From: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Wealth (was: Re: My thoughts on Clinton's character)
Date: 22 Jul 92 23:01:02 GMT
Reply-To: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Organization: Columbia University

I almost missed out on replying to this because I forget which
subject line I post with.  Anyway....

In article <1992Jul22.075549.26368@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU> dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:
>In article <1992Jul21.191124.1515@news.columbia.edu> egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes:
>>Pfft.  For my part I don't believe that people of equal abilities
>>should be constrained by the environment they're brought up in.
>
>They're not. It's a country with a free enterprise system.

And so it is.  Banks aren't as willing to lend money to the poor
so they can start businesses because they're regarded as credit
risks.  Don Trump, on the other hand, seems to lull bank examiners
to sleep: he collects loans without the same intense scrutiny that
you or I would receive.  Why?  Because he's rich, so people assume
that he somehow will make wise, enlightened investments.  The bigger
the loan, the less carefully it's looked at.

>
>>Yes,
>>people are born with different attributes, but people who are born
>>wealthy have an opportunity to develop these attributes whereas the
>>poor do not.
>
>We are all born with the same potential to succeed and we all have
>many opportunities for success in our lives.
>
>We all have an equal opportunity to be as unequal as we like.

And you seem to be missing the point on how this so-called "equal
opportunity" depends in large part on whether you're born in
the right socio-economic level.

>
>It's actually a disadvantage if you are already born rich, because then
>you aren't so motivated to improve.

I won't laugh.  I really won't.

>
>>Consider education, which I think we all agree is
>>important to economic success.
>
>No we don't all agree. How do you explain the zillions of rags-to-riches
>type stories of uneducated imigrants who come to America, with nothing but
>2 cents in their back pocket, work their behinds off, don't even speak the
>language and then become millionaires?
>
>Why can't a non-immigrant do the same? It's all to do with ATTITUDE not
>education.

First, I want you to name these rags-to-riches stories.  Carnegie
would be one.  Rockefeller another.  You can count these with your
fingers, maybe with your toes also.  Compare this to the number of
immigrants that have passed through Ellis Island.  Yes, the lives of
most of these immigrants improved, but in the span of decades, and
because of the slow, ever so slow, accumulation of wealth over
generations.  Yes, they went from dirt poor to middle class.  Very few
got further, and not in the course of a lifetime.

That was then, back when this country was an industrial economy.  You
can work in unskilled jobs, on the assembly line, in the sweat shops,
etc.  You can make enough so that your kids can do better than you.
The economy, however, has changed.  We are approaching an
post-industrial economy, where unskilled labor can be found in
Singapore.  It doesn't matter how many hours you can work before you
drop anymore.  What matters now is how well you can think.  What are
the high paying jobs now?  Certainly not factory jobs, nothing manual.
The jobs that add real wealth to the global economy are the financial
analysts, the auto designers, the computer programers, what Robert
Reich calls "symbolic analysts" in his book _The Work of Nations_.
You need a real education to this sort of work.  You have to have
practice manipulating abstract concepts, something the poor certainly
don't receive in their schools, because it costs too much for them to
pay for it.  In this new economy, if you start out poor, you stay that
way because you don't have access to the necessary education to pull
you above the bottom rung.

>
>>Do the wealthy have an environment in
>>which they have to content daily violence and misery while they study?
>>Do the poor have private tutors to fall back on?  Small classroom
>>sizes and well equipped schools?
>
>Education has nothing to do with it. How come Economics Professors
>drive beaten up old Volkswagens?

See above.  What do Ivy League grads working on Wall Street drive?
What do high school grads drive (despite their hard work and pluck)?

>
>>Do they wealthy have to worry about
>>their health, about where they'll get their next meal?
>
>No. But when they were working to become wealthy they did.

I don't think Donald Trump or Rockefeller ever had to worry about a
meal in their lives.

>
>>It is about providing
>>equal opportunity early in life.
>
>Yea. Agreed. But it's not education that does it, it's attitude.
>
>If you're saying that we should teach attitude in schools, then I agree with
>you.

No no no no no.  We're trying to teach kids to use their analytic
capabilities to the full, not how to be assholes.  The modern economy
demands clear thinkers, who know how to produce things, to add real
wealth to their products, not how to plan raids on RJR Nabisco.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections