Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
April 15, 2016 10:19 AM   Subscribe

Robert H. Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University, for The Atlantic: Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think. "...the luckiest among us appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time."

The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. (2004)
Heads nod in acknowledgment whenever hard work is mentioned in conjunction with economic success. Rarely is this assumption questioned. But what exactly do we mean by hard work? Does it mean the number of hours expended in the effort to achieve a goal? Does it mean the amount of energy or sheer physical exertion expended in the completion of tasks? Neither of these measures of "hard" work is directly associated with economic success. In fact, those who work the most hours and expend the most effort (at least physically) are often the most poorly paid in society. By contrast, the really big money in America comes not from working at all but from owning, which requires no expenditure of effort, either physical or mental. In short, working hard is not in and of itself directly related to the amount of income and wealth that individuals have.
The False Promise of Meritocracy by Marianne Cooper (2015)
The paradox of meritocracy builds on other research showing that those who think they are the most objective can actually exhibit the most bias in their evaluations. When people think they are objective and unbiased then they don't monitor and scrutinize their own behavior. They just assume that they are right and that their assessments are accurate. Yet, studies repeatedly show that stereotypes of all kinds (gender, ethnicity, age, disability etc.) are filters through which we evaluate others, often in ways that advantage dominant groups and disadvantage lower-status groups.
posted by amnesia and magnets (109 comments total) 102 users marked this as a favorite
 
This seems natural... people who spent their skill points on Luck didn't have many left for Intelligence.
posted by Riki tiki at 10:29 AM on April 15, 2016 [75 favorites]


Keep talking, I'm still sharpening my pitchfork.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:31 AM on April 15, 2016 [14 favorites]


"My dad's one of the lucky ones... The chain of events that got me to my cushy apartment while my cousin is in a cell somewhere is so precarious, so rooted in economic opportunities that don't exist anymore. Pull out any one of those links and I could've had a life of minimum wage work and early death from cirrhosis too."
posted by kliuless at 10:34 AM on April 15, 2016 [10 favorites]


These articles should be required reading for every elected official (both local, state and national), every government employee and every ceo and board member of every corporation in America. If I had a nickel for every time some middle aged, rich, white dude told me how hard he worked while sipping bourbon at 3pm on a random Tuesday I would have ... ok, I'd have 3 nickels. But you just know those guys are every where. And they drive me insane.
posted by pjsky at 10:35 AM on April 15, 2016 [40 favorites]


The one dimension of personal luck that transcends all others is to have been born in a highly developed country. I often think of Birkhaman Rai, the Bhutanese man who was my cook when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. He was perhaps the most resourceful person I’ve ever met. Though he was never taught to read, he could perform virtually any task in his environment to a high standard, from thatching a roof to repairing a clock to driving a tough bargain without alienating people. Even so, the meager salary I was able to pay him was almost certainly the high point of his life’s earnings trajectory. If he’d grown up in a rich country, he would have been far more prosperous, perhaps even spectacularly successful.

Don't disagree at all with the main thesis of this piece, but he lost me a bit with this paragraph. Being born in a developed vs developing country is hardly a binary lucky/unlucky thing. The populations of neither developed nor developing countries are monolithic. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been born into an upper-middle class family in India, and would take it any day over being born into a lower-middle class family in the US. And honestly, I'd argue that even a lower-middle class Indian person is better off in many ways than a poor black person in the US.
posted by peacheater at 10:37 AM on April 15, 2016 [30 favorites]


I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, and my bootstraps were pulled up by tiny helicopters with four leaf clovers for propellers.
posted by museum of fire ants at 10:38 AM on April 15, 2016 [65 favorites]


I've got a job that pays well (lawyer) but required a fair bit if education and really long hours. To an outside observer this is meritocracy in action. But how I got the job in the first place was that I ran into a friend at a wedding who had a lawyer friend that was hiring. This was actually pretty lucky because I tend to avoid going to weddings if possible but ended up going to this one. Sure I had to show my worth during the interview and early part of the job but in a lot of ways that's the easy part, getting the chance to show your worth is what's hard.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:41 AM on April 15, 2016 [31 favorites]


And honestly, I'd argue that even a lower-middle class Indian person is better off in many ways than a poor black person in the US.

I've heard that same sentiment from more than one colleague from India. Americans have so completely internalized exceptionalism, it distorts our picture of reality and what's possible.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:43 AM on April 15, 2016 [19 favorites]


people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard.

My anecdata supports this - it's something I ran into a whole lot when I was exposed to an impressive level of the "Fuck you, I've got mine!" branch of Libertarianism back in the late 1990's.

A huge amount of my success has been due to luck. And plenty of not-well-off folks I know have worked hard.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:46 AM on April 15, 2016


And honestly, I'd argue that even a lower-middle class Indian person is better off in many ways than a poor black person in the US.

I'm curious to hear what this arguement is. Not saying you're wrong, simply curious.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:47 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


A lot of people find my uh sticking to certain folk rituals and superstitions to be odd, but honestly considering the oversize role Luck has played in my life, it's essentially Pascal's Wager but with Luck instead of God.
posted by griphus at 10:49 AM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


I don't know griphus... you have talent, you recognize where you have talent and cultivate it, and you work hard. Of course, luck, circumstances, location and privilege play a role, but if you're a creative you cannot deny that hard work and focusing on the right things made something happen.
posted by My Dad at 10:56 AM on April 15, 2016


Money matters less than you might think. Sharing and love, more.
posted by iotic at 10:56 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm curious to hear what this arguement is. Not saying you're wrong, simply curious.

I guess my feeling on this is that while the lower middle class Indian person would likely earn less than the poor black American in absolute terms, that money would go further in the Indian economy, and he/she would also be surrounded by people in similar circumstances who can help support that person when needed.

There is still free healthcare in India - completely free hospitals/clinics/prescription drugs. Even for-pay healthcare is not as expensive as in the US, since the average amount an Indian can pay is lower - thus there would be no market for healthcare if it was priced much higher.

