The Turn of the Screwed

In my long tradition of providing edgy material nobody asked for, I liked this article by Bryan Goldberg. Not sure I agree with all of the conclusions, but there is some serious fodder in the premises. (You can read the whole thing, unedited, over here: http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/09/young-people-are-screwed-heres-how-to-survive/)

Hey kids, you’ve all read “The Hunger Games,” right? Almost all young people have read the best-selling books or seen the Hollywood movie about Katniss Everdeen, a smart and ambitious young lady whose life prospects are diminished by historical events that predate her. What little hope she has is seemingly reduced to nil when a bunch of old people drop her into an arena and force her to fight with her fellow children in a battle royale to the death.

But that’s just fiction, right? Your loving parents and grandparents would never screw up their world and then throw you kids under the bus…or would they?

Actually, they already have.

Last week, the economics blog Calculated Risk ran a chart that tells a pretty compelling story. To an economist, this chart means that the magnitude and duration of the 2007 recession’s impact on unemployment outpaces that of any prior post-war recession. To young people, it simply means this…

You kids are screwed.

In fact, teenagers today probably aren’t old enough to remember the “Dot Bomb” recession of twelve years ago. But even at its peak, that really bad recession did not reach a level of unemployment that matched the one we are still currently experiencing. With the Federal Reserve losing its appetite for quantitative easing, the last bullet in their holster, and both political parties deciding to half-@$$ the fiscal policy debate, it’s safe to say that…

You kids are really screwed.

As mentioned in one of my recent articles, unemployment for young people is about double the national average. Student debt is now the single largest contributor to the nation’s credit delinquencies. And it’s one of the few debts that you can never expunge through bankruptcy. Stated differently…

You kids are so unbelievably screwed.

Finally, young people need to understand how much their grandparents’ generation has ruined things for them. The average American retires with less than $70,000 in savings, but an elderly man and woman receive about $275,000 in medical care during that time — and you kids are paying for it by inheriting trillions upon trillions in Medicare bills that granny and grandpa never intended to pay and will be too dead to worry about soon. And you California kids can thank them for passing Proposition 13 and Proposition 30, which relieved them of having to pay taxes in favor of you having to pay even more taxes. In other words…

You kids are beyond screwed.

But there’s some good news in all of this. Some of us have already been through this “Hunger Games” melee, and we can serve as your Haymitch Abernathy — you know, the drunk, ranting mentor who teaches Katniss how to survive the great battle that awaits her.
So here are a few pieces of advice for how to navigate this terrifying world:

Lesson No. 1: In 2007, the first thing to go was the BS. So you better learn how to make something.



There’s a reason why unemployment is still very high, even though corporations are making record profits. It’s because after they were forced to cut about 10 percent of their workforces, many of them realized that, well, they never needed that many people to begin with.

Companies cut out the BS. And, unfortunately, many of the cerebral jobs that were going to ambitious young people were right in the thick of it. This included young lawyers, who pretty much can’t get jobs right now. This included young people in marketing and finance, two departments that do not bring in revenue or keep the factories running.

But guess what isn’t BS… making things. There are millions of unfilled jobs in America, and most of them are careers where you actually have to make and build stuff. If you grew up in an affluent environment, then you see your software engineer friends getting jobs easily. But it’s not just them. There are countless labor jobs — everything from HVAC to plumbing — that still pay big dollars. But rich kids don’t even know what those jobs entail.

My advice to young people is to figure out how to make something. That means either working with your hands, or learning how to type code with them.

Which brings me to the next lesson…

Lesson No. 2: No, education is not the answer.

If you can get into an ultra-top-tier college, then go ahead and do it. An Ivy League degree is worth getting, at least for undergrad. The value of a law or business degree is becoming more and more questionable each year.

But for the rest of you, it may be worth skipping college altogether.

The world doesn’t need any more girls with Spanish degrees from California State, Long Beach. Sorry, but it just doesn’t. We need you gals to learn how to build software in equal number with your male peers. They are no smarter than you, and they are definitely way less organized and far less attentive to detail. So go show them what you are made of.

But won’t a college degree pay for itself? It probably won’t. According to UC Berkeley’s website, a four year education will cost you $210,000 in tuition and living expenses, and a private education could run you way more. A part-time job at Starbucks will eat into very little of that sum, and you will be forgoing a real job during that same time. And — if I can convey just one point in this whole article, let it be this…saving money takes forever. Even if you do get that coveted six-figure job, you will find that it takes forever to save $210,000. Decades even.

Buy a few O’Reilly books — it will run you about 60 bucks. Go find a few software engineer friends and ask them to help you. Nerds are friendly and altruistic. And software code is no more boring and no more cryptic than learning how to conjugate your Spanish gerunds. Who knows, you may even have what it takes to start a company, but even if you don’t, you can get some valuable equity along the way.

