Poll of the Day > Is the American Dream real?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position. - James Truslow Adams, 1931
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>according to ability or achievement

>fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Inheritance dynasties are ruining the American Dream!
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Yea. It is. You really don't realize how much it is until you've lived somewhere that doesn't have it.
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no. i did my part and still got fucked
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For some people.
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The American dream existed last century because America was sparsely populated so land was cheap...now that the whole country has been ocupied it is no different than other first world countries

Nomak-54 posted...

a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

I don't believe this ever accurately described the United States at any point in its history, but if it did, it certainly doesn't these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q3nn9Unfgw
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Lokarin posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q3nn9Unfgw

hes a funny guy and all but lets face it, dan harmon is a fat angry drunk whose political opinions sound like some shit a highschool student would spout
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Troll_Police_ posted...

angry drunk

Troll_Police_ posted...

highschool student

Seems legit
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Ironically Japan does the American dream better than America.
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The American dream is only dead for those seeking it.

Yes, but thanks to corruption, greed, or incompetence, some people are ruining it for others.
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lolno
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Im pretty sure you just want help with your Great Gatsby homework that you were supposed to do over your winter break.
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Cacciato posted...

Im pretty sure you just want help with your Great Gatsby homework that you were supposed to do over your winter break.

Yo why are you always picking at things? I should flair you as supreme bully ;(
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Yup. Parents moved here from Asia dirt poor, now they both have jobs earning $600,000+ USD a year. I was born in the US, and I get to be born into an upper-class lifestyle thanks to their hard work and a country that rewards hard working people instead of just subsidizing the lazy.

Yes, but you won't find it in America.
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I think it's a "yes and no" answer here. It's nowhere near as easy to achieve as it was up to and including the 1980s. The fact that it's still possible means the answer is technically yes, but it has become significantly more difficult to do so since the '90s. Everything has higher requirements and more people competing these days. A guy who sold furniture at Sears could buy a house and support a family decades ago. While there's no glory associated with that, my point is that you could do a lot more with a lot less, which itself allowed for more ability to pursue your goals.

Hard workers will always succeed in any free (or free-ish) market though, because struggle is in their nature to overcome. My dad's parents didn't speak English until they were probably teenagers and came from nothing, but his father supported a family while working on his engineering degree and ultimately became moderately wealthy and debt-free. My dad's parents lent him money for university and were of typically stern and uncompassionate Prussian stock, but it gave him the grit he needed to battle various hardships, including a hard life, and ultimately own a house worth almost $1M and in a fulfilling career of his choosing.
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yes, it is alive for those who are willing to strive to achieve it. those who aren't will still live better than they would most other places, but the additional envy they feel makes them think they are worse off than the 3rd world.
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If you have the right connections anything is possible, its never about what you know but about who u know
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TheCyborgNinja posted...

Hard workers will always succeed in any free (or free-ish) market though, because struggle is in their nature to overcome.

Not true. Connections and/or family wealth are also a necessary ingredient.

I can prove it too. Consider a janitor at your local mall. That guy could be the best janitor on the planet by a mile. He could put in 14 hour days, seven days a week, never calling in sick, never taking vacation; he could work harder than any janitor anywhere else on the planet. And you know what? He still would earn nowhere near the amount of money as an average - or even sub-par - investment banker, lawyer, engineer, or other high-paid profession.

Success and monetary compensation are not dependent on hard work; they are dependent on what skills you possess and how much demand there is for those skills. "Fine", you might say, "then go retrain in a better skill." Nice in theory, but re-training takes time and resources, as you are limiting the number of hours you are available to work and, unless it is supported by your employer (and if you're working a Joe-job, it won't be), it also costs money. If you are fortunate enough to have savings or qualify for scholarships or have a relative willing to give/loan you the money to get through, problem solved, but for those who don't have those things retraining becomes an almost impossible obstacle, because even working double shifts simply does not bring in enough income to save up for retraining in a meaningful amount of time (particularly if you have a family to support).
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darkknight109 posted...

Connections and/or family wealth are also a necessary ingredient.