Tuition for universities is within reach for the average lower middle class person due to heavy subsidization by the government. And unlike in the US the cheaper universities actually offer a better education, since public universities are actually considered better than private ones.

There's far less likelihood that a lower-middle class Indian person would be killed due to gun violence or go to prison than a poor black person.

Provided the lower middle class Indian person is not from one of the untouchable castes, they are likely to experience far less prejudice against them from other Indians than a poor black person would from other Americans.
posted by peacheater at 11:00 AM on April 15, 2016 [27 favorites]


griphus you are a talentless husk of a man
posted by beerperson at 11:00 AM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


> but if you're a creative you cannot deny that hard work and focusing on the right things made something happen.

What with griphus being so smart and all, I'm betting he would not at all deny that of course work and focus play a role, and he doesn't seem to have done that here. Those things, while necessary in some respects, are certainly not sufficient.
posted by rtha at 11:01 AM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]


A lot of people find my uh sticking to certain folk rituals and superstitions to be odd, but honestly considering the oversize role Luck has played in my life, it's essentially Pascal's Wager but with Luck instead of God.

This an eastern european thing? (Please excuse the noticing; that's roughly my background...) I can't get on board (or keep track of) the superstitions. But I get a lot out of the concept of sudbina/fate.
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:03 AM on April 15, 2016


The role of luck in life has always been so obvious to me that it's a big part of why I have "socialistic" or communitarian tendencies. That doesn't mean I think I don't merit my success, it just means I realize that, to some extent, life is a crap shoot, and I don't think any civilized society should be OK with that, or justify randomness by masking it with false virtue.

The most common version of this Calvanist fantasy found in the media is encoded in the idea that we can learn from "successful people". While that might be true, it's certainly not if we don't look at the statistics honestly: e.g. in Bill Gate's cohort of ambitious early computer businessmen, adjusted for skill and economic standing, what were the odds of achieving even a tenth of his wealth? I don't know, but I'll bet it was vanishingly small. There's just too much chaos in the system for it to be any other way. So the idea that he's so rich because of he's such a smart guy, or whatever, is absurd.
posted by mondo dentro at 11:09 AM on April 15, 2016 [27 favorites]


This an eastern european thing?

Yeah, you bet. Most of it revolves around the Evil Eye (and related bad mojo) and the things to avoid/repel it and then just a bunch of weird shit ("don't give knives as gifts") that I somehow internalized.
posted by griphus at 11:10 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


Being born super tall: luck
Being able to sink 3 pointers:hard work
posted by museum of fire ants at 11:10 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


And honestly, I'd argue that even a lower-middle class Indian person is better off in many ways than a poor black person in the US.

As someone pretty familiar with Indian culture, there's at least one obvious huge advantage a poor black person in the US has that many upper middle class Indians would give A LOT for.
posted by shala at 11:11 AM on April 15, 2016


don't give knives as gifts

Ha :) Yeah, I have some of that weird shit in there, too. (Re knives - it's apparently ok to give them, if the recipient gives the giver a penny. But not for a wedding? Or to a family member, on a Thursday, argh yeah maybe they're less ingrained than I thought.) I do pay attention to which eye's twitching :/
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:13 AM on April 15, 2016


As someone pretty familiar with Indian culture, there's at least one obvious huge advantage a poor black person in the US has that many upper middle class Indians would give A LOT for.

Sure, I'm just saying it's not black and white. I'm not sure what use an American passport is if you're too poor to make use of it - and given that 64% of Americans don't have passports and have thus have never left the country, that is probably true for a lot of poor Americans.
posted by peacheater at 11:15 AM on April 15, 2016 [13 favorites]


Yeah if you're given a knife as a gift you have to give them back a token amount of money (a penny, a dollar, etc.) to make it into a transaction instead of a gift.
posted by griphus at 11:16 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Being able to sink 3 pointers:hard work

I don't think it's as simple as that. In the population of people capable of getting to a high skill level as 3-pt shooters (with hard work), how many actually can get to the NBA? It's a very small number.

I see this all the time in academia. I've met many smart people in my life as an egghead. A small fraction of them even got the chance to enter academia, conversely, many who did get the chance had less talent (but more luck).

Markets have a huge amount of stochasticity in them. Thinking that they select in a way that optimizes "merit" is just a bad model.
posted by mondo dentro at 11:18 AM on April 15, 2016 [17 favorites]


"As someone pretty familiar with Indian culture, there's at least one obvious huge advantage a poor black person in the US has that many upper middle class Indians would give A LOT for."

...Do poor black people in the US have passports?
posted by subversiveasset at 11:18 AM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]


Suppose I could have chosen the circumstances of my birth, sitting next to (deity of your choice) and reviewing the options. Not able to max everything out, but a lot of flexibility. For easy mode, for a head start, I'd probably choose, oh, I don't know, tall healthy white male born in America to two college-educated parents, who stay together until at least his teens and work hard to make sure he gets a good education, does music and sports, and learns right from wrong.

So yeah I was born on third base. Didn't realize that at first. I work hard, but a lot of people work even harder.
posted by kurumi at 11:21 AM on April 15, 2016 [15 favorites]


Let's look at another analogy: consider 10 Navy Seals, elite commandos, asked to take out a machine gun nest. Only one survives in accomplishing the mission. Was that one the "best commando"?
posted by mondo dentro at 11:21 AM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


...Do poor black people in the US have passports?

I think they're referring to the idea of being able to live and work in the United States without limit rather than the physical object itself.
posted by Talez at 11:22 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Right mondo dentro, agreed. But it illustrates the point overall. Note I didn't say 'makes a million dollars in the NBA.' Just 'able to sink 3 pointers' In this analogy I meant success at the game/skill of basketball being broken down into luck and hard work.
posted by museum of fire ants at 11:22 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Not able to max everything out, but a lot of flexibility. For easy mode, for a head start, I'd probably choose, oh, I don't know, tall healthy white male born in America to two college-educated parents, who stay together until at least his teens and work hard to make sure he gets a good education, does music and sports, and learns right from wrong.

