If they did not go to Cranbrook, if they did not play hockey or lacrosse or tennis in school, if they are not involved in private equity and venture capital, if they didn't vote for me or contribute to the right political funds, I really do wish them well and I was more than willing to kiss their babies last year.
Adam Smith wrote:
My great-grandpa was a Norwegian immigrant turned self-made millionaire.
He always said "Stupid people make stupid babies".
Stupid babies need the most attention.
BlehDudeYouHeardMe wrote:
Adam Smith wrote:My great-grandpa was a Norwegian immigrant turned self-made millionaire.
He always said "Stupid people make stupid babies".
Stupid babies need the most attention.
We used to have good ol' fashioned ground wars where we would draft a large number of them and kill off a big percentage of those selected. While not great foreign policy, it was good population control.
aquafina wrote:
BlehDudeYouHeardMe wrote:Stupid babies need the most attention.
We used to have good ol' fashioned ground wars where we would draft a large number of them and kill off a big percentage of those selected. While not great foreign policy, it was good population control.
The matrix is actually a pretty good idea. If you want pop control just jack everyone into a gigantic grid. It will just be a big software programs. Remember robocop where the bad guy brain was fused with the machine. That way no reproduction happens. The company that builds these systems makes gazillion. Everyone is happy.
lange wrote:
Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion or are you just another 30-hour workweek piece of Eurotrash being fashionable by bashing the US over the American-invented internet, using a device running an American-engineered operating system, on a website you found with an American-built search engine?
Evidence for economic mobility:
http://ftp.iza.org/dp1938.pdfTo address a few of your spittle-flecked ad hominem comments, I am not European, I work substantially more than 30 hours a week and Americans contributed to, but can hardly be said to be the primary inventors of, the Internet. Your list of actual American innovations in computer technology can be readily countered with an equally impressive list from, for example, Germany: the automobile, the printing press, bicycles, contact lenses, helicopters, refrigerators, and so on.
America is a very nice country on the whole and Americans are, on average, quite friendly and pleasant. But the blinkered outlook you possess is sadly all too prevalent among your compatriots. While this may fall on deaf ears, I encourage you to travel and meet people from other countries with different perspectives instead of falling back on reflexive nationalism to shape your view of the world.
butter factory wrote:
"deserve" is not the right word, but i think i get what you mean. i think most poor people could get out of poverty or at least improve their situation. the problem is most dont know that they can or dont know how to. seriously. thats how theyve been conditioned and its typically not their fault. its easy to call them lazy or stupid but the mindset of many of our citizens below the poverty line is completely different from the middle or upper class white boy's.
upward mobility is not easy but is certainly attainable. here's an anecdote from my father's family:
his father (my grandfather) was an auto mechanic in a blue collar town in PA. his mother (my grandmother) worked the night shift at dunkin donuts. the boys (including my father) in the family worked construction during the summer. my father is the 3rd of 9 kids. he was born when my grandmother was 18. so yes, they were dirt poor living in a small 2 bedroom house. not all were "successful" but heres how some of them turned out-
child 1- PhD, teaches abroad, and is the smartest person i know
child 2- extremely successful scientist working in singapore
child 3- well known consultant in our city and worth 8 figures
child 8- another PhD and a professor at a top university
child 9- yet another PhD. works in academia
thats my anecdote. im aware i was never poor but know my dad's story well. vertical mobility can be achieved. so while poor people dont deserve it, they have to be proactive and take responsibility for changing their lives. and not all rich people are schmucks
How old are you? I'm 30, and my grandpa was a farmer which was much more typical back then. If you're around my age, or older, it's pretty typical for our grandparents to have non-glamorous jobs, but for their kids to turn out middle class or better.
gamecock wrote:
You know what would be really great for fighting poverty? It would be awesome if we had a system where we all paid taxes (maybe with the well-off paying the most) to fund some sort of free public education that would enable everybody to learn and climb the ladder of success. We could even provide transportation to and from these places, maybe on a big yellow bus. And we could even give free breakfast and lunch to the kids who might be hungry. I'll bet if those kids worked hard and showed promise, some really good universities would even let some of them come for free to continue their education.
Nah. That could never happen.
Know what would be even crazier? If those really good universities would not only let people from disadvantaged backgrounds attend for free, but were actually bending over backwards to get these kids to attend. Maybe they could use their own money to send recruiters into inner city communities to explain the opportunities available and maybe they could even lower their admissions standards a bit to help out kids who didn't come from the best schools. THAT would be crazy!
Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in Three Generations
The universal cultural proverb that says "shirtsleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations," is as old as writing itself. And when I say universal, I mean that it appears in every culture I have studied. Clogs to clogs, kimono to kimono, rice paddy to rice paddy, shirtsleeves to shirt sleeves. And it is a proverb that describes human behavior in terms of creating long-term families as failure.
The theory of the proverb is that the first generation starts off in a rice paddy, meaning two people with an affinity for one another come together and create a financial fortune. They usually do it without making significant changes to their values, customs or lifestyle. The second generation moves to the city, puts on beautiful clothes, joins the opera board, runs big organizations, and the fortune plateaus. The third generation, with no experience of work, consumes the financial fortune, and the fourth generation goes back in the rice paddy. This is the classic formulation of the shirtsleeves proverb, which is as true today as it has been throughout evolved human history.
Define 'poor' and 'rich'. Take home pay for example
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