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My grandfather (still alive) had his Polish village burned down and he found himself doing forced labor in Germany during WWII at the age of 14. Not only was th

My grandfather (still alive) had his Polish village burned down and he found himself doing forced labor in Germany during WWII at the age of 14. Not only was there not much to return to, the borders were redrawn and his previous hometown wasn't even in a country that he held citizenship in. He came to the US and worked in the forges for Falk in Milwaukee. He didn't speak English, but he worked hard, lived responsibly, and paid for the education of his two children. My dad became an electrical engineer, and my uncle got a doctorate in veterinary medicine and owned a clinic. Going a generation further, me and all my siblings have college degrees from great schools. This whole story plays out from 1940 to the present day. I'm just trying to understand where it is that my family got lucky, and why I should feel sour about this country and the opportunities it gave us. Where else on Earth is this possible? How did we get so lucky, and why is everyone so sure that it wasn't just that we worked hard and had the right priorities? “The ~Christian Ideal~ American Dream has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

dragonwriter 6y ago
> I'm just trying to understand where it is that my family got lucky Between the inputs and the outputs. For example: > He came to the US and worked in the forges for Falk in Milwaukee. He didn't speak English, but he worked hard, lived responsibly, and paid for the education of his two children Plenty of people at the same time put the same inputs of hard work and responsible living in, and got different outcomes due to forces they didn't control. The success of American elites (this is true of capitalism generally, and the greater prosperity of American capitalists compared to much of the rest of the developed West is due specifically to failing tomitigate this aspect of capitalism as much) is built on the precarious position of the working class.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bsder 6y ago
The issue is that there is NO job today for that immigrant who doesn't speak English--let alone one that supports a family in this day and age--let alone one that pays for college. And why should you feel sour? There is nothing wrong with being lucky. However, the problem is that too many lucky people assume that their result is due to work rather than luck and then attribute a lack of result to a lack of work instead of a lack of luck. This is akin to winning the lottery jackpot and then blaming other people not hitting the lottery because they just didn't buy enough tickets rather than the odds being explicitly stacked against them.
- pdubs1 6y ago
  >The issue is that there is NO job today for that immigrant who doesn't speak English Not sure where you live, but what you speak of does not match my experience. Have you never worked in a kitchen in an American restaurant? Or in an agricultural field? Or in the cleaning services department of a facility? I have had plenty of neighbors in apartments who did not speak English and also coworkers (when I was waiting tables) who did not speak English. They had jobs. Latin Americans, who speak Spanish. In some cases they have families. And in some of those cases, their children do attend college.
- mech422 6y ago
  The problem I see with this line of thought is it tends to minimize personnel responsibility and overlooks the fact that everyone has _bad_ luck as well as good.. I had the 'bad luck' not to be born rich, should I let that define my life? or should I wait around for some 'good luck' to change that ? The argument reminds me of the old religious debates about 'free will' vs 'destiny'...if some god already knows every decision we will make, and we make 'evil' decisions, were we destined to be 'evil' ? If a 'god' with perfect knowledge already knows we will make these 'evil' decisions, did we really have a choice (eg if we choose to be good, the 'gods' knowledge is no longer perfect..) Just seems like a great way to remove personal responsibility from the conversation. Yes, we all have been lucky (and have all had bad luck..) but yes, you have to make the most of it as well. Having the awesome luck to win the lotto doesn't really matter, if you never take the personal responsibility to cash in the ticket.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > I had the 'bad luck' not to be born rich, should I let that define my life? No, but what we, as a society, need to do is cut down on how much luck you need in order to move up. There was a very nice article at one point that showed that the absolute best students who come from the lowest 20% of the socioeconomic strata barely do as well as the absolute worst students of the highest 20% of the socioeconomic strata. It's basically a proof of "Einstein may exist in <insert poor country>, but we will never know." That is a hideous loss of human potential. We, as a society, need brilliant people to achieve their maximum potential without luck. And we need people less than absolutely brilliant to not have to fight so stupidly hard to move up. We had an article (I believe in the LA Times) talking about the problems of the disincentives of being a student from an underprivileged background. The biggest thing that struck me was that STEM fields were simply not in scope--the students coming from these backgrounds simply were blocked. Social worker, lawyer, nurse, etc. were achievable but engineer, scientist, or doctor were absolutely not--through no fault of their own other than the area in which they were born. You can only fix this by putting a very significant amount of more resource into your education system.
clawedjird 6y ago
