Study Hard, Work Hard, Prosper

Study Hard, Work Hard, Prosper Nothing gets a conservative "worked up" more than when work ethic is introduced in a conversation. Immediately the anger flashes, and you hear how government encourages laziness through entitlement programs. Recently, there has been a frontal attack on the extension of unemployment benefits, claiming this "kills initiative". The flint edged side of life is reflected in phrases like, "I worked my way up; or, look at the welfare moms and cheats; or, why should we reward the underachievers"? Recently, in a reaction to the President pushing for an increase in the super rich's taxes, Bill O'Riley of Fox sputtered, "I may not do this anymore if my taxes are raised". The theory is that higher taxes will kill initiative and the rich will take their money and flee the country. I only hope O'Riley keeps his promise! Another theory is that the rich are all over-achievers, who worked according to the "Horatio Alger" myth, and deserve all that they make. These are all myths, lies, and toxic overstatements. First, the lie that all the rich are somehow deserving as "over-achievers". Much of the wealth of America is inherited. "Old money" is just that, "old", having been passed down through generations. Children of old money often are lazy and shiftless, having never had to work for anything. George W. Bush even got Congress to agree to complete suspend the inheritance tax, culminating in the rich paying NO inheritance tax at all in 2010. I encountered this head on when I matriculated in Stanford. The dean of admissions thought it would be a good idea to diversely match Freshman room mates. So, I was matched with a "Preppie" from New York, whose father was the CEO of a large news organization and also was "old money". In short, my room mate was ridiculously wealthy. He also was a spoiled brat, who told me the FIRST DAY that he was going to flunk out because his father was forcing him to go to college. I immediately thought of my high school classmate, who had higher grades than me but couldn't play football as well as I could, and cried when he was not accepted to Stanford. My room mate then proceeded to do exactly what he promised, he never attended classes, had girls in the room all the time (I was forced to go to the library a lot), but still couldn't flunk out. In those days, Stanford has changed its policy since, rich families were given an admission advantage because they contributed much more to the endowment. Finally, my room mate flunked out. In those days, those that left college lost their deferment and many went to Vietnam. Not my room mate; his "daddie" took care of it and he began traveling the world. The last I heard of him he was selling yachts in Boston Harbor, having never attended college. Have you ever taken a minute to watch the unskilled laborer work? Sometime, when you are traveling in California agricultural areas, stop and watch the "illegals" work. Rich people could not work like that. I couldn't work like that. Poor people work harder than rich people....tell that to Fox News sometimes! Watch your motel maid work, or your landscaper. For that matter, take a minute and watch your waitress actually work. They put in long hours of back breaking work for minimum wages, that the cons constantly want to cut. In short, the work ethic myth, that the rich earned their riches through hard work and over-achievement, has millions of exceptions; and is one of the biggest lies in American folklore. People achieve through a multitude of paths, some earned, many not. A child born into an affluent family is given, through no effort of his own, all the advantages: good schools, good nutrition, educational toys, travel; et al. A poor child gets none of these, save nurturing if they are lucky. I was always interested when I was a Principal how children who acted out and got in trouble often showed the same behaviors no matter what social strata they came from. The poor child and the rich child acted exactly the same, in fact, they often acted out together, becoming partners in crime; especially if drugs were involved. What they had in common was a lack of parental interest and nurturing. The rich child was sometimes ignored by parents too busy with their careers, or spending their parents' money jet setting. The poor children had sometimes been abandoned by care givers, and were living with in-laws due to drug use, criminal behavior; etc. And the behaviors in both groups was the same; rebellion, drug use, anger, disrespect; etc. The big difference was the rich child could mess up all the time and still get bailed out. They would be sent to special schools, get counseling, even be sent to military school. The poor child simply went to jail and were relegated to the dust heap of society. This inequality if endemic in America today. The gap between rich and poor has never been greater. Every day, in the thousands, poor children are lost in a culture that punishes them for "not working hard" when in fact, they are simply being punished because they don't have what the rich kid has, a "get out of jail free card" for life. And, the privileged class are born into a increasingly aristocratic culture, go to the best schools, become C.E.O.s but have not developed any character skills, so they cheat, lie and even steal. The myth that achievers somehow develop character while fighting their way up the career ladder is not true, often there is no career ladder at all; success is guaranteed. If a rich person fails, they are re-cycled back into the system, and move