It’s easier to be happy if food and shelter and health care are taken care of then if you are struggling mightily and going without on a daily basis. This is not to say that you have no problems if you are privileged. Depression hits us all. But it’s better to be well off and depressed than it is to be in poverty and depressed.
I would certainly rather be privileged. It is a huge advantage. It’s like running a race. The further ahead you start, the faster you get ahead. That’s why the rich keep getting richer much faster than the poor do. That’s why a poor hospital will never catch up with a good hospital. Even if the poor hospital adopts all the best practices, the good hospital will already be much further ahead.
There are very few people who jump between the different class levels. People are more likely to sink down than to move up. (I think I’m remembering these things correctly, although the latter doesn’t quite make sense). So, despite the myth of upward mobility in the United States, it isn’t true for the vast majority. The only way people make the jump, almost universally, is with a very good education—look at most of the great new internet and computer technologies: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. Sometimes the education was not so formal (Jobs attended Reed for a semester and then audited classes, but also went to India and on other informal adventures that taught him a lot), but all were highly educated and from families that valued education.
Harvard, Stanford, Penn (Warren Buffet)... it’s interesting which universities that people who later became rich went to. Yale is probably a premier politician school. Hmmm. I’m going to have to see what my daughter wants to do (then my son, but that’s 4 years after). It seems that the education is the same, but the connections are so much more important.
So education and connections can get you from one class to the next one. It’s not just education, but who you know, and going to the right school is the best way of assuring that who you know are going to become important people in business. Although I personally know of people from Harvard who are just ordinary people, so it’s no guarantee. I also know of people who went to lesser known schools and who have become very successful in business or other arenas. I digress.
I think I’m saying that privilege can, to some extend, be bought. If you buy education. Many immigrants know this. However many, mired in poverty, either don’t know this or don’t believe it will make a difference or just can’t find a way to make it happen.
I don’t think anyone would honestly choose to be disadvantaged. I think people of privilege can choose to live a very simple life. But that’s a lot different from being poor. The poor really have no choice, and far too often, no idea how to better their situation. That’s why the best thing our society can do is to find ways to help them get educated.
And it is to the advantage of all of us that the poor get an education. The more people contribute to the wellbeing of us all, the better off are those doing better. The more money people have, the more they buy, and those who sell will do better. It is to the advantage of the rich to have the poor get richer, and so the rich should invest in the poor. It will always benefit the rich more than the poor, but it is better than a zero-sum game.
I grew up with the advantage of a good education. Like Jobs, I started my independent life couch surfing. I made ends meet by living with other people and combining our incomes so we could survive much better than we would have alone. I got a job that paid little, but it gave me a car, which was huge. Later I went back to grad school and was able to triple my income compared to what I made before grad school.
When I married, I had a negative net worth. What we owed was more than what we had. But within a decade, that situation had turned around, and by saving every dollar we could, we were able to increase our net worth from nothing to something that allows my wife to not work at a job she hated. We still have two children to put through college.
I went from less than nothing to being in the top 5%, and I’m pretty proud of that. I didn’t do it on my own—on my own I might be in the top 40% if I was lucky. My wife was the big earner. So I tell people with bit student loans that it is not something to worry about. They will be much farther than they every expected in two decades, if they work hard and save. Unfortunately, not a lot of people save as much as they could.
I started from nothing financially, but I did not start from nothing in terms of preparation. That was (is) my greatest form of privilege. My parents made damn sure I had as good an education as I could get. I didn’t get into a Harvard or a Stanford or Princeton—the schools I was shooting for. I only got into my safe school (which will remain nameless) and that was perfectly fine. Not terribly prestigious. A lot of people have never heard of it, but it was good enough. I also got a graduate degree—a Masters. As I said, that added significantly to my income. If I had a PhD or a Law or Medical or Business degree, I’d be doing even better, financially. But Masters was enough (even if I did feel ashamed that was as far as I went).
That’s privilege, even if it isn’t money to start off with. It’s potential. There’s a lot of discussion about whether education is worth the cost. Obviously, I think it is, and I urge everyone to get as much as they can—the hell with the cost. Decent education, that is. Not internet or for-profit education. I don’t trust that one bit. But go to as good a school as you can and get as much education as you can, and you will most likely be able to become one of the upper 50%, or better. And, you will be happier.
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