Why the rich are rich and the poor are poor
 

Because the rich are busy making money and the poor are busy bitching about the rich making money.

Brilliant!

What about those born into poverty, with almost no chance of getting out? Dad in jail, mom in jail, brothers in jail or dead. 20 years old and doesn't know how to read, etc. How do they get rich?

And what about those born into poverty who get out, start working, build and get rich?

See how dumb, vague questions work as a means to replying to someone as if you actually have a valid point?

i'm pretty sure there's more to it than that.

I just heard no one in Portman's family EVER worked. That Portman who married Natalia Vodianova supermodel, told by her directly on TV, like fucking NEVER worked at all.

Isn't it hillarious? Living and not caring about money. Like fucking crazy.

It's true. I heard these two old retired guys once, sitting in a coffee shop, both on fixed incomes, talking about how the rich get richer while they worked their hands to the bone their whole lives and have nothing to show for it but arthritis, and the gov't is keeping them down etc.

Between the damn rich and the damn gov't life truly is unfair. :D

Drugs or prostitution.

or hard work playing the lottery. :)

I'm not doing bad, but then again I'm not doing good. I don't complain :)

by developing and offering a product or service other people value and are willing to pay for.

Certainly none of us come from the sort of background I'm describing. People have nothing to lose and nothing to live for, you are going to ask them to "develop a skill"? I work 7 days a week and more about 10 - 12 hours a day, but I've never been hungry nor did I have to worry about where my next meal came from. Of course hard work is the only way out, but seriously, some points of views in this thread are naive to say the least.

so in their case, like someone said few posts above... either drugs or prostitution... :thumbsup:1orglaugh

jk :)

Of course there is, these problems aren't black and white. That's like saying killing Bin Laden will go a long way towards ending terrorism. Just pure stupidity.

quite the generalization. many rich people are rich simply because they were born into the money.

Some certainly are, but not as many as most people think, most are actually self made...
read "Millionaire next door", it's a great book on this topic... :2 cents:

"who was S B Fuller?"

i wonder how the op arrived at this conclusion.

That isn't really true. There have been plenty of studies saying the exact opposite. About 80% of "rich" people are entrepreneurs/business owners. Trust fund babies aren't that prominent.

Like a lot of people here, he probably made a good deal of money through very hard work. So, naturally, he thinks people need to stop bitching and work harder, since it is the only proven way to be successful. However, people who are really poor do not have the same opportunities.

or connections. I think that in the US at least it is more about who you know and the children of the elite are born into a life that has those connections built in. I am not bashing GWB but lets face it, his father had him extremely well connected even though for most of his life he was mediocre and incompetent. He was only able to rise to the position he attained through the connections both financial and political that his family was able to afford him.

There are a few who through hard work and an above average intelligence are able to forge those kind of connections on their own but they are the exception to the rule and not the norm. :2 cents:

Being rich or poor isn't black and white. The OP is black, you are white. Reality lies somewhere in the middle.

People came to this country, with nothing.
They worked hard and did something with their lives, it's hard to have pitty for those that get home from walmart and sit in front of the 42 LCD tv they got from work cheap because of a scratch on it, drink a 6 pack of beer and fall asleep on the couch. Get up in the morning and repeat.

A door-to-door salesman:thumbsup

That's a cop out. Connections are simply knowing someone and having a relationship. Meet them, find common ground, help them out somehow. Build one connection, more will follow. We live in the Internet age, you can contact almost anyone in the world and many will actually reply.

That's middle class and underachieving, not poor.

sure but they have kids, and those kids are born into it. its not like people just started getting rich in the last 10 years.

People who work hard are usually too busy with work to make any real money. The trick is to work smarter, not harder.

If you are born in a 1st world country you have every tool to be one of the rich despite your circumstances bar something wrong with your health. You decide whether to work hard at school, you decide whether to learn skills, and ultimately you decide how much energy you will put into achieving the steps in order to become rich.

Most poor people, infact every single poor person I have ever met and known has made the choices to be poor. They decided to waft through school, they decided to take that cruisy no effort job, they decided to drop out of university, they decided to work a 35 hour week and party hard, they decided to post on GFY all day instead of doing any work, they decided to pick up the bottle. We are the product of our choices first before anything else.

So the rich are lucky? Sure some can come into wealth, but its funny that in most cases the harder they work, the luckier they get ;)

By working hard I meant long hours.

well, maybe we should establish what is rich..recently being 'rich' was defined has having more than 26 million dollars. to some maybe being rich is making 150k a year? I wouldn't call that rich at all really. i don't think its so cut and dry to be 'rich' as you put it. typically someone has to do *something* that everyone else isn't. you can't do great in school, get a good job and suddenly be rich.

Ah yes, the definition of Rich I was working off is different than yours. Though many of my points still stand, people who work themselves into positions that pay that much don't get there by slacking.

Are we talking about being poor or being lazy? People who are really poor would be lucky to get any job at all. I do agree that in a first world country your chances are of course much higher, but even first world countries have ghettos that nearly impossible get out of.

I personally think it's all about your upbringing and the examples people lay out for your as a child. If both your parents are drug addicts, your brothers and your friends all sell drugs, you don't have a change of clothes, you're teeth are yellow cause your parents can't afford fucking toothpaste and your skinny cause they sure as hell can't afford food, do you really think they would even make it through high-school, much less college?

I know. You're too busy working, you don't have time to make money. :)

you are misrepresenting the metaphor. it's not an either or proposition. working smart is working hard and vice-versa.

Ideas and opportunity have more to do with being rich than hard work does.

Quoted for truth. :thumbsup

Assuming all of that is true. How exactly does it defy the initial statement in this thread?

You might've misunderstood the metaphor altogether. While the two may not necessarily be mutually exclusive, they sure as fuck aren't one and the same.