DCE’s (Weekend Pundit) “Thoughts on a Sunday” is a mandatory read for me every week. This week, this gem:
I saw this in a comment to a piece I linked to yesterday and I knew I had to work it into another post. I think it amply demonstrates that even if all wealth was distributed equally, the outcome would not be equal, something the Left still refuses to recognize.
If you took all the wealth in America, converted it all to cash, and gave everyone an equal amount, within a few years the ones who had nothing before will have nothing again while those rich before would be again. Look at how many lottery winners go broke while so many wealthy had been bankrupt. Some people are just good at generating wealth, and it’s not something that you can learn in school.
Indeed. Having a lot of money is not the same thing as being wealthy as it is more a state of mind and action than having someone just dump a lot of money into your bank account. Remaining wealthy takes work, something which many of the chronic poor have no experience. Too many of them have had things handed to them by the government their entire lives.
This is the nub of the actual problem – literally, “what are you going to do“? Seriously, that is THE question to ask: how do you life your life and is it conducive to be successful?
Sure, one can have graduated from high school (like most people counsel), get married first then have kids (instead of the other way around), work hard, and not be wealthy. I get that part. But going the opposite direction will almost guarantee poverty over being wealthy. I’ve dealt with folks in the welfare class and those that escape it all have a couple things in common:
- They hated being on welfare
- They were determined to rise out of it – it became their singular focus
- They didn’t complain – they just worked harder.
- And then harder again. Got edumacated.
- And delayed their gratification needs – eschewed the little stuff now for a better life later.
DCE is right – one can be poor in outlook and actions and still have a bunch of zeros to the left of the decimal point – for a while as DCE notes above. I’ve also read the stories of those that had been wealthy (e.g., serial entrepreneurs) but had nothing at some point – a bad decision here, another one there. Then later, they had gained that wealth back because they knew the habits and actions that had to be employed to do so.
