
The American Dream, RIP? - soundsop
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21586581-economist-asks-provocative-questions-about-future-social-mobility-american
======
JulianMorrison
The American dream of meritocracy and working your way up has been a lie from
day one. In a pyramidal social structure, even if rising is possible, it's
probabilistically unlikely. You should predict that your "merit" is in the
normal range and you will remain in the largest class, subsistence workers. To
convince people that "anyone can make it" implies "everyone can make it" has
been a triumph of political bullshit, and the sooner it unravels the better.

------
coldtea
_First Person_ : Lack of upward mobilty and income inequality is a real
problem.

 _Second Person, living in some Silicon Valley or other bubble, only meeting
similar people (the worser-off of which are some "ramen enterpreneurs" with
upper-middle class parents and university education), ignoring tons of
homeless people, millions of minimum wage workers, immigrants, who almost
never ventures outside his urban comfort zone, etc_: Is there a source
supporting this claim?

For some reason, for other claims, which the same people have a first person
experience with, like sexism and racism, they don't feel the need for a
"source" that much. But when there's something they haven't cared about ever,
don't see in their circles, and doesn't affect their middle/upper-middle class
lives, then suddenly they need citations, which they will then scrutinize.

------
eldude
So the worst case here is that the poor might move to _GASP_ Texas! And enjoy
a better quality of life associated with a smaller government. What a
bizarrely narrow-mindedly ignorant perspective, which I imagine will resonant
quite well with the anti-Walmart crowd that is equally too narrow-minded to
appreciate the impact and empowerment Walmart has on the poor.

~~~
busterarm
How's that small government working out for ya?

[http://norfolk.legalexaminer.com/medical-
malpractice/investi...](http://norfolk.legalexaminer.com/medical-
malpractice/investigation-reveals-dangerous-inaction-on-the-part-of-state-
medical-boards/)

[http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2013/05/other-
sho...](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2013/05/other-shoe-
dropping-another-gosnell-emerges-in-texas/)

[http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/06/dr_christ...](http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/06/dr_christopher_duntsch_plano_s.php)

I don't consider it a high quality of life when you can't have a reasonable
expectation that a surgeon isn't going to kill you on the operating table and
has been killing patients for years with complaints about him while the state
board does nothing.

~~~
jejones3141
So a failure of government agencies is an argument for more government? I
don't quite see how that follows.

~~~
busterarm
No, I was implying that what the parent comment meant by "small government"
was actually "useless government" and that his supposed higher quality of life
was anything but.

Texas sucks. Hard.

------
wffurr
"The American Dream" was a myth from its very inception, perpetuated to
suppress labor and preserve the capitalist status quo.

~~~
aroman
"suppress labor" and "preserve the capitalist status quo" seem to be
completely antithetical goals.

And really, I disagree. The American Dream to me is the simple idea that if
you work hard, you can climb the social ladder. This is as true now as it ever
has been.

There are no castes in America, only people born into classes of varying
privilege. For some people, therefore, the American Dream is attainable more
easily than others — but that doesn't mean it's a myth.

~~~
EliRivers
_This is as true now as it ever has been._

Whilst it is true that one can climb the social ladder, it is much harder now
than it was. To simply say it is true/false is to ignore that it's
significantly harder now than it was. It has always been true that the
strongest indicator of success is how rich one's parents are; it's more true
now.

~~~
aroman
That is _precisely_ my point.

------
jonnathanson
Social mobility and income distribution are not the same thing, and people
leap to some intellectually dubious conclusions when they conflate the two.

A lot of comparisons are being drawn, for example, between the 1920s and
today. While the income distribution curves look startlingly similar, the
concentration of wealth is very different. Most of today's 1%+ are "working
rich," i.e., they receive the bulk of their income from salaries and bonuses
-- not from ownership or direction of capital.

Most of the turn-of-the-20th-century rich were actual
capitalists/industrialists -- "robber barons" who secured monopolies on
commodities, trade routes, new technologies, and so forth. These robber barons
built generational fortunes whose relative scale and unshakable concentration
are unmatched by anything since, including today. Their children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren enjoyed lavish fortunes not of their
own merit or creation.

