Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
The "if you want to be successful, you just need to work hard" argument always rings hollow to me. I'm reasonably successful in my business career. I'm not fabulously wealthy, by any means, but my wife and I enjoy a comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle. I don't think I've worked particularly hard to achieve my success. I lucked into being born to parents who stressed the importance of education, ensured I took my schooling seriously, had business connections that opened doors for me, and had enough available time to help me with my homework, shuttle me around between extra curricular activities, read to me as a child, etc.
Now contrast that with a child growing up in a low-income single-parent household. Just so that kid can have food, clothing, and shelter, the mother or father has to work two menial wage jobs. He or she doesn't have time to read to the kid or help with schoolwork or anything like that because work consumes too much of the day. The parent isn't lazy and is a hard worker, but he or she is stuck working dead-end jobs. Getting some form of higher education that would open more career options is out of the question because it's both unaffordable and would necessitate taking time away from work. So the parent drudges away working low-paying McJobs because he or she has absolutely no other choice. And yet out-of-touch billionaires like the woman in the OP would dare call people like this lazy!
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I want to agree with you, and I guess partly do. Thing is that in Canada education and hard work really are the great equalizer. I have a limited amount of sympathy for the "bad childhood" argument and how its basically a domino affect on people not being able to do A,B,C things with their lives.
I wouldn't suggest for a second that people working for minimum wage don't work hard, they definitely do. I worked those jobs and frankly working menial labour and having held numerous jobs at a time (all of which were terrible I assure you) was part of the reason that I made sure to finish school!