No. And here's why: I grew up dirt poor. I never was able to attend computer club chess club, or what have you. My parents, when I was in high school, were constantly working (often under the table and at odd hours). They could also never afford to give me any money for school. Attending college was also a nightmare. We moved across the US after my dad lost his job on the East Coast (I was 19, after my freshman year at GSU), so I had to start working as I couldn't afford out-of-state tuition. I finally finished school when I was 27 (I'm 31 now). At UCLA, I had a full academic scholarship and graduated with an almost-perfect GPA. I was able to pay for housing with the money I had saved up from FAFSA while attending community college.
I earned my salary and I resent anyone that would argue otherwise. I've contributed to Google Go, have two technical books under my belt (one as editor, the other as co-author), and dozens of open source projects. I've started a handful of startups and have taken my fair share of risk.
Finally, my parents got their house in 2011 (at one of the lowest points after the housing crash) and it was kind of a fluke. They never expected such a nice house at such a low price point (around 700k at that time), but hey, God is good. My post was mainly about my parents and the risks they took, but I've had to suffer many of the consequences of those risks and I still criticize my parents for some of their decisions. But c'est la vie, I'm making do.
I'm a child of immigrants as well but I won't pretend that my parents did anything more than live up to the expectations bred into them during to their social class. Class Privilege is a good thing, one that we should be so lucky to give our children.
The GP is not a "the definition of a rich trust-fund kid", he is the definition of a self-made American.
Arguing that no one can overcome adversity with hard work is just as irresponsible as saying that everyone can overcome adversity with hard work.
His parents have the million dollar house today. Theirs isn't a story of privilege.
Yes but his (having parent with million dollar house) is ...
Three role of multiple draws of the luck is underrated. Generic lottery, family lottery, location lottery, avoidance of terrible things in life. You can have way better chance in a society where inequality is low and/ or social mobility upwards is high.
The privilege part is him earning the spot in a prestigious school.
The parents earned it, he didn't. He inherited those opportunity from the choice of his parent.
> Fruits of hard work are not a privilege.
Hard work and privilege are completely orthogonal. His parent where hard working, but also had the opportuinity to emigrate somewhere where they could safety reap the reward of said hard work
> Assuming that wealth = privilege
Wealth is a form of privilege, especially inherited wealth.
> shows only the bitterness of the person making such an assumption.
Sure... Let's do personal attack instead of staying on the topic
Sure, but being able to swing a $800k mortgage is almost the same thing. You'd need an income of roughly $200k/yr, which would put you well above the top 10% of incomes nationwide.
...
But your parents have $1M house, and you have a six figure job. Are you not the definition of a rich trust-fund kid? (To be fair, I don't know your age) I don't understand? To me it seems that you perfectly personify this section of the article:
>The research that concludes that entrepreneurs don’t have a propensity for risk, they just have wealthy parents backs this up. It is less of a risk to start a company if you can be supported while doing so, and have fall back options.
And this one:
>A senior manager once told me they loved risk, and I remember thinking, ‘but you aren’t affected by it’. They’d go on to a well paid job elsewhere, and not only would they be untouched by any failure of their risk but it would likely boost their status. They become a person willing to take risk, which has increased currency. This is not the case for someone who may be made unemployed in their late 50s with little chance of re-employment as a result of the change they sought to introduce.