Amen. I hit all the same checkboxes. If I were DM'ing a game and someone rolled up a character like me, I'd make 'em re-roll. What's the point of pretending it's a real challenge if you start out so overpowered? Who are you trying to fool?
posted by Mayor West at 11:27 AM on April 15, 2016 [10 favorites]


I think they're referring to the idea of being able to live and work in the United States without limit rather than the physical object itself.

But is this part even true? "without limit"?
posted by subversiveasset at 11:27 AM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


I think they're referring to the idea of being able to live and work in the United States without limit rather than the physical object itself.

You're right. As an immigrant myself, I know way too many people, who after having navigated nightmarish American immigration system -- visitor visa, student visa, work visa (finally, can legally look for a goddam job!), and then, as an ultimate culmination after many years, a shiny plastic green card -- simply cannot comprehend the concept of a homeless person in America: "But, but... he can just work, right? Legally?"
posted by shala at 11:29 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


You're right. As an immigrant myself, I know way too many people, who after having navigated nightmarish American immigration system -- visitor visa, student visa, work visa (finally, can legally look for a goddam job!), and then, as an ultimate culmination after many years, a shiny plastic green card -- simply cannot comprehend the concept of a homeless person in America: "But, but... he can just work, right? Legally?"

Well, Americans certainly don't have a monopoly on thoughtlessness.
posted by peacheater at 11:30 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


given that 64% of Americans don't have passports and have thus have never left the country

Until a few years ago, you didn't need a passport to go to Canada and Mexico, so this isn't strictly accurate. (My parents don't have passports - well, my dad did decades ago for work travel, but let it lapse long ago - but they have been to Canada several times over the years.) But casual North American travel is yet another victim of the post-9/11 era.
posted by aught at 11:31 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


64% of Americans don't have passports and have thus have never left the country

Just to note that before 2009 Americans didn't need a passport to visit many nearby countries and that people who don't have passports can have had passports. If you'd asked me in 2008, I wouldn't have a passport but had lived outside the US for eight years and regularly spent a few weeks at a time outside the US.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:32 AM on April 15, 2016


Just to note that before 2009 Americans didn't need a passport to visit many nearby countries and that people who don't have passports can have had passports. If you'd asked me in 2008, I wouldn't have a passport but had lived outside the US for eight years and regularly spent a few weeks at a time outside the US.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:32 AM on April 15 [+] [!]
EPONYSOMETHING
posted by museum of fire ants at 11:33 AM on April 15, 2016


In the population of people capable of getting to a high skill level as 3-pt shooters (with hard work), how many actually can get to the NBA? It's a very small number.

To continue with this analogy, 17% of people over 7' tall have played for an NBA team. Do you think you can name another trait (demographic or not) that can hit a tenth of that?
posted by Mayor West at 11:33 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'd like to generalize the thing about rich men not believing in luck: as a middle class liberal, I believe that all those who make less than me are hard working victims of an unfair system, those who make more than me are lazy lucky bastards, and I am the perfect balance between the two.
posted by signal at 11:34 AM on April 15, 2016 [58 favorites]


I think they're referring to the idea of being able to live and work in the United States without limit rather than the physical object itself.

Yeah, but between institutional racism and a lack of educational opportunities, they might actually be less eligible for good jobs within the US.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:34 AM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


The truth is more complicated, as usual. Wealth can come about through hard work, and since this is the only factor we can control, it makes sense for us to work hard on our moneymaking endeavors -- until and unless it becomes clear hard work is not paying off, whereupon we should redirect our efforts. But this is important: Hard work does not always equal wealth, and hard work failing to generate wealth is often a thing we cannot correct for simply by working harder. Some stones ain't got no blood in 'em.

Wealth can come about through luck, but be careful. People to whom wealth comes too easily may have some rude shocks ahead. People born into wealth especially. Your friends may not be your friends. They may use you; they may even hate you. You may have grown up thinking life is a TV show and you're the star. There's no star.

Mostly it's going to be a combination of hard work and luck, but to some degree, luck is what we make of it. If you find a ten-dollar bill on the ground, that's lucky. If you don't pick it up, you're still lucky, but you don't have ten dollars. Maybe the next person to walk down that street will be lucky that you're a dumbass, and they'll have ten dollars.

But money isn't itself happiness or success. It's just money. A sad, friendless person with a fortune can eat, drink and smoke himself into a quick grave. You can buy a lot of shit to put where love should be, and a lot of it kills you. How much money does a person need to be happy? It's like asking how much spinach you need to build a spaceship. A lack of money can make life much harder and less joyous. It too can kill you. You need it to sustain the body, but it cannot bring meaning to a life.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:37 AM on April 15, 2016 [9 favorites]


Too little money will kill you 100x faster than too much I bet.
posted by museum of fire ants at 11:42 AM on April 15, 2016 [26 favorites]


It's a lot easier to make happen for sure.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:43 AM on April 15, 2016


Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think

I don't want to seem too harsh or dismissive, but yeah, the only people who don't appreciate the importance of luck are those who have had plenty of it. Which tells you something important about who this piece is oriented toward.

Some people believe in meritocracy (i.e., institutions that are set up in such a way as to reward effort and talent in a perfectly fair way), but I find that far more people believe in what I'll call "meritonomy": the belief that it is not just formal institutions like companies or governmental agencies that reward people on the basis of their skill and hard work alone, but that in fact this is how all of human society operates, and sometimes the rest of the universe as well. Calvinism is a meritonomous theology, and (although I don't know it as well, and could be wrong) Saṃsāra seems like one as well. Meritonomy is a very basic, almost elemental way of thinking about why social difference exists, but you find it in many, many places, and it frequently manifests as a kind of tautology that's dreadfully difficult to get people to think critically about. In fact, meritocracy might be more accurately classified as a form of meritonomic thinking, finding expression often in the modern, rationalized, bureaucratic societies of the West.
posted by clockzero at 11:44 AM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]


Being born super tall: luck
Being able to sink 3 pointers:hard work


So everybody who is the same height and puts in the same amount of hard work ends up sinking the same percentage of 3-pointers? If not, what accounts for the difference?
posted by straight at 11:44 AM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


This right here is the biggest disconnect between me and my parents. They're explicitly very into the Randian heroic ideal of the self-made man, meritocracy, and this bizarre notion that they have known struggle when what they knew is a very very typical "middle class family just starting out in the early 70s" scenario. They were broke for a few years, not poor. The distinction is lost on them. They're libertarian Objectivists.

On the other hand, I'm acutely, maybe somewhat pathologically aware, that nothing in my life is because I deserve it more than anyone else. The hard work I've done has only taken me the last few feet of the mile of my life. Everything else is attributable to my race, my class, my good physical and mental health, the good physical and mental health of my family, and all of those same things being true for my husband and his family. I'm a democratic socialist.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:46 AM on April 15, 2016 [27 favorites]


I'd like to generalize the thing about rich men not believing in luck: as a middle class liberal, I believe that all those who make less than me are hard working victims of an unfair system, those who make more than me are lazy lucky bastards,

Taking personality and social politics out of it, who cares how we see ourselves? The case that success depends on luck is open and shut--you can prove it mathematically, empirically, logically, and almost everyone has at least a few anecdotes that support the conclusion, too. A lot of wealthy people do work fantastically hard. So what? The point is the work is necessary, but not sufficient, and increasingly, for more and more people, hard work isn't the most important factor at all. It is absolutely true that having the right surname in America can substitute for hard work. It's also absolutely true that sometimes people do still overcome the odds (though luck is always still involved in those successes, too). It's obviously not about work anymore, if it ever was. My step-grandfather believed success was all about hard work his entire life, worked his way up from sharecropping to owning a successful business with operating revenues in the low millions--then he got swindled out of everything, worked himself to death, and the courts helped his business partners steal his widow's inheritance, leaving her back in poverty where they'd started. For every hard-work-made-me-who
-I-am story, there's probably dozens or even more like that one. So, if it's not really only about hard work, why do we have the myth?
posted by saulgoodman at 11:50 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


clockzero, that sounds a lot like the Just World fallacy.
posted by Hactar at 11:52 AM on April 15, 2016


No one likes hearing that they never worked hard, even tho that isn't necessarily what's being said. A softer way to say it to your bourbon swilling biz man at 2pm on a Tuesday might be...some people work JUST AS HARD and it never generates the GOOD FORTUNE that you are enjoying.
posted by museum of fire ants at 11:54 AM on April 15, 2016 [10 favorites]


Never blame others for your success, and never take credit for your failures.

My axiom is that "getting ahead" is more about being stupid in specific areas than it is about intelligence. It is a corollary to the principal that it is important to have the skills to get the job not to do the job.

I'm not bitter.
posted by Pembquist at 11:54 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't think it's as simple as that. In the population of people capable of getting to a high skill level as 3-pt shooters (with hard work), how many actually can get to the NBA? It's a very small number.

Amazingly, (or not amazingly) something in the neighborhood of 20% of American males over 7 feet tall wind up in the NBA. It's a waaaaay higher percentage than for anybody else aspiring to a professional sports career.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:55 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


Saṃsāra seems like one as well.

That's the American pop culture version, for sure. But it's really sort of the opposite: the idea is that the world is horrible and unfair, due to people's ignorance and unhealthy attachments to desires/cravings. All that Karma says is that your intentions will have some effect, eventually, in the outcomes of your actions, that intentions play a role in cause and effect, whether for good or bad. Samsara itself is actually a prison full of deceptions ruled over by an evil being named Mara in the Tibetan tradition, for example.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:58 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


oops, I see Mayor West beat me to that, and with a link, no less.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:58 AM on April 15, 2016


clockzero, that sounds a lot like the Just World fallacy.

Yeah, I think they're not dissimilar analytic constructs. One important difference is that, as I would use it anyway, meritonomy would emphasize the role of work, economics, and social promotion in its interpretation of merit and outcomes, specifically. I see it as a kind of economic thinking, really, in the incarnations such as the readers of the first linked article who need an economics professor to explain to them, and still might be surprised to learn, that luck is actually very consequential.
posted by clockzero at 11:59 AM on April 15, 2016


That's the American pop culture version, for sure. But it's really sort of the opposite: the idea is that the world is horrible and unfair, due to people's ignorance and unhealthy attachments to desires/cravings. All that Karma says is that your intentions will have some effect, eventually, in the outcomes of your actions, that intentions play a role in cause and effect, whether for good or bad. Samsara itself is actually a prison full of deceptions ruled over by an evil being named Mara in the Tibetan tradition, for example.

It still sounds as though this cosmology claims that people's lots in life are affected by instantiations of merit, but perhaps I'm still misunderstanding.
posted by clockzero at 12:03 PM on April 15, 2016


Having the kind of faith that allows you to work hard comes from luck.
posted by amtho at 12:06 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


But money isn't itself happiness or success. It's just money.

Among other things, eighteen years living off of government assistance and other people's handouts taught me this: Money isn't itself happiness or success, but it isn't just money, either -- it's food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. (And if you aren't plagued with worry about acquiring and maintaining your possession of those things, you're very lucky indeed.)

Also, anyone who says money can't buy happiness has probably never found themselves empty-bellied and flat broke, then found a fiver on the ground or got some money from a friend so they can go buy a 2,000-calorie Value Meal, because TRUST: that shit will make you happier than anything in the world.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 12:09 PM on April 15, 2016 [35 favorites]


But money isn't itself happiness or success. It's just money.

I believe it is somewhere around 70K a year that "studies have shown" a person achieves a significant gain in personal happiness. (less than 70K less happy more than 70K not much more or no increase in happiness.) Wish I could cite where it comes from beyond my little brain but I'm off to library.
posted by Pembquist at 12:19 PM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


some people work JUST AS HARD and it never generates the GOOD FORTUNE that you are enjoying.