Today's income gap appears troubling, and I don't want to downplay it. But the
frequent comparisons to the Gilded Age are superficial at best, and they veer
us off topic. This is true whether one is looking at the comparison from
either side of the politico-economic spectrum: the pro-capitalist side
(because the majority of today's elites are not capitalists, per se, but wage
earners in highly paid fields like finance), _or_ the egalitarian side
(because what, exactly, are we proposing to redistribute? Opportunity? Wealth?
Salary? Market demand? And how will we do this?).

And that's not even touching on globalization, which seems inevitable, and
which has had a major effect on the disappearance of working-class and middle-
class jobs. The article touches on the effects of new technologies, access to
them, and ability to master them -- but this seems pretty meritocratic
_unless_ access is restricted to the children of privileged families. That's
where we need to turn our lens. That's where things start to look less
meritocratic and more aristocratic.

It's time we took a more nuanced view of this issue. For one thing, we should
look beyond the present income inequality and toward the future implications.
Is social mobility going to suffer for the next generation? Is wealth
concentrating in generational amounts? Is the current power-law distribution
crystalizing into a caste system? By some indications it is, and by other
indications it's not. Let's go there. Let's dissect this. We need less hand-
wringing and more investigation.

I'd be much more troubled by an uneven playing field than by uneven scores at
the end of the game. By many accounts, today's playing field is fairly uneven
-- and that's where we should be focusing our attention and effort. At the
same time, we need to be comfortable with the probability than a perfectly
_even_ playing field will still produce uneven outcomes. It might produce
_more_ uneven outcomes, depending upon one's choice of modeling. Nevertheless,
we're looking too much at the symptoms and not enough at the underlying
sickness in the system.

~~~
Joeri
Actually, upward mobility has been regressing in the US for a while now, and
is much worse than in countries like germany or sweden. If you are born in the
bottom fifth, your odds of making it out of there are roughly fifty/fifty. You
don't have to wonder about the next generation because the current one is
suffering enough already.

There's no need for nuance here. Nuance is what you apply when something has
merit. The direction the US economy is headed in has no merit. The ship needs
a course correction.

~~~
sigil
> upward mobility has been regressing in the US for a while now

Do you have a source for this?

> If you are born in the bottom fifth, your odds of making it out of there are
> roughly fifty/fifty.

Are you sure? In a longitudinal study of US income earners during a 20 year
period [1], a _majority_ of people who started in the poorest quintile cracked
the richest quintile at some point. The degree of opportunity this points to
is really quite astonishing if you think about it.

This study is a little dated now (1990s). I can't imagine it's changed
dramatically, but I'd love to see a new longitudinal study that went up to the
present.

[1] Google Books, "Basic Economics" by Sowell:
[http://bit.ly/grnsDF](http://bit.ly/grnsDF)

~~~
azernik
>> upward mobility has been regressing in the US for a while now

> Do you have a source for this?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-
to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-
lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all)

This one doesn't talk very explicitly about the time trend, but it mentions
studies conducted in different decades finding progressively higher levels of
correlation between parents' and children's incomes; unclear if that's due to
random chance or an actual trend.

~~~
yummyfajitas
This only measures relative mobility, not absolute mobility. It doesn't show
at all that it's harder to move up in the world, but merely that it's harder
to move up _relative to someone else_.

~~~
azernik
The absolute mobility measure isn't really indicative of what most people
think of when they hear "social mobility". For example, in 100% rigid caste
society, with any economic growth whatsoever, everyone will make more than
their parents.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Relative mobility isn't indicative of people's intuitive notions of mobility
either.

Consider an farmer living in a village where incomes for everyone range from
200rs/day to 250rs/day depending solely on random chance (weather, locusts,
etc). Relative mobility is high - depending on your crop yield, you could go
anywhere from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. And you have no chance to go
anywhere besides your farm.

~~~
azernik
That's both a very short-term (years to days) and localized (in one specific
sector of the economy) measurement. If you look at inter-generational mobility
(as these studies do), and look at the level of mobility that you care about
e.g. over a whole national economy (as these studies do), a son of such
farmers who grows up to be in the same job as his father will be shown as
moving around solely within the small slice of the class structure (a decile
at most?) that makes up the farmers of the village. Even that much movement
will only show up if his income is fairly consistently (averaged over at least
a year) in a higher percentile than his father's. So yeah, I think relative
mobility is a pretty good indicator.

