No, letting your dreams die is not a "part of growing up", good lord, how depressing. Think about what life savings are for a minute. It's literally a bunch of money you save over many years that you only get to spend once you're too old to work anymore. If we all just settled for this very pragmatic dream we wouldn't start companies, create art, or take any significant risks.
> I think there's a implicit understanding with this quote that Americans not only have that "American dream", but we also don't expect to work for it.
That's funny, because that's exactly how I would characterize Socialism; as the ability for anybody to attain the "American Dream" without having to work for it. If the Government could simply hand out American Dreams at the Bureau of American Dreams then why would anyone ever aim any higher? Why would anyone take a risk on anything or try to exceed expectations?
> Part of dreaming big is understanding that you have to work towards it, or it won't happen. I don't feel like this is happening in America. (As an American)
I agree completely, and that's precisely what the American Dream is. If people are misconstruing it as some handout that you don't have to work for then that's a problem and they need a big wakeup call. But I think the American Dream is still alive and well here, otherwise we might not be here on Hacker News keeping up to date with the latest happenings in the startup world and we might not be thinking of or attempting to start our own startups. But we clearly are, and we're doing it at a higher rate than any other country on the planet.
The day the American Dream dies is the day we stop innovating as a country.
You hate some odd quote, yet I hate this constantly perpetuated myth regarding socialism.
Firstly, the most "driven" people aren't the wealthiest (though, it can occasionally be a side effect). The research scientist who forgoes money in some fortune 500 firm (or a more lucrative field of study) to instead focus on some obscure species of fauna? Probably way more driven than some sociopath focused on the bottom line.
Second, socialism isn't about handouts. It's about moving the ownership of production from the hands of one central figure to the hands of those actually managing the production. Usually, this would mean shifting ownership to the employee collective, not state ownership (a la communism).
It sounds like you might be making the mistake of equating "social democracy" (universal healthcare, social security, etc) with "socialism". Even if that's the case, I don't see the issue with helping my fellow man with basic health and well-being. It's pretty much the entire reason societies and nations were formed. We're advanced enough to offer it at this point.
Lastly, automation is happening. At remarkable speeds. As we automate more, there's less labor to do. Period. In 50, 100, maybe 150 years; there's not going to be an option. There's a very good chance there will only be work left for the innovators and dreamers (the "Star Trek" model, ascribed to by techno-utopianists), some day. Even if that's not the case, unemployment levels are going to grow, and it's not due to people being "lazy" or "non-driven".
It's not impossible to get ahead in a socialist economy, it's just that the bar is raised for the lower classes.
I think you're hitting on a bigger problem with American culture, which is the "hard working" bias. Is the employee who comes in at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better person?
No, just a more easily exploited one.
I know the question was rhetorical. But I felt like answering it because you're absolutely right. Only in the US do you see people hold up themselves as better than others because they let their employer take advantage of them more.
I wonder if working longer than colleagues actually does improve your chance at promotion like so many claim? Or simply means they leave you in that role longer because you're cheaper/more productive?
By some definition yes. Some body with that sort of work ethic, definitely would convey a message of discipline, commitment and a degree of attachment to one's job.
I would rate that person far higher than a person who always shows up late and isn't half serious about their job.
Work place isn't adult day care.
some customers would rather be told the wrong information, at the right time of day, than the right information 2 hours later.
i wouldn't have believed it until i saw it myself.
people in general are insane, half of "work" is just catering to insanity.
Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead. If you get too far ahead, your gains are redistributed to those who you have left behind. By that definition, a pure Socialist system will ensure that nobody can ever get ahead of anybody else.
> I think you're hitting on a bigger problem with American culture, which is the "hard working" bias. Is the employee who comes in at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better person?
Ask this a different way: is the athlete who comes to the gym at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better athlete? The answer is, of course, yes. Sports are 100% meritocracies. You either perform, or you do not. The color of your skin, the disabilities you have, the socioeconomic status you grew up with; none of those things factor in. You can either perform better than the opposition, or you cannot. Full stop.
There are very few people that would dispute that, yet for everything outside of sports there's a subsection of the population that has convinced themselves that hard work somehow doesn't equal success. Maybe it's because it's harder for people to relate to entrepreneurial success than it is to relate to success in a sport because the metrics for sports are very well defined.