> I'm just trying to understand where it is that my family got lucky Really? Did you read the article? Raj Chetty's work on inter-generational mobility should make it obvious where your family got lucky. Your grandfather's story resembles many others from that time period. If he was even able to immigrate to the US today, as a contemporary version of his 1940's self, he wouldn't find nearly the same level of opportunity. > Where else on Earth is this possible? I would agree that there are economic benefits to being a global hegemon. Today, however, at least based on measures of social mobility, your family's rise would be more possible in Western Europe than the US.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Chetty’s work lumps together a lot of different people with very different circumstances. An Asian American born in the bottom 20% has a 25% chance of ending up in the top 20%: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-your-own-mobility-animation.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-y.... Hispanic men born in lowest 20% have a 15% chance of ending up in the top 20%. That’s a high level of mobility. But black men raised in the bottom 20%, the chances of rising to the top are just 7%. If you compare the US to for example Denmark, you can see that the lack of opportunity is concentrated in the bottom 20%. That is to say, income mobility is similar between the countries for people in the lower middle class, but not at the very bottom: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/05/economic-mobility-in-the-u-s-and-denmark/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/05/economic-mo... The various data taken together strongly suggests something else is at work rather than the economic system itself. Poor Asians, poor Hispanics, and poor blacks face the same economic system. For them to have vastly different outcomes in terms of economic mobility, the explanation is likely to be something apart from the economic system. What is billed as a matter of economic mobility may well turn out to be more of a story about the criminal justice system, systemic racism, the lasting effects of segregation, etc.
Barracoon 6y ago
This commencement speech from Arnold Schwarzenegger hopefully helps you understand where your family got lucky (text and video on this page). Arnold worked incredibly hard for his success, just like it sounds your family did. However, he did not live in a vacuum - he got lucky in many ways. He got lucky that he was born with genes that allowed him to maximize his grueling weight lifting routines to pack on mass (and probably lucky that no one really did much about steroid use?). He got lucky that someone took a chance and cast him despite his appearance and accent. He got lucky that voters elected him to governor, then that the legislature worked with him, and then that his infidelity didn't come out until after his term. Similarly, you grandfather got lucky that he didn't die when his village was burned, that he didn't die in a work camp, that he could immigrate to the US, that someone gave him a job and wasn't in a community that hated Polish people for no reason. Your parents and you were lucky to be born to the families you were. There's less context about you/your father/your uncle, but I imagine there was a lot of luck of someone else giving you a chance involved. As other posters have said - don't be upset that you got lucky! There's nothing wrong with being lucky. Success is a mix of luck and being able to take advantage of that luck - your preparation and hard work. Hopefully you use the luck that you got to help provide a bit of luck to someone else. https://time.com/4779796/arnold-schwarzenegger-university-of-houston-uh-commencement-graduation/ https://time.com/4779796/arnold-schwarzenegger-university-of...
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  > Similarly, you grandfather got lucky that he didn't die when his village was burned, that he didn't die in a work camp, that he could immigrate to the US, that someone gave him a job and wasn't in a community that hated Polish people for no reason. Your parents and you were lucky to be born to the families you were. There's less context about you/your father/your uncle, but I imagine there was a lot of luck of someone else giving you a chance involved. Thanks for this. You're right. You've made me realize that I'm probably falling victim to intergenerational information loss or just a lack of appreciation. A couple years ago I sat down with my grandfather with a voice recorder and asked him a bunch of questions about what it was like when he was in Germany, when he immigrated, what he did once he got here. He was lucky to be able to immigrate to the US. After the war, he worked for a while in an office for the German government (he actually still gets a pension check from the German government) doing paperwork for displaced citizens and helping them get visas to Australia and the US. He had all his paperwork worked out to go to Australia instead of the US and at the last minute he was able to get sponsorship in Chicago and was able to come here instead. I think the only reason that connection came through was because it was someone he helped immigrate earlier. He was lucky that someone gave him a job. In fact, that's the exact expression he used when I asked him. If I asked him, the guy with the hardest cross to bear, he'd definitely attribute a lot of his life to getting lucky. But my dad and uncle weren't lucky to get to a community that didn't hate Polish people. I've heard a story that my uncle and dad were beat up as they were walking home from school one day and my uncle had his head put through a window, just for being Polish. I think it's all about context. My grandfather looks at what life would have been like if he was still in Poland and thinks, "Of course I'm lucky!" My dad looks at the kids he grew up around and thinks, "I didn't speak any English until the first grade. I'm lucky, but things could have been easier for me." And I think, "I'm just a normal American guy, things are as easy for me as they would be for anyone."