------
mmagin
Feels like somewhat of an overlap with the kind of trends Nassim Nicholas
Talib has been writing about -- extremely non-gaussian curves for the
probability of various outcomes including wealth.

------
cliveowen
I don't know, at this point I've read a great deal of similar articles that
seem to imply a golden age for software developers and technology
entrepreneurs and a dark age for everyone else. Even worse, the implication
seems to be that the winner-takes-all mechanism will concentrate wealth in an
ever-shrinking elite. I don't think this is completely true, while on one hand
we have more automation and ever-lowering operating costs for many kinds of
businesses that in the end let relatively few people service even millions of
customers (think Instagram for a recent, technology-related example) I think,
we're also heading to an even more globalized landscape where every company
will try and capture customers in every country. Servicing not millions, but
billions of people and offering services in every corner of the world will
actually create demand for people with average skills, a new form of middle
class will emerge. If the future will get to a point where everything will
look really bleak, I think jobs will be created with the sole purpose of
keeping the cash flowing. Unemployed, unhappy people aren't customers, are
lost sales. A middle class is needed, middle class jobs are needed, if they
won't come up naturally, someone will make sure they'll exist somehow.

~~~
VLM
Its hard to test a very large scale theory based on optimism about human
nature, but you can downscale it and try it on smaller scales like states and
cities. So why didn't your example of Instagram benefit West Virginia or
Detroit?

If a self organizing phenomena doesn't happen at a small scale in almost all
examples, you need a theoretical reason why it doesn't downscale if your claim
is some time in the future it'll self organize at a larger scale.

The future of the whole country probably resembles WV or Detroit much more
than SV. This has certain startup implications; for example, creating a luxury
electric car startup in a permanently down-trending country seems unwise, in
comparison sharing photos sounds like something poorer people can continue to
cheaply do as they gradually become permanently poorer and poorer because even
the 3rd world has mobile phones.

~~~
TheLegace
Exactly, anything that scales up to large, especially to fast ends up becoming
an inefficient and uncontrollable behemoth. Take a look at any corporation(ie.
Microsoft, HP, IBM) or governments(USG, China vs. Canada, Poland, Finland) or
media (News, MTV, Cable) where large entities cannot function efficiently and
only get worse as they become larger.

The only thing that works is some sort of self-organizing nature that similar
to the way biological organisms form, which then end up creating neuron/brain
like structures which form higher intelligence. Take a look at the universe,
there is an interesting talk on how the Internet is starting to show that
phenomenon, it's appearing more and more like a brain and may be starting to
show some signs intelligence.

Take a look at this post from LinuxCon2013(it's not about Linux).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6425227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6425227)

------
tokenadult
I've read various reviews of Tyler Cowen's new book (and I read his blog, very
occasionally). I'm not worried about what he is worried about. I have lived
overseas, twice. I'm back in the United States because the joint conclusion of
my family (including my wife, who grew up in another country) is that the
United States still offers us, and millions of other people, a whole lot of
opportunity for personal advancement that is hard to find in other countries,
even thriving, developed countries that also have representative government, a
free press, and broad protection of individual liberties.

The death of the middle class in the United States has been predicted for a
long time, but middle-class Americans still look like rich people in most
other countries. The whole economy has been transformed over the last century
(my uncle farms land that was first developed into a farm by my grandfather a
century ago, when a large percentage of the United States population were
farmers), but people are still mostly employed, and living in larger, more
comfortable houses, eating better, and living longer[1] than ever. What is
called decline in the United States looks a lot like progress anywhere else in
the world. People are still very eager to immigrate to the United States,[2]
so what exactly is the problem?

[1] An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life
expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why."

