The Muslims and the Asians took every piece of land, which equal well more than the white world, by imperialistic force.
Shut up you retard. Whites invaded the Americas (North and South), Australasia, Eastern Europe AND most of the Middle East. You're an idiot with no regard for reality and you believe everything in life can be morally justified by attacking the people you don't like. You're a ridiculously unlikable prick.
But in almost all of those cases, it was the British. Furthermore, most of the world clearly is not white. Just India has more people than Europe. Just China has more people than all of Europe. The Middle East has more people than all of Europe. Africa has more people than all of Europe. Are you unaware of this?
The problem with this argument is that it does not account for the fact that most people who own property or wealth in the US, or have positions of any sort of power are not descended from the people who established the original laws, or initially settled the land.
People in those positions got there by getting with the program.
We are ALL born into an environment governed by laws and customs we did not make. Success of any kind is dependent on how well one adapts to the society we are in.
We ALL have to swallow the same crap if we want to succeed, and it does not taste any better to white people than it does to black or brown people.
I am not a fan of the societal or corporate cultures that dictate we project a particular image in order to get and keep a job. It rankles that I have to behave a particular way to get and keep what I have.
HOWEVER, I jumped through the necessary hoops, took the necessary steps, and continue to make the sacrifices and do the work require to succeed. The manners I display, and the behaviors I engage in do not come naturally or easily to me or anybody else, but I suck it up.
Anybody who does the same gets the same results.
Only a racist would think that it is easier or happier or more comfortable for white people to pretend to fit with cultural norms and societal mandates than it is for anybody else.
Only a racist would think that white people alive now have any more responsibility than anybody else of any race in creating the set of rules we all inherited, and to which we all are subject if we want to be successful.
People lose that advantage all the time. Family wealth is hardly a guarantee of success, and is useless in the face of laziness and unwillingness to work within societal norms.
The top 1% is a statistical point on a distribution, not a single group of people whose progeny all stay at the same point in the distribution.
Consider that the richest people in the US did not start out that way. Rockefeller and Carnegie both grew up poor, and each took a turn as among the richest men in the world.
Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerburg are self-made.
There is tremendous class mobility in the US, going both from rich downward, and from poor upward.
The Vanderbilt fortune is gone, and at one point, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in the US.
Ben Carson is a multimillionaire ($30), and he started out very poor. He worked hard, learned and applied considerable skills, and made lots of money. Significantly, he learned to speak and write correct English, dress professionally, and comport himself in accordance with the norms required for professional success.
My folks started off poor, and ended up middle class. My dad started off with the disadvantage of not even speaking English when he started kindergarten, and he had to learn and adopt the behaviors and manners required for acceptance and success in American society.
This is just semantics, Marcus. People who have advantages are privileged.
People lose that advantage all the time. Family wealth is hardly a guarantee of success
Family wealth IS success. If your family is wealthy then you are "successful" without even doing anything, aka Paris Hilton.
and is useless in the face of laziness and unwillingness to work within societal norms.
Utter nonsense. Being lazy doesn't rid you of money you already have. Laziness is the excuse rich people use for why poor people haven't got any money. If the rich are lazy too then who is doing all the work in society?
The top 1% is a statistical point on a distribution, not a single group of people whose progeny all stay at the same point in the distribution.
But the demonstrable reality is that the vast majority of them DO stay at the same point, or more frequently they INCREASE their wealth, since it is much easier to make money when you have lots of it already, aka Donald Trump. The fact is that the same family names recur over and over and over again when looking at the history of wealth.
Consider that the richest people in the US did not start out that way. Rockefeller and Carnegie both grew up poor
Just factually untrue:-
Yet the Rockefeller family has defied all of that. Now entering its seventh generation with as many as 170 heirs, the Rockefeller family has maintained substantial wealth — they had an $11 billion fortune in 2016, according to Forbes.
Yet the Rockefeller family has defied all of that. Now entering its seventh generation with as many as 170 heirs, the Rockefeller family has maintained substantial wealth — they had an $11 billion fortune in 2016, according to Forbes.
I apologize for being unclear.
I meant only the John D. Rockefeller (born 1837) who founded Standard Oil, and the Andrew Carnegie (born 1835) who founded US Steel.
Family wealth IS success. If your family is wealthy then you are "successful" without even doing anything, aka Paris Hilton.
Again, The Millionaire Next Door addresses how this works in practice. Thrift, savings, and working class values made it possible for one generation to amass substantial wealth, but the subsequent two generations usually divide and dissipate the assets, and do not live as thriftily as the working class generation that amassed the assets.
The kids & grandkids become professionals, often with incomes that put them in the top 1% of income, but are not as parsimonious as is required to be in the top 1% of assets. By assets, they are often in the top 10% or 25%. This demonstrates the mobility going both ways.
It would be nicer to know what percentage of the advantage stay advantaged and what percentage of the disadvantaged stay disadvantaged. ;)
Percentage of individuals, or families?
Percentage of people who waste money, or live thriftily?