They are important for success - but antithetical to "American Dream"
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miki_sauvester posted...

I get to be born into an upper-class lifestyle thanks to their hard work and a country that rewards hard working people instead of just subsidizing the lazy.

I can't actually tell if this is satire or not.
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darkknight109 posted...

TheCyborgNinja posted...

Hard workers will always succeed in any free (or free-ish) market though, because struggle is in their nature to overcome.

Not true. Connections and/or family wealth are also a necessary ingredient.

I can prove it too. Consider a janitor at your local mall. That guy could be the best janitor on the planet by a mile. He could put in 14 hour days, seven days a week, never calling in sick, never taking vacation; he could work harder than any janitor anywhere else on the planet. And you know what? He still would earn nowhere near the amount of money as an average - or even sub-par - investment banker, lawyer, engineer, or other high-paid profession.

then obviously the janitor's efforts should be redirected to finding those connections, its all the same thig
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darkknight109 posted...

TheCyborgNinja posted...

Hard workers will always succeed in any free (or free-ish) market though, because struggle is in their nature to overcome.

Not true. Connections and/or family wealth are also a necessary ingredient.

I can prove it too. Consider a janitor at your local mall. That guy could be the best janitor on the planet by a mile. He could put in 14 hour days, seven days a week, never calling in sick, never taking vacation; he could work harder than any janitor anywhere else on the planet. And you know what? He still would earn nowhere near the amount of money as an average - or even sub-par - investment banker, lawyer, engineer, or other high-paid profession.

Success and monetary compensation are not dependent on hard work; they are dependent on what skills you possess and how much demand there is for those skills. "Fine", you might say, "then go retrain in a better skill." Nice in theory, but re-training takes time and resources, as you are limiting the number of hours you are available to work and, unless it is supported by your employer (and if you're working a Joe-job, it won't be), it also costs money. If you are fortunate enough to have savings or qualify for scholarships or have a relative willing to give/loan you the money to get through, problem solved, but for those who don't have those things retraining becomes an almost impossible obstacle, because even working double shifts simply does not bring in enough income to save up for retraining in a meaningful amount of time (particularly if you have a family to support).

True to a point, but some people are just stupid, unskilled, or lazy as well. Hard work only takes you so far if you're not smart. Connections help immensely, but they make it easier rather than outright robbing people of opportunities if they lack any.
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darkknight109 posted...

Not true. Connections and/or family wealth are also a necessary ingredient.

i worked from the lower class to the upper middle without the benefit of family wealth. amd the connections i have i built myself.

TheCyborgNinja posted...

He could put in 14 hour days, seven days a week, never calling in sick, never taking vacation; he could work harder than any janitor anywhere else on the planet. And you know what? He still would earn nowhere near the amount of money as an average - or even sub-par - investment banker, lawyer, engineer, or other high-paid profession.

lets see here, you are talking about 98 hours a week. lets say he makes $10 an hour (if he is good he almost certainly makes more, but lets lowball).

thats $400 for the first 40, $600 for the next 40, and $360 for the next 18. Homeboy is pulling home $1360 per week. thats over $65k a year. more than enough to support yourself and a small family.

the trade he chooses is just that, a CHOICE. some people make the right one, some people make the wrong one.

darkknight109 posted...

If you are fortunate enough to have savings

its not "fortunate" to have savings, its intelligent

TheCyborgNinja posted...

ut re-training takes time and resources, as you are limiting the number of hours you are available to work and, unless it is supported by your employer (and if you're working a Joe-job, it won't be), it also costs money.

ok, but you just included a guy who works 98 hours a week into this hypothetical. if you are willing to do that, then you can handle a 40 hour a week job while training for another 40 and still have 18 hours to spare

how do i know all of this? because i fucking did it. i worked my ass ragged for years, and I was absolutely miserable, but in the end, it was worth it.

so its up to you to decide, is it worth it? are you willing to put the work in? or do you just want to stay at the bottom and stare enviously at the top while thinking that you deserve what they have?
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The actual American Dream is absolutely real. Immigrants constantly come here for a better life which, given where they're coming from, sets a pretty low bar. Likewise people who are here can become absurdly rich if they find the right idea and have the persistence to follow it through.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Ironically Japan does the American dream better than America.