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html)

Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising
throughout the developed countries of the world.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-
why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

[2]
[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/232...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/232-million-
people-left-their-countries-for-new-ones-where-did-they-go/279741/)

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-
drea...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream-
life.aspx)

AFTER EDIT: I've still got time to edit this comment, so I'll respond to the
people who think I am ignoring important trend lines. I respectfully disagree.
(Note that I am well known here on Hacker News for saying that United States
K-12 education needs improvement, so I am by no means saying that there is
nothing left to improve, or nothing to worry about, here.) A funny comment
posted on Hacker News about Japan's "lost decade" (posted before I opened my
user account here)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=329218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=329218)

shows how difficult it is for a developed country to lose ground:

 _It was terrible. People were forced to eat raw fish for sustenance. They
couldn 't get full-sized electronics, so they were forced to make tiny ones.
Unable to afford proper entertainment, folks would make do by taking turns to
get up and sing songs._

I've grown up in the United States, and I've been hearing predictions of doom
here throughout my life. Doom here still looks like heaven to most people in
most parts of the world.

~~~
mjn
_a whole lot of opportunity for personal advancement that is hard to find in
other countries, even thriving, developed countries that also have
representative government, a free press, and broad protection of individual
liberties._

Out of curiosity, what kinds of things? I was born and raised in the U.S.
(have lived in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, and Atlanta), and
now live in Copenhagen, and don't feel like I am missing a lot so far, apart
from the general experience of foreignness occasionally being strange (might
be ameliorated if I were better at learning Danish). If anything the
opportunities for personal advancement feel somewhat stronger, due to the
social safety net meaning you can start companies or nonprofits or whatever
without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare.

I'll probably move back at some point, but mostly just because it's where I'm
from, not out of any particular dissatisfaction with Denmark. And I'll
probably only move back if I have a good job with a salary and benefits lined
up first...

~~~
busterarm
The "American Dream" for a lot of my friends nowadays is to relocate to
Europe. Copenhagen is a frequently-mentioned destination and my destination of
choice as well.

I definitely felt like there was more opportunity in Denmark than here. Gotta
say, I'm a bit jealous.

~~~
tptacek
What kind of opportunity are you referring to? Strip it to nuts and bolts as
much as you can.

I ask because, for instance, it is harder to run a company in Denmark than in
the US. Danish employment law requires months of notice before terminating an
employee, and allows termination only with cause. It also appears to be
somewhat expensive to incorporate there.

~~~
davedx
Interesting first criteria for judging a country's economic opportunities: the
ability to easily terminate your staff.

The "Ease of Doing Business Index" actually removed "how easy is it to fire
people" from its indicators because of the controversy.

Do you think everybody in the USA would agree that being able to fire people
at will is a good thing for the US economy?

~~~
tptacek
Yes. Employment at will is one of the major reasons --- perhaps _the_ major
reason --- why it is easier to start a company in the US than in, say, France.

In a 3-person company, particularly in knowledge work where headcount costs
dominate all other operating expenses, a bad 4th hire is a catastrophic
problem: it means 1/4 of your staff is dysfunctional, maybe 1/5th of your
operating expenses are being wasted, and as many as 1/2 your existing
employees are (a) unhappy and (b) steadily becoming harder to retain. Now
imagine _not being able to terminate that employee_.

The Ease Of Doing Business index includes _no metrics on employment law at
all_ , not just termination; for instance, employee minimum wage, mandatory
holidays, prohibition on contracted employees, prohibition of night work, and
maximum work week are also not considered. That they aren't says more about
the World Bank index than it does about the importance of these issues.

~~~
mjn
For small tech companies in Denmark (I don't know much about other
sectors/countries), it's common to hire people on a contract or fixed-term
basis initially, something like 3-12 months. Then each side can decide if
they'd like to make the arrangement more permanent in the future. For tiny
companies with uncertain revenues it's pretty common to just have that be the
default mode of employment: when you get 12 months of funding, you hire people
for another 12 months, because you can't honestly promise any more than that
anyway.

~~~
tptacek
Oh, cool, are you a small tech company person in Denmark? Can I ask: why
aren't there more small tech companies in Denmark? It can't be for lack of
quality education!

~~~
mjn
I'm not; I'm a useless academic. :) Many of the students in my program start
small game companies, though (I teach in a game masters program), so I follow
that scene a bit.

