[cnn] obama / gingrich / romney tax returns

[ayz]

Yes and a big reason he's a smart successful hard working businessman is because of his privileged upbringing.

Yeah yeah "everyone has the opportunity" but people who aren't part of the lucky sperm club have to work about 100x harder to make it a reality.

no it's because of his *good* upbringing

those who are successful tend to have a better idea of what it takes to be successful and instill those values on their kids

or those who are simply hard-working do the same

and their kids are better off for it.

i mean at this point it's like if someone started his career and had a really good mentor, versus someone who got stuck under a shitbag manager

you can attribute it to circumstance, but ultimately it boils down to your own ability. for each mitt romney there are also millions of rich kids who are just dumb fuckups. trump being the most high-profile (and still richest) example.

 

[Goshin]

i wonder if he was accepted into an ivy league school that his parents could afford
or if he went to an exclusive prep school growing up
or what his frat was
or the business contacts his father/peers/peers families knew that helped him get in with a top consulting firm after business school

ayz, any ideas since i dont feel like researching?

 

[amRam]

I'm just saying that the odds heavily favour those who had a privileged upbringing. You can't just discount it as if it didn't make a lick of difference. It matters. A lot.

 

[ayz]

i wonder if he was accepted into an ivy league school that his parents could afford
or if he went to an exclusive prep school growing up
or what his frat was
or the business contacts his father/peers/peers families knew that helped him get in with a top consulting firm after business school

ayz, any ideas since i dont feel like researching?

most ivy league schools meet 100% of need-based financial aid. so if you get in and are too poor to afford to go, the school helps you out

the vast majority of people admitted to ivy league schools aren't from prep schools

i was in a frat, it doesn't help much except for drinking for 3 years

people get into top consulting firms after college and business school without "connections". it's called grades, resume, and interview prep.

any more lame ass excuses?

and this is speaking from experience, as an asian kid with poor parents who came to the US with 200 bucks in their pocket, and couldn't afford a house until i was in high school, who went through the georgia and florida public school system, who got a scholarship to help with college, took out loans for the rest, got a good job, went to a top MBA program, and is now going back to a top consulting firm post-MBA

blame "birth privilege" all you want but Mitt Romney worked his way to where he is today. People just whine and bitch because they aren't as hard working or capable as he is and so they want to blame something like birthright instead of their own inability

so yeah i have no sympathy for people who say "yeah he only accomplished that because he was a little rich kid", as an excuse for themselves not being as accomplished or hard working and feeling insecure and jealous about it. lame fucks.

 

[ayz]

I'm just saying that the odds heavily favour those who had a privileged upbringing. You can't just discount it as if it didn't make a lick of difference. It matters. A lot.

the odds favour it but they still earned and worked their own way

bill gates had a good upbringing and his parents were well-off, but nobody gets on his shit because he's not running for office

my perspective of this is a kid who grew up lower-middle-class and still managed to get a lot of opportunities because my parents stressed education and work ethic, and so i have a certain motivation/drive.

on the flip side you have kids whose parents were doing ok, proudly drove around their camaros in high school, fucked around, went to community college, and now work in IT or as a bank teller for some local bank or credit union and bitch about being the 99%

i'm not saying the playing field is level, but the bottom line is mitt romney worked and earned his way to where he is today and built up his wealth. people who attribute that to privilege are just looking for a lame excuse.

 

[Synth]

Bush went to an ivy league school, your argument is false

 

[Kizzak]

Got very side-tracked yesterday, so here's my response that I typed up last night for the most part:

Highest-income metropolitan statistical areas in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

assuming two earners in the house hold, you have to get to around the 100 in terms of top metro areas before the median per person gets to the median you posted for the entire country.

As it happens, 38 of the 40 of those metro areas were on the top 40 by population.

In fact, only about 15% of the total population in that top 100 metro area list is held in those extra 62 metro areas, 8.6% if we include the two missing metro areas.

I also tend to dismiss household-level data because the definition of a household is pretty shit in my opinion*. Only around 49% of households are considered 'married households', with 34% being considered 'non-family' households. I'm exactly any better off based on the amount of money my room-mate makes, neither is a co-worker who happens to have three other room-mates (including a couple) in the house the four of them rent.

I also notice that there is no actual data source cited for that graph, so I went back to the census (where I pulled the actual data I was citing) and pulled some other interesting data (because it seems the data they were citing was from the 2000 census, which puts it just *slightly* out of date)

Case in point for the incorrect data: Atlanta, GA is list as 4.1 million people in that dataset but as of 2010, Atlanta, GA has 5.2 million people in the metro area.

Interesting data:

205 million working age adults live in metro areas, of those 66% make under 27.5k a year
78 million working age adults live in the principal cities for metro areas. Of those, 70% make under 27.5k a year.

43 million of those working age adults live in the top 40 cities in the country. 24 million live in the top 10 cities in the country.


*

A household includes all the persons who occupy a housing unit. A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a mobile home, a group of rooms, or a single room that is occupied (or if vacant, is intended for occupancy) as separate living quarters. Separate living quarters are those in which the occupants live and eat separately from any other persons in the building and which have direct access from the outside of the building or through a common hall. The occupants may be a single family, one person living alone, two or more families living together, or any other group of related or unrelated persons who share living arrangements.

 

[-§trife-]

most ivy league schools meet 100% of need-based financial aid. so if you get in and are too poor to afford to go, the school helps you out

the vast majority of people admitted to ivy league schools aren't from prep schools

i was in a frat, it doesn't help much except for drinking for 3 years

people get into top consulting firms after college and business school without "connections". it's called grades, resume, and interview prep.

any more lame ass excuses?

and this is speaking from experience, as an asian kid with poor parents who came to the US with 200 bucks in their pocket, and couldn't afford a house until i was in high school, who went through the georgia and florida public school system, who got a scholarship to help with college, took out loans for the rest, got a good job, went to a top MBA program, and is now going back to a top consulting firm post-MBA

blame "birth privilege" all you want but Mitt Romney worked his way to where he is today. People just whine and bitch because they aren't as hard working or capable as he is and so they want to blame something like birthright instead of their own inability

so yeah i have no sympathy for people who say "yeah he only accomplished that because he was a little rich kid", as an excuse for themselves not being as accomplished or hard working and feeling insecure and jealous about it. lame fucks.

is it ok for me to hate romney because his policy positions are dreadful