09-16-2016, 08:52 AM
OK, maybe I'm one of the 'elite' sorts. My father was not a millionaire, he was a foreman for the old Bell System, a low level manager installing the relay generation of central switches. Well, he wasn't a millionaire until late in his life. He saved, and he bought every single stock option made available, and New England Telephone made a lot of stock options available. And then they broke up Ma Bell, and he ended up holding a whole bunch of digital communications stocks as the country went into the dot com boom era. He and my mother wound up asking each other how they became millionaire...
Anyway, I grew up thinking that if I got my grades in school and put in solid hours at work I'd end up OK. That's the way the world works. At least, that's how it worked for me, my father, my uncles, my sisters... Anyway, that how things worked.
Reading Hillbilly Eulogy, there are folks who didn't work on grades in school, and who didn't put solid hours in at work, and who thought they'd end up OK too. They often don't end up OK. The heroin and meth don't help, but from their point of view it isn't their fault that they're not millionaires, it's the fault of Big Government.
To some degree there is some fraction of truth in an elite notion that you can get out of the system what you put into it. If you end up as an elite, yes, you got something out of the system so obviously the system is working just fine. The world is what one sees of the world, and what the elite see works just fine. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
This doesn't mean everyone is willing to put the effort in. Not everyone's father will lend the next generation a million to continue the family real estate empire.
But in a lot of places it is hard to get that education, to get a job that leads further than nowhere. I would agree that there are many elites who have lived too long on Easy Street who can't conceive of that reality. They have just never lived it, and when building a world view that which one hasn't lived doesn't exist at a values level.
Anyway, I grew up thinking that if I got my grades in school and put in solid hours at work I'd end up OK. That's the way the world works. At least, that's how it worked for me, my father, my uncles, my sisters... Anyway, that how things worked.
Reading Hillbilly Eulogy, there are folks who didn't work on grades in school, and who didn't put solid hours in at work, and who thought they'd end up OK too. They often don't end up OK. The heroin and meth don't help, but from their point of view it isn't their fault that they're not millionaires, it's the fault of Big Government.
To some degree there is some fraction of truth in an elite notion that you can get out of the system what you put into it. If you end up as an elite, yes, you got something out of the system so obviously the system is working just fine. The world is what one sees of the world, and what the elite see works just fine. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
This doesn't mean everyone is willing to put the effort in. Not everyone's father will lend the next generation a million to continue the family real estate empire.
But in a lot of places it is hard to get that education, to get a job that leads further than nowhere. I would agree that there are many elites who have lived too long on Easy Street who can't conceive of that reality. They have just never lived it, and when building a world view that which one hasn't lived doesn't exist at a values level.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.