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> or envision themselves as (somehow!) becoming part of the top 10% I don't disagree with you but want to add some insight to this... My entire life I've been

> or envision themselves as (somehow!) becoming part of the top 10% I don't disagree with you but want to add some insight to this... My entire life I've been told the lie that if I "just work harder" I can be rich etc. Most of America thinks about themselves in this same way, and it's taken me years of traditional employment + risky startup opportunities to realize that no, success is not guaranteed if you "just work hard"... Honestly you just get nailed with the majority of work as an IC who's trying to crank it out vs. your peers who are off having "dev beers" at the trendy bar down the road. The peers that I see that are "well off" often had huge monetary injections from their parents in either fully-paid education, first houses, vehicles, incestuous "investments" in their business, etc. Now, those same people that had everything handed to them on a silver platter are invested, some own rental properties, etc. to the point that they can choose not to work for long periods of time to just collect dividends/rent. Funny part - they still define themselves as people who have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps! So yea - in the US we have a really unhealthy view/mentality around success and ignore the fact that the IT'S THE EXCEPTION for someone to truly "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" into any sort of significant wealth. Truth is most "rich" people had an incredible amount of external financial support and stability to get themselves there and maintain it. Bring the downvotes, because you're darn tootin' I'm bitter about all of this.

thechao 6y ago
The original formulation of the statement of “work hard and you’ll make it” was created in the context of 17th-19th c. Europe, where no matter how hard you worked, if you weren’t landed gentry, you simply could not make it. The idea was that any opportunity existed. The universalist position you described is a rosy reimagining of a history that never was.
- folkhack 6y ago
  This is super interesting to me and I would actually love to learn the origins of this... do you have any resources you may be able link? Books, articles etc.
- neskiredk 6y ago
  Precisely, My ancestors left Denmark and Sweden. Hundreds of thousands left doing the later period of the 19th century. Mainly because how the land was distributed and taxed in such a way that you could never get ahead.
eanzenberg 6y ago
Nice anecdotes! Here’s some more. Everyone I know who’s “made it”, top 10% came from poor or lower-middle class beginnings. Probably more a factor of where you came from, who you know, etc.
- folkhack 6y ago
  This seems incredibly dismissive of what I was trying to say with your whole "nice anecdotes!" bit. Obviously it's situational.
kazen44 6y ago
what seems very weird to me (as a non US citizen), is that most working class people in the US seem convinced the 'american dream' is synonymous with being a millionare/billionare and introducing legalization to level the playing field of the latter will hurt their own changes at becoming part of the former. It might also be the reason social democratic/socialistic parties never got a foothold in the US post world war 2.
- klipt 6y ago
  Home ownership is a core part of the American dream, and in pricey places like the Bay Area, you pretty much have to be a millionaire to own a house. Thanks to inflation "millionaire" doesn't mean as much as it used to. Billionaires are a completely separate class though.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Exactly. Even setting aside the house prices, if you have exactly a million dollars in your retirement account, you should plan on spending only about $40K-$50K per year from that account. That's hardly a luxurious retirement; yet "you're a millionaire!"
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  It's also interesting how the scale has slid up so much that many people now believe the "American Dream" is to become a millionaire/billionaire. When originally it was merely the idea that if you do the right thing your children will be better off than you were. It wasn't until the gold rush in the 1850s that the American Dream, for some, became this idea of get rich quick scheming. I can't speak to everyone, but my parents are children of the 50s and their idea of the "American Dream" was the nice house in a safe neighborhood in the burbs.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    Thankfully pretty much everybody still has the ability to buy into a safe neighborhood with a good school district in the Bay Area.
Consultant32452 6y ago
How many blue collar millionaires do you know? My two anecdotes are one guy who opened a machine shop with his dad in their very lower middle class garage and one guy who worked his way up to having a few taco bell franchises from the bottom rung. If you don't know those kinds of millionaires, your perception of the world might be tinted by being in a career path that is popular for a certain category of children of wealthy families.
- coliveira 6y ago
  The issue is not that these cases exist, but that they are sold as being the standard, which they're clearly not. To became wealthy coming from a poor background requires a lot of effort, sense of opportunity, and frankly, luck. But all this is sold as something at grasp to anyone in this country, which is clearly false.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    Of course luck plays a role in everything. It's merely luck that I've never been run over by a bus, or any number of other problems. But can you help me understand how a lot of effort and a sense of opportunity is not available to the common person?
    - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
      42% of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution ("quintile") remain in the bottom, while 39% born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top.
      - Consultant32452 6y ago
        Okay, more than half of the people at the bottom rise up out of it. And less than half of the people at the top stay at the top. What are you hoping for? Please be as specific as possible. And what does this have to do with whether a lot of effort and a sense of opportunity is available to the common person?
zapita 6y ago
I think you defined perfectly the defining problem of this generation in the US: nepotism. It is the root cause of so many structural problems that we see as unrelated. In particular the failure of the press to do their job and hold the powerful accountable. Not so easy when you went to the same school as them; got an internship thanks to them; were at a NYC roof party with them last week. Positions once available to anyone who worked hard, are now reserved to the children of the already wealthy. The consequences are severe.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > nepotism 85% of American millionaires are self-made. "The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley
  - maest 6y ago
    Is there any data on where wealth increase has come from for those people? e.g. started own business, vs savings + stock market, vs investing in real estate.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      I recommend getting the book, it's cheap and a good read. It also lays out a path for those that want to accumulate wealth themselves.
      - folkhack 6y ago
        Yea - I'll second that even though you don't think I've read it.
  - folkhack 6y ago
    "The Millionaire Next Door" was published in 1996 when the economy was booming, the dot-com bubble had yet to burst, and the employment market meant anyone slightly skilled could get a FT+benefits career. In the 24 years since that book's publishing I absolutely argue that ladder has become more difficult to climb. But hey - what do I know? I'm just a lazy millennial who's now living through his second major recession, with the first one landing directly on when I was entering the work world FT. Thank goodness for my tech career because let. me. tell. you... my peers were struggling. Especially the ones who persisted in Cedar Rapids (blue collar Iowa town). But sure - 85% of American millionaires are "self-made", whatever the heck that means. I don't doubt that's how they feel about themselves and self report!!!
WalterBright 6y ago
It's not about working hard, it's about working smart (i.e. choosing the right things to work on).
- nthj 6y ago
  Also, part of working smart is owning meaningful equity in a business likely to generate meaningful returns. Startups are high risk, high reward, and if the GP doesn't care for how their luck has played out at startups, there are many other lower-risk opportunities to build equity: writing books, teaching, consulting, a bootstrapped SAAS app... and plenty more outside of the software engineering landscape.
  - folkhack 6y ago
    > books Most books don't pan out and if I don't turn myself into a marketing personality good luck. I say this as someone who's marketed books professionally as a web product across all major publishing platforms. I'm a nobody and prefer to focus on my engineering. > teaching Sure - because there's tons of money in teaching? Uhhh...? > consulting I've made a killing here and am likely going into my next 1099 tomorrow so yea. No arguments here. It DOES take a solid network though to do consulting so if you're not sociable you're likely screwed in this arena. I have two sales people who are my guardian angels hawking my services for top-dollar so I'm incredibly blessed in this department. > bootstrapped SAAS app Currently working out licensing with two corps on one of these myself as well. Finding the foot in the door for industry, then collecting user data on problems to solve, then pushing through solving them, and then gambling on the problem you solved is INCREDIBLY risky. Plus - if you're the startup engineer things fall near-100% on your shoulders unless you're willing to play the outsourcing game. Which I have and my god that's a FT job itself even for the most menial of applications. --- All-in-all I am actually the guy who pulled myself up by the bootstraps to probably 10x what my parents made in small town Iowa. So yea. But all of my original comment absolutely stands. It was hell on earth and I worked my entire 20's away hustling my BUTT off to get out of the trailer park and out to California. I still absolutely posit that my story of "just pull yourself up by the bootstraps" is the exception and shouldn't be sold as "anyone can do this if they work hard enough!!!" Most people can't. Your list makes it seem like those things are easy - and as someone who has experience in them (minus teaching)... it absolutely isn't. Those are all serious endeavors that take time, commitment, failure, getting back on the horse, and ultimately years of pursuit/work.
2019-nCoV 6y ago
American institutions should be controlling for this inherit classism, instead, the most prestigious continue to employ race-based selection criteria. Middle-class America seems to have a particular disdain for the less well off. This divide is the driving force behind Trump. It's the same divide we're seeing play out now over reopening the economy. Suburbanites with cushy WFH jobs, chastising the poor who have been laid off, as they have the audacity to want to put food on the table tonight.
- folkhack 6y ago
  > Middle-class America seems to have a particular disdain for the less well off. Hell as someone who's struggled early-on... Poor America seems to have a particular disdain for the less well off too. I feel like I'm constantly surrounded by entitlement regardless of the person - and I'm no better as I am constantly trying to quash my own crap attitude with this... We were brought up this way across the board, to the point that I'm convinced childish entitlement is in our DNA as a country. It's just a whole bunch of finger pointing while ignoring the elephant in the room... but hey people seem to get off on the hate so the folks in charge keep us divided and subdued to their interests. Not disagreeing - just my own take being exposed to many diverse backgrounds rich/poor, rural/metro, etc etc. Everyone wants to point a finger because it's MUCH easier than acknowledging difficult societal problems/self-reflection.
arcticbull 6y ago
> incestuous "investments" in their business. This is open to anyone, but of course it's not guaranteed. You have to put yourself in a place where you're more likely to encounter these folks, and demonstrate value.
SZJX 6y ago
I think it is a pretty widely shared consensus in economics that "the American Dream" was the truest in the beginning of the 20th century, when European regimes were aristocracies and peasants were regularly starving to death. That was why waves of immigrants arrived from Europe to the US. After WWII the situation basically got reversed: Europe experienced such a shock and disruption to the existing social order/redistribution of wealth etc., that it went really left-wing/"social democratic". In the meantime, the US saw a greater and greater concentration of wealth and the division between the rich and the poor got increasingly stark, and social mobility is much worse than that in, say, Northern Europe. The American Dream as people knew it is pretty much dead. This is also one huge reason behind the polarization in politics that we see nowadays. Unfortunately, a lot of narratives in the US don't seem to realize/willingly ignore this situation and still seem to talk about the old idea of "bootstrapping" and American exceptionalism in this regard, which is really kinda one century out of date already.