Honestly, I've never seen that stick, usually they double down, maybe shift the goal posts a bit: "well, they're not working smart."

The closest I've gotten was telling someone how I'm mostly successful due to luck (this was when I had a pretty well paying job right out of school, before going into research). He protested, and then I was brutally honest about how little effort I put into anything before getting into a good grad school (over half the battle), which happened strictly because I test well, and let's face it probably another dash of luck when they reviewed my application. I'm not sure if it stuck, but he at least thought about it for a bit.
posted by ghost phoneme at 12:21 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


any portmanteau in a storm: I've got a job that pays well (lawyer) but required a fair bit if education and really long hours. To an outside observer this is meritocracy in action. But how I got the job in the first place was that I ran into a friend at a wedding who had a lawyer friend that was hiring. This was actually pretty lucky because I tend to avoid going to weddings if possible but ended up going to this one. Sure I had to show my worth during the interview and early part of the job but in a lot of ways that's the easy part, getting the chance to show your worth is what's hard.

Not picking on you, but looking to your case because it provides an example of the more subtle "luck" in your birth:
  • Are your parents college-educated?
  • Did you have a supportive family and calm home in which to do your school work?
  • Was it expected of you to go to do well in school and go to college?
  • Are your parents friends and your friends of similar backgrounds and aspirations?
  • Did you have to struggle to pay for your education?
Answering from my own experiences as a white guy who was raised in the 'burbs:
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes, mostly
  • No
If I were in your shoes, I'd see the "luck" going well beyond running into a friend of a friend who was a lawyer who was looking to hire someone. I'd mark myself as being born on third base, if not having a silver spoon in hand.

I was able to take my sweet time getting through college, wait around for my first job (I was unemployed for months after graduating, then it was another 9 months from submitting my job application to starting work, with two rounds of interviews spread out over months). I knew my stuff, and it was an entry level position, but I kind of thought I got picked for that job because I was the only one who was still able to take the position after nine frickin' months. And then I was able to move to another state with my wife and young son, and neither of us had a job lined up, but we had family who could support us and enough savings to carry us through.

My *luck* is layers deep.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:32 PM on April 15, 2016 [16 favorites]


I forged myself from clay that I willed into existence and then hardened that clay with my laser eyes and then built an ivory tower from dragon tusks that I'd slain and filled it with books that I wrote and educated myself with them. Then I became an investment banker.
posted by museum of fire ants at 12:37 PM on April 15, 2016 [44 favorites]


that sounds a lot like the Just World fallacy.

But don't you get it? It is a Just World. The only thing we deserve is to suffer and die, and that's precisely what each of us gets, guaranteed. Everything else is just details.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:41 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I forged myself from clay that I willed into existence and then hardened that clay with my laser eyes and then built an ivory tower from dragon tusks that I'd slain and filled it with books that I wrote and educated myself with them. Then I became an investment banker.

PHEW! Is it just me or is this stuff cut with something funny?
posted by clockzero at 1:10 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


The reason that I've been in my current field (for almost 10 years now) is purely because a resume autoreader mistakenly identified me as having X years of experience in one of the leading companies in my field.

In actuality, I had 0 years of experience with that company (and, technically, with that field); my gradaute program just happened to share a name with that company.

I didn't find this out (or even think it could actually happen) until my third round of interviews when someone asked about the discrepancy. But that mistake allowed me to get my foot in the door.

It is actually oddly comforting in moments where I feel like the world isn't going my way. Rather than get down on myself (e.g., you could have done more), I can remind myself that despite all my effort - it sometimes just comes down to a random chance from out of the blue. (And, I guess, it helps me put into perspective how much luck I've had in my life...)
posted by TofuGolem at 1:34 PM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


filthy light thief, my answers are the same as yours except I'm a brown guy who was raised in the burbs. I totally agree that there were other layers of luck as well, the wedding was just the proximate one to me getting the job.

And the luck goes back even farther than just me. Both of my parents were born in India to upper-middle class families (which is pretty damn lucky, especially back then) so they were able to get university degrees there and then come to Canada on scholarships for further education back in the 50's/60's when that kind of thing was pretty rare.

It's not quite the same as intergenerational wealth, but intergenerational luck is still a pretty good thing to have.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:46 PM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


Every day I think how lucky I am.

If have your health and you're not poor, or even more if you're affluent, you have no excuse for not counting your blessings.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 1:48 PM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


The problem with the whole conversation around luck and merit is that it limits the discussion to the individual level and gets diverted to arguments about privilege. These are not unimportant discussions, but they miss the forest for the trees.

First of all, the labor is not something everyone can 'win': the occupational mix is fairly steady and not particularly responsive to the labor supply. We need sanitation workers, in other words. And moreover, it's not like merit is rewarded linearly--jobs and property are not quite zero sum games, but they might as well be for many practical purposes. So you might have two students with the same 'merit' who take an exam to get into a profession, and they both guess on one question and but only one of them happens to get it right, and because they're are limited spots for the grad program or whatever one ends up successful and the other not.

The percent of men working in low-wage jobs in the USA doubled from the 80s to 2007. Are those men unlucky? Probably. Do they lack merit? In the face of that statistic the question seems absurd to me.

Second, while you can point out policies that have affected individuals and how that helped them get lucky, out still obscures the importance of collective action in implementing those policies that helped people's luck--and the role of collective action in making policies that helped make people unlucky. Or simply policies that leave more and more up to change.
posted by ropeladder at 1:50 PM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


An underlying problem is most people want the world to make a straightforward kind of sense, and luck doesn't make sense to them. Not to mention that for a lot of people, a world that has a substantial component of luck involved in one's fate probably doesn't have a God in it, which is scary to them. I think the need for the world to make sense (linked to a kind of higher order) is what makes people behave reasonably at all in their lives; for many people, if they really bought into the idea that luck was as important to overall success as skill or effort, they would say fuck it and society would crumble. It's a tricky house of cards of beliefs and illusions that keeps our civilization up.
posted by aught at 2:03 PM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


I believe it is somewhere around 70K a year that "studies have shown" a person achieves a significant gain in personal happiness.