Not in the least.

Cacciato posted...

Im pretty sure you just want help with your Great Gatsby homework that you were supposed to do over your winter break.

Kek.

TheCyborgNinja posted...

I think it's a "yes and no" answer here. It's nowhere near as easy to achieve as it was up to and including the 1980s. The fact that it's still possible means the answer is technically yes, but it has become significantly more difficult to do so since the '90s. Everything has higher requirements and more people competing these days. A guy who sold furniture at Sears could buy a house and support a family decades ago. While there's no glory associated with that, my point is that you could do a lot more with a lot less, which itself allowed for more ability to pursue your goals.

It's different, although maybe not harder. The thing is, when people thought of the American Dream they were imagining better than just a good living. The amount of effort required to earn a good living has certainly gone up thanks to outsourcing and a surplus of unskilled labor. However, we live in what might be the greatest time in history to make a fortune. A guy can study hard, create an app, and become a millionaire overnight.

darkknight109 posted...

TheCyborgNinja posted...

Hard workers will always succeed in any free (or free-ish) market though, because struggle is in their nature to overcome.

Not true. Connections and/or family wealth are also a necessary ingredient.

Not true. There are countless people who came from nothing and are now either millionaires or billionaires. Oprah was the child of an uneducated, black single mom in a rural area. You can't stack the deck harder than that at the time, yet today she's a billionaire.

And, to your janitor example, she COULD have become the world's best clotheswasher -- which is what her grandma was trying to train her to do -- but she did something different. She wasn't born rich, she wasn't born with connections. She came into the world with very little and will leave it with tons.

Despite the stereotype, familial wealth doesn't tend to last long. Most families lost it by the end of the second generation and almost none have it by the third.
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Nomak-54 posted...

Cacciato posted...

Im pretty sure you just want help with your Great Gatsby homework that you were supposed to do over your winter break.

Yo why are you always picking at things? I should flair you as supreme bully ;(

AND another thing, I certainly finished all my Gatsby stuff, can't fathom where you got the idea that I was some kind of slacker >:(

Im glad I was right.
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Unbridled9 posted...

Yea. It is. You really don't realize how much it is until you've lived somewhere that doesn't have it.

Such as?
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Cacciato posted...

Nomak-54 posted...

Cacciato posted...

Im pretty sure you just want help with your Great Gatsby homework that you were supposed to do over your winter break.

Yo why are you always picking at things? I should flair you as supreme bully ;(

AND another thing, I certainly finished all my Gatsby stuff, can't fathom where you got the idea that I was some kind of slacker >:(

Im glad I was right.

You're not right, I ain't no slacker. It just inspired me to make this topic.
It isn't funny Zeus >:(
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It still exists. You just have to work a lot fucking harder now for it than the baby boomers did

Lokarin posted...

They are important for success - but antithetical to "American Dream"

Agreed, which is why I said you're not likely to find it in America.

Troll_Police_ posted...

i worked from the lower class to the upper middle without the benefit of family wealth. amd the connections i have i built myself.

I can't speak to your personal situation, given that I don't know what it is, but I would be very surprised if you managed to pull that off without SOMEBODY helping you out in some manner.

Troll_Police_ posted...

lets see here, you are talking about 98 hours a week. lets say he makes $10 an hour (if he is good he almost certainly makes more, but lets lowball).

thats $400 for the first 40, $600 for the next 40, and $360 for the next 18. Homeboy is pulling home $1360 per week. thats over $65k a year. more than enough to support yourself and a small family.

It's nice that you think he's eligible for overtime and double-time; in my experience, most people working Joe-jobs are not (or if they are, their employers make sure to schedule them so that they never reach that point, which is why employers like Wal-Mart absolutely love to abuse the shit out of the "part time worker" system). 100 hours a week at $10 an hour is likely going to bring in closer to $50k a year, not $65k.