thechao 6y ago

The original formulation of the statement of “work hard and you’ll make it” was created in the context of 17th-19th c. Europe, where no matter how hard you worked, if you weren’t landed gentry, you simply could not make it. The idea was that any opportunity existed. The universalist position you described is a rosy reimagining of a history that never was.

folkhack 6y ago
This is super interesting to me and I would actually love to learn the origins of this... do you have any resources you may be able link? Books, articles etc.
neskiredk 6y ago
Precisely, My ancestors left Denmark and Sweden. Hundreds of thousands left doing the later period of the 19th century. Mainly because how the land was distributed and taxed in such a way that you could never get ahead.

eanzenberg 6y ago

Nice anecdotes! Here’s some more. Everyone I know who’s “made it”, top 10% came from poor or lower-middle class beginnings. Probably more a factor of where you came from, who you know, etc.

folkhack 6y ago
This seems incredibly dismissive of what I was trying to say with your whole "nice anecdotes!" bit. Obviously it's situational.

kazen44 6y ago

what seems very weird to me (as a non US citizen), is that most working class people in the US seem convinced the 'american dream' is synonymous with being a millionare/billionare and introducing legalization to level the playing field of the latter will hurt their own changes at becoming part of the former. It might also be the reason social democratic/socialistic parties never got a foothold in the US post world war 2.

