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Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

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Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#211

Post by nickthemagicman »

timedoctor wrote: post #210
ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone who was so aggressively proud of their success, having founded and grown a successful business. He'd talk your ear off about how people like him were the ones adding value to society and how unsuccessful people are just lazy and don't try hard enough or don't take enough risks, or are just deadbeats, and how successful, hard working people are punished with taxes--you know, the standard soapbox speech.…

I did not agree at all. In my experience it's much easier to make 1 million then it is to invest 1 million and make another million. Also there are many startups that require zero investment capital and if you do not have a family and you minimise your expenses you can leave on very very little. If you do have a family it's more difficult but still possible.

'Its easier to make a million starting from zero than make a million starting with a million' is the essence of what you just said.

This is easily the dumbest thing Ive ever heard on this site. Seriously.

Can we guild and save this somehow?

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#212

Post by pjmorris »

ap22213 wrote: post #103
nugget wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going from $0 to $1M is almost impossible--going from $1M to $2M is almost inevitable. I know plenty of people who inherited money and blew it all. Very, very few people, even children from ''rich'' families, have an ''infinite money cushion''. People who come from poverty or communities rampant with discrimination often times have to work harder for opportunities. But hard work is hard work, and there is fierce co…

It depends on where one lives. Where I currently live, it takes about $25M in wealth just to get out of middle class and into lower upper class. And, to get into the true upper class requires maybe $500M to a billion. And, at that level, it is effectively infinite money (like > $250k a day in passive income, at the lowest level). -4 in less than 30 minutes. that's a record for me. I must have said something controver…

Is the $25M in US dollars? If so, that seems like plenty to be upper class in any place I'm aware of. For example, at 4% return on investment, that'd yield $1M US annually. 500K would be enough money to, e.g., rent two rooms at the Mayfair Hotel in London, or the Contemporary Hotel at Disneyland for the year and eat out every night. Maybe you live in a place more rarefied than Mayfair or Disneyland, but there aren't many of those places, so your experiences may not be typical.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#213

Post by tn13 »

trjordan wrote: post #3

I wish I could remember where I read this, but I once heard it explained to me as this: It's easy to deride the journey of the rich college student: 80-hour internships at Goldman Sachs, unpaid positions in government, etc. But, the things that are done by successful people are hard, as hard as walking a tightrope. The difference is that rich students walk this tightrope over a bed of pillows. Poor students walk it o…

> Obviously falling off onto a cushion is easier.

The whole notions of cushion and spikes is relative too. For some having a roof above your head might sound like a blessing. I will probably hang myself (metaphorically speaking) than go back and stay with my parents thought I will get a house and food twice a day.

Large mass of those so called "privileged" people perhaps have to take equal amount of stress even though in absolute terms we might think they are better off.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#214

Post by nickthemagicman »

WalterBright wrote: post #181
nugget wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going from $0 to $1M is almost impossible--going from $1M to $2M is almost inevitable. I know plenty of people who inherited money and blew it all. Very, very few people, even children from ''rich'' families, have an ''infinite money cushion''. People who come from poverty or communities rampant with discrimination often times have to work harder for opportunities. But hard work is hard work, and there is fierce co…

85% of American millionaires are self-made. Source: "The Millionaire Next Door" book.

85% of wizards are educated at Hogwarts. "Harry Potter" book.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#215

Post by nickthemagicman »

WalterBright wrote: post #181
nugget wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going from $0 to $1M is almost impossible--going from $1M to $2M is almost inevitable. I know plenty of people who inherited money and blew it all. Very, very few people, even children from ''rich'' families, have an ''infinite money cushion''. People who come from poverty or communities rampant with discrimination often times have to work harder for opportunities. But hard work is hard work, and there is fierce co…

85% of American millionaires are self-made. Source: "The Millionaire Next Door" book.

Wheres the ACTUAL study? Or did the author just call up 5 rich dudes?

Seriously are we taking this number as legitimate.. simply because it comes from a BOOK?

Is that how low our scientific standards have become?

Frickin Pixar verified that talking cars exist. Good enough for me!

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#216

Post by oldmanjay »

st3v3r wrote: post #190
hueving wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I absolutely would take away from their success Why? Because they are an asshole about it? That doesn't reduce their success in any way. If they have offset the losses of their previous endeavors, they have provided a net gain and it's still a success.

Because they're an asshole about it, and because they're ignoring the pure luck advantages they had which made their success possible. And it doesn't matter if they've offset the losses of their previous tries, they still took multiple tries (in and of itself not a problem), which is something most people don't get.

Let me ask a question - what does your attitude benefit you? It seems mostly to make you bitter about things that were never in your control, which seems like an unvarnished negative. Maybe you've found something more helpful.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#217

Post by Terr_ »

simplemath wrote: post #80
tajen wrote: post #73

I'm in France and I sometimes notice that USA articles focus only on underpriviledged talent . Why only the talents? It's a bit like rape is fought against, except in prisons because they're lower-grade citizen. Or like articles describing unwarranted violence from the SWAT teams: "The family was playing poker, they got busted for illegal gaming, 3 died" will trigger fewer reaction than "The SWAT team killed the dog.…

Empathy is a dying sentiment in this country. We've made the horrible mistake of conflating "success" with morality; i.e. "the poor are just lazy", or "this wealthy person is automatically a paragon of good judgement"

It's a human problem, not a modern-day nor US-only one. It seems we're all intrinsically prone to the "Just World" hypothesis.