Lesson No. 3: Your parents and grandparents don’t understand your world. You should probably ignore them.



Your parents and grandparents want what is best for you. But they do not understand your world in the slightest. You should probably ignore them.

They grew up in a world so unbelievably different from your own, that they couldn’t possibly understand what things are like for you. They don’t know what it is like to fight hard for an unpaid internship. They don’t know what it’s like to watch entire career paths suddenly disappear or become far less desirable: like Journalism, Medicine, and Law. In their day, getting a job in Medicine or Law was a ticket to prosperity. And newspapers actually hired people.

Parents and grandparents don’t understand the extent to which careers need to evolve in the modern day. No longer can you get a job at some company and expect to stay there for three decades. What you do for a living may not even exist in ten years.

Every young person is an entrepreneur now, in one way or another — they must forge their own unique career path, and they need to think five or 10 years ahead. There is no rulebook anymore for how to build a career. Certainly not the one your parents read in 1981.

In summary, the “conventional path” has become so narrow, that it hardly even exists. You can’t just go to grad school and “become” anything: a lawyer, a banker, a doctor, a journalist, a manager. Some of these jobs are on hiring freezes, and some of them are so fraught with frustration that they are best avoided. I don’t know a single doctor who thinks that Medicine is the best career path for their kids. And the same logic is applying to more and more professions. The well has been poisoned.

Lesson No. 4: Don’t worry about your network. Worry about your friends.    

If you have successful friends, you will be successful. It’s pretty much that simple. If you hang out with a bunch of losers, you too will adopt their loser ways and not achieve anything. Regardless of whether or not you go out and network, please make sure that your friends are ambitious and hard working people who you admire.

For some, this means that they will have to move on from their high school buddies. For others, it means that they will need to have friends who are older than they are. Some people will have to learn new skills in order to penetrate the friend groups that they would like to join.

But if you hang out with quality people, you won’t need to worry about networking. Your friends will be your network. The only reason you are reading this article is because Sarah Lacy has a lot of friends who are very high quality, and they not only supported her PandoDaily ambition, but also put money into it. And even though she is nobody, she does have quality friends.

It works. I’ve seen it work innumerable times. Your friends bring you up or pull you down. There’s no in-between. Make sure they are pulling you up.

Back That Up

Do you want to know what rock and roll is all about? (Duh, you do.) Then listen to the drums on this Elvis Costello song: No Action (Early Version)

What's so rock and roll about the drums here? They are excessive, but not complicated. They aren't listening to you. They are doing their own thing. You can't stop them. You don't even want to stop them. 

I hate to even share this via the web, since you'll likely listen to it on a laptop or an iphone with puny  speakers, but since so few people come to my house or car, this is really the only place where I can share it.

Anyway, maybe you could at least turn up the volume--you are learning about rock and roll after all. 

For all the Ladies on the Web

Ladies, I've lived among men for thirty-two years. I've seen them when you aren't around. I've learned some things and I'm willing to share with you.

Click below for details. 

Back That Up

Shhhh. Don't speak while Tom is speaking.

Teacher Says...

One of my new favorite pastimes is having educators forward me obnoxious emails from students, and then I respond as if I were the teacher and if I wasn't afraid of losing my job. Without further ado..

Dr. Physiology,

I talked to you earlier in the semester about how to do better on the test and everything I try doesn't work, I still get that same dang 63%, I am beginning to think it is a curse. I have tried working in groups, reading and listening to the lecture, notecards, everything I can think of and have tried in other classes. I am beginning to panic because we have 3 weeks left of the semester and I desparetly need a C to graduate in April. This is just an elective course for my major and I have no desire to become a doctor or a nurse, I just want to work with athletes.

Thats my problem, my question is, Do you curve final grades and will that be needed this semester? Is there a chance I can do some extra credit work in order to help my grade. I currently have a 71% (C-) and hope to do well on this test but I am beginning to worry that I will never pass the class and that I will never graduate. I hope you can help and I will continue to work hard even if there is nothing you can do. Thanks for reading and let me know what I can do.

Girl College Student

Girl, 

My comments are below in red. 

-Dr. Physiology

Dr. Physiology,
I talked to you earlier in the semester about how to do better on the test and everything I try doesn't work,

If everything you try isn't working, then you either need to try more, try something else, and/or try everything you're doing, but for substantially longer amounts of time. If you get to 40 hrs of trying a week and still see no improvement, let me know and we can talk. But, at that point, the problem is probably you and not the content.

I still get that same dang 63%,

This is probably a reflection of your natural ability. The servant with three talents wasn't expected to earn five.

I am beginning to think it is a curse.

