, sorry). There are more “working poor” and “not [and never will be?] rich” than there are welfare mammas.
But you go ahead and focus on her if that makes you feel better.
Meanwhile, WE are going to elect to find ways to break the cycle of the rich getting richer while the not rich get poorer: Gore on Tuesday and Nader in 2004.
[This message has been edited by pwynnnorman (edited 11-05-2000).]
Oops, Hobson, no cheesesteaks for us, we are both Veggies, but we do make a mean Hummus.
I envy you for your ability to serve as such a peacemaker. I thought I possessed that ability… but some of the posts just pushed me over the edge! And believe me, I don’t like that I felt I had to post that. As much as I am disapointed in myself that I could not hold back… I don’t take any of it back either!