But even if we use your (rather generous) numbers, yeah, he's making enough to support himself and a small family... by working so many hours that he would not have time to do anything but come home, eat a meal, and go to bed. That's an existence, but it's not a life. More to the point, $65k a year still puts him below an entry level position in engineering, law, or various other lucrative fields. If the "hard work = success" adage held true, he should be making bank; he's not, despite working harder than most other people in the country.

Troll_Police_ posted...

the trade he chooses is just that, a CHOICE. some people make the right one, some people make the wrong one.

No, it's not a choice, because some trades have prerequisites. Want to be a doctor? You have ~eight years of post-secondary schooling ahead of you, plus at least three years of residency, and I hope you can afford the ~$200k worth of student debt you'll be racking up along the way. Most of the other well-paying professions have similar requirements.

If you come from a poor family with no means to support you through post-secondary, your prospects are extremely limited - much more so than someone who comes from a well-off family (they will be able to work far less hard and reap far greater rewards, simply by dint of the fact that having money allows you to make money). And this is without even considering the elephant in the room, that being aptitude. If you took 100 random students out of high school and were told that you had to make every one of them a doctor, there's no way you would succeed regardless of how hard those students worked, because some people are just not cut out to be doctors. Again, this has nothing to do with how hard people work to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" - some people just lack the necessary aptitude to perform certain trades.
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Troll_Police_ posted...

its not "fortunate" to have savings, its intelligent

Problem is, in order to have savings you have to have something to save. If all your money is going into just getting by (and I know people who work two jobs who fit that description), your savings are a pittance and will be immediately swallowed up by the first emergency to come along.

Troll_Police_ posted...

ok, but you just included a guy who works 98 hours a week into this hypothetical. if you are willing to do that, then you can handle a 40 hour a week job while training for another 40 and still have 18 hours to spare

Alright, let's look at this.

40 hours a week at $10 an hour is $400 a week, or about $20k a year before taxes (at that level, he's not likely to pay any, but whatever). That's cutting away more than 50% of his income using my numbers from above (and more than 67% if we're using yours). I don't know of too many people who could take that much of a pay-cut and still get by. Moreover, from that $20k a year, he has to pay living expenses, support his family, pay for transportation (be that a car or public transit), and somehow have enough left over for tuition for whatever he's training for. Depending on where you're going to school, and for what, that $20k wouldn't even cover tuition for the year let alone living expenses.

Troll_Police_ posted...

how do i know all of this? because i fucking did it. i worked my ass ragged for years, and I was absolutely miserable, but in the end, it was worth it.

so its up to you to decide, is it worth it? are you willing to put the work in? or do you just want to stay at the bottom and stare enviously at the top while thinking that you deserve what they have?

This, plus Zeus's Oprah example, is survivorship bias at its finest.

If you want to talk about whether the American dream works, you need to look at the numbers, not just pick individual anecdotes. This is a well studied phenomenon and the US has some of the lowest economic mobility and some of the highest levels of income inequality in the developed world. Whether you will be successful has far, far less with how hard you work and is far more tied to whether or not you had the good fortune to be born to a rich family (which, you may recognize, is the very antithesis of the American Dream). It's not impossible to start low and finish high (or vice versa), but it is significantly more difficult in the US than just about anywhere else.

Zeus posted...

Not in the least.

Japan is actually a great example of where the theory behind the American dream actually works. They have one of the lowest levels of income inequality in the developed world, and their economic mobility is moderately high.
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darkknight109 posted...

it is significantly more difficult in the US than just about anywhere else.

hahahahahahaha no

if you spent less time crying about how much others have then maybe, just MAYBE you'd have a little more time to get some yourself.

or just keep looking up with envy, but understand that its not becoming. no matter how much you want to demand that youre entitled to what another person earns the fact is you aren't.
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Troll_Police_ posted...

darkknight109 posted...

it is significantly more difficult in the US than just about anywhere else.

hahahahahahaha no

if you spent less time crying about how much others have then maybe, just MAYBE you'd have a little more time to get some yourself.

or just keep looking up with envy, but understand that its not becoming. no matter how much you want to demand that youre entitled to what another person earns the fact is you aren't.

Well, first off, I'm not American.

