Comment Re:Poor people are poor because they're lazy (Score 1) 459
Precicely, and statistically plain dumb LUCK is the biggest of those factors. 95% of all Norwegians are wealthier than 95% of all people born in Ghana, yet where you're born is just luck.
The odds of staying in the top quintile if that's where your parents are, is something like 85% (in USA), the odds of climbing to the top quintile if your parents are in the bottom one, are about 11%. In other words, 8 times as good odds if your parents are already wealthy.
That's not to say impossible: 11% still does mean some people make it. But it says it's damn hard, and probably -also- requires luck (in addition to the hard work).
I'm fairly wealthy, me and my wife pull about $200k/year, and sure we've worked for it, but at the same time a LOT of it is just luck: Born in Norway and Germany. Educated parents. Good health. Quick learners. All of these things helped us enormously, yet we have them just because we lucked out in the lottery of life.
If we worked equally hard, but where born in a slum in Nairobi, odds are we'd be living on 2-3 magnitudes less. So while hard work matters, it's pretty arrogant to go around talking as if hard work is the ONLY thing that matters.