Oh, look what we have here, a theory about why you're doing poorly in this class that absolves you from all responsibility. C'mon, doesn't that seem a little too convenient? This could be a motivation or ability problem, and maybe both, but I can guarantee you that Hamlet's witches aren't sitting around a big ol' black pot talking about you, dear.

I have tried working in groups, reading and listening to the lecture, notecards, everything I can think of and have tried in other classes.

Wait, wait, wait... You mean you've actually gone to the effort of trying ALL the things that most students try anyway and you're still not rocketing to the top of the class? I'm so sorry you had to read AND listen to the lecture AND take notes AND talk to other classmates. This sacrifice might make you a saint, but, sadly, grades are based on scholastic achievement. If there was a class called "Doing Everything You Can Think Of," and that class was capped for people who thought of four things and under, I would totally give you an "A."

I am beginning to panic because we have 3 weeks left of the semester and I desparetly need a C to graduate in April.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, why the rush? "Three weeks left in the semester...?" Listen Early Bird, why not write me the night before the final?

This is just an elective course for my major

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "just an elective course for my major," unless that is the way you meant to say, "A course I chose of my own free will that also is required to earn my diploma." (But if you meant something different, let me know.)

and I have no desire to become a doctor or a nurse, I just want to work with athletes.

Here is a place where I can give you some good news: Many people who neither graduate on time nor have stellar grades are still perfectly able to work with athletes. The dream remains alive.

Thats my problem,

Actually, I don't think you have come close to accurately stating your problem, but for the sake of the email we will move on...

my question is, Do you curve final grades and will that be needed this semester?

This is actually a two part question. Let me break it down for you. First, yes, I do curve grades. Second, I do not know, because I have no idea what you mean when you say "needed this semester."

"Needed" as in "a bunch of whiny kids, who despite doing all four things they could think of to succeed in the class, will still need a generous curve in order to slip by and graduate (even though this class is just an elective needed for their major)," then, yes, there will be a curve. However, if you meant "needed" as in, "the universe, the law, or the gods demand it," then the answer is no. The curve is not needed. It's seldom needed. It's something that can be done that is often helpful to students.

In the case of you and this class, it is a charity and not an entitlement. Much like a child who slips past birth control's best defenses, this is something you should not have been expecting but should be grateful for when it comes.

Is there a chance I can do some extra credit work in order to help my grade.

There you go ascribing things to happenstance and enchantments again. What you're really asking me for here is a favor. You could at least do me the courtesy of acknowledging that fact. Extra credit doesn't spring forth from the head of Zeus. It's not something meteorologists predict--"It's going to be about 60 degrees outside today, with a chance of extra credit happening at the end of the semester."

Next time, try something like this: "Sister Kimball, if you think it's fair and will allow it, I would like to do some extra credit work--something that would help me learn more and prepare for the final. Please let me know what you think."

You might have also noticed how I dropped the part about doing the "work in order to help my grade." See, here's the deal, I don't care about your grade. That doesn't mean that I want you to fail. That doesn't mean I am indifferent to your success. I am looking forward with great hope to the class where everyone earns an "A."

However, I don't know a single professor who got into this business thinking, "Oh man, I really hope I can help the world by helping grades!" We do this because we love learning. We do this because we want you to learn and grow as people. We do this because it's a job and because we're qualified. I hope I speak for most professors when I say I would much rather you earn a "dang 63%" in the class and become a smarter and better person, and carry all the knowledge one has to acquire to earn a "dang 63%" with you always, then to have you graduate with an "A" while not learning a thing or remembering anything once you've left the class. I don't care about the development of your GPA because I care about the development of you.

I currently have a 71% (C-)

A pretty great grade for someone who gets a "dang 63%" on all her tests and exams. (Don't mention it; you're welcome.)

and hope to do well on this test but I am beginning to worry that I will never pass the class and that I will never graduate.

I'm sorry, is this your last semester on earth? Do you plan to start a life sentence soon? If not, then this is another place where I can give you good news: Me and the whole university system will still be here ready and willing to educate once April is over.

I sincerely hope you are able to do well on the final, and if you want to talk to me about how to study for the final I will set up a time with you. HOWEVER, even if you do fail miserably--despite reading AND listening to the lectures--you are welcome with open arms to take the class again until you can show you've gained a mastery of the content. (And, in general, I would refrain from concluding that something can't be done when at the conclusion of your first attempt it seems like you might have failed. That's no way to learn how to ride a bike, speak a language, eat solid foods, or how to achieve any number of worthy endeavors.)

I hope you can help

Your hope was misplaced; I've always been able to help. I could change your grade right now with about four mouse clicks and a few keystrokes. But you might remember from above that helping your grade is generally outside my scope of interest. I would love to help you learn the subject matter. I would love to talk to you about the miracle of the human body and how it works and what keeps it from working well. But if you're really saying, "I hope you will improve my grade because I asked," then I would respond, "Why should I do for you what you were unwilling to do for yourself?" This would be like me writing you with three weeks left in the semester and saying, "I hope you can give me a good evaluation." Of course you CAN, but if I really wanted that for myself, I could've and should've done something about it much earlier.

and I will continue to work hard even if there is nothing you can do.