dragonwriter 6y ago

> I'm just trying to understand where it is that my family got lucky Between the inputs and the outputs. For example: > He came to the US and worked in the forges for Falk in Milwaukee. He didn't speak English, but he worked hard, lived responsibly, and paid for the education of his two children Plenty of people at the same time put the same inputs of hard work and responsible living in, and got different outcomes due to forces they didn't control. The success of American elites (this is true of capitalism generally, and the greater prosperity of American capitalists compared to much of the rest of the developed West is due specifically to failing tomitigate this aspect of capitalism as much) is built on the precarious position of the working class.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bsder 6y ago

The issue is that there is NO job today for that immigrant who doesn't speak English--let alone one that supports a family in this day and age--let alone one that pays for college. And why should you feel sour? There is nothing wrong with being lucky. However, the problem is that too many lucky people assume that their result is due to work rather than luck and then attribute a lack of result to a lack of work instead of a lack of luck. This is akin to winning the lottery jackpot and then blaming other people not hitting the lottery because they just didn't buy enough tickets rather than the odds being explicitly stacked against them.

pdubs1 6y ago
>The issue is that there is NO job today for that immigrant who doesn't speak English Not sure where you live, but what you speak of does not match my experience. Have you never worked in a kitchen in an American restaurant? Or in an agricultural field? Or in the cleaning services department of a facility? I have had plenty of neighbors in apartments who did not speak English and also coworkers (when I was waiting tables) who did not speak English. They had jobs. Latin Americans, who speak Spanish. In some cases they have families. And in some of those cases, their children do attend college.
mech422 6y ago
The problem I see with this line of thought is it tends to minimize personnel responsibility and overlooks the fact that everyone has _bad_ luck as well as good.. I had the 'bad luck' not to be born rich, should I let that define my life? or should I wait around for some 'good luck' to change that ? The argument reminds me of the old religious debates about 'free will' vs 'destiny'...if some god already knows every decision we will make, and we make 'evil' decisions, were we destined to be 'evil' ? If a 'god' with perfect knowledge already knows we will make these 'evil' decisions, did we really have a choice (eg if we choose to be good, the 'gods' knowledge is no longer perfect..) Just seems like a great way to remove personal responsibility from the conversation. Yes, we all have been lucky (and have all had bad luck..) but yes, you have to make the most of it as well. Having the awesome luck to win the lotto doesn't really matter, if you never take the personal responsibility to cash in the ticket.
- bsder 6y ago
  > I had the 'bad luck' not to be born rich, should I let that define my life? No, but what we, as a society, need to do is cut down on how much luck you need in order to move up. There was a very nice article at one point that showed that the absolute best students who come from the lowest 20% of the socioeconomic strata barely do as well as the absolute worst students of the highest 20% of the socioeconomic strata. It's basically a proof of "Einstein may exist in <insert poor country>, but we will never know." That is a hideous loss of human potential. We, as a society, need brilliant people to achieve their maximum potential without luck. And we need people less than absolutely brilliant to not have to fight so stupidly hard to move up. We had an article (I believe in the LA Times) talking about the problems of the disincentives of being a student from an underprivileged background. The biggest thing that struck me was that STEM fields were simply not in scope--the students coming from these backgrounds simply were blocked. Social worker, lawyer, nurse, etc. were achievable but engineer, scientist, or doctor were absolutely not--through no fault of their own other than the area in which they were born. You can only fix this by putting a very significant amount of more resource into your education system.

clawedjird 6y ago

> I'm just trying to understand where it is that my family got lucky Really? Did you read the article? Raj Chetty's work on inter-generational mobility should make it obvious where your family got lucky. Your grandfather's story resembles many others from that time period. If he was even able to immigrate to the US today, as a contemporary version of his 1940's self, he wouldn't find nearly the same level of opportunity. > Where else on Earth is this possible? I would agree that there are economic benefits to being a global hegemon. Today, however, at least based on measures of social mobility, your family's rise would be more possible in Western Europe than the US.