from one company to another, messing up at every turn. They have no sense of failure, or success for that matter, having never needed to develop one. Ever wonder why there is so much cheating at the higher levels of American business, why we are constantly reading about corruption? It is because an increasing number of power brokers never worked to get where they are but inherited the privilege! This is the threat of entrenched aristocracy that I thought America understood when I was growing up. The United States was established in reaction to the aristocracies of 18th century Europe, as a revolution of human values; encouraging human achievement regardless of who you were. That dream is dying every day in today's America. And, the most troubling is how some working class people, are adopting a defensive position for the rich, in the mistaken assumption that they are defending achievement and the "work ethic". Polls always show that a surprisingly high percentage of Americans, even in the depths of the Great Recession, believe that if they work hard they can ultimately become a millionaire, or better. They believe the myth, propagated by the rich, that government aid to the poor, public education, welfare programs, kill initiative and are "unfair" and in a sense will hurt their chances to "make it". The truth is the odds of "making it" are crushingly small! Republicans chant that "only 50% of Americans pay income taxes", or "unemployment payments are creating a class of lazy American" etc., etc., etc. And of course, Fox News hammers away daily with anecdotal stories of how government is assisting people who don't deserve it and are "taking opportunity away from YOU". The public record shows a different story. The gap between rich and poor is wider than since the Great Depression. The top 10% of wage earners make the vast majority of income, the middle class is dwindling, poor people are poorer than in many third world countries. And the rich kid continues to get all the breaks, cynically using them for good and often for ill, and once in a C.E.O. position, screwing up, losing the company or closing it, outsourcing work, cheating on taxes, and paying millions to conservative groups who deny global warming and encourage pollution. Have you ever wondered why the ruling class in this country is constantly in the news for cheating, whether it is through the mortgage "lying loans" scandal, or Bernie Maloof ponzie schemes? It is because many of them never worked for ANYTHING they got, while the poor have to work their butts off just to say alive. The rich class in this country has a real integrity problem. Just like my room mate of long ago, when compared to my work ethic, that got me to Stanford and beyond, who scoffed at the opportunity of Stanford because he never really needed it anyway. Because of his privileged placement at Stanford, he took a spot away from another over-achiever, like my high school classmate. There is no career ladder anymore in America. There is no longer the opportunity that Fox News supposedly protects. What we have evolved into is an aristocracy, whose rich are now firmly entrenched within the Republican Party, who fight equal opportunity initiatives at every turn, while mouthing platitudes that they are " fighting for working people", when in fact they are protecting unearned privilege. It's a world of opposites, where reality is not what is propagandized: many of the rich are lazy without character, many of the poor work unbelievably hard and in fact have much more character than any of us realize. As long as the ruling class in America are rich spoiled brats, we will get no leadership and one disaster after another. George W. Bush was a rich spoiled brat, whose Presidency was marked by one mistake after another, culminating in an economic meltdown that came from basically from a financial sector that cheated. That's right, they CHEATED! This was not by accident, but was a product of a social system that puts people into positions of power who have no character, no integrity, because of the privilege that put them there. George W. Bush is a perfect example of this. In fact he even bragged of his low grades at Yale, and got into the MBA program (drunk by the way) only through the privilege of his father. In short, he never really worked for anything, and failed (unfortunately for all of us) at every business venture he attempted, when he was sober. Once he sobered up and decided to try to achieve, he turned to politics, where the skids were greased since his father just happened to be President of the United States. If he would have been a working class kid, with no connections, he would be in some jail in Texas, or worse. George W. got break after break after break, until finally he got into a position where character did not matter; politics, and Daddy's influence, could overcome his basic character flaws. This may seem like more "Bush bashing" but George W. reminds me so much of my long lost Freshman room mate at Stanford, who had no clue who he was, but fully understood that he didn't really have to do anything to attain all the riches there rest of us were fighting to achieve. So, when the Fox water carriers scream that progressives are "ruining the American work ethic" take some time to really think of the rich and the poor in this country. Finally, after the Watergate Scandal, a Republican Congressman said, "What we have learned here is there is no connection between intelligence and character". He could have added; there is no connection between wealth and character as well.