Again, your fixation on my abilities is misplaced. There is so much I can do. And yet there isn't much I can do to make you learn. I can serve up content. I can answer questions. I can give advice. I can also reassure you that it's completely possible to do well in this class without being a some kind of Rain Man. (Garden variety students get good grades in here every semester.)

But there are some things I can't do. I can't make you: remember anything; spend forty-hours making flash cards when there are two million things you'd rather be doing; or make you annoy all your friends and family by saying, "Hey, will you quiz me on the functions of the pancreas again?"  Also, I'm afraid if you want to do well, you're going to have to do more than "continue to work hard." Whatever effort you may currently be giving, it seems clear you're going to have to "work harder."

Thanks for reading and let me know what I can do.

Girl College Student

Back That Up

Just in case you forgot about something you probably shouldn't have forgotten...

The Specials--"Night Club"

True Dis

I was not aware that it had been so long. I guess being engaged/married corresponds negatively to my inclination to blog. Who knew?

Thing is, I'm not even here to write something. I'm just here to share something someone else wrote, "Six Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying." It's comedic, but also wildly insightful--enough so that I put up with its unusual (for me) level of profanity, which I have spruced up a bit for my limited audience of three LDS people.

Six Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying

by David Wong

All of a sudden, it's like you can't make huge amounts of money without people getting all upset. And it's only going to get worse -- with the election coming up and the weather getting warmer, this whole "Occupy" movement is probably going to come back strong. The 1 percent will feel even more besieged than before.

"What the heck?" you're probably thinking, if you're somehow both rich and reading an article with this title, "I didn't crash the economy!" You might even be tempted to take to a microphone, to defend yourself and your wealthy friends. But before you do, I want you to stop and ask yourself, "Will this make me sound like an out-of-touch jerk?"

#6. "Well, $500,000 a Year Might Sound Like a Lot, but I'm Hardly Rich."

"The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 ... and so by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over ..."
-- Congressman John Fleming

Pictured here with his poverty.

"It is hard to ask more of households making $250,000 or $300,000 a year. In large parts of the country, that kind of income does not get you a big home or lots of vacations or anything else that is associated with wealth."
-- Senator Chuck Schumer

What They Think They're Saying:
"Come on, we're all in this together! It's not like I have infinite money."

What We Hear:
"When my family's Aruba vacation went over budget, that was exactly like you being unable to afford medication for your child's excruciating chronic illness!"

Getty"Look at how tiny my yacht is!"

I'm going to try to only quote politicians and pundits and other public figures for this article, but don't take that to mean they're the only people saying stupid things. Regular rich folk aren't exactly reluctant to offer this as a defense (here's an article on why it's hard to get by on $500,000 a year in New York, and here's one on why $200,000 a year isn't rich in Toronto), and you can go to the comment section of any article that mentions taxes or welfare or income inequality (including this one!) and hear this same BS.

"It's gotten to where I can barely afford my daily cigar rolled in the tanned flesh of a forsaken child."

Heck, you've probably heard it in real life, from a boss or some guy sitting nearby at Starbucks. "I guess I'm considered rich now! Well, if I'm so 'rich,' why am I broke at the end of the month?!?" Uh, I think it's because your mortgage is $3,000 a month, since you live in a giant palace. And because you took your family on that Disney cruise last summer. And because you pay for your kids' college, so that, unlike us, they won't be crushed under six figures of student loan debt at age 22. And because you eat all the best foods and drink the finest liquids.

Or, as Hamilton Nolan at Gawker put it, "'Sure, it's an objectively large sum of money,' they say. 'But it is far smaller after I spend it.'"

Getty"Once I pay for the helicopter, the helicopter fuel, the townhouse and the Lexus, I barely have more spending money than your entire yearly salary."

For people who are grinding through overtime just to keep up with their bank's late fees, this induces an urge to storm a gated community with pitchforks and torches and make those people go spend a year in a trailer park or in a city apartment so small that when you flush the toilet, little yellow droplets splatter onto the bed.

But don't get too mad at the rich for saying this -- we shouldn't, as a rule, get as angry at people for being oblivious as we should when they're being intentionally evil. Besides, they can't help it -- that obliviousness is hard-wired, a product of evolution that, really, kind of explains all class tension in the world. The rich, along with all of us, are biologically programmed to not notice their advantages.

Getty"This stuff? I guess I could use it to prop up the table."

Basically, your brain drains the pleasure from the current things you own and do in order to motivate you to keep hunting and gathering. And I don't care where you are on the economic ladder, you've experienced this yourself.

