If you start life race very far behind athletes who had best training and nutrition, how easily you can even catch them, not even going into overcoming.
But adversity is a great, massive stimuli for those few with right mindset on their own, even if it stuns most. They would wither and get comfortable in comfort and security, instead they gather drive and focus that very few can match eventually. Often great men and women, albeit broken deep inside.
I'm willing to bet - dollars to donuts - that there were (and are) American investors in your country of origin, and every other one you've been to. Sometimes being an outsider confers clarity / skills / experience necessary to exploit opportunities not available - or even visible to those who've lived all their lives in an environment.
This is especially true if you consider Indians or Chinese in America. Those populations have an even more acute education lead. So many people want to come here, that to commit means accepting you spend the next 15 or so years waiting in line to finally be a permanent resident (rather than an immigrant who can easily be forced to leave if their visa doesn't have a sponsor.)
That's my point exactly! It's not that all Americans are particularly lazy, uncreative, risk-averse. I specifically chose American investors in their country of origin as a counterpoint to the implication that Americanness infers lack of grit/drive, doubly so when Americans can succeed the countries OP left.
Voluntary migrants (that includes expats) are a self-selected, self-motivated bunch. OP is did not contrasting themself to the appropriate percentile of Americans.
And I said the opposite? the problem is not with all Americans, just the ones perpetually complaining that all of their misfortunes were caused by being born here vs some ideal place (which they can't never really point to in a map) where they were going to magically have an easier life.
> Voluntary migrants (that includes expats) are a self-selected, self-motivated bunch. OP is did not contrasting themself to the appropriate percentile of Americans.
I'm not Indian or Chinese (I'm a black latino), came here with not even a bachelors degree, and honestly, with no particular skill that someone from here could not obtain in a relatively short amount of time; I was still able to insert myself into the tech scene and find my place there. I'm still working on improving myself day to day, so I guess maybe you have a point on the motivation aspect, but that is an intrinsic quality, and I don't like how this analysis somehow attributes the lack of motivation on other people to <me>, and suggest that if I don't feel gullible and pay more taxes (which is the subtext of this piece) I somehow failed "Alex".
US has a limit of 140k employment-based green cards issued per year, set by law.
Then per-country quotas (no more than 7% of the total number per country) are applied, meaning that the number of green cards issued to Indians per single year can be no more than ~15k/year for employment-based category. This is further broken down by meritocratically-worded categories such that the quota actually available to someone who doesn't fit the EB-1 "Einstein visa" category - i.e. someone with "merely" a master's, say - is ~8k/year.
And the backlog for this category for India is over 1 million. So, given an Indian applying today, and assuming everyone in front of them in the line will remain there, you get something on the order of 125 years wait. Of course, in practice this means that many people in the line will either abandon the wait or literally die of old age before their turn comes up, which moves it that much faster for those behind them. At current rates, this translates to the actual wait of ~50 years.
You and I have very different ideas about what's fair.
Considering we seem to be discussing the USA, the richest nation in human history, this seems very unfair to me. It seems to me at minimum we should easily be able to remove squalor conditions no matter how little someone works.
While I’d agree, you’ve read the OP’s comment in a significantly darker light than I did, or than I can get the text to support
Just that what worked for him might not work for many others. I’m still happy to hear he did ;)
I meet so many tech bros that victim blame. "the mom working two jobs has at least an hour at night. She can use that time to take free coding classes, teach herself to code, upskill and get a high paying programming job. It's not easy but it's possible." Some variation of that said to me so many times. "my family grew up poor and I figured it out! My dad came to this country with five dollars in his pocket etc etc."
I think one or two were telling the truth from all angles. Most were telling the truth as they knew it, but didn't realize that the fact that their parents were able to afford a house in the good school district already gave them a significant leg up, or other random privileges they have over others.
But what everyone seems to overestimate is their own willpower when they aren't just working many hours - which many of us on this forum are used to from startup life - but working for those hours for 7$ or less per hour, while facing humiliation and depredation every day at however many jobs being worked (by customers, by managers), looking to the future and seeing nothing but this 7$ an hour, watching your meagre savings always get nuked at just the right moment by a blown head gasket or the landlord raising rent or the kid needing unexpected school supplies because they forgot their backpack at the bus stop or whatever else.
