> It sounded like an intuition rather than a conclusion.

Fair enough.

> It’s an intuition that’s very familiar to those born without a leg up.

I was born to a blue collar family and I lived in a trailer until I was 6. I don't share the intuition.

I worked through college while my classmates skipped class, spent loads at starbucks, restaurants, etc. I double majored and graduated with a fraction of the debt of my peers, and I picked majors that are likely to pay well. I now make multiples of what my parents made together. N=1 and all that, but it's not "intuition of those born without a leg up".

If you lack the intuition, it might not be because it doesn't exist. It might be because you were not so intuitive, at least about the nature of the people around you. I don't mean that to sound negative, some people have good fortune with their intuitive sense in the same way some have good fortune to make all the "right" choices at the right time.

It sounds like you made it through some trying circumstances. Good on you. It doesn't mean the rest of us who have witnessed the other side of the veil are incorrect in our own intuitions.

I wish I had grown up with the worldly insight to make money out of any situation along my way without losing my sense of myself or my principles. Instead I encountered recessions and empty job markets. C'est la vie. We all get our breaks somewhere.

So, to extend on that, my point was never one is more noble than the other—but pointing out that asking for datasets and conclusions about intuitions is like asking artwork to explain itself.

No worries. Maybe it’s luck, or maybe it’s mindset. Maybe the messaging (from the press or even from one’s own community) that life is hard, that only the exceptional few escape their circumstances, etc becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I think it’s somewhere in the middle, and America needs to make some reforms so we don’t have billionaires and abject poverty at once; however, I don’t think the media narrative is helping.

I'm sure it's ultimately an amalgam of who you are, your hard work, and good fortune that got you where you are.

I do believe you have to work to prepare yourself to make the most of whatever comes your way. If it all was so simple, and so easily digestible then we wouldn't be having a discussion at all!

I can see where you're coming from when you mention a media narrative, but I disagree. But I think that's just a matter of perspective—I don't see it as some moral or other failing to decide that working hard and hoping and aiming for good fortune just to acquire capital when in the end you really just want to work a day job and smoke a joint and watch the flowers grow.

I think that's the tone that's being expressed, especially in the introspective light of the recent pandemic. The big questions have come out for a lot of people all over again: what's it all for, anyway?

America, the modern world, what have you, glorify financial success in itself above all else as if its representative of something deeper, more profound. I think the article(s) on the subject are pointing to the growing tendency of late to question whether it's really worth it, or in the interest of most people.

Personally, I don't get the quest for money alone. Life, for me, is primarily experiential. I'm a practical person, but there's no reality I can fathom in which I'd put a raw capital value or property ownership above a wealth of experience. For instance, I rent a beautiful old century townhome in a small artist's town in Ontario from a wealthy dentist. He bought it several years ago and has probably made a killing in the increase in property values here, but somehow I feel like I'm getting the better deal here. Especially when he keeps wistfully remarking that maybe they'll move in when they retire.

It seems like you switched from bemoaning how difficult it is to make money to "why bother making money anyway?". If you don't value money and you prefer to take it easy, then I don't see what the problem is?

No not at all. I wasn't bemoaning anything, myself.

I'm saying that is a part of the question of what the articles are discussing, not something as singular as poo-pooing hard work or making money. But questioning whether hard work with the goal being money really being a path worth its while on its own. Especially if you can get 90% of the life you want without all of the strife.

The article is illustrating people asking: "Will years of hard work accomplish what people claim it will for me?"

That was not a reasonable question in most peoples' minds pre-pandemic, and "no" wasn't a reasonable answer. I think it's a big question for the times, and it's a good one. It always has been, but it is now, too.

You kind of just said it. What's the problem? But there's a giant argument about it going on throughout the entire thread, and people are asking others to back up their personal intuitions and experiences with data—like asking the wind why it blows in one direction versus the other.