(12-09-2022, 02:33 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: Sure. And I don't disagree that there are individuals who will be born with the right intrinsic motivators, that also got the right leads in life, and make it out of the ghetto by making different choices. That said, the same can be true for people moving from middle class to upper middle class. The opportunities are there, but it's not easy to completely buck everything you know, adopt completely countercultural views and practices, and discipline yourself into a different class. You have to completely go against the grain of your entire experience, and that is VERY difficult. If it wasn't, you'd see a lot more people moving into upper class, and that doesn't happen, either. Unless the people in those board were able to do that, it seems a bit shortsighted to condemn others who aren't able to overcome a very similar set of circumstances.

I don't know if you're intending it, but when you talk about moving middle class moving to upper middle class, even if every single person can, by definition most will not, otherwise the term upper middle has no meaning when compared to middle.  Just like only 1% of us can ever be in the top 1%.
When you talk about moving out of the ghetto, that's probably an objective achievement.  Ghettos can be eliminated and redeveloped.  But if you talk about moving out of the bottom 10%, by mathematical definition someone else is moving in while you're moving out, even if both of your lives are improving.
Overall this stuff is hard to talk about, But it's much easier for the Reagan type rhetoric of "a rising tide lifts all boats" to reach the masses than the Obama type rhetoric of "let's spread the wealth." Which is good.  Neither motto tells the whole story but Reagan's gets closer to the truth.

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