The psychological burden of a hopeless situation is enormous. I wish I could help more people understand that and empathize with people in these situations. In the richest country on earth I don't understand why we tolerate people having to live like that, out of some cultish dedication to nonexistent meritocracy.
People also drastically underestimate the negative changes in social mobility since 1980. You mentioned one with housing but access to good education is another aspect.
I know the situation in France more than the US but at least in France, there used to be a lot more upward mobility. I went to a very well ranked engineering school that was created in the 60s with the goal of giving access to higher education to everyone. When they opened, 30% of students had parents who were farmer or factory workers (65% of the population had those type of jobs back then). By 2005, 7% of students had those kind of background (compared 39% of the population did those kind of jobs). I was in the school administration concil back then and this was already seen as a big problem. I know for a fact that the students coming from less advantageous background has been further reduced.
It's a generalized trend, increasingly all the best schools mostly admit from a small selection of students that come from a select number of good schools.
There's a lot of factors that changed and, surprisingly, evolution of upward mobility is poorly studied. My mother always thought that she succeeded because she went to boarding school in middle school and high school. Back then it was normal for people living far in the countryside like her. She thinks that boarding school allowed her to get a rest from her stressful and toxic home environment. Thanks to it she was able to read, study in peace and able to succeed. She later became a teacher and she was saddened by some of the kids she saw that grew up in an adverse environment with no real way out.
> The psychological burden of a hopeless situation is enormous.
Fully agreed on the psychological burden of a hopeless situation. When you are perpetually stressed about money, it's hard to gather the required energy to do anything besides surviving.
If I’d been born in a low income family in the US, I’d be working a dead end cleaning job, with no prospect of anything ever getting better. I’m fairly certain I’d be a kick ass cleaner though.
P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.
I’m just demonstrating here but this is an example of the stressful life many people around the world are living. We are blessed to be in the USA.
I was under the impressions that Americans work hard too. For example, if I'm not mistaking there's no mandated minimum number of vacation days, so you might get only 11 compared to 20 in most European countries.
> Heaven forbid you get sick.
The medical act is (very) good in the US, but is it affordable?
> The children have to compete in complicated exams to even have the sliver of a chance to land themselves in a good university.
Doesn't the same apply to the US as well? You either have lots of money, or good grades or you're good athlete.
The answer is....it depends.
If youre at poverty levels you would qualify for federal-level Medicaid insurance. learning about these benefits takes some digging. Some states(often democrat) provide their omedical benefit coverage for people who are at or below poverty line(which is itself a locale-specific metric).
If youre upper-middle-class or work for the government, you have good medical insurance through your employer or by paying $$$$$ out of pocket.
Anything between these two -- youre probably underserved in terms of medical coverage and you probably only see the inside of hospitals via emergency rooms.
Just as some examples:
Doctors are quite good here, none of that untrained nonsense you mentioned.
You have safety nets.
If you work formally employed (which granted is not a minor detail, since informal employment is a big problem), you have plenty of sick days, and these are mandated by law; so not at the mercy of the company.
Vacations are mandated by law to be paid according to how long you've been at the company. Nobody can fire you for taking vacations; it's about 2 weeks vacation once you've been working for a year. This is by law, the company is of course free to sweeten the deal.
Our best university is public and free.
While life is not easy for somebody without a family to support them or a good job, the reality is nowhere close to what you imagined.
Now, this is one country and I'm aware the "global south" is large and varied. I'm sure other countries have it worse. But it makes me suspect your global description of the south.
Etc, etc.
I'll be honest, as a non-American, I thought you were describing the USA in these sentences. I quite frequently read things online/see videos etc where Americans are shocked that we can take several weeks or a month off for a holiday in Europe, that if we're sick we just take time off, there's no worry about being fired for getting sick, or needing to work in order to qualify for health insurance. Education isn't free everywhere, but in most places people acquire much less debt than it seems you do in the USA.
It’s not a great stretch to go from there to assume they don’t have any social security at all.
If it’s available but many people cannot or do not know to make use of it, is it really social security? If they do make use of it and it’s still not enough, does that change things?
