Posted on 03/04/2020 8:00:14 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Most Americans don’t believe people are rich because they work harder than other people or poor because they don’t work hard enough, according to a new study published by the Pew Research Center.
In the results of a poll released Monday, some 65% of U.S. adults said people are rich because they had more advantages in life than others, while only 33% said it’s because they work harder than others.
When it comes to the question of why people are poor, some 71% of respondents attributed it to having to face more obstacles in life. Only 26 percent of respondents in the poll conducted Jan. 6-19 among 12,638 U.S. adults who are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel, said people are poor because they don’t work hard enough.
And people’s views of the determinants of wealth from this recent poll appear to align with other recent studies that show how income inequality and other factors such as being raised in poverty has contributed to a stifling of the American dream and upward mobility for a share of the population.
The Census Bureau found that 38.1 million people in 2018 were poor, which is 1.4 million fewer poor people than in 2017. This means about one in eight Americans still live below the poverty line — $25,465 for a family with two adults and two children.
In a recent interview explaining why working hard is simply no longer enough for many to achieve the American dream, Raj Chetty, director of Opportunity Insights at Harvard University, pointed to some of his team’s research.
“Back in the 1940s and 1950s, virtually all kids in America would grow up to have a higher standard of living than their parents did. So for children born in 1940, for example, 90 percent of them went on to have a higher standard of living than their parents. And if you look at kids who were born in the 1980s, who are turning 30 today, when we’re measuring their incomes that number is down to 50 percent,” he said.
“It’s a 50-50 shot as to whether you’re going to achieve the American dream of moving up. And so, that fading of the American dream, you know, I think is of tremendous concern from an economic perspective, socially, politically, and there are a variety of factors that I think play into what’s driving that trend.
"But at a macroeconomic level, a lot of it has to do with the fact that wage rates and incomes for people in the middle of the income distribution basically haven’t gone up over the past 30 years, so most of the economic growth that’s occurred in America has gone to the very, very top of the income distribution,” he said.
The poll data from the Pew study show that respondents were deeply divided along partisan lines.
Some 82% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said advantages in life have more to do with why someone is rich, while 86% of this group said having faced more obstacles has more to do with why someone is poor.
Just over half of Republicans and Republican leaning respondents, however, said hard work has more to do with why a person is rich, while 45% said it is because they have more advantages.
Some 55 percent of this group said people are poor because they face more obstacles while 42% said it’s because they didn’t work hard enough.
Liberal education: Working hard doesn’t get you anywhere. It is rich white folks who keep you down. Why bother?
I always think of Dave Ramsey’s distinction between being broke and being poor.
Broke is a temporary state of being that can be overcome with some work and discipline. Poor is a state of mind that is mostly attributable to a lack of discipline and is far more difficult to overcome.
“Most Americans don’t believe people are rich because they work hard or poor because they don’t”
And people are not smart because they read and study or dumb because they don’t.
People don’t smell because they take showers or stink because they don’t.
Another “dividend” of our educational system. Just blame someone and give up. America has nothing to be proud of./s
Old: Admiration for innovators, inventors, captains of industry, Founders and common people who sacrificed to work to build America and those who risked or gave their lives in the armed forces. Ten Commandments on many school buildings and post offices.
New: No responsibility-—just blame-—for any shortcomings. Males at fault for any defeat or failure by a feminist woman. (True story: Woman I know told me her female psychiatrist concluded that nearly all of women’s psychological problems come from the harm done by the sexist male dominant society.)
And the oft heard variations on: He had no choice but a life of being a career criminal-—not enough government benefits, he came from a low income family, no opportunities for a person of color compared to whites, and America is set up to favor the top elites.
False choice in the poll question. I’ve known poor people who work hard. They remain poor because they make easier or worse choices in other aspects in their lives. A 12-pack of Busch is more satisfying than putting the money in an investment account. Watching The Batchelor is more fun than working on the house.
The article missed another major point... if you were the smartest person in the world and studied harder than anyone else, but you picked an unmarketable field of study... you are not likely to get ahead. My brother's kids all got degrees in “environmental science” because they all believe that “global warming” is going to destroy the world. For some reason none of them have managed to get a decent job.
I'm well off because I worked hard to take advantage of the advantages I was provided with by my hard-working parents. Just having had more advantages in life than someone else isn't a ticket to affluence.
I know many people who had every opportunity presented to them do little other than squander each and every one, usually through the lack of hard work on their own part.
Living beneath your means is an important skill.
Some people are rich because they worked for it. But others are rich because they are corrupt and they committed financial crimes to obtain a lot of money. They basically did no work at all. There are a lot of politicians that fit in that category.
Shell companies used to transfer US tax dollars back to them for example.
Exactly, it's ambition that is the driver. Sure once you're rich you don't have to work as hard. And as you gain experience you learn to work smarter, not harder. The biggest "gap" is the ambition gap. Some people are happy to just take whatever crumbs get thrown their way, others want more. And in a healthy society wealth and ambition should parallel each other.
Biased propaganda
I think the same way. To say that the “rich” don’t work is just wrong. Oh sure, there are those that don’t, through inheritance mainly but SOMEONE at SOME POINT had to work to get that money amassed. It just doesn’t fall in their laps. They start a company, put in long hours and take a lot of risks to build that company and make it profitable. The kids today think that they need to come out of college with a house/car/checking account that their parents have. They don’t think about the fact that mom and dad are married 30+ years and have worked to build up what they as their children have always taken for granted. Mom and Dad needed to teach kiddo some hard lessons.
The merchants of victimology have been effective in spreading their message.
“Living beneath your means is an important skill.”
Very true. My dad always taught us “Pay yourself first.” In other words, put away 10% in savings or investments for your future BEFORE you pay anybody else (presuming, of course, you have enough left over to pay your bills).
My college was back in the early- and mid 70s. Maybe it’s the same guy?
TAXES PLAY A BIG ROLE TO. Being in a conservative state also helps. TN has NO STATE INCOME TAX except for investors. SALES TAX and we run a surplus despite the LIBTARDS SPENDING ON CRAP.
This is what happens when you have 2 generations of communists teaching in our schools and colleges.
“You didn’t build that” - sums up the mindset of the young, impressionable dregs that think their lot in life is handed to them, rather than earned.
Precious few people are handed such a poor lot in life that they can’t climb out of it, and with good friends, they can also.
Mike Tyson is a classic example. Give an idiot a lot of money and all you have is a rich idiot.
Doubt it, but I imagine technicians had the same approach to life in California as they did in Pennsylvania, at least back then.
You notice that increasing wealth and prosperity for average people was increasing in the 1940’s and 50’s. Then, it flattened out. Are we sure that the “war on poverty” wasn’t really a War on the Poor to keep them down.
As of several years ago, we had spent over 17 trillion dollars on the welfare programs that had the great success of keeping about 20% of 13% of the population in poverty. Imagine if that same money were spent on actually helping them instead of paying them to not work or even try.
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