A few examples that have come out of the program here:
[http://conquistadorthegame.com/](http://conquistadorthegame.com/)
[http://machineers.tumblr.com/](http://machineers.tumblr.com/)
[http://www.knapnokgames.com/](http://www.knapnokgames.com/)
[http://gutefabrik.com/](http://gutefabrik.com/)
[http://duckandcovergames.com/](http://duckandcovergames.com/)
[http://www.seriousgames.net/](http://www.seriousgames.net/)

Most of the small tech companies I know are pretty low-key, though. Besides
the game company route, another common one is a small team of 1-3 people
making a living doing iPhone app development, that kind of thing. Some
congregate around hackerspaces like:
[https://labitat.dk/](https://labitat.dk/)

Not as much of the typical 'startup' route per se, although there have been a
few (Unity3d and Bitbucket come to mind). There's also Copenhagen Suborbitals,
which isn't for-profit, but is probably the most widely recognized
organization to come out of the Copenhagen hacker/maker scene.

~~~
busterarm
Shameless plug for where my friends work, but there are consulting companies
like [http://bestbrains.dk/](http://bestbrains.dk/)

Definitely a small tech company but larger than what was mentioned.

------
anovikov
I don't see any problem is what's explained here. One potential thing to worry
about is a surge in crime rates, but statistics does not show that: crime
rates are falling, and violent crimes especially so, with no sign of reversal.
Otherwise why should we worry?

Really, worry about mass unwarranted wiretaps. Worry about ever increasing
rigging of democracy. Worry about useless wars started by corrupt crooks.
Don't worry about income distribution. It was artificially low in second half
of 20th century due to the fear of communism. With communist system collapsing
and nobody wanting a red revolution anymore, there is no need to redistribute
income in favor of the potential revolutionary class.

------
cmdkeen
I think the final paragraph points out the obvious point - social mobility has
never really fully existed. Previously large swathes of the workforce were
never expected or enabled to progress - women and ethnic minorities. When they
are included I doubt the golden age looks so golden from the point of view of
"everyone" suddenly getting rich off the economic returns of work.

Now the economy is much more open to merit - the problem with meritocracy (as
the article points out) is that once you open it to everyone whole swathes of
people lose out. See the trends of successful women marrying successful men
thus creating a more closed top tier of society.

~~~
VLM
"Previously large swathes of the workforce were never expected or enabled to
progress"

The article listed several reasons why little social turmoil was expected... I
suspect the old "divide and conqueror" will be applied to the above historical
facts. "Sure we're all getting poorer, but the white guys are getting poorer
at a faster rate than we are, so its OK".

I suspect this will be a popular "calming" strategy.

------
anovikov
>Is the current power-law distribution crystalizing into a caste system?

Of course it doesn't. Because the majority of income earned in top 15% and
even top 1% is not derived from capital (at least not financial/material
capital, to be precise). It is salaries and bonuses. Ability to get these is
derived mostly from education (and also social skills which are evenly
distributed among income brackets), and education is going free or cheap
online. So no reason to worry.

------
VLM
I had to LOL at the paragraph incorrectly beginning with "It describes a
future largely stripped of middling jobs". He's describing the present.

The future is already here, just not smoothly distributed.

~~~
aroman
What is the basis for your conclusion? I don't see any evidence of modern
America being "largely stripped of middling jobs". There are millions of
generic corporate, retail, or otherwise "non-elite" jobs being held by
millions of Americans.

~~~
eropple
The presence of corporate functionaries and so on is decreasing steadily over
time as their purpose becomes superfluous through different organization and
evolving technologies. And retail jobs are not "middling", retail jobs are
low-level and were at one point not too long ago almost completely entry-
level.

You are making his point for him.

------
frank_boyd
This should sound familiar:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q)

~~~
TheLegace
"The owners in this country know the truth, it's called the American dream,
because you have to be asleep to believe it." \- George Carlin.

~~~
refurb
So says the multi-millionaire comedian who rose to the top complaining about
everything and everyone. I'm sure he would have had the same success in a
place like China.