Second off, you're wrong if you think I'm "envious" or "crying" about the wealthy, because I *am* wealthy. If you want my story, here it is - it's pretty much the counterpoint to yours.

I was born to a wealthy family. Graduated valedictorian out of high school, but not because I worked particularly hard - it was because I am smart and have a very good memory. I would frequently walk into class, look around and wonder why everyone looked so nervous, then realise we had a test that day that I hadn't bothered to study for... and get 95+% on it.

I got into a rather difficult but lucrative program at university and that method didn't work anymore. I worked hard, but no harder than anyone else in the program. I had jobs during the summer, but never during the school year; the idea of not paying my tuition was never a salient issue for me, because my parents would cover what I could not (some years I was able to pay it all, others they would pitch in - I'd say I paid about 75% of my costs all said and done). Certainly there were plenty of others with my degree who put in far more work; one of my best friends, who did not come from a well-off background, had to work his balls off just to graduate (and he had to work at the same time too, as he had a wife and a kid on the way).

Now I own a house on the coast, I work from home, and I live quite comfortably. I am not a one percenter, but I am a ten percenter. I did have to work hard to get through my degree, but the primary factor in my success was not hard work, but simply having the good fortune to be born to a wealthy family who could fund my way through post-secondary and ensure I was never left wanting for anything.

I am a beneficiary of a flawed system, but I at least have the good graces to recognize it.
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Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

It's now called the Canadian dream.
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OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.
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darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

Really unimpressive background if you're intending to brag about yourself.

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

Really unimpressive background if you're intending to brag about yourself.

Well, I mean, I left out the part about being married to a supermodel and curing cancer, but I kind of wanted to save that for a follow-up post.
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darkknight109 posted...

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

Really unimpressive background if you're intending to brag about yourself.

Well, I mean, I left out the part about being married to a supermodel and curing cancer, but I kind of wanted to save that for a follow-up post.

Don't worry, for whatever reason you already seem to think very highly of yourself, even though your self-described accomplishments are mediocre and pedestrian at best. Quite a lot of telling admissions in that. Good for you. It's important to have high self-esteem.

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

Really unimpressive background if you're intending to brag about yourself.

Well, I mean, I left out the part about being married to a supermodel and curing cancer, but I kind of wanted to save that for a follow-up post.

Don't worry, for whatever reason you already seem to think very highly of yourself, even though your self-described accomplishments are mediocre and pedestrian at best. Quite a lot of telling admissions in that. Good for you. It's important to have high self-esteem.

Eh.

If you want my serious response, Troll was the one who brought personal life into it (along with a number of staggeringly wrong assumptions in his later posts), so I felt that since the topic had been broached I should respond in kind. You can try and armchair psychoanalyze my life and what I feel and how I think about myself, but the simple truth is I gave exactly as many details as I felt I needed to to make my point. If you really want me to give an annotated list of my accomplishments in life, including ones I'm actually proud of... I guess I could do that, but I'm not in the habit of putting those sorts of things online.
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darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

I know I am. Sadly, that's what we call an anecdote and does in no way validate the point you're trying to prove. All it serves to do is illustrate that you get high on your own farts and that satisfies you enough to feel you should dictate what everyone else does with their wealth or lack thereof

if you're born into it or lucky
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OhhhJa posted...

darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

I know I am. Sadly, that's what we call an anecdote and does in no way validate the point you're trying to prove. All it serves to do is illustrate that you get high on your own farts and that satisfies you enough to feel you should dictate what everyone else does with their wealth or lack thereof

The only point I was trying to refute with that anecdote was Troll's erroneous assumption that my points were being made out of some perceived jealousy felt towards the wealthy.

Hell, I was the one who earlier brought up that anecdotes about his own life (which you seem oddly content to overlook), as well as Zeus's about Oprah, mean absolutely nothing in this debate. If you want to see my point bolstered by actual numbers, here's a few:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/04/21/science.aan3264.full
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_economic_mobility_sawhill_ch3.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Intergenerational_mobility_graph-1.jpg
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240/
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darkknight109 posted...

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

Really unimpressive background if you're intending to brag about yourself.