You remember that scene from Big, where the boy-in-an-adult-body Tom Hanks gets his first paycheck at his crappy data entry job and screams in celebration, "A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SEVEN DOLLARS!" When you're a kid begging mom for 10 bucks at a time so you can buy some stickers for your Trapper Keeper (this is still 1984, right?), $200 seems like the kind of money that should come on a huge novelty lottery check. But then just a few years later, you get that first fast food job and watch your paycheck evaporate on just one car payment (the insurance takes the next one).

GettyThat leaves just enough extra money for a Netflix subscription and a bowl to cry into.

It is apparently entirely possible to stay in that mindset, ignoring each new asset, right up until you're sleeping on a platinum bed under covers made of fur from a cloned woolly mammoth. If someone tries to offer you a little perspective and remind you of the tremendous advantages you no longer even notice, you'll reply with something like ...

#5. "Hey, I Worked Hard to Get What I Have!"

"I became a self-made millionaire by the age of 30 by working grueling hours, being relentless and risking my own money. My success was earned with blood, sweat and tears."
-- Wayne Allyn Root

"I used the tears as hair gel."

"Why, oh why, does the media bolster President Obama's rhetoric by using his term: 'the rich'? Would it not be more appropriate to say 'the successful,' or 'those who work harder?"
-- Letter to the Editor, Feb 21, 2012 Wall Street Journal

What They Think They're Saying:
"I'm not Paris Hilton! I work 70-hour weeks to make this salary!"

What We Hear:
"The only reason I have a hundred times more money than you is because I work a hundred times as hard!"

This will be the entry that prompts many a reader to skip right to the comment section after only reading the entry header ("I'm tired of these hippies saying the rich just got lucky and don't work hard!"). So let's get this out off the way right now, and make them look like wankers for not reading far enough:

Most high-income earners do put in a ton of hours. Bill Gates seemed to never sleep (an employee once said that putting in 81 hours in four days still couldn't keep up with Gates' schedule). So yes, it's unfair that we tend to think that "being rich" means "lounging by the pool while an albino tiger massages our feet with his tongue." So, "Hey, I work hard for what I have!" is perfectly true. It's also insulting.

Getty"You guys just need to work hard in a lucrative field."

It's insulting for the exact same reason "Hey, I love my country!" is insulting: It implies that the listener doesn't. Otherwise there'd be no reason to say it.

It implies a bizarre alternate reality where society rewards you purely based on how much effort you exert, rather than according to how well your specific talents fit in with the needs of the marketplace in the particular era and part of the world in which you were born. It implies that the great investment banker makes 10 times more than a great nurse only because the banker works 10 times as hard.
He doesn't.

GettyAnd he gets pooped on less than half as often.

And even stranger, it implies that money earned is a perfect indicator of a person's value to society -- if you're broke, it must mean you're a loser who contributes nothing to anyone's life. And that's downright bizarre when it comes from the same people who also go on and on about the importance of parenting and family values. Surely they've noticed that being a great stay-at-home parent makes you exactly zero dollars a year.

And volunteering to work at a shelter for battered women? Doesn't pay jack! Diving into a creek to save a toddler from drowning? It pays infinitely less than throwing a touchdown pass during the Super Bowl.

GettyI mean, babies are important, but c'mon ...

So, mister rich person who clearly is not reading this, when we say you're "lucky," we're not saying you're lucky in the way that a lottery winner is lucky. We're saying that you're lucky if you were born in a time and place where the hard work you're good at (say, stock speculation) is valued over the hard work that other people are good at (say, landscaping, or poetry).

You can reply that if some other field paid more, you'd have just simply switched to it and been equally successful, due to your smarts and determination. You know, like how the smart and determined Michael Jordan was equally successful as a basketball player (six titles, $70 million a year) and baseball player (batted .202 in the minors) and team owner (his Charlotte Bobcats are currently 4-28).

Hmm ... wait a second. Man, it's almost like Michael's hard work and determination wouldn't have made him rich if he hadn't happened to have been born in the one place and one time in human history where a man could get rich throwing a rubber ball through a small metal hoop.

GettyOn the other hand, that sweater vest makes us think he has potential as the next face of Jell-O.

Now I'm starting to wonder if I would have ever heard of Shaquille O'Neal if he'd skipped basketball to go right into rap. If you think I'm just being mean to athletes, well shoot, let me use myself as an example. I failed at three different careers before I struck gold with list articles and screwing around online. I suck at everything else -- take away the Internet and I'm a 37-year-old man doing data entry in a cubicle. Or, if you don't believe me, let billionaire investor Warren Buffett tell you: "If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil ... I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well -- disproportionately well."

Getty"And yet I do all my shopping at Goodwill."

