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Comment by sillysaurus2 | Hacker News Reader

my hunch is that given two individuals of ordinary moral fortitude, the one born into a rich family will tend to be pretty successful, while the one born into a poor family will tend not to be.

Is it even possible to disagree? This seems as obvious as gravity, but the counterargument (if one exists) may be interesting to hear.

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You'd be surprised. There's a certain segment of the population thats finds it vital to their self-image to insist that--in America, now--absolutely anyone from any social background can be guaranteed success if they only work hard and apply themselves; and therefore, if you're poor, you must obviously be lazy and deserve to be poor.

Naturally it's mainly successful people who say this, but they say it with such fervent faith and belief that there's a fair few miserably poor folks who buy it, generally in the form of "I'm better than the rest of you poor bastards 'cause I work hard and I'm gonna be rich any minute now." And then they spend the rest of their lives slaving for minimum wage and not rocking the boat, always convinced that the American Dream is right over the next hill. It's sad.

The Declaration of Independence says "pursuit of Happiness" and anybody can pursue it. I've never met anyone who thought it was a guarantee even with hard work and I live in the area of the country that still believes in the American Dream.

Of course, I also live in the part of the country that doesn't measure happiness by the size of the bank account when you shuffle off the the great beyond. Although the farmers and vocationally trained in the area are doing pretty darn well.

Hard work seems to give one a better chance at reaching your goals, much like exercise seems to help with keeping you healthy. Some folks live a long time without exercising and some die early even when exercising regularly.

"The pursuit of happiness" is an attempt to express human rights in a positive way. That is, rather than say what the state cannot stop you from doing, it attempts to say what it is you are supposed to be allowed to do. This is important because many people will want to say "I agree with human rights but why would you ever want to do X". "The pursuit of happiness" is an expression of what we are trying to protect: people freely choosing the lifestyle that they feel is best.

There is a term for what you describe: The "Just World Fallacy".

I have seen the opposite cases as well:

The one born into a rich family tends to get spoiled, become wasteful and when the money exhausts becomes poor.

The one born into a poor family develops a hard-working attitude, becomes more careful about money, and eventually becomes rich.

A poor person becomes rich only through the exercise of their own expertise.

A rich person can draw on the professional expertise of others in order to stay rich if they are not particularly clever.

This is a huge reason why the rich stay rich.

I doubt anyone would say that rich family leads to poor family and vice versa like some sort of cyclic pattern.

It depends on what you define "pretty successful".

If you come from an American point of view, then success = money and nothing else. In America you need lots of money for everything, just giving a good education for your kids is 10 to 15 times more expensive than in Europe or Asia, same with health care.

But on other countries success is defined differently, like having a good relationship with your family and friends.

I know quite a few very rich people, and some of them are as miserable or more miserable as people without money. With broken families, no real friends, and no time for living outside work. With women or men around them that just want their money and will do anything to get it.

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