Have you seen the horrific conditions the poorest people of Europe 'survive' in? The ghettos of Eastern Europe are every bit as bad as the worst areas of Baltimore or St Louis. The bad areas in and around Paris are hyper minority poverty with zero upward mobility and extreme unemployment problems (thus the annual large riots). People in rural Western Russia live in third world conditions on $20-$30 per month; they live like nothing has improved in a century. To say nothing of the Ukraine war, which is now part of their living condition (for Ukraine and Russia). You realize how poor Moldova or North Macedonia are? The level of education and outcomes among the bottom 20% of Europe is every bit as bad as the bottom 20% in the US.
It's exceptionally difficult to provide a median (or median+) first world outcome to so many, perhaps impossible.
The Poorest 20% of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most European Nations: https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric... Although averages are a dangerous measure to use and I guess the article is wrong for other reasons (I think it is talking about consumption). The study and article are in response to the crazy OECD poverty measurements: "OECD measure assigns a higher poverty rate to the US (17.8 percent) than to Mexico (16.6 percent). Yet World Bank data show that 35 percent of Mexico’s population lives on less than $5.50 per day, compared to only 2 percent of people in the United States."
I'm in New Zealand, where we have some social support for the unfortunate. Disclaimer: I'm very ignorant of conditions for the poor in the US and Europe.
The state of California alone has spent $24,000,000,000 on homelessness in the last 5 years. The government spends about $50,000 per homeless person. See: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-homeles...
You can certainly argue that the support they're being given isn't working, but it's very far from zero support.
should very probably read "paid $24 B over 5 years to third parties on programs claiming to 'fix' homelessness"
This would include urban architectures and installions that seek to deter homelessness making sidewalks unsuitable for tents, benches unusable for sleeping, removing access to water and public toilets, etc.
Such things would not count at all as "support" for the homeless.
Regardless it seems remarkably ineffective and one has to wonder, as with military spending, how much goes to end use and how much is $$$ profit! for the contracters.
What would $24 B of affordable public housing look like, employing the homeless as labour?
As a Britisher, obviously I’m in favour of universal healthcare, and I think the US system would benefit from it. But let’s not pretend it’s perfect there either
I'm one of those 90%. My health insurance (family of 4) costs more than my house payment, and the annual deductible is over $6000 (for one person). Either the premiums or my deductible goes up every year. In terms of total cost (monthly premiums plus annual deductible) it's also pretty much the least expensive plan that I can get.
It's not that health care here is bad, it's that it's ridiculously expensive compared to most other places in the world.
Sure, but the average American also gets paid $20k more than the average Brit, on average.
~25% of the federal budget goes to medicare and medicaid, i.e. healthcare for other people. On top of that, you're paying for your own medical insurance as an implicit deduction on your salary for your employer-sponsored healthcare plan, or you just pay for your plan directly if you're self-employed.
Those percentages add up.
Whereas in the UK, or in Sweden where I'm from, you only pay once through your taxes for healthcare for everyone, including yourself.
On top of that, copays are higher in the US, annual deductibles are much higher, procedures are much more expensive, medication is much more expensive. Healthcare in the US is simply disproportionally more expensive than in the rest of the world, as a percentage of people's income, and as a percentage of GDP. It's got nothing to do with salary levels.
Edit: everything we pay out of pocket we can deduct from our taxable income (it's an HSA plan), but still.
Which you still might not qualify for, and may not get even if you do qualify for it (https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/apr/15/john-ol...)
> 90% of Americans are insured.
Which doesn't prevent nearly 40% of americans from being forced to put off needed medical care because of the expense they're still subjected to. (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/americans-put-off-health-car...) Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy.
> nearly 40% of americans from being forced to put off needed medical care
Hard to interpret UK NHS waiting-time figures, especially given the political weight given to them, but these[0][1] paint a picture of 6 month to >1 year waiting times.
0: https://www.boa.ac.uk/resource/boa-statement-on-nhs-app-show...
1: https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/news-and-events/media-centre/press-...
> Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy
Medical debt for non-elective treatment feels barbaric, although digging into the figures (2m personal bankruptcies a year, 60% medical) gives 0.3% of the US population declaring medical bankruptcy a year, possibly going up to 1% if you do fancier maths involving households vs people.
The long wait times, 22 weeks mean average, > 63 week in 8% of extreme waits, are regrettable but not indicitive of waiting for urgent emergency life threatening required non elective procedures which are relatively prompt and immediate for the most part.
Same problem, same prescription.