BTW, George was a comedian, that is, entertainer. He was saying stuff that
would sell more tickets.

~~~
brianmcconnell
George Carlin was IMHO one of the most insightful people America produced.
Yes, he was a "comic" because in his time that's how he could follow his
calling and make a living.

While he was very funny, and he was riotously funny, he was basically the high
priest of pull your head out of your ass and think for yourself.

R.I.P. George Carlin

------
robomartin
This is a typical extremist view of the universe. One in which things are
always absolutes operating at the ideological limits. A social digital scale,
if you will. Nothing in the middle. Everything is either a one or a zero.

It is utter nonsense.

The real world does not work this way.

The United States is still a place where anyone can reach nearly any goal he
or she desires. The pre-conditions are simple: You have to be willing to make
the effort to reach your goal.

It's that simple.

Do you want to be somebody? Then be somebody. Don't waste your time playing
games and watching TV. Optimize for future success rather than for current
comfort and self-satisfaction. Be uncomfortable. Be hungry. Understand that
ignorance is not a platform for success and learn something. Learn lots of
things. Take risks. Fail. Take more risks. Fail again. Don't give up. You will
succeed. And, when you do, you'll get to read an article by someone pointing
to the great unfairness and inequality of our society. And the first thought
that will pass through your mind is likely to be "clueless".

This is my problem with folks who have never touched the real world. If you
look at his CV [0] it shows he has lived in academia his entire adult life.
This is like the idea of sex without having the experience of sex. It's like
watching a bird fly, learning and researching the physics of bird flight and
not really understanding what it is to be a bird and fly. There's a huge
disconnect between people who operate in these sterilized environments and
those who actually touch the real world.

I've had mind-blowing conversations with experienced business owners who
barely got a high-school diploma. The insight and understanding of the real
world some of these people develop is absolutely amazing. And, in most cases,
the results parallel their understanding. They are successful, build great
businesses and enjoy a fantastic quality of life.

I realize I am shooting the messenger. This approach perfectly valid and
logical when justified. People who come from a purely academic world view
have, through no fault of their own, a view of reality that is utterly
distorted. There's a huge difference between talking about the statistics of
business and wealth and the act of actually getting out there and devoting ten
or twenty years of your life putting it all on the line to create businesses
and wealth. That's the perspective their writings lack. And that's why,
despite credentials, these messengers are not to be trusted to understand
reality. It's like a teenager thinking they understand sex by watching lots of
porn. Not the same thing.

How many economists warned us of the economic implosion of 2008/9? Not many.
The folks who did were actually living in the trenches and neck-deep in the
muck of reality.

[0]
[http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%20pages/Tyle...](http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%20pages/Tyler/tylervita.pdf)

~~~
Dewie
I've never made the connection before... but the ideology behind the American
Dream could fit just as well on the back of a Self Help book.

~~~
robomartin
Not sure what you mean by that.

~~~
Dewie
I'm saying that the ideology behind the American could be mistaken as being
from a self help book.

~~~
robomartin
I don't think so. I think there's nothing unique about this thing called the
"American dream". I've lived in a couple of countries outside the US and have
travelled extensively. I can't think of many people who don't strive to
improve their lives, provide for their families, own a home, perhaps own a
business and, generally speaking, have a good life without worries, health or
financial problems. This is not an idea rooted in the US at all.

How do you achieve these things? Well, should these things be handed to you by
a government? Well, that's not going to happen anywhere in the world. You have
to work for these things. That doesn't mean hard labor. That means that you
have to focus on what it is you want and lay out a course through which you
can reach those goals. No matter where you put your finger on the globe this
requires determination, lots of work and focus. It might mean going to a
vocational school, college or university to learn something in preparation. It
could mean saving money for years in order to open a small business. It could
mean learning how to find people who will invest in your vision. It could mean
dedicating every free moment you have to slowly inch towards your goals. It
could mean a million different things. None of which are unique to Americans
or the United States.

A lot of Americans have this myopic ego-centric view of the universe. I don't
know of anyone who's been exposed to a variety of cultures and ideas who
things this way. There are brilliant and exceptional individuals all over the
world. Not one of them succeeds without a solid dedication to a vision. Not
one of them succeeds because the State drives them to succeed. Not one of them
advances in life because they waste their lives away watching TV, playing
video games and hanging out on Facebook all day. Those who do succeed work
hard. With "hard" not necessarily being defined as "hard physical work" but
rather an intense and sustained focus and dedication to what it is they want
out of life despite their current circumstances and station in life.

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rickjames28
Another clown(writer) with an agenda.

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avty
Time to move to Texas.