Well, I mean, I left out the part about being married to a supermodel and curing cancer, but I kind of wanted to save that for a follow-up post.

Don't worry, for whatever reason you already seem to think very highly of yourself, even though your self-described accomplishments are mediocre and pedestrian at best. Quite a lot of telling admissions in that. Good for you. It's important to have high self-esteem.

Eh.

If you want my serious response, Troll was the one who brought personal life into it (along with a number of staggeringly wrong assumptions in his later posts), so I felt that since the topic had been broached I should respond in kind. You can try and armchair psychoanalyze my life and what I feel and how I think about myself, but the simple truth is I gave exactly as many details as I felt I needed to to make my point. If you really want me to give an annotated list of my accomplishments in life, including ones I'm actually proud of... I guess I could do that, but I'm not in the habit of putting those sorts of things online.

And what point was that? That someone who isn't even American can condescendingly lecture other people about their personal experiences moving up the economic ladder in the country and accuse them of engaging in logical fallacies while simultaneously pulling off confirmation bias by relying on his own inapplicable foreign personal anecdote, which fails to prove anything they said was wrong or that social and economic mobility are lacking?

So in other words your point was to look like a huge presumptuous hypocrite that claims he was given every advantage and access to wealth in life but still hasn't really achieved anything all that special? All you've shown is that you have likely moved horizontally within the top 10 percent of income for your country, which assuming is Canada, wouldn't be close to the top 10 percent in the U.S. Way to go you high rolling big shot.

And don't worry about listing your "accomplishments." I'm confident you listed all of the ones you thought meaningful enough to mention, including where you ranked in your high school class many years ago.

Good grief.

/ drops mic

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

reruns_revenge posted...

darkknight109 posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Darkknight is one of those users that should probably be tagged as "look... I wanted to fake modesty for a while but now i need to brag in depth about my entire life story and act like it's to prove some kind of moral point that wealth distribution is a must."

Give me a break. You're transparent as fuck

Pretty sure that's too long for a tag. Otherwise you're bang-on, though.

Really unimpressive background if you're intending to brag about yourself.

Well, I mean, I left out the part about being married to a supermodel and curing cancer, but I kind of wanted to save that for a follow-up post.

Don't worry, for whatever reason you already seem to think very highly of yourself, even though your self-described accomplishments are mediocre and pedestrian at best. Quite a lot of telling admissions in that. Good for you. It's important to have high self-esteem.

Eh.

If you want my serious response, Troll was the one who brought personal life into it (along with a number of staggeringly wrong assumptions in his later posts), so I felt that since the topic had been broached I should respond in kind. You can try and armchair psychoanalyze my life and what I feel and how I think about myself, but the simple truth is I gave exactly as many details as I felt I needed to to make my point. If you really want me to give an annotated list of my accomplishments in life, including ones I'm actually proud of... I guess I could do that, but I'm not in the habit of putting those sorts of things online.

And what point was that? That someone who isn't even American can condescendingly lecture other people about their personal experiences moving up the economic ladder in the country and accuse them of engaging in logical fallacies while simultaneously pulling off confirmation bias by relying on his own inapplicable foreign personal anecdote, which fails to prove anything they said was wrong or that social and economic mobility are lacking?

So in other words your point was to look like a huge presumptuous hypocrite that claims he was given every advantage and access to wealth in life but still hasn't really achieved anything all that special? All you've shown is that you have likely moved horizontally within the top 10 percent of income for your country, which assuming is Canada, wouldn't be close to the top 10 percent in the U.S. Way to go you high rolling big shot.

And don't worry about listing your "accomplishments." I'm confident you listed all of the ones you thought meaningful enough to mention, including where you ranked in your high school class many years ago.

Good grief.

/ drops mic

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
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I was planning on coming back here and shitting all over whatever reply DK managed to spew, but yall saved me the trouble.
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Troll_Police_ posted...

I was planning on coming back here and shitting all over whatever reply DK managed to spew, but yall saved me the trouble.

All I did was post the truth.

If that upsets you, then you're getting mad at facts. Not much I can do about that.
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