So if that's the case, to answer your question directly, we need to define the metric for success. In business, that's called profit. The hard working employee is a "better person" (your words) if their work results in greater profit for the company than the person coming in the bare minimum amount of time. If not, then yes, they're wasting their time just like the Athlete would be if their hard work didn't result in better performance in their sport.
Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about.
>Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead.
Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.
May be in the gym. But on the game as a whole? A lot more. Gym work isn't all there is to sports. Just like just writing code isn't all there is to programming. You need to learn new things, read other peoples code, review code, learn a new algorithms etc etc.
Similarly sports people have their stuff to do when they are not actually practicing.
>>Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about.
People who do more work get ahead. This shouldn't even be surprising to you. Because this is common sense. Students who study hard score more marks than students who while away their time with friends.
We could keep handing out free marks to non performing students, subtracting equivalent from performing students to make non performers feel good. But that doesn't change anything about those students. Good students are going to do well in the coming year, with more advanced subjects. And the bad ones will do worse. When they are done with their education, merely marks being same will mean nothing at all.
Check back after a few years, what kind of jobs performing and non performing students are doing. It will be clear to you why that tiny equality exercise can never actually work.
>>Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.
Socialism gives incentives for people to stay in the back, because its assumed those getting ahead are supposed to make up for them.
I have worked for Kroger for a little over a year now. I make 7.55 an hour handling dangerous chemicals; before that, I bagged people's groceries for 7.45. As a bagger, I not only worked hard, I constantly told my supervisor that I was willing to work 40 hours, that I wanted to work a register. They didn't promote me until I gave two weeks notice; my parents convinced me to stay.
Now I get paid ten cents extra to clean floors and cover for absentee cashiers (and, mind you, I'm not actually trained; I had to learn it all myself). Oh, and one of the other janitors cannot figure out basic chemical safety. She is paid just as much as I am, and continues to work as a janitor.
It's not that hard work never pays off. It's that I have a concrete example of hard work not paying off that I see every day.
You have seen hard work paying off. For the level of work that you do. Of course there is no ideal world where a hair cut could be charged the same as surgery. Or someone who write database code, an OS or a search engine algorithm could be charged equally as some one troubleshooting a faulty CD drive in a call center.
What are your contributions? What value are you creating? A clean floor, a good grocery bag may not be that much value. But the guy inventing the floor cleaning chemical, and people selling that for an affordable price are definitely creating a lot of value.
However, basic chemical safety should be valuable--but at Kroger, it apparently isn't, and this drives me insane.
If min wage is increased to $15 she will be paid exactly as much as you.
My point is, the message that keeping this lady sends is "I don't care if you do your job right". And if that's the message you wanna send, whh should I do my job right? I end up split between doing my job right on principle and knowing it'll get me nowhere.
As for "where you come from": Can you supply some evidence for that assertion? I'll give you argument (not evidence, I admit) that your claim is false. If it were true, then someone could create a high-performing team simply by selecting people who came from the places that other teams ignore. (Or are you claiming that, for example, there aren't many hockey players coming from Hawaii, even though one would expect that the population would include some with the genetics and talent to be excellent? Well, raw talent means little. Merit means talent and preparation and discipline and coaching and genetics and drive and mental toughness and probably a few things I've forgotten. If you're not going to chase that sport because it's not culturally a thing where you are, then you aren't going to be very good at that sport.)
And I would say that raw talent means a lot, the majority of atheles work hard, but the deciding factor is talent.
They are means to buy the financial independence to free up your time, which you would have other wise spent on that job. Now you have time and resources to chase your dreams.
To be able to romance with a dream, you need to be pragmatic first.
Any dream of any magnitude requires ingredients most of which people neither have the drive to work for, nor the resources and most give up not long after they start when the realize the magnitude of the struggle the lies ahead in getting to it.
I think there's a implicit understanding with this quote that Americans not only have that "American dream", but we also don't expect to work for it. If it was merely a matter of Americans dreaming big and working towards it, then great! But it's not, imo. It's Americans dreaming big, and working their low end 9 to 5, expecting the dream to come true. It's more Dream than Reality. It's a daydream.
Part of dreaming big is understanding that you have to work towards it, or it won't happen. I don't feel like this is happening in America. (As an American)