(April 16, 2019 at 4:58 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: I guess I should have mentioned that both my uncle and my sister became millionaires by hard work, careful investing, and in my sister's case having a great plan and a good idea to sell.
Both lived the American Dream in their own experiences, which I took to mean the opportunity to better oneself financially.
However, I certainly agree that income inequality is making upward mobility more difficult.
My issue, though, is that "upward mobility" is not a good indicator of societal health. To me, it is this: if you are a hard working person who provides something useful to society, are you being shit on or not? The problem I have with capitalism (contemporary or otherwise) is that the vast majority of people who actually DO something useful for society are shat upon just because they haven't figured out the puzzle of "upward mobility."
"Upward mobility" is a shitty metric by which to gauge the health of a society. A better metic, I propose, is this: if you work 40 hours a week, can you afford decent healthcare and education? If this were the metric used to determine how "wealthy" a nation was, America might be lobbed in with the third world (albeit at the top of the third world).