rayiner 6y ago
Chetty’s work lumps together a lot of different people with very different circumstances. An Asian American born in the bottom 20% has a 25% chance of ending up in the top 20%: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-your-own-mobility-animation.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-y.... Hispanic men born in lowest 20% have a 15% chance of ending up in the top 20%. That’s a high level of mobility. But black men raised in the bottom 20%, the chances of rising to the top are just 7%. If you compare the US to for example Denmark, you can see that the lack of opportunity is concentrated in the bottom 20%. That is to say, income mobility is similar between the countries for people in the lower middle class, but not at the very bottom: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/05/economic-mobility-in-the-u-s-and-denmark/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/05/economic-mo... The various data taken together strongly suggests something else is at work rather than the economic system itself. Poor Asians, poor Hispanics, and poor blacks face the same economic system. For them to have vastly different outcomes in terms of economic mobility, the explanation is likely to be something apart from the economic system. What is billed as a matter of economic mobility may well turn out to be more of a story about the criminal justice system, systemic racism, the lasting effects of segregation, etc.

Barracoon 6y ago

This commencement speech from Arnold Schwarzenegger hopefully helps you understand where your family got lucky (text and video on this page). Arnold worked incredibly hard for his success, just like it sounds your family did. However, he did not live in a vacuum - he got lucky in many ways. He got lucky that he was born with genes that allowed him to maximize his grueling weight lifting routines to pack on mass (and probably lucky that no one really did much about steroid use?). He got lucky that someone took a chance and cast him despite his appearance and accent. He got lucky that voters elected him to governor, then that the legislature worked with him, and then that his infidelity didn't come out until after his term. Similarly, you grandfather got lucky that he didn't die when his village was burned, that he didn't die in a work camp, that he could immigrate to the US, that someone gave him a job and wasn't in a community that hated Polish people for no reason. Your parents and you were lucky to be born to the families you were. There's less context about you/your father/your uncle, but I imagine there was a lot of luck of someone else giving you a chance involved. As other posters have said - don't be upset that you got lucky! There's nothing wrong with being lucky. Success is a mix of luck and being able to take advantage of that luck - your preparation and hard work. Hopefully you use the luck that you got to help provide a bit of luck to someone else. https://time.com/4779796/arnold-schwarzenegger-university-of-houston-uh-commencement-graduation/ https://time.com/4779796/arnold-schwarzenegger-university-of...

nickysielicki 6y ago
> Similarly, you grandfather got lucky that he didn't die when his village was burned, that he didn't die in a work camp, that he could immigrate to the US, that someone gave him a job and wasn't in a community that hated Polish people for no reason. Your parents and you were lucky to be born to the families you were. There's less context about you/your father/your uncle, but I imagine there was a lot of luck of someone else giving you a chance involved. Thanks for this. You're right. You've made me realize that I'm probably falling victim to intergenerational information loss or just a lack of appreciation. A couple years ago I sat down with my grandfather with a voice recorder and asked him a bunch of questions about what it was like when he was in Germany, when he immigrated, what he did once he got here. He was lucky to be able to immigrate to the US. After the war, he worked for a while in an office for the German government (he actually still gets a pension check from the German government) doing paperwork for displaced citizens and helping them get visas to Australia and the US. He had all his paperwork worked out to go to Australia instead of the US and at the last minute he was able to get sponsorship in Chicago and was able to come here instead. I think the only reason that connection came through was because it was someone he helped immigrate earlier. He was lucky that someone gave him a job. In fact, that's the exact expression he used when I asked him. If I asked him, the guy with the hardest cross to bear, he'd definitely attribute a lot of his life to getting lucky. But my dad and uncle weren't lucky to get to a community that didn't hate Polish people. I've heard a story that my uncle and dad were beat up as they were walking home from school one day and my uncle had his head put through a window, just for being Polish. I think it's all about context. My grandfather looks at what life would have been like if he was still in Poland and thinks, "Of course I'm lucky!" My dad looks at the kids he grew up around and thinks, "I didn't speak any English until the first grade. I'm lucky, but things could have been easier for me." And I think, "I'm just a normal American guy, things are as easy for me as they would be for anyone."