$66k-122k. $75k $40k. $161k. So yeah, $70k sounds about right.
posted by effbot at 2:08 PM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


luck doesn't make sense to them

"The harder you practice, the luckier you get."

Which is indeed true, once luck has taken you to a point where you can practice.
posted by effbot at 2:14 PM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


Extremely lucky person here--heterosexual, white male, born in the 1960s to parents and an extended who loved me and who had the means to provide me with medical care and the education that they highly valued and who made me realize how lucky I was and helped me avoid bad choices or to recover ones that I did make. Even though I was geeky kid, I wasn't picked on, and I remained popular. Yes, I worked very hard in high school, college, graduate school, and in my career as a professor in a top engineering school, but I was very fortunate to have the initial opportunities that gave me the chance to take advantage of later opportunities. In short, I was dealt a good hand, and by and large I played my good cards well (lucky to have the role models to make good choices) so that through good decisions and hard work I got even more good cards.

Many of my high school classmates were not so fortunate. Often they were dealt bad hands, and in many cases squandered the few good cards that they had, primarily because of alcoholism or other addictive or self-destructive behavior not entirely within their control. Many made early bad choices that from which they could never recover--such as having children before they were financially or emotionally prepared. Others repeatedly made the same mistakes due to pride, peer pressure, or their own biases such as looking down on others even less fortunate causing them to choose against their own best interests.

It is heartbreaking to see a lot of people whom I liked 35 years later with such difficult lives and so little to show for a lifetime of toil.
posted by haiku warrior at 2:32 PM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


ropeladder, I think it's important to talk about how those who are well-off benefited from luck because collective changes aren't going to happen unless there is sufficient buy-in from the well-off for them. If we can get them to accept that there is no real causation between desert and someone's wealth or position in society then maybe we can have meaningful discussions about increasing welfare, minimum wage, labour protections or other social program without the opponents trying to paint the potential beneficiaries as not being deserving of these. So the issue stops being "why should we raise the minimum wage, those people should have studied harder to get a better job" and starts to be "what is the minimum wage that someone would need to support themselves, and potentially a dependant, at an acceptable level to society".
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:38 PM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm not saying there's no connection between hard work and success, but the bare logic behind the idea "I worked hard, and I got rich, so people who work hard will get rich [or people who aren't rich just haven't worked hard]" is precisely the same as that of "I bought a lottery ticket, and I got rich, so people who buy lottery tickets will get rich [or people who aren't rich didn't buy lottery tickets]".
Again, the lottery is purely random, while hard work can definitely contribute to success. But the logic still sucks.
posted by uosuaq at 2:39 PM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


The lottery ticket analogy is a good one. You have to buy a lottery ticket to win. The life lottery is ticket is working hard and working smart. But that is no guarantee. It merely improved the chances that one will succeed.
posted by haiku warrior at 2:48 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Filthy light thief: you're right. You are lucky. Until recently, I'd hoped my kids might be lucky, too, unlike me. I'd get myself down about it, but what good would that do?
posted by saulgoodman at 2:58 PM on April 15, 2016


I'm an atheist, but I actually think the bible put this one quite nicely:

"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.." -Ecclesiastes
posted by Hylaea at 3:49 PM on April 15, 2016 [21 favorites]


The life lottery is ticket is working hard and working smart. But that is no guarantee. It merely improved the chances that one will succeed.

But by how much? There are lazy and incompetent people at every level of responsibilty and reward, from the street homeless of the developing world to the highest halls of government power. Hard work is pretty much the only honest way to improve your own odds, but it's not clear to me how significant a role it actually plays.
posted by howfar at 4:21 PM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


"If have your health and you're not poor, or even more if you're affluent, you have no excuse for not counting your blessings."

I'm disabled and poor but I still count my blessings. Where would I be if I didn't have the advantages I've had and I were disabled and poor? In a much worse place, that's where.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:41 PM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


Hard work is pretty much the only honest way to improve your own odds, but it's not clear to me how significant a role it actually plays.

For people who have nothing else (everyone has something, but broadly speaking), it's all you can do. Our world isn't fair, and for the most part the people who could level the playing field are pretty pleased with themselves and think the problem is you if you don't agree that it's wonderful.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:01 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Being born super tall: luck
Being able to sink 3 pointers:hard work

So everybody who is the same height and puts in the same amount of hard work ends up sinking the same percentage of 3-pointers? If not, what accounts for the difference?


I was born to be tall, but I was also born super-clumsy. The last time I tried to play basketball I sprained my wrist dribbling.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:08 PM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


As someone pretty familiar with Indian culture, there's at least one obvious huge advantage a poor black person in the US has that many upper middle class Indians would give A LOT for.
posted by shala


Oh my lord! You think a poor black person in the US has $165 sitting around to pay for something they'll never be able to use? (Not sure if you can go with just the card, but at $55, the point still stands.)

I think you need to acquaint yourself a little more with lower income and many middle income people in the US.

No offense intended, honestly.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 5:24 PM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've met a few talented people in the animation business who got into it just as things took off in the eighties and found themselves very in demand and well paid as they entered their mid 20s. There's no more obnoxious a libertarian type than one who's had success early in life.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:08 PM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


The thing is, even the capacity to be hard working is luck.

1. You need to meet a certain threshold of physical and mental health
2. you need to have seen hard work modeled by someone in your childhood
3. you need to have enough good luck to see hard work rewarded enough to continue being hard working, instead of giving up

I think we like to pat ourselves on the backs for those morning we get up and go to work even though we didn't feel like it, or get home from work and put in another 4 hours even through a migraine. It's easy to forget that what's hard for us can be impossible for someone else.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 7:31 PM on April 15, 2016 [17 favorites]


All this talk about hard work being a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for success--

It's not even necessary. Some people have the world handed to them on a silver platter.

Sure, it helps, and there are many people who would not be successful if not for hard work, but oh man are there sure a lot of people who have had it easy.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:48 PM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's not even necessary. Some people have the world handed to them on a silver platter.

