World's richest woman says poor should have less fun, work harder. Calls for lower minimum wage and tax cuts

[HappySqurriel]

Immortal said:

HappySqurriel said:
Its insensitive and not politically correct but it is not inherently wrong ...

While becoming "Bill Gates Rich" involves a lot of exceptional things to line up for you, the basic process of climbing the economic ladder involves showing up, doing the work that is required of you, and trying to get along with your co-workers/other students and boss/teacher.

Anyone can end up being "poor" for a period of their life due to misfortune, but almost no one stays "poor" for a long period of time without their decisions and attitude playing a major role in it. Certainly we all may "fail" in life but the difference between those who are successful and those who are not is often based on who tries again. There is a long list of successful people who were successful simply because they were willing to fail more than anyone else.

We would mock a 40 year old man who never had a girlfriend who made up countless excuses why he never put any effort into attracting women and yet deserved to be with a "perfect 10", and yet we completely tolerate people making similar excuses why they never put any effort into their career but deserve to be wealthy.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but do you really have any evidence for this? I mean, this is the normal right-wing argument; the poor are poor because they don't work hard enough or something to this effect. The general leftist response is either that a) they do work hard and the system is rigged to make sure they get nowhere while doing so or b) they don't work hard because they have experienced no benefit from working hard and have stopped bothering.

Idealistically, I'd like to go with your rhetoric since the idea seems to be that people are the masters of their own fate and that we aren't completely bound by circumstance, but are you entirely convinced that's the reality of the situation in general?

For your second paragraph, the liberal answer would probably be that few poor people are in the situation you described and that the majority put effort into their career and still get nowhere, rather giving them something of a right to complain about being poor.

The primary "proof" comes from seeing how the income distribution changes based on controlling certain factors ...

While they are not the only factors, age and education level play a huge role in the income of people. The older and more educated a person is the higher their income generally is; and age is an imperfect proxy of experience and effort put into their career. A 17 year old high-school drop out has (at this point in time) put in no work to develop the necessary skills within the economy and generally only has low paying career options, while the 50 year old executive vice president of a mid-sized company has spend decades building the skills to be successful and is being rewarded for it.

I'm in no way saying that anyone can reach any income level but usually there is an understandable set of steps that a person can follow to improve their standard of living. A woman I know immigrated to Canada and was working at a hotel cleaning rooms. She then entered into a local college part time and worked to become a nursing assistant (of some sort), after that she continued to go to school part time until she got her nursing degree; and now she makes a very nice wage. I find it difficult to accept people complaining about how someone else is the cause of their poverty when I see people who were dealt a much worse hand work their way to success.