Q for law enforcement personnel

Another key here, IMO.

It’s one thing to celebrate your accomplishments. We all should do that. It’s still another to say we did this on our own, and the birth lottery had nothing to do with it; our parents had nothing to do with it; their parents and so on. That the environment we were born into was irrelevant.

It’s still another to say, well, I did it, so everyone can. And because I did it, that makes me incredibly virtuous, and everyone who “fails” to do what I did should be ashamed and doesn’t deserve any support at all. Because in America, anyone can do what I did, bucko!! It’s the golden land of opportunity, donncha know!

“It is always about choices.”

Yep. And I made some real doozies when I was younger. Set us back quite a bit. Almost back to home plate.

But then again, if you’re born a one-armed, two-toed sloth with no teeth you’re pretty well screwed no matter what you do.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Ozoneranger.

Ozoneranger wrote:

“It is always about choices.”

Yep. And I made some real doozies when I was younger. Set us back quite a bit. Almost back to home plate.

But then again, if you’re born a one-armed, two-toed sloth with no teeth you’re pretty well screwed no matter what you do.

You bring up another really important point, Ozone. That ability to recover from bad choices. Some of us get to do this. Some of us don’t. And that’s dependent to a massive degree on where we start out in life. Our class, our race, our gender, etc. And all too many Americans who get back up seem to forget the helping hands they had along the way. Family, friends, networks, society, government — the whole gamut.

I made a lot of rotten choices, too. But I was very lucky to be born into the family I was. Like bnw’s, we didn’t have much in the way of material wealth. But we had a strong family tradition of education, pride in its importance, pride in the cultural accomplishments of our forebears — especially in the arts, but in the civic realm as well.

And I didn’t always see this at the time. But it was there, kind of like an invisible life raft. And other times, it was very visible and palpably there. I had my share of times on the edge of things. Right on the edge. And without that invisible life raft, I just don’t know.

There are tens of millions of Americans who don’t have anything like that. I’m not a believer, but I think the saying, “There but for the grace of god go I” is always in play.

zn wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

. income is tied into net worth. a person can’t increase net worth with little income.

True but that’s not what they’re looking at.

It’s not what YOU can do, it;s what you had before you started.

So for example, if a child grows up in a bought and paid for house in a neighborhood that has good schools, that’s something substantial that the previous generation did for the individual child. It’s incalculable. And it;s not something that the individual child DID, he or she just simply benefits from that. And then the government handback on taxes for homeowners helped guarantee things like ordinary decent medical and dental care while growing up.

So the article is not about what WE do as individuals to build OUR worth. It’s about what WE got as a headstart before we even started doing that.

And of course behind the parents owning the house is a long series of policy decisions that made the house affordable to them. Before the 1940s, people typically had to come up with a 50% down payment, and before 1930 the mortgage would be 3 to 5 years to pay off.

The 30 year mortgage with an affordable down payment was a deliberate, direct, orchestrated shift in policies at the government level. (This all has to do with the history of the FHA.)

It’s not simply that our parents bought us cars and paid the college tuition. (I am talking in generalities here…I don’t know your history. My own parents did not pay college tuition. I don’t know anyone’s personal history. It’s just the sociological types I am talking about here.) Those who had all that were already ahead of kids who did not grow up in an owned house in a neighborhood where the schools were at least recognizably decent. None of those kids did that on their own. They grew up WITH that.

So even the kid who goes to a public university without a scholarship and pays his way through by working is starting off with enormous advantages just if their parents owned a house in a decent safe neighborhood with a decent school and who could afford to pay for basic medical and dental expenses while they were growing up. (Add to that the fact that until recently public universities were affordable in the first place because they were mostly tax funded…tuition is not the major financial force keeping those institutions going.)

This goes on and on and on. What did WE get to help us before we even started to make our own income as individuals.

