"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
nk.net...
If you look at who is wealthy in the US you will notice that the list is
constantly changing and that most of them made their own way.

Don't take my comments personally. Just because you're rich, that doesn't
mean I think you personally are driving this country to ruin.

If you look at the wealthiest and most powerful in our country, they all
came from wealth. The idea that "the list is constantly changing" is
laughable. The *order* of the people on the list does change, but the
people who are on that list doesn't change very much at all.

[...] It is not a perfect system by any means but it seems to be better
than any other system.

That is certainly debatable, but I won't bother...I've already done too
much off-topic here.

The "poor" around here are the ones who don't work or don't show up for
work during hunting season or when there is a foot of powder at the ski
resort.

Ahh, yes...must be nice to live somewhere that doesn't have truly
poverty-stricken people. Suffice to say, there are plenty of urban areas
in the US where the poor are a lot worse off than the ones near your
mountain getaway, and for most of whom all they did wrong was to be born
into the wrong economic class.

There certainly are lazy people around, and they often wind up poor (but
there's lots of lazy rich people too). But to assert that if you are
poor, you are obviously lazy is just plain ignorant.

I am not saying poor people are lazy, or even those that I was describing
are lazy. Some are and some aren't. Hunting and skiing are harder than
most jobs. These people aren't lazy, they are just making decisions that
limit their financial success. I wouldn't even go so far as to say thay
they are making poor choices. All I am saying is that the choices that they
have made have put them in a different situation than people with the same
skills who made different choices.

An aquaintance of mine's wife is African-American, grew up in rural Alabama
to uneducated parents in a shack with no electricity or any plumbing. She
is now a vice president of a Fortune 100 company. I grew up in an
upper-middle class area, went to public schools, went to a state university
that was paid for through student loans and a job and went on to be
relatively successful. Did my aquaintance's wife overcome more obstacles
than I did? Certainly. But the fact is that she made it because of the
chioces she made and the inate intelligence she started with..

I know a lot of high school educated people from very modest backgrounds who
are fairly successful. The only difference that I can see between them and
those I described previously is that they made, and continue to make,
different choices. The lifestyle choices that will deliver better long term
financial outcomes are well known but people continue to make the opposite
choices. That is their right and their choice but the outcome is theirs as
well. It would be interesting to know what the outcomes of those who make
the same choices are. How many people who, by choice, did not finish high
school, had two or more children by age 25, use credit to buy un-needed
consumable items end up successful regardless of their background? How many
who made the opposite choices ended up in poverty? I believe that the
answer would show that the choices we make have more bearing on where we end
up than what we start with.

Mike
MU-2