>People talk as if we could all lift ourselves up by our
>bootstraps and be filthy rich as we want to be.

>That's just not true. Even if everyone suddenly got their
>Steve Jobs on tomorrow (forgetting how much that would
>probably screw the world in general) we can't all sit at the
>top. Even if we're all educated and talented, someone still
>has to clean the toilet.

>Given that we've created a society where someone's got to
>clean the toilet and pick up the rubbish, maybe let's think
>about what we can do to see that these people and their lives
>are valued at something higher than where the market sets the
>bar.

Agreed!

It seems to me the “I worked hard for this” comments are typically heard as a response by successful people to criticism for their success. That really shouldn’t be the target here, but that seems to be the case. There are plenty of awful articles and books written that detail all the habits rich people do with the implication that if you would just get your act together YOU would be rich too. These are right to be ridiculed for their ignorance.

I also think it’s absurd for this conversation to center on the notion of hard work, as it creates obvious, artificial barriers that stifle any truly thoughtful discourse. Obviously not everyone who works hard gets rich, not everyone who is rich is rich solely because they worked hard, and not everyone who is poor is poor because they’re lazy. People tend to use those arguments as intellectual crutches; they’re made in large part because they’re easy to make, but the truth is most people readily admit the truth of all three factors.

I’d argue that most people would have a better lot in life if they did work harder. That doesn’t mean work harder at their given job, but work harder at home, going to school, brainstorming ideas, putting those ideas into play, etc. I’m sure many are eager to jump all over that statement, but I’m not saying it’s easy and I’m not discounting some of the lose-lose scenarios faced by many.

Still, I look around at people in my profession. I look at friends, relatives, etc, even myself and my wife. Damn near everyone I know would be better off in life if only for a little extra effort beyond subsistence level. Some of that work is character work, some of that work is schooling, and some of that work is sacrificing, say, nights playing their XBOX or zoning out in front of the tv for hours on end and trying to build some sort of side business to get ahead.

That said, not everyone even has the same abilities. Not everyone has the economic or social advantages, and the valid argument to make here is that the system so heavily favors those with some sort of advantage that the degree of difficulty for those without said advantages is exponentially greater, thereby ensuring only a few actually break through. This discrepancy yields a net loss for everyone up to and including the elite. The gross hoarding of wealth, the rising cost of higher education, the increasingly high qualifications for lower level positions, etc all conspire toward maintaining the status quo at a minimum with an eye toward widening the gap if at all possible. While I’m in the camp that doesn’t think flipping burgers necessarily warrants $15 an hour, I’m also in the camp that says better wages for more people equals a net gain for everyone, so why not?

An economy may be a system of checks and balances, but it’s all theoretical. A dollar is made up. The gold standard exists because people decided it exists. Nothing has any value apart from that which is mutually decided upon, and even that value is weighted against the perceptions of others in relation to their own perceived values. The unfortunate truth is that the solution to bridging these gaps really lies in a collective shifting of values, and until/unless we all decide a greater quality of life for everyone is more important than how much you and I can individually hoard for ourselves, we won’t see much of a difference for the little guys. The saddest part of all is that’s a mentality that would undoubtedly yield untold riches for everyone.