0: https://www.myplannedcare.nhs.uk/seast/royal-surrey/
1: https://www.myplannedcare.nhs.uk/seast/oxford/
2: https://www.myplannedcare.nhs.uk/seast/buckinghamshire/
For each specialty, there's a waiting time, which is the time between you seeing your local doctor and then seeing a specialist, and then there's a waiting time given from when the specialist refers you for a treatment -- they need to be added together. Cardiology is 17+21 weeks, 10+12 weeks, and 25+28 weeks, urology is 12+18 weeks, 18+23 weeks, and 25+20 weeks. Orthopedics (for your osteoarthritis example) is at 17+24 weeks, 22+46 weeks, and 20+25 weeks.
> not indicative of waiting for urgent emergency life threatening
Hospitals in the US can't turn you away if you show up presenting urgent, emergency, life-threatening symptoms either, and I suspect those are not the types of medical care that people in the US are generally putting off for cost reasons (although I'm sure there are a few cases where they are).
"My" portrayal is a summary of the information in the links that you provided.
To add to your list: housing, healthcare, food programs exist at the local + state + federal levels. The US state government system is huge unto itself, like having an entire other federal government nearly.
There are thousands of government support programs between the state + federal levels of government.
People outside of the US are almost entirely ignorant of how large the government systems in the US are. They're not as big as in France or Denmark obviously, they are still sizable compared to the median peer nation (on a GDP % basis).
We do some stuff (often not the right stuff) to prop up people struggling as adults. We do very little, relatively speaking, to enhance people's childhoods (or even just ensure that it's OK).
The point of the article is to think about how adverse childhood experiences might affect adulthood, using actual data, and try to think about an actionable way to address the issue. Maybe stuff like this is behind USA's secret sauce compared to other countries where the 'unfortunate' are left to rot.
From: https://collabfund.com/blog/immutable-truths-and-arguing-foo...
> This is so foreign to the world I know. But so is my world to them. I think they’re wrong, but they’d say the same to me. I’m sure I’m right; so are they. Often the reason debates arise is that you double down on your view after learning that opposing views exist.
> Here’s another.
> Former New York Times columnist David Pogue once did a story about harsh working conditions at Foxconn tech assembly factories in China. A reader sent him a response:
>> My aunt worked several years in what Americans call “sweat shops.” It was hard work. Long hours, “small” wage, “poor” working conditions. Do you know what my aunt did before she worked in one of these factories? She was a prostitute.
>> Circumstances of birth are unfortunately random, and she was born in a very rural region. Most jobs were agricultural and family owned, and most of the jobs were held by men. Women and young girls, because of lack of educational and economic opportunities, had to find other “employment.”
>> The idea of working in a “sweat shop” compared to that old lifestyle is an improvement, in my opinion. I know that my aunt would rather be “exploited” by an evil capitalist boss for a couple of dollars than have her body be exploited by several men for pennies.
>> That is why I am upset by many Americans’ thinking. We do not have the same opportunities as the West. Our governmental infrastructure is different. The country is different.
>> Yes, factory is hard labor. Could it be better? Yes, but only when you compare such to American jobs.
>> If Americans truly care about Asian welfare, they would know that shutting down “sweat shops” would force many of us to return to rural regions and return to truly despicable “jobs.” And I fear that forcing factories to pay higher wages would mean they hire FEWER workers, not more.
If the complainers had that attitude, I wouldn't mind at all and would endorse it. It's the whiners that have nothing more creative to say than how terrible America is that get me.
We should not forget though that at the same time the system in place will also produce people that face live with the same attitude and do all the same things, but with much less success.
Now the big question is, if we can have a system that does a similar job in encouraging your type of attitude while at the same time helping those out better, for whom it doesn't work out as much. Or are these things mutually exclusive.
There is a guy who cofounded a successful company and sold it. When asked if he would retire, his answer is no. Not because he isn't ready for retirement. Not because he wants to continue working or be even more successful. Because he has kids to put through college. Even successful people are not free of financial worry.
I wonder if all this success if fueled by constant adrenaline, no matter if it helps the individual or not. And if yes, if there is a better way.
I'm one of the luckiest people alive because I live in this country, and was always able to surround myself with supportive, positive and forward thinkers.
I don't know why I shared this. Maybe because I don't care to blame society for my adverse experiences. Through those experiences, I learned to lead. I learned to listen. I learned to value and appreciate. I learned to live.