In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

The people we paid $35,000 were quite well off in that in that town. Hell, I rented one of the largest houses in the area when I moved, and only paid $800/mo (for 4,000 sqft). Nice two bedrooms ran $400-450, with three bedrooms running a hundred or so more.

The single wide culture fell into three main camps, as far as I could see:

1) Those who bought land and put a single wide on it, so they could own their place. Usually the intention was to some day build a house. Not a horrible decision.

2) Those who were renting, and opted to have a smaller trailer on a lot of property (to be able to have horses, etc), instead of going for a real house in town. I can respect that decision too.

3) Those trapped in the "pay weekly" rent treadmill. I feel bad for this group, because they're paying as much or more overall for their trailer rent as a decent rental house ran. But it's almost as bad as the payday loan treadmill .. once you get on, it's hard to get off.

1. education

2. income

3. influence

I've travelled and lived all over the world. It always struck me odd that the poorer places in the world always seem to value religion over education (my perception), and it creates a nasty cycle where the majority of people don't/can't better themselves.

I saw this first hand in the southern US where it was always God #1, everything else (including education, which in my view is super important) #2. You would be amazed at the things people would give up if they thought "God" told them to.

I haven't studied the interaction of the three things above, so this is just my observations, but if you have a strong influencer at a young age, that influencer has a dramatic effect on the trajectory of your life. If that person pushes you to education, likely you'll be ok. Though it goes both ways. If the influencer pushes you away from education (for whatever reason), your life situation could end up very differently.

I was very lucky to have a non-religious teacher mother who pushed education above all else. I didn't know college "was optional". In my family, it wasn't. Not b/c I think college is necessary; I don't by any means. It was her thinking and pushing that molded me in a certain direction. Even though I grew up in the northeast US, I saw super religious families who pushed their kids away from education. Those kids are now in the their 30s and 40s and have lost most of their lives to "god".

My grandparents constantly re-located to where the work was. They did construction so they'd move to where a big hurricane hit, since they'd be busy for a few years. People from the south flocked to the mid-west for factory jobs in the middle of the last century.

But this generation, and the previous generation, are content with just sitting on their asses. People are content to stay put after losing a job. Why move, they're getting an unemployment check? And it's not even people who own a home and don't wish to move.

It irks me when people say, "I can't find a job here." Change where here is! Beg, borrow, or steal a couple hundred bucks and hop a Greyhound out to the oil fields. Do something.

Race still matters, very much.