So to sum it up: If you make good money, but have to work 80-hour weeks to get it, you're still lucky. Just swallow your pride and acknowledge it, jerk.

#4. "If I Can Do It, So Can You!"

"We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves."
-- Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana

"The road to wealth is paved with self-delusion."

What They Think They're Saying:
"This is the land of opportunity, where anyone can make it! Instead of complaining, just go out there and get rich!"

What We Hear:
"If everyone at my country club makes good money, it can't be that hard!"

This is such an impossibly strange idea that I'm not sure if the people saying it actually believe it.

GettyAt the best parties, the words "social mobility" are the only punchline you need.

But ... I guess our entire philosophy about money kind of revolves around this premise -- that there is no poor or working class, but only people who have chosen to not buckle down to the task of getting rich (and thus deserve whatever salary, insecurity or poor work conditions they get). So there should be no talk about improving the lives of the non-rich, since any of them can simply choose to elevate themselves out of that group, right?

Seriously, now. How much time do you really have to spend off your fancy yacht to see that this isn't true? You don't even need to leave the dock -- there's a guy standing right there who you pay to fix your boat's engine. You know that 1) you absolutely need guys like him and 2) he will never get rich doing what he does. He could be great at his job, he might be the Michael Jordan of mechanics, he might work 100 hours a week -- it doesn't matter. Sure, if that one guy somehow also has the head for management and finance and the networking skills, he could maybe open his own chain of yacht repair shops. But they can't all do that.

GettyThis dress could have fed starving interns.

So "anyone can get rich" isn't just untrue, it's insultingly untrue. You can't have a society where everyone is an investment banker. And you can't have a society where you pay six figures to every good policeman, nurse, firefighter, schoolteacher, carpenter, electrician and all of the other ten thousand professions that civilization needs to survive (and that rich people need in order to stay rich).

It's like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, "Now fight for it!" Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, "Hey, you could have had it if you'd fought harder!" and that's true on an individual level. But not collectively -- you knew darn well that nine hobos weren't getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it's their fault that only one of them is drunk?

Or alive.

You're intentionally conflating "anyone can have the moonshine" with "everyone can have it." And you are doing it because you're hoping that we will all be too busy fighting each other to ask why there was only one jar.

But if we do ask, the response will probably be something like ...

#3. "You're Just Jealous Because I Made It and You Didn't!"

"I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent -- and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent -- [it] is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God."
-- Mitt Romney

GettyCracked Exclusive: Mitt Romney's hair isn't as nice as he thinks it is.

"Part of it is jealousy. I stand by that. And here's why I don't have a lot of patience for that. My parents, they never played the victim card. My parents never said that we hope the rich people lose something so that we can get something."
-- Herman Cain

What They Think They're Saying:
"It's wrong to tear down others instead of improving your own life!"

What We Hear:
"All complaints about unfairness in the system are the equivalent of 12-year-old girls spreading mean rumors about the popular ones!"

Look, I get it. You worked your tails off to start a business (or get your MBA or become a lawyer or whatever) so that you can finally have what you dreamed about when you were in high school: a huge swimming pool in the shape of the Van Halen logo. You obey the law, you pay your taxes. Then suddenly, this Occupy Wall Street freak show declares you to be the "one percent," and therefore the enemy. Obviously you've done nothing wrong, so their hatred must be irrational. They only hate you because you're rich!

To that, as the senior editor of a site that should darn well know, I can only offer one word:
Batman.

"That's Mr. Batman to you."

Stinking Batman. Pop culture's greatest hero. Search Cracked.com for "Batman" and 70 percent of the site comes up. Our culture loves him, and he 1) is rich as hell and 2) can only do what he does because he's rich.

Heck, let's look at the annual poll of the most admired people in America for 2011. There are 20 people on that list, and all 20 are rich enough to be in the "hated" 1 percent. I count four billionaires on that list, and another person who is a member of a billionaire family.

Above: The 99 percent and the 1 percent. Guess which one gets the badass car.

Now go into the bedroom of any child in America. Even before the parents have the chance to call the cops, you'll see posters of pro athletes and Disney pop stars and famous actors dressed as action heroes. Millionaires, all.

That's because all of our heroes are millionaires.

Heck, every Christmas we celebrate the tale of the wealthy Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. We hate him in the first part of the story, and then we love him by the end. Not because he gave away all of his wealth and became poor (he didn't), but because he stopped acting like a jerk. Do you get the incredibly subtle and nuanced message of that story?

GettyA few million donated to the right dinosaur-cloning company would totally change this man's legacy.

You might be tempted to say, "What business is it of yours what I do with my money! Whether I use my cash to give to the poor or for gold paint to spread on naked women like Goldfinger, it's none of your business!"