That;s what the article is about.

ok. sorry. i make it a bad habit of having these ideas all jumbled in my head and posting when i really have no time to collect my thoughts and put a post down. i probably sound really stupid right now.

yes i get what the article is about. i myself am privileged. i know that what my parents had and what i had at my disposal has made my life easier and given me a head start so to speak compared to others. and for certain people that’s been possible specifically because of policies that were geared toward helping a specific group of people.

but it’s also been exacerbated by other factors outside of just policy. i read that over 60% of black children grow up in a single parent household. compared to 25% of white children. asian children are low as well. for black children those single family households are mostly single black mothers. that immediately puts them at a disadvantage. single mothers make something like only 35% of what a 2 parent family would make on average. that affects net worth and assets. not just immediately but for future generations.

so i know this is going outside of that article which was great by the way. but why are black children growing up in predominantly single parent households. i think that’s also the result of racism on a systemic level. i don’t think it’s a result of any policy but i think it’s a result of how black people have been treated historically.

and yeah we could take this attitude of hey kid life is tough you’re just gonna have to work harder but why?

if i see someone on the street who needs help why not help him out? do i just tell that guy hey tough i got my own shit to worry about. help yourself up. we’ve become so callous lately.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Apparently our making good choices for the long term didn’t sit well with those people accustomed to following the carefree spending high expectations in fun keeping up with the Joneses. It is always about choices.

But all choices are made within a certain environment and environmental conditions, with certain natural boundaries, due to the luck of the draw. All choices are made on foundations that range from impoverished to obscenely wealthy. All choices are made within environments that help or hinder or just outright stop those choices from taken effect.

Some folks are born with wings, others with chains, and everything in between.

The problem is, as ZN mentions, when we think we achieve X because we make “the right choices,” while others “fail” because they made the wrong ones. It’s usually the case that they made really, really good choices too, but their environments, their birth lottery, put them so far back behind the eight ball, it didn’t matter.

Again, it’s cool to be proud of your choices. But why denigrate others for not fitting into your notions of “success”? Or for fitting into your notions of “failure”? Why assume everyone has an equal shot in this country, when that’s clearly not the case? Or that they didn’t make really good choices too?

I don’t denigrate others for their choices. I simply shouldn’t be forced to pay for their mistakes.

but the argument is that they didn’t necessarily make a mistake. but that they were born into a situation where they weren’t afforded the same opportunities that others were.

i don’t see that as paying someone for their mistakes. rather it’s rewarding someone for their hard work despite not having advantages that others did have.

i mean take a guy who gets into school but through hard work but will have to take out loans which he will be forces to pay for much of his life vs another guy who gets into that same school only because his dad went to that school. doesn’t necessarily appreciate that he got into that school and skates by graduating from college with no worries about paying off debt. he’ll get that nice house inherited from his dad. those nice assets with which he can grow his wealth even more.

why not reward that guy for his hard work.

i know. tough shit. life isn’t fair. but hey. it’s nice to think about a world where hard work is rewarded.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by InvaderRam.

bnw wrote:

Ozoneranger wrote:

I’ve arrived at Old Fartdom.

That just means you’ve seen things good and bad, and you likely smell.

No, I don’t smell. I bathe regularly…at least twice a month.

InvaderRam wrote:

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Apparently our making good choices for the long term didn’t sit well with those people accustomed to following the carefree spending high expectations in fun keeping up with the Joneses. It is always about choices.

But all choices are made within a certain environment and environmental conditions, with certain natural boundaries, due to the luck of the draw. All choices are made on foundations that range from impoverished to obscenely wealthy. All choices are made within environments that help or hinder or just outright stop those choices from taken effect.

Some folks are born with wings, others with chains, and everything in between.

The problem is, as ZN mentions, when we think we achieve X because we make “the right choices,” while others “fail” because they made the wrong ones. It’s usually the case that they made really, really good choices too, but their environments, their birth lottery, put them so far back behind the eight ball, it didn’t matter.