klipt 6y ago
Home ownership is a core part of the American dream, and in pricey places like the Bay Area, you pretty much have to be a millionaire to own a house. Thanks to inflation "millionaire" doesn't mean as much as it used to. Billionaires are a completely separate class though.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Exactly. Even setting aside the house prices, if you have exactly a million dollars in your retirement account, you should plan on spending only about $40K-$50K per year from that account. That's hardly a luxurious retirement; yet "you're a millionaire!"
Consultant32452 6y ago
It's also interesting how the scale has slid up so much that many people now believe the "American Dream" is to become a millionaire/billionaire. When originally it was merely the idea that if you do the right thing your children will be better off than you were. It wasn't until the gold rush in the 1850s that the American Dream, for some, became this idea of get rich quick scheming. I can't speak to everyone, but my parents are children of the 50s and their idea of the "American Dream" was the nice house in a safe neighborhood in the burbs.
- scarmig 6y ago
  Thankfully pretty much everybody still has the ability to buy into a safe neighborhood with a good school district in the Bay Area.

Consultant32452 6y ago

How many blue collar millionaires do you know? My two anecdotes are one guy who opened a machine shop with his dad in their very lower middle class garage and one guy who worked his way up to having a few taco bell franchises from the bottom rung. If you don't know those kinds of millionaires, your perception of the world might be tinted by being in a career path that is popular for a certain category of children of wealthy families.

coliveira 6y ago
The issue is not that these cases exist, but that they are sold as being the standard, which they're clearly not. To became wealthy coming from a poor background requires a lot of effort, sense of opportunity, and frankly, luck. But all this is sold as something at grasp to anyone in this country, which is clearly false.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  Of course luck plays a role in everything. It's merely luck that I've never been run over by a bus, or any number of other problems. But can you help me understand how a lot of effort and a sense of opportunity is not available to the common person?
  - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
    42% of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution ("quintile") remain in the bottom, while 39% born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      Okay, more than half of the people at the bottom rise up out of it. And less than half of the people at the top stay at the top. What are you hoping for? Please be as specific as possible. And what does this have to do with whether a lot of effort and a sense of opportunity is available to the common person?

zapita 6y ago

I think you defined perfectly the defining problem of this generation in the US: nepotism. It is the root cause of so many structural problems that we see as unrelated. In particular the failure of the press to do their job and hold the powerful accountable. Not so easy when you went to the same school as them; got an internship thanks to them; were at a NYC roof party with them last week. Positions once available to anyone who worked hard, are now reserved to the children of the already wealthy. The consequences are severe.

WalterBright 6y ago
> nepotism 85% of American millionaires are self-made. "The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley
- maest 6y ago
  Is there any data on where wealth increase has come from for those people? e.g. started own business, vs savings + stock market, vs investing in real estate.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I recommend getting the book, it's cheap and a good read. It also lays out a path for those that want to accumulate wealth themselves.
    - folkhack 6y ago
      Yea - I'll second that even though you don't think I've read it.
- folkhack 6y ago
  "The Millionaire Next Door" was published in 1996 when the economy was booming, the dot-com bubble had yet to burst, and the employment market meant anyone slightly skilled could get a FT+benefits career. In the 24 years since that book's publishing I absolutely argue that ladder has become more difficult to climb. But hey - what do I know? I'm just a lazy millennial who's now living through his second major recession, with the first one landing directly on when I was entering the work world FT. Thank goodness for my tech career because let. me. tell. you... my peers were struggling. Especially the ones who persisted in Cedar Rapids (blue collar Iowa town). But sure - 85% of American millionaires are "self-made", whatever the heck that means. I don't doubt that's how they feel about themselves and self report!!!