Oh, dude, wouldn't life be easier if that were true? If we didn't have to answer to anybody, or feel social pressure based on the choices we make?

But, sadly, all civilization and morality rests on the fact that we have to answer to each other -- the only reason I haven't murdered a dozen people in traffic is because society will bring consequences if I do. And when you're powerful (due to being a politician, or a rich man, or having a position of authority like a priest or police officer), we turn up the heat even more. See, your power eliminates many of society's checks on your buttheadery (i.e., you can afford better lawyers), and so we have to make up for it in other ways. It's how we keep you in line. The fact that you don't like it only proves that you need it.

Getty"Not allowing the wealthy to hunt man for sport removes all motivation to succeed."

And when we hate people, it's always for the same reason: They refuse to acknowledge that their power brings with it any responsibility. It's why we hate bullies and dictators and supervillains. It's why we hate people who benefit hugely from society and then pretend like they're living on an island with a population of only them.

Which leads us nicely to ...

#2. "You Shouldn't Be Punishing the Very People Who Make This Country Work!"

"There is a deeply disturbing message coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement ... Simply put, it boils down to this: We must punish success ..."
-- John E. Kramer, Washington Times

GettyHe must speak really fluent Hippie.

"There'll always be those who earn more than I do, and I say, God bless them. I'm sure they work hard, did what was necessary to get ahead and should not be penalized for or feel ashamed of their accomplishments."
-- Bernard Goldberg

"The top 1 percent of wage earners in the United States pays 40 percent of the income taxes and the top 10 percent of wage earners pay 90 percent of the income taxes ... the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy and to create jobs in our country."
-- Speaker of the House John Boehner

"I never got a job from a poor person."
-- Sean Hannity

"I also can't lick my elbow and hop at the same time. Life's funny, huh?"

What They Think They're Saying:
"If you punish success, society will collapse into communism!"

What We Hear:
"I have to pay higher taxes than my gardener! Waaaah!"

Getty"I'm pretty sure he's either smoking pot or shooting up insulin back there. I forget which is which."

There are two elements to this, and I don't want to get too much into the first one because it gets into a tedious debate about tax policy and junk that nobody comes to here to read. But, very briefly, it's the concept of "You have your job because of a rich person."

This is true, I suppose, if that rich person inherited their money and you are personally working for them as a gardener. But if you are working at a Toyota factory, your paycheck doesn't come from under the mattress of the owner of the company. That money came from lots and lots of regular Joes who bought Toyota cars. The guys in suits are just middlemen between the supply and the demand.
So as for the popular talk radio joke, "I've never gotten a job from a poor person"? Well, Sean, a lot of your listeners are poor, and your advertisers are paying you with money they made by selling goods to those poor people. So, yeah, the cash you make does in fact bear the smelly fingerprints of the lower classes. It's the same for somebody working at Walmart, or a grocery store, or a liquor store. You didn't get your job from a poor person, but collectively their money made it happen. Which is just a long way to say the obvious: That rich people don't make the world go around. It takes everybody.

GettyEven -- no, especially -- this guy.

But the second part is this idea that asking the rich to pitch in is "punishing" them. So, Rich Guy, let me explain this as calmly and logically as I can:

Are you 6 stinking years old? Do you still think mom made you clean up your room because she was mean? In the adult world, we get asked to do things because junk needs to get done. It has nothing to do with fairness, it has nothing to do with judging you. It has nothing to do with you at all. There's a whole world out there, with people who need helping and projects that need accomplishing.

You're only being asked to pitch in because you have the resources. You're not a tall person who us dwarfs are jealously trying to cut down to size. You're a tall person being asked to get something down from a very tall shelf because nobody else can darn well reach it.

GettyThe step stool is ... welfare?

Really ... I'm not trying to be condescending. We're all adults here.

Just ... here, how about this: Remember when Yoda told Luke he had to confront Darth Vader if he wanted to be a true Jedi? Do you think that was because Yoda hated Luke and assigned him that awful task to punish him? Was it because Yoda was jealous? Of Luke's ... height, or whatever?
Or was it because it needed to be done and Luke was the only one who could do it? Because he had the Force?

See, in our society, money is the Force.

We can't decide if the lightsabers should be lobbyists or lawyers.

Yes, I know you think you already give more than your fair share. So did Luke. So does everyone. Welcome to the human race -- we all think we're getting the stinky end of the deal.

#1. "Stop Asking for Handouts! I Never Got Help from Anybody!"

"I've been on food stamps and welfare. Did anybody help me out? No."
-- Craig T. Nelson

"I expect nothing to be handed to me, and will continue to work my @$$ off for everything I have. I am NOT the 99 percent, and whether or not you are is YOUR decision."
-- Anonymous

Getty"Unless you were born in Haiti. Then the deck is kinda stacked against you."

What They Think They're Saying:
"I pulled myself up by my bootstraps!"

