Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Marshall_Priddy's avatar

Absolutely. I'd really like to see the GINI coefficient on number of hours per week dedicated to work plus that for number of hours cumulatively dedicated to directly developing marketable skills.

There's a great deal of grumbling about the absurdity of the Horatio Alger "myth," but his stories (as far as I can tell, having never read them) were not about becoming a billionaire that can live a life of lavish decadent consumption and never working. It was about becoming a respectable gentleman of middle class standing who has escaped poverty. That one cannot in a single generation launch easily, effortlessly, and reliably from poverty to opulence has been advanced as an argument against the simple accessibility of a comfortable life out of poverty and with reasonable security.

Expand full comment
Marshall_Priddy's avatar

You've got the causality backwards. Believing that you have no control and placing the locus of control over your life outside your personal means to affect change is what leads people to follow a path of least resistance. This leads to reduced advancement in life. Conversely, anyone who believes they can control their own fate is far more likely to actually make the sort of concerted efforts needed for sustained personal advancement.

Expand full comment
88 more comments...

No posts