Originally Posted by Sini
You can't talk about responsibility when all you have to work with is circumstances.
Of course you can. You can choose to be a victim or you can suck it up like the rest of us a work to change to your circumstances.

Originally Posted by Sini
That is, American Dream is dead. There are no opportunities to hard work, and hard work doesn't get you ahead. Class mobility at all times low, middle class is shrinking by sliding into poverty, and productivity gains almost exclusively go to 1% controlling capital. This is not a rhetorical turn of phrase, rather a hard cold facts backed by a lot of data.
This is utter horseshit. Are you telling me that hard work didn't earn you all the gains you've realized in your life? It just all magically fell into your lap? You immigrated to the US and someone was standing there with a sign with your name and instead of a ride to the hotel, they gave you everything you have? Bologna.

As for the class mobility argument, first, I'm not convinced that this is a reasonable metric or that we have a good way to measure it. Second, in a brief perusal of recent articles from sources like the Atlantic, what I found where studies (performed by Harvard and UC Berkley) saying things are roughly the same as they were 50 years ago, and the article's author pontificating that "just because the data don't agree with me, doesn't mean I'm wrong."

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