Again, it’s cool to be proud of your choices. But why denigrate others for not fitting into your notions of “success”? Or for fitting into your notions of “failure”? Why assume everyone has an equal shot in this country, when that’s clearly not the case? Or that they didn’t make really good choices too?

I don’t denigrate others for their choices. I simply shouldn’t be forced to pay for their mistakes.

but the argument is that they didn’t necessarily make a mistake. but that they were born into a situation where they weren’t afforded the same opportunities that others were.

i don’t see that as paying someone for their mistakes. rather it’s rewarding someone for their hard work despite not having advantages that others did have.

i mean take a guy who gets into school but through hard work but will have to take out loans which he will be forces to pay for much of his life vs another guy who gets into that same school only because his dad went to that school. doesn’t necessarily appreciate that he got into that school and skates by graduating from college with no worries about paying off debt. he’ll get that nice house inherited from his dad. those nice assets with which he can grow his wealth even more.

why not reward that guy for his hard work.

i know. tough shit. life isn’t fair. but hey. it’s nice to think about a world where hard work is rewarded.

OK but what about me and the very very many other people like me who made the choice to not get into debt that couldn’t be repaid? What about those of us that did so by not going to our dream school? By not going for our dream degree? Tough shit? Thats what I read from you. Why should people like me accept the burden? Everywhere I turn theres people expecting others to pay for their own mistakes.

bnw wrote:

OK but what about me and the very very many other people like me who made the choice to not get into debt that couldn’t be repaid? What about those of us that did so by not going to our dream school? By not going for our dream degree? Tough shit? Thats what I read from you. Why should people like me accept the burden? Everywhere I turn theres people expecting others to pay for their own mistakes.

it’s about creating a more even playing field. it’s not about saying tough shit to any particular person. it’s recognizing that some people have certain advantages over other people through no credit or blame of their own. just privilege.

i see it as giving everyone a fair chance. or as close to fair as possible.

but it also sounds like you’re saying i had it tough so why shouldn’t the next guy?

why? if you could have gone to your dream school based on merit and not have to think about paying off debt you wouldn’t take that opportunity? just cuz it’s been done one way doesn’t mean it HAS to be that way.

and why wouldn’t a system like this help a guy like you? if you didn’t have that debt to pay off you would have even more income and wealth are your disposal no?

InvaderRam wrote:

but it also sounds like you’re saying i had it tough so why shouldn’t the next guy?

why? if you could have gone to your dream school based on merit and not have to think about paying off debt you wouldn’t take that opportunity? just cuz it’s been done one way doesn’t mean it HAS to be that way.

and why wouldn’t a system like this help a guy like you? if you didn’t have that debt to pay off you would have even more income and wealth are your disposal no?

Plus everyone in this discussion was “helped” when it came to all this.

Unless there is someone here who grew up in a rented apartment in a bad neighborhood with a distinctly underfunded, bad school and whose family could never help them in any single way, ever.

And that last paragraph does NOT refer to just family help.

People who are in the opposite situation—ie. they grew up in owned houses in at least bottomline decent neighborhoods—were directly helped, in more ways than they can count, by an array of federal policies that are deliberately set up TO help people in their situations. Plus also helped by the various ways in which state governments (used to) fund public university education.

That’s even if they BELIEVE they did everything on their own. All that belief means is that they have not looked very closely at the reality.

And of course people can squander opportunities, and so congrats to the people who did well for themselves (which is all of us on this forum, each in different ways, but still there are some who put in the extra mile). So I take nothing away from any individual when I say all this. BUT the MYTH that just “working hard, making right choices” is all there is to this? It is precisely that, a myth. Everyone here was directly helped in their educations by this or that state or federal policy. It’s just that for some reason, we make that fact invisible and convince ourselves we did more and others don’t deserve things, when a lot of that ACTUALLY is the truth that (a) we were helped and (b) our circumstances gave us opportunities.

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