Every study done has confirmed what Mister Agenda said. You have money, your kids have advantages which result in them having money later on. It starts before birth, when your parents can afford the best pre-natal care for you. It continues as you get better nutrition, better supervision and a better education. As you continue on, you have more general stability. You have a better chance of having a car or having continued quality health care. Money lets you get tutors or your kids to make damn sure they get good grades. Money helps your kids emphasize more on school and less on getting a job simply because they aren't going to see their family in dire economic straights. Money is what gets them into college which is the doorway to getting a good job. You don't see kids from dirt poor families getting into Harvard or Yale. You see them getting into state schools on sports scholarships sometimes, sure, but the great majority of them wind up going to community colleges if they go to college at all.
Yes, there is some amount of personal responsibility with poverty, no question, but persoal responsibility only adds onto circumstances you were born into. Take a person born into a por family but works his ass off. Sure, he'll be able to climb out of poverty but he probably won't get further than middle class. Take someone born into power and privilege and give him a lazy work ethic and he can still become president of the United States (that's exactly what happened with George W. Bush, the president who set record for vacation days while president).
I've watched it happen. My dad has a better work ethic than anyone I have ever known; he actually gets excited to work lots of overtime. He came from some pretty extreme poverty, though, and even with that work ethic, he's upper middle class (and it helps that he was married to a woman who comes from an upper middle class background; in fact, he had to rely on help from my mom's family while he was getting his career established). If he had worked that hard and put that much effort into his career but he had come from a wealthy family, who knows where he would be now; he might be refered to as 'Governor Rizzatto' or 'Doctor Rizzatto' or some other prestigious title.
Also worth noting, while hard work did get him where he wants to be, he also knows he never could have gotten there on his own. He has always been a union supporter, even when he was in a supervisory position and prohibited from being an actual union member because of it. He knows that the plutocrats would milk him for everything he's worth if given half the chance and his only protecions from their abuses of power are unions.
The bottom line is, every single fucking study in the history of the world has shown the same thing: if your family has power and privilege, you're chances of having an easy life go up drastically regardless of what other personal circumstances you have to deal with. If your family is poor, you're probably going to be poor even if you work your ass off.
Yes, there is some amount of personal responsibility with poverty, no question, but persoal responsibility only adds onto circumstances you were born into. Take a person born into a por family but works his ass off. Sure, he'll be able to climb out of poverty but he probably won't get further than middle class. Take someone born into power and privilege and give him a lazy work ethic and he can still become president of the United States (that's exactly what happened with George W. Bush, the president who set record for vacation days while president).
I've watched it happen. My dad has a better work ethic than anyone I have ever known; he actually gets excited to work lots of overtime. He came from some pretty extreme poverty, though, and even with that work ethic, he's upper middle class (and it helps that he was married to a woman who comes from an upper middle class background; in fact, he had to rely on help from my mom's family while he was getting his career established). If he had worked that hard and put that much effort into his career but he had come from a wealthy family, who knows where he would be now; he might be refered to as 'Governor Rizzatto' or 'Doctor Rizzatto' or some other prestigious title.
Also worth noting, while hard work did get him where he wants to be, he also knows he never could have gotten there on his own. He has always been a union supporter, even when he was in a supervisory position and prohibited from being an actual union member because of it. He knows that the plutocrats would milk him for everything he's worth if given half the chance and his only protecions from their abuses of power are unions.
The bottom line is, every single fucking study in the history of the world has shown the same thing: if your family has power and privilege, you're chances of having an easy life go up drastically regardless of what other personal circumstances you have to deal with. If your family is poor, you're probably going to be poor even if you work your ass off.
I live on facebook. Come see me there. http://www.facebook.com/tara.rizzatto
"If you cling to something as the absolute truth and you are caught in it, when the truth comes in person to knock on your door you will refuse to let it in." ~ Siddhartha Gautama
"If you cling to something as the absolute truth and you are caught in it, when the truth comes in person to knock on your door you will refuse to let it in." ~ Siddhartha Gautama
