521–530 of 548 posts
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What exceptions? Don't you have any restaurants or dry cleaners or any other small businesses around where you live which were started by poor immigrants?
That seems like a strange comparison. Apple and my local kebab shop are not businesses in the same league and never will be.
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Here I thought I was underachieving because I was reading HN comments instead of doing anything productive. Now I see that the world, or at least subsets of the population I’m allowed to blame for my problems, has wronged me, which appeals to my petty sense of envy and bitterness and assuages the guilt I had about not actually trying. Perhaps this inequality is actually a grand conspiracy. I wish the press, academia,…
You are correct. The homeless camps across the United States are no doubt full of people not actually trying.
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That seems like a strange comparison. Apple and my local kebab shop are not businesses in the same league and never will be.
I hope you don't think only a multi billion dollar companies count as success. The point is: a lot of poor people start businesses all the time and a lot of them end up successful.
What's "a lot". My bet is on the majority failing, and by that, I mean, going bankrupt before even breaking even.
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I agree about the signifier, but still think education has a real value outside the pure signalling. You need experts and for that you need schools/colleges because in most jobs you will not learn wide enough nor deep enough (exceptions are possible).
Yes, you need experts, but the people who are going to really benefit from expert-level training were probably already going to go to college anyway. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc are part of the upper class in one way or another.
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>What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? Vigorously target labor unions. Lobby for substantial decreases in state and Federal taxation, reductions that have in turn necessitated major reductions in education spending and substantial tuition increases that hit middle class families [1]. Attempt (so far unsuccessfully) to privatize social security. Strongly oppose healthcare re…
You are conflating "rich" with "not socialist".
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As per the source I linked: the rich captured all the gains and failed to increase everyone else’s pay to even match inflation.
As per the source, the rich are paid in stock, and they made more because stocks grew in value. You're making it sound like a scheme when it's a paycheck. Everyone in the US is free to convert all of their money into stock whenever they like. The reason the CEOs get paid in stock to to tie their compensation to the value of the company, not to disenfranchise the poor.
Hey, let me convert my ramen money into 2 Berkshire Hathaway shares.
Do you realize how ridiculous and disconnected from reality you comment sounds?
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I think this is the main con of American individualism. The alternative is the culture in Asian societies and perhaps to some extent in European ones as well - there is always an Uncle or Aunty who is watching out for you. Of course that has cons where you can't do things that are unconventional, but at the very least you have a stop gap to help young people who are lost.
The greatest and most rapid creation of wealth in human history occurred in the US under an even more extreme form of American individualism than exists today. Europe is quite poor relative to America precisely because its anti-individualism prevents the formation of economic-political environments conducive to wealth creation.
Do you mean the 1800s? Manifest Destiny? That time when the Americans bought Louisiana for peanuts to double the size of their country, kicked out Mexico to double the size of their country again, bought Alaska to add another 20%, again, for peanuts, and "conveniently" wiped out all the original populations in those territory and provided free land for probably half their population? And also leveraged their common language and culture to steal, pardon me, transfer, industrial technology from Britain?
Gee, I wonder how they got rich, every nation in the world should have been able to reproduce that, right?
I'm not saying that Americans didn't also do amazing things as individuals, but it's REALLY, REALLY hard to be sure that the end result came from those amazing things or from the shady things I listed above.
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We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. (In some ways, even more so than the EU. For example, the EU has no equivalent of our anti-commandeering principle. The EU can direct national administrative organs to carry out task, while the U.S. federal government can’t direct state administrative units. The issue of why taxpayers won’t pay doctors to deliver children i…
> We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. That ship sailed over the horizon a long time ago, like at the latest with the adoption of the 14th Amendment nearly 150 years ago. When you took the oath to become a lawyer, you didn't swear allegiance to whatever state you happened to be living in at the time. And sociologically, I'd venture that most U.S. citizens thin…
My New York bar oath says: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York." You don't swear loyalty to the constitution of a mere administrative subdivision.
> And sociologically, I'd venture that most U.S. citizens think of themselves as Americans, not as Marylanders or Texans (OK, granted, a lot of Texans think of themselves as Texans first, which isn't a good thing).
I think that depends on the context of the question. If you ask people in the abstract, I agree most people identify as American first. But people have very well-developed affinities and prejudices about their states versus neighboring states that verge on nationalistic sentiment. Texans do, of course, which is something I find charming. But so do Oregonians. Having spent much of my adult life in Georgia, I can tell you exactly what I think about Floridians, Alabamans, South Carolinians, Mississippians, etc. (A lot of these sentiments play out through college football, the way they play out through soccer in Europe.) My wife, being a fifth generation Oregonian, would not move to California to save her life. Having relocated to Maryland, we have both cultivated an active dislike of Virginians (what the heck are they doing here, with their license plates?)
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I hope you don't think only a multi billion dollar companies count as success. The point is: a lot of poor people start businesses all the time and a lot of them end up successful.
> The point is: a lot of poor people start businesses all the time and a lot of them end up successful What's "a lot". My bet is on the majority failing, and by that, I mean, going bankrupt before even breaking even.
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Yes, you need experts, but the people who are going to really benefit from expert-level training were probably already going to go to college anyway. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc are part of the upper class in one way or another.
A huge chunk of "doctors, lawyers, scientists" come from the middle class or lower, though.