Sure, it helps, and there are many people who would not be successful if not for hard work, but oh man are there sure a lot of people who have had it easy.
posted by Kutsuwamushi


I think you're exactly correct. I'm reminded of some sort of saying I heard years ago that went something like, "For every cockroach you see in your home, there are at least 1000 more that live in your home that you don't see."

I think the ultra-wealthy elite are kinda like that. For every one Koch brother, etc. you see, there are at least 1000 other ones you don't see.

And, yes, I guess I am comparing the Koch brothers and their ilk to cockroaches, although that's probably a terrible insult to cockroaches.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:22 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Classic Rawlsian veil of ignorance.

(Fwiw I work like a maniac, but so do lots of people who get paid jack shit. My good fortune is absolutely the luck of the draw.)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 12:47 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've been absolutely killing myself 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week working at something or other for almost 40 years-- avocations such as music, photography, etc. on top of on-my-feet hustling all day jobs, and maybe I've made poor investment choices, or poor business partner choices along the way, but one by one, the things I was doing that I thought would break wide open one day have all been pulled out from beneath my feet. I am the fucking best at what I do, by measurable criteria, there's just no money in any of it any more. I chose crafts, skills, when I could have chosen computer design or IT or something, when I had the chance.

I'm a 5'11" white American male that has only actually gone hungry a few days in my life, so overall I've led a fortunate life & I know that, but I sure as hell never got rich at any of it. I can see why some people get resentful towards those "beneath their station," as they feel like they're battling for finite resources in a zero-sum game, and I can certainly see why someone who busts ass & breaks into something big feels like they deserve every penny.

I try to remain grateful that there's still an atmosphere between me & the void of space when I catch the resentment setting in, but man, sometimes I just get tired.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:23 AM on April 16, 2016 [9 favorites]


The "money doesn't buy you happiness" set of studies that suggest you don't get happier above $70k is such capitalist nonsense. I got slammed for saying this the last time I said it, but it's absolutely true. ("What, you don't believe in science?!"). I'd link to the studies that say otherwise but the whole thing is so fraught within the neoliberal epistemology of our time that's it's not even worth pointing out that there are countervailing opinions on the subject. How does one measure wealth and how does one measure happiness? Whoever figures out the answer to that question in a way that leads to a pattern of declining happiness with increased wealth gets to publish in PNAS. If you don't, you don't (how lucky). It's become accepted wisdom among a certain set of well-educated upper middle class folk, and I wish more people would think about how convenient it is. "Oh I'd get more upset about the .1% owning 90% of the wealth, but that one study I didn't read says I'm actually happier than them. And isn't that punishment enough?" The history books on this country are going to print that study on page one just so they can point and laugh at how credulous we were. For every rich kid you knew growing up who was a little socially awkward and drank too much at parties, there's ten dudes who became independently wealthy in their twenties and spend their lives split between Manhattan and the Catskills, attending workshops on black smithing and riding their off-road Segways. They are rich and they are very happy.
posted by one_bean at 7:34 AM on April 16, 2016 [9 favorites]


I cannot favorite Devils Rancher's comment hard enough. Also pocketfullofrye's. I have busted my ass all my life, 60-80 hours a week, often at either extremely stressful or extremely physical jobs, and gotten nowhere. And now my genetic inheritance has combined with all those years of hard work and stress to give me a medical condition so that I have a hard time working even 25 hours a week at a low stress, not-physical job. Additionally, I'm having to deal with two immediate family members who have severe health problems, which have only made my situation worse. All of us were way more health conscious than most people, and all of us are now pretty much screwed.


But money isn't itself happiness or success. It's just money.

I beg to differ. As I've said here before, money *can* buy happiness. It can buy food that's not 5/$1 ramen noodles. It can buy regular oil changes in your car so that you can keep working. It can buy a trip to the vet for a sick pet. It can buy dental work. Anyone who says that money can't buy happiness has always had enough money.
posted by MexicanYenta at 7:57 AM on April 16, 2016 [19 favorites]


I don't know if money buys happiness, but it sure as hell pays off misery.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:09 AM on April 16, 2016 [7 favorites]


Whoever figures out the answer to that question in a way that leads to a pattern of declining happiness with increased wealth gets to publish in PNAS. If you don't, you don't (how lucky).

That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Got any examples on studies that's been rejected?

(also, the studies I've seen don't say that you get less happy by getting more money, they say that there's a point where you no longer get noticeably happier by getting a bit more money)
posted by effbot at 10:37 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Got any examples on studies that's been rejected?

I'm sure you know there's no way for me to have direct evidence of unpublished studies. There are standardized techniques to estimate based on the published literature how many papers haven't been published, or how many papers would need to be published showing the opposite effect for the original study to be negated. The Kahneman and Deaton study from 2010 is the one everybody likes to cite. There have been relatively few other papers published on the subject, i.e. not enough to detect a problem of publication bias. Those papers that suggested happiness just keeps going up with increased wealth were not published in PNAS and they did not receive the same fawning media coverage. That's not a conspiracy, it's a fact. Wait a few years for the meta-analysis to be done and we will have a much better sense of how strong the effect of wealth has on happiness. In the meantime, there is just as much evidence that the two are strongly, positively, correlated than not.

You want some real evidence about how much faith to put into that one paper? Do you think after the two Princeton economists published their groundbreaking study they went over to the Dean's office and asked him to lower their salaries?
posted by one_bean at 10:58 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


I wish more people would think about how convenient it is. "Oh I'd get more upset about the .1% owning 90% of the wealth, but that one study I didn't read says I'm actually happier than them. And isn't that punishment enough?"

I'm not sure of the significance of your position. What has this got to do with whether we get change or not? No just or justifiable replacement for capitalism is going to end up allocating a larger share of resources to people already earning over $70k. The middle-classes are not the victims of inequality (although our quality of life is, I think, significantly impaired by it, and our future survival clearly imperilled by it), we are (financially) among its beneficiaries. The purpose of reform or revolution isn't to punish the very wealthy, it's to help the poor.
posted by howfar at 10:58 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


most people want the world to make a straightforward kind of sense, and luck doesn't make sense to them

See also evolution, and the difference between climate and weather.