What We Hear:
"Because I didn't inherit millions of dollars, impoverished children don't need food stamps!"

All right.

Getty

You "never got help from anybody."

Nothing was "handed to you."

All right.

Let's say you scratched and you clawed and climbed the ladder of success. You never took a welfare check or charity, you worked three jobs to get through college. And at the end of it you look back on your labors and feel justified in saying, "I never got help from anybody."

Getty"Wow. When you put it like that, the vast majority of my life sounds terrible."

So ... you were never a child? From birth, you were hunting and gathering your own food? You never had a mother to "hand" you milk?

You're completely self-educated? At age 4, you sought out your own knowledge, and paid teachers out of your own pocket?

I don't think you did. I'd have seen something about it on the news.

I think your parents poured untold resources into your hungry mouth. I think you had a roof over your head that was paid for by other people, I think you went to schools that were built and staffed and paid for by other people, I think you felt safe because the streets were patrolled by other people, I think you drove to your three jobs on roads paved by other people, in a car built by other people and burning oil that was drilled by other people in a nation whose borders were defended by other people.

Getty"Don't mention it."

Look, I understand why "I ain't asking for help from nobody!" individualism works as an attitude, or a philosophy. No, you shouldn't wait for help to come along. I'll even agree that we don't impress that message hard enough on kids when they're growing up. Kids, if you're reading this, and you really shouldn't be, but if you are, let me tell you now:

The world doesn't give a fart about you, and you'll have to wrestle it for every good thing you get. Hell, I've written an entire article about how grown-ups don't tell us how freaking hard everything is, and how the shock of unexpected effort trips us up.

But, for the rich, this somehow gets extended to the absolutely delusional idea that they exist on a purely self-sufficient island, in an ocean full of shiftless layabouts always asking to borrow their stuff.

Getty"More soup? Next you'll be asking to borrow one of my 12 golden Xboxes."

And you literally hear people express it this way -- in libertarian circles they refer to it as "Going Galt" (as in John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged) -- fed up rich people just disconnecting from this annoying "society" thing that's bleeding them dry. If you live in my part of the country, you'll hear hard-working, rural farmer types say, "I got my own piece of land, I grow my own food, all I want is to be left alone." All right, well tell me this, cowboy:

Let's say some mean, even richer guy, like a wealthy gangsta rapper, hired a bunch of armed thugs to come take your farm. What would you do? Your shotgun won't fend them off -- they have a hundred bigger shotguns. What will you do, call the cops? That is, other people, who will risk their lives while being paid with still other people's tax money, who will try these bad guys in a court funded by yet other people's tax money, under laws passed by legislators paid with other people's tax money? Whoa, slow down there, welfare queen!

GettyNow fight off these Nazis with your bootstraps.

But if none of that stuff existed, there would be nothing stopping Jay-Z from taking your farm. In other words, you don't "own" jack. The entire concept of owning anything, be it a hunk of land or a house or a darn sandwich, exists purely because other people pay other armed men to protect it.

Without society, all of your brave, individual talents and efforts won't buy you a bucket of farts.
So when I say "We're all in this together," I'm not stating a philosophy. I'm stating a fact about the way human life works. No, you never asked for anything to be handed to you. You didn't have to, because billions of humans who lived and died before you had already created a lavish support system where the streets are all but paved with gold. Everyone reading this -- all of us living in a society advanced enough to have Internet access -- was born one inch away from the finish line, plopped here at birth, by other people.

Getty"On your mark, get set -- hey! Anybody else want to watch The Office?"

So when somebody else asks for your help, in the form of charity or taxes, or because they need you to help them move a refrigerator, you can cite all sorts of reasons for not helping ("I think you're lying about needing help" or "I don't care" or "I'm too tied up with my own problems"), but the one thing you can't say is, "Why should you need help? I've never gotten help!" Not unless you're either shamefully oblivious, or a lying jerkwad.

Heck, if anybody could play the "I did this myself!" card, it's me. I mentioned earlier that I've made an unfair amount of money due to writing a novel about a zombie detective who only solves crimes of paranormal romance and then selling the film rights to said novel. If anything is a one-man show, it's writing a book. Nobody helped me with that. Well, I mean other than the friend who created the title character. And the publisher who spent the money to print up the copies and publicize it. And all of the previous novelists who established the medium and genre. And the public school system that taught me how to read and write, and that taught all of my readers how to read. And the people who built and maintain the Internet so that I would have a place to promote it, and the people who maintain the roads so that the books could be shipped from Amazon ...

You get the idea.

David Wong is the Senior Editor of Cracked.com and the author of John Dies at the End and the even more ridiculously titled sequel This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don't Touch it, available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, etc.

Read more: 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying_p2/#ixzz1pgbpFmmq