About wealthy people

[HughBeaumont]

25. Er . . . .

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/07/5075

To see what's wrong with this idea, it's easiest to start with criteria that ought to disqualify a person from claiming to be "entirely self-made." After we've applied these criteria, we can see who's left in the pool. So, then, let us scratch from the list of the self-made anyone whose accumulation of wealth has been aided by any of the following:

* Laws concerning property or contracts, and the public agencies that enforce such laws
* Public schools or employees educated in public schools
* Employees or customers who rely on public transportation
* Roads, bridges, airports, sewers, water treatment plants, harbors, or other utilities built and maintained at public expense
* Mail systems built and operated at public expense
* Public hospitals and government-licensed physicians
* Health and safety regulations created and enforced at public expense
* Police and fire protection provided at public expense
* Public libraries and parks
* Any public amenities that add value to commercial or residential real estate
* Government contracts
* Government-provided business incentives
* Regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission, that sustain trust in the stock market
* A government-granted license permitting the exclusive use of a broadcast channel
* The Internet
* A form of currency legitimated and backed by a stable government
* Social welfare programs that keep the poor from rebelling
* The U.S. military

If we use these criteria to determine who can legitimately claim to be "entirely self-made," the Forbes number drops dramatically. It's not 270 out of 400. In fact, it's precisely zero.

If not for the legal and political arrangements that we create and maintain as a society -- with contributions from us all, costs to us all, and benefits to us all -- and if not for what we call "the public infrastructure," nobody could accumulate wealth. In short, there can be no private wealth without common wealth.

Forbes and the economic class it represents would like us to forget that wealth always depends on collective effort. Why? Because of what the "entirely self-made" myth implies: If I have amassed a fortune solely through my individual talent and hard work, then it is wrong for the government to take any of it away. By further implication, taxation is wrong, and progressive taxation is really wrong.

Oh, and . . . .

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Wanting_it_bad_enough

"Wanting it bad enough" is a "strategy" for achieving just about any goal promoted by a multiplicity of public figures, from self-help writers to mainstream celebrities, who all have one thing in common: they have already achieved their goals. These people like to talk up their own hard work by saying that:

1.They got where they are simply or largely because they wanted it bad enough.
2.You too can achieve your dream, so long as you want it bad enough as well.

Of course, none of these people's success can be in any way attributed to factors outside their own direct personal control such as patronage, privilege, opportunity or simple dumb luck.

There is also the flip side, of "blaming the victim." If you do not have the success you want, it is your fault because you didn't really want it badly enough. It has nothing to do with a bad economy, or the flat out odds against something happening.

Seductive appeal

The idea of "wanting it bad enough" as a route to success is very attractive to large numbers of people, since anyone is able to want something, and everyone likes to believe that their own dreams are uniquely powerful and thus more likely to come true. Unfortunately, while there is an abundance of testimonials from successful people endorsing the power of "wanting it bad enough," the sample tends to be somewhat self-selecting: only people who have already tasted success have the platform to tell their success story. While Britney Spears has undoubtedly had a level of success that must have been due in part to wanting success, history does not record how many other little girls from the American South might have wanted to become famous pop singers just as badly as, or even worse than, Spears, yet somehow ended up with only multiple divorces, drug problems and bouts of pant-mislaying insanity to show for it.