Thinking about the luck of being in an environment where hard work pays off, so that we learn to work hard: every ...quirk of our political arrangements that teaches "learned helplessness" or "fatalism" to a ...particular section of society is going to be really stable, not just because it reduces the chance of ...particular people not working their way out of it, but it gives the "meritocracy" an excuse not to fix the quirk: see, those people don't work hard. [[Opinions implied are not those held by the author.]]
posted by clew at 12:20 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


Money doesn't buy happiness but a bit of capital is a hell of a comfy cushion.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:08 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


I keep thinking of Bugs Bunny's line, "iron bars do not a prison make...but they sure help!"
posted by uosuaq at 7:54 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Just World fallacy is,indeed, fallacious, and pernicious to boot.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:03 AM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


Those papers that suggested happiness just keeps going up with increased wealth were not published in PNAS and they did not receive the same fawning media coverage. That's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.

Are you referring to actual papers or hypothetical ones?
posted by straight at 12:19 PM on April 17, 2016


Are you referring to actual papers or hypothetical ones?

Actual. Some were referenced in effbot's links.
posted by one_bean at 4:30 PM on April 17, 2016


The "money doesn't buy you happiness" set of studies that suggest you don't get happier above $70k is such capitalist nonsense.

Whoa! My take away from the study wasn't that you don't get happier above 70k but that you get a lot happier with 70k compared to say 20k. I'm sure it varies with markets but 70k is a sweet spot where you have a lot more economic agency and you don't just have to take it in the teeth. For instance if your cat gets sick you don't have to think twice about going to the vet. I never thought of it as being about poor rich people or the smiling middle class.
posted by Pembquist at 9:21 PM on April 17, 2016


I like to say that money can't buy happiness but it can buy peace of mind. Also the 70k number is weird because the amount of purchasing power 70k represents depends heavily on your location. If you're in San Francisco and paying (hopefully not though) 4k rent a month then that 70k is nothing whereas if you're in a different city like Pittsburgh (city picked randomly though selection biased due to Videodrome) then that 70k will go a lot further.
posted by I-baLL at 9:52 PM on April 17, 2016


My aunt used to say, "Maybe money can't buy happiness, but it can make your misery a lot more fun."

Honestly, I can think of very few problems I have right now that wouldn't be either solved or greatly ameliorated by large infusion of cash.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:04 PM on April 17, 2016


"We used to have a better wheel, but aaah, a bunch of old people wrecked it"

The role of luck in life has always been so obvious to me that it's a big part of why I have "socialistic" or communitarian tendencies.

Don't be afraid to say it just b/c the Soviet Union was horrible. It's COMMUNISM.

I had this epiphany (about luck, inherited wealth, and success) in third grade (when I wrote my first Communist-sympathetic poem). I've been DEPRESSED every since. :s (but working on it!)
posted by mrgrimm at 9:59 AM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Honestly, I can think of very few problems I have right now that wouldn't be either solved or greatly ameliorated by large infusion of cash.

When you don't have it, it seems like cash can solve almost any problem. Most of my early 20s were spent thinking, "if I could just save up $3,000" (or win $5K in the lottery ...).

As a 40-something, I can tell you (if it helps at all), the people with LOTS of money are definitely not any happier than the people (living comfortably above the poverty line) who are not rich. They still want MORE, MORE, MORE.

I've been poor, and I've been moderately well off (now). Money opens up opportunities, but it also complicates affairs. It's kinda like sugar--you get a taste and you want MORE. IMO, it's that "spiritual materialism" that all of us humans need to overcome. Our salvation is not in things, but in each other, etc etc.

It's the people who have money and don't care about it (giving freely and not craving MORE) who seem to be the most fulfilled. Or the people who don't have any money and work passionately toward a cause or goal they strongly believe in.

I, like most people, am neither of those. For us, it's more of a challenge. Good LUCK!
posted by mrgrimm at 10:07 AM on April 18, 2016


As a point of reference, my landlord was very lucky to buy a house in South Berkeley in 1993 for $100,000. That house is now valued near $1 million.

She owns the house I live in, as well as a house in Kensington, and yet I had to hear her whole sob story about how she's subsidizing our living because our rent is under-market value (well, duh, that's how rent control works) and taxes killed her and she would love to even sell this house (we made her a very generous $900,000 offer 2 years ago, which I'm so glad she rejected (after naming her price)), but she can't sell it because she can't manage the tax burden.

Waa, waa, waa. My daughter goes to school in one of the richest neighborhoods in Berkeley. I'm out there on the streets (and/or cul-de-sacs). I'm familiar with the whines and burdens of the upper class. They are definitely not any happier than the rest of us, though they love to pretend they are--that's why they buy so much crap. (But yeah, luck is still everything.)
posted by mrgrimm at 7:59 PM on April 18, 2016


A huge amount of my success has been due to taking action in life. In the beginning I invest a lot on my knowledge but nothing went as I wished. The reason: I was not taking action. When I did take action, I managed to use 5% of all knowledge investment to produce 100% of what I am doing today. Better late than never.
posted by ChristosM at 8:58 AM on April 19, 2016


Lucky you had those opportunities, then.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:46 AM on April 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


I guess the big question for me is: why can some people, like snickerdoodle, scale the heights and yet see the truth of their personal success as a combination of focused effort, familial and societal support, and fractal good luck, whereas others feel the need to erect edifices of self justification that, inevitably, involve oppression of the less fortunate?
posted by mondo dentro at 11:35 AM on April 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


Being born super tall: luck
Being able to sink 3 pointers:hard work


Being able to get the opportunity to try out for a team that will pay you well enough that you don't have to do anything else for a living EXCEPT sink 3-pointers: more luck
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:47 AM on April 22, 2016


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