Consider the historical examples -- widely spread over cultures and times -- of where the wealthiest and most powerful people are assumed not just to be "good people", but God-approved or even proto-deities themselves.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#218

Post by quanticle »

WalterBright wrote: post #181
nugget wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going from $0 to $1M is almost impossible--going from $1M to $2M is almost inevitable. I know plenty of people who inherited money and blew it all. Very, very few people, even children from ''rich'' families, have an ''infinite money cushion''. People who come from poverty or communities rampant with discrimination often times have to work harder for opportunities. But hard work is hard work, and there is fierce co…

85% of American millionaires are self-made. Source: "The Millionaire Next Door" book.

That's exactly what OP is trying to point out. It's easy to be "self-made" when you can get a million dollar loan from your dad to get your real-estate business off the ground. It's easy to be self-made when your dad works at Seattle's most prestigious law firm and can arrange an introduction with IBM's PC hardware division. It's significantly more difficult to be self-made when you have no connections and no capital.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#219

Post by EdSharkey »

projektir wrote: post #205
EdSharkey wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm an old fashioned US citizen and resist your sentiment. I'm of the opinion that if you grab a random adult, inspect them, ask them about their lives, look at their health, abilities, check out their finances, family, and all the rest - then you'll come to the conclusion that, for the vast majority, they themselves are best able to take care of themselves. "Our civilization needs to take care of everyone" i…

It's best for a person to take care of themselves, but it's foolish to expect that when they never got the resources, whether that's financial, mental, educational... > Homelessness should be declared illegal so that civil liberties aren't an issue when we force these people to work or become wards of the state if they are not capable. I think that's called slavery. That seems like the direct opposite of giving peopl…

> I think that's called slavery. That seems like the direct opposite of giving people agency and, if anything, the attitude that created all these problems in the first place.

People aren't given agency by other people, they're born with it. Agency can be denied a person though, especially when they break serious-enough laws. That's all I'm talking about. Now I just need to convince enough people to agree with me that scoffing the "must live in a domicile" law dips into the felony range of crimes.

I contend it's not humane to allow people to live on the street. It's in no one's interest for people in the community to live dangerously like that. Depending on the person's situation, a break from their downward spiral might set them on a path back upward. There's no guarantee the individual will be helped by incarceration, but it's needed for the health of the community.

And incarceration due to homelessness wouldn't be permanent, they didn't murder anyone by sleeping on the street. Obviously, jailing a person for homelessness doesn't fit the crime, too.

Case workers would have to decide what to do with people depending on their situation. Return them to their family? Send them to a workhouse to do their time on the farm? Put them in a home to get medical or mental care? I think this is where the social safety net needs the $$$ concentration. You think the prison industrial complex shouldn't extend to the homeless? Ok, let's write the laws that way: every dollar a person earns at a workhouse goes to them once they leave the house.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#220

Post by psyc »

Wow. Seldom has an article hit so close to home.

I grew up American-poor (household income I had to work any job I could find as a kid to buy near-obsolete computers to hack on. That was probably good for me.

We tell ourselves that smart kids get scholarships, but that's a half-truth. Some do, some don't. I was valedictorian, had a 4.0 GPA, 99th percentile on every academic test, and applied for scholarships. I got a half-ride to a decent state school. I had to work 30 hrs/wk at a stressful job to make up the rest and pay for used books. A major auto accident was enough, financially and psychologically, for me to drop out. None of that was good for me, and I've occasionally regretted not being able to pursue academics further.

My parents never had any money, and never taught me anything about money beyond "don't spend any". I taught myself as much as I could about finance, but I've found that there are money traps absolutely everywhere. Corporations are very eager to take your money for nothing if you're less than extremely vigilant. Sub-optimal mobile plans, auto-renew subscriptions, lack of health insurance, bank fees, gotchas in employment contracts... such things are ultimately in your power to some degree, but it's a constant hostility against you, and if you're not battling, you're potentially losing tens of thousands, often for literally nothing in return.

I was homeless a lot as a young adult. I still don't have an especially stable living situation.

I've had a great career, and I'm a somewhat sought-after "senior" developer. That in itself is an opportunity. Where I come from, $50k/yr is called "good money", and people know how to live like princes on that. The figures tossed about in any discussion of developer comp would make my childhood friends kill themselves (or kill me).

I once managed to save $100k in cash. I used it to try to start a business, but it failed. I've tried to start companies 3 times. I'm trying to start one now, with no money and a failing laptop. Of course I have the option of getting a good job if I need to.

That's enough details. They don't matter that much. What matters to me is how it feels. To know that it's taken me 5 times as long to get to the same place. That the results I get have always been below what I know my potential is. I'll never give up. It's hard to contemplate, so now I meditate it away so it won't stop me from trying. The point is I've worked really, really hard, and now I'm 40, and the success I hope for is still in the future.

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