[Chickensoup]

There are a number of people who are just incompetent in life.

.......

There have always been a number of people who didn’t get off the ground floor of life. People who never left home or ones who were mostly isolated. People who didn’t talk much. The Bo Ridleys of all the neighborhoods. The people who went to work in the back rooms of companies and punched in and out. The constant drinkers who drown their anxieties.
The people who built match villages and elaborate railroads at home. Who at the turn of the 20th century lived in my great grandfather’s basement and stoked the furnace and shoveled the walks.

Always been there. Behind the scenes.

[Pontiac]

Always been there. Behind the scenes.

I wasn't arguing that there was not.

My statement was meant to convey that the education system that they grew up in was designed to manufacture failure by discouraging effort.

As for the people living in your great-granfather's basement, that was a period similar to today when there had been a great influx of cheap labor (the Irish and Italian migrations).

But at that time there was no social safety net available to those immigrants.

These people and any other low skilled people took whatever jobs they could find and survived day by day.

Failure was homelessness and starvation.

Finding the time and the money to build some kind of success was difficult in the extreme for these people who were mostly illiterate and fighting prejudice of the worst kind.