“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
- Robert Heinlein
YEARS ago, I was married about a year, and lived in California. My wife's sister was the female version of Al Capp's Joe Btfsplk - had been married at least 10 years to some loser and was still at the barely-above-poverty level, working at minimum wage in those PA mushroom houses.
We had just bought a 1,600 sq. ft. house for the stiff price of $36,500 (early 1970) and were settling in when she paid us a visit. She took one look at our surroundings and all the middle class gadgets we had (not yet paid for) and remarked that "some people were just lucky".
Bless my wife (who also worked). She lit into her and said that after quitting one career (typesetting) and sticking my neck out by working at night and going to computer programming school during the day, she noticed that the more chances we took and the harder we worked, the "luckier" we got. Big sis shut up and sulked.