The poor are lazy bludgers who won’t do a proper day’s work. Wealth is a reward for virtue and hard work. Right? No – it’s a bit more complicated than that. By popular acclaim we’re pulling the following comment by rosy up as a Guest Post. Rosy extends an earlier analogy by McFlock, describing success in life by analogy to winning various divisions of lotto:
Okay… the (lotto) lucky card. Lets narrow it down a bit…
1. You won lotto div 5 by being born middle class. Lots of people share that, but more people don’t win div 5 than do.
2. It went up to being div 4 by not having adverse events happening in your childhood. Every adverse event you missed out of (a catastrophic health event, car crash, divorced parents, parents who smack each other around or hit you around, strong family or community network, not moving around for seasonal work, not being a victim of random crime… shall I go on?) reduces the number of people you have to share the divisional prize with.
3. You win division 3 when you got through school without being bullied, having a teacher that had high expectations of you, had a ‘natural’ talent at something, no dysexia or other learning difficulty, parents who made sure you were school-ready (lunch, proper clothing, glasses, healthy) and did your homework, you didn’t have to stay home to look after the kids/mother/granny etc, or help out the parents with the cleaning business, takeaways at nights when you were too young to manage it. Your parents took you to sports and paid for class events and transport to them. Once again the pot is shared with fewer people each time you can tick one of these off.
4. Division 2 comes in when you were good at a subject that pays well (or you were an awesome entrepreneur – most are only average or worse) and you managed to get accepted on the course. You managed to get through your risky teens without an error that cost you dearly – think of anything teenagers/young adults do for narrowing the pool on that one. Bonus points if you actively made decisions to avoid all risky situations – because it only takes one bad decision – with a roll of the dice about whether you’ll be paying for it for a very long time- to come out without life-changing consequences.
5. Division One arrives when based on all the other wins you get chosen for the right job, with the right boss/mentor to ensure you excel if you work hard. You change jobs at the right time, the company doesn’t go bust or hire a complete idiot to manage you… etc, etc, and there you go – the gold-plated lucky card.
6. Add into that choosing the right life partner, the right children a house in the right area that doesn’t get earthquaked, or something – jackpot! And your kids share this too, because you’ve learned from winning division one and from not missing out on all those other divisions along the way and you transfer that knowledge.
— rosy
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