Percentage of people who are industrious, or just diddle about?
Percentage of people who take advantage of the system of laws, cultural norms, and societal requirements, or people who disregard preexisting requirements.
I am not so sure that statistics are particularly useful, particularly because we are looking at people who are relatively rare. The presupposition of statistics is that individual differences (and combinations of personal behaviors) are not the key. To get at those we are dependent on anecdotes.
Again, my point was that in the US people can, do, and always have been able to move into the top 1% of income.
Consider that the threshold for the top 1% is only an income of about a quarter to a third of a million dollars per year (depending on region, year, and whether the criterion is gross or net income.) My plumber in San Diego (who was his own business--just him and a part-time helper) made that in the early 2000s. He charged $1000 to replace and replumb a bath tub. It took him less than 4 hours, and he was the cheapest I could find. I paid him at a higher hourly rate than my lawyer!
True, there is a difference between top 1% of income and top 1% of assets, but the categories overlap. Read The Millionaire Next Door by by T. Stanley & W. Danko. In large part, it addresses how working class people, primarily small business owners move into the top 1% of income, and then into the top 1% of assets. It is the work of a lifetime, but it happens more than many people think. The key is a lifetime of hard work, thrift, and savings. Cheap living (small house, used car) and savings/reinvestment are how wealth is built from nothing over the course of decades.
Sometimes, as in the case of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Hiltons, and Trumps, the kids and grandkids do not dissipate the wealth built by their working class parents and grandparents, but build on it to increase fortune and power.
The evidence demonstrates that advantage of family wealth is not a guarantee of personal success, nor is the lack of family wealth and its advantages an insurmountable barrier to joining the top 1% of income or assets.
As in all things, the usefulness of the advantage depends entirely on application of personal abilities, and whether or not one behaves in accordance with preset/preexisting societal norms and cultural requirements.
The same is true of the bottom 1% of income/assets. In order to keep from being permanently poor in the US, one must graduate high school, get a job (any job), and marry BEFORE becoming a parent. 98% of those who do these three things become middle class by the end of their lives. Those who refuse to get in line with these three simple requirements are MUCH more likely to remain poor.
Personal outcomes of wealth and power are not so much a function of where one starts, but whether one behaves in accordance with the cultural rules and system of laws and requirements that are part of the landscape that limit everybody.
Personal outcomes of wealth and power are not so much a function of where one starts, but whether one behaves in accordance with the cultural rules and system of laws and requirements that are part of the landscape that limit everybody.
You are missing two main factors if you think that average wages staying stagnant means that personal wealth/power outcomes are not a function of whether one behaves in accordance with the cultural rules and system of laws and requirements that are part of the landscape that limit everybody.
1 - That the stagnant purchasing power of AVERAGE wages for all American workers does not mean that individuals do not experience increased income.
Personal wage increase is a function of promotion, not increase in wage rates for staying in the same job.
Promotion and getting higher paying jobs over the course of your life is a function of personal behavior.
Because of how I behave (how I do my job, the education and experience I have gained, the jobs to which I have applied) my income has doubled in the past eight years, but the cost of living has not increased by even 25%.
When I was 30, I was in the bottom 10% of American earners, but a couple decades later, I am in the top 25% of earners.
2 - Wages are not the main path to wealth and power.
Entrepreneurship is.
The main behaviors in our society that lead to wealth and power are getting an education or learning a skillset, continuing to learn all your life, taking risks, innovating, reinvesting profits, creating and maintaining advantageous relationships, learning from failure, trying again after repeated failures, and working 70-80 hours per week.
There are multiple factors. Including the 2 that you mentioned. Trying to determine which is "the main" contributing factor would be an impossible task because people do not always behave logically. If people always behaved logically, economics would be a science. It is also impossible because you would have to characterize and quantize luck as one of the factors. Not to mention prejudices.
So..., if you believe those are the 2 main factors, good for you ;)
Absolutely there are multiple factors, I was merely calling attention to two that were ignored, and that are necessary to illuminate the article.
As for luck, it is the residue of hard work.
As for prejudice, that definitely plays a part. The most impactful prejudices are people's expectations about how they will be limited before they even try. Self-fulfilling prophecies are pretty damned effective in creating both failure and success.
The close second is prejudice against fat and ugly people on the one hand, and prejudice in favor of pretty people on the other hand.
Of course logical behavior would be nice, but as you indicate, that is far too much to expect.
That was just one article touching on aspect. There was another one a few weeks back about luck. Another one about how pay up at the top has sky rocketed (CEO real wage increases is one example) while workers real wages remained flat. Multiple articles (especially in the tech field) where employees were not hindered by expectations of how they will be perceived before they even try. No self-fulling prophesies but the reality of the prejudices of people on top.
When you think about, an argument can be made that those 2 factors you mentioned are not as important given the fact that real wages have remained flat (unless, you make the argument that the reason real wages have remained flat for so many decades is because the large majority of the people do not abide by those 2 factors). And quite frankly, I don't see it that way ;)