WalterBright 6y ago

It's not about working hard, it's about working smart (i.e. choosing the right things to work on).

nthj 6y ago
Also, part of working smart is owning meaningful equity in a business likely to generate meaningful returns. Startups are high risk, high reward, and if the GP doesn't care for how their luck has played out at startups, there are many other lower-risk opportunities to build equity: writing books, teaching, consulting, a bootstrapped SAAS app... and plenty more outside of the software engineering landscape.
- folkhack 6y ago
  > books Most books don't pan out and if I don't turn myself into a marketing personality good luck. I say this as someone who's marketed books professionally as a web product across all major publishing platforms. I'm a nobody and prefer to focus on my engineering. > teaching Sure - because there's tons of money in teaching? Uhhh...? > consulting I've made a killing here and am likely going into my next 1099 tomorrow so yea. No arguments here. It DOES take a solid network though to do consulting so if you're not sociable you're likely screwed in this arena. I have two sales people who are my guardian angels hawking my services for top-dollar so I'm incredibly blessed in this department. > bootstrapped SAAS app Currently working out licensing with two corps on one of these myself as well. Finding the foot in the door for industry, then collecting user data on problems to solve, then pushing through solving them, and then gambling on the problem you solved is INCREDIBLY risky. Plus - if you're the startup engineer things fall near-100% on your shoulders unless you're willing to play the outsourcing game. Which I have and my god that's a FT job itself even for the most menial of applications. --- All-in-all I am actually the guy who pulled myself up by the bootstraps to probably 10x what my parents made in small town Iowa. So yea. But all of my original comment absolutely stands. It was hell on earth and I worked my entire 20's away hustling my BUTT off to get out of the trailer park and out to California. I still absolutely posit that my story of "just pull yourself up by the bootstraps" is the exception and shouldn't be sold as "anyone can do this if they work hard enough!!!" Most people can't. Your list makes it seem like those things are easy - and as someone who has experience in them (minus teaching)... it absolutely isn't. Those are all serious endeavors that take time, commitment, failure, getting back on the horse, and ultimately years of pursuit/work.

2019-nCoV 6y ago

American institutions should be controlling for this inherit classism, instead, the most prestigious continue to employ race-based selection criteria. Middle-class America seems to have a particular disdain for the less well off. This divide is the driving force behind Trump. It's the same divide we're seeing play out now over reopening the economy. Suburbanites with cushy WFH jobs, chastising the poor who have been laid off, as they have the audacity to want to put food on the table tonight.

folkhack 6y ago
> Middle-class America seems to have a particular disdain for the less well off. Hell as someone who's struggled early-on... Poor America seems to have a particular disdain for the less well off too. I feel like I'm constantly surrounded by entitlement regardless of the person - and I'm no better as I am constantly trying to quash my own crap attitude with this... We were brought up this way across the board, to the point that I'm convinced childish entitlement is in our DNA as a country. It's just a whole bunch of finger pointing while ignoring the elephant in the room... but hey people seem to get off on the hate so the folks in charge keep us divided and subdued to their interests. Not disagreeing - just my own take being exposed to many diverse backgrounds rich/poor, rural/metro, etc etc. Everyone wants to point a finger because it's MUCH easier than acknowledging difficult societal problems/self-reflection.

arcticbull 6y ago

> incestuous "investments" in their business. This is open to anyone, but of course it's not guaranteed. You have to put yourself in a place where you're more likely to encounter these folks, and demonstrate value.

SZJX 6y ago

I think it is a pretty widely shared consensus in economics that "the American Dream" was the truest in the beginning of the 20th century, when European regimes were aristocracies and peasants were regularly starving to death. That was why waves of immigrants arrived from Europe to the US. After WWII the situation basically got reversed: Europe experienced such a shock and disruption to the existing social order/redistribution of wealth etc., that it went really left-wing/"social democratic". In the meantime, the US saw a greater and greater concentration of wealth and the division between the rich and the poor got increasingly stark, and social mobility is much worse than that in, say, Northern Europe. The American Dream as people knew it is pretty much dead. This is also one huge reason behind the polarization in politics that we see nowadays. Unfortunately, a lot of narratives in the US don't seem to realize/willingly ignore this situation and still seem to talk about the old idea of "bootstrapping" and American exceptionalism in this regard, which is really kinda one century out of date already.