Oh really? Let's see. My father's side of the family came over from Italy speaking no English and with little money. My mother's side came from east Carolina tobacco fields, outhouses, hand water pump, shooting wild turkeys for dinner, etc. No exactly the Rockefellers on either side of the family. In fact, dirt poor. Dad went to college on the GI Bill after WWII, graduating with a electrical engineering degree from Syracuse. His two sons each graduated from the University of Maryland, both working their way through school. Dad's four grandchildren have a total of 3 undergraduate degrees, 1 technical degree, and 2 graduate degrees. Don't even start with the faux white privileged rant. My farther's deep dark Italian skin caused him to be mistaken for a variety of dark skinned races, never Caucasian. And yes, we did pull ourselves up by our bootstraps even when we couldn't afford the boots. Impossible? Only to journalism majors......
16
Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps can also be taken to mean getting up in the morning, pulling on your boots and going to work.
One of my good buddies grew up in public housing. He got a good job, bought a little property and has over a million dollars in the bank.
My first girlfriend grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Both her brother and her father died as a direct result of alcoholism. She is now worth an embarrassing amount of money.
One of the kids I was forced to babysit started a software company with her husband, which was bought by Microsoft. Then they started another. They have crazy amounts of money.
The land rush? That ended 120 years ago. (You can still homestead land in some states - it ain't easy.)
Japanese-Americans started over with nothing in 1945, and faced overwhelming discrimination. They're doing fine today.
I've taught the children of refugees, most of them do quite well in an amazingly short period of time.
I'm a first generation US citizen. First generation to go to college. Raised by a single mom, with no support from my father or from the state. I'm doing fine.
Pull your boots on, one at a time. Then get busy. Try it, it still works!
111
@Michael Haddon You're right that it's still possible to rise from nothing: My dad came as a penniless refugee. But the statistics show that it's harder now: Upward mobility has diminished. More importantly, those who rise may lack financial capital, but they usually have human capital. My dad had no money but he had a university education and spoke seven languages. The big problem is for kids who are born in toxic homes with no books, and then attend failed schools, with no role models in sight? How are they supposed to lift themselves up? There are programs that help, like home visitation, but the present approach of preaching doesn't work.
612
@Michael Haddon
These examples are the exception rather than the rule. The odds of rising from the lowest 20% to the highest 20% is 7%. Most people would bet against such odds.
144
@Nicholas Kristof Mr. Kristof, a friend of mine is a retired social worker whose job was to go to the homes of people who had been accused of child neglect and teach them to be better parents. The parents were often alcoholics, drug addicts, or the father or mother was incarcerated. She had to cover seven counties by herself. Seven!
I asked her why the people in my town are the way they are. Her answer? There's a huge meth problem there. Little children learn what they live. If they see nothing but drugs and alcohol, they'll think that's normal life.
142
The most pernicious thing, to my mind, with the notion of "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" is that it implies that those who don't deserve the poverty of failing to do so. Hard work and social mobility are good things, and are in no way diminished by setting a minimum standard for comfort and prosperity. It's disheartening to more to listen to the rhetoric as a means of justifying and perpetuating needless poverty.
Irrespective of whether poverty makes better workers, or noir entrepreneurial people, the fact that rich societies are satisfied in letting people lube lives of desperation and suffering is a tragedy in my view. In countries that can afford to eliminate poverty and improve the lives of many, why don't we?
13
This topic is basic to behavioral science. Beyond the equipment you are born with, learning history (what one has experienced, or the history of the consequences one has experienced), current and past contextual variables, and the response effort required to do a 'thing' are the factors that determine how one behaves. Nicholas is absolutely correct here. One cannot lift oneself up by one's bootstraps without a very long lever with a proximal fulcrum (and someone(s) helping out by leaning on the lever).
'Liberals' are sometimes criticized for not sufficiently appreciating the 'downside' of consequences (e.g. creation of dependency). Of much greater concern is conservatives' failure to understand the impact of context.
13
This article is contradicted by the countless immigrant success stories that are everywhere, including my own family's. My parents and I immigrated here (legally) when I was a toddler with no money, little education, no English, and they went about making their way. 6-7 years later they bought a home and raised me and my siblings (born after) All of us went on to get degrees and all of us are doing ok. Nothing unique about us. Many of my parents' contemporaries also immigrated at the same time and they kept in touch. Pretty much all have similar stories. Some became quite wealthy, but pretty much all of them (I am talking about a couple of hundred families), became homeowners and sent their kids on the get educated and make their own way. Many of them did this with relatively low paying or blue collar jobs. How did they do it? You can probably guess. Hard work, frugality, delayed gratification, emphasis on education and taking responsibility for their actions. I never went on a vacation or to ball game when I was a kid. My dad worked Sundays You will find similar stories in many immigrant communities. Like I say this is not unique.
12
@Robert : Actually, immigrants are self-selected. They're the people who have the courage to uproot themselves, go through the procedures for legal immigration, and move into an unknown world for the express purpose of bettering their circumstances.
For every immigrant who came to America and achieved upward mobility, there are thousands who stayed in the Old Country. If you took one of those families who stayed behind and just dropped them off in the U.S. against their will, would they succeed? My guess would be "no."
13
Growing up and living on the near east side of Detroit provided an invaluable insight into upward mobility and why things are like they are in many urban areas. My high school was about 55% African-American. After serving a tour in Vietnam with the Army I utilized the GI Bill to pay for my undergrad at a public university in Detroit during the 1970s.There were many African-American and Latinos that I had the privilege of serving with who also qualified for the same benefits. Unfortunately by the 1980s our neighborhood had turned into essentially a war zone. This was due to the actions of a portion of its residents. We finally moved out on the late 1980s. The last of the driving forces was having our phone lines cut one evening. I had to chase away the would be perps, fortunately I possessed a firearm. As we moved out, one could almost hear liberals, from safe environs, shouting "Look! White flight. That's the cause of problems," My ill-gotten privileged inter-generational real estate inheritance consists of an empty lot assessed at $102. My family has moved from the bottom 20% of the economic ladder to the top 10%. Living in that neighborhood certainly woke my family, friends and neighbors. When I read OP-Ed pieces by Kristoff all I can do is shake my head. And on and on it goes, the liberal perpetual motion guilt machine. And there's no dog whistle to it.
9
A balanced perspective is vital. I'm convinced people's outcomes result from their choices and their character. Working in a community college has taught me that individuals are responsible for their success or failure. I've seen hundreds of students who struggle with daunting circumstances achieve not just success but distinction by virtue of initiative, self-discipline and determination: immigrants and refugees whose work ethic shames that of their native-born peers; female students who escaped abusive relationships, but who graduated with honors; kids with developmental disabilities who, by sheer will, attained a degree. What these people achieved, they achieved through effort and perseverance. And yet, I and my colleagues have mentored them, they've had strong family support, in many cases, and they have free counseling and tutoring, not to mention Pell Grants. Success is contextual. They DID build that, President Obama! But they had help, too, which doesn't diminish them or their accomplishments. But, they are exceptional. Many more students cheat or ask for special treatment or complain to college officials when they get a bad grade. In public policy, we should encourage self-reliance, and ingrain the respect for work and effort that make it possible. But that doesn't mean gutting social programs. It may mean means-testing, time limits or stricter criteria, but many on the right seemingly want there to be NO safety net--an idea that is both ugly and self-defeating.
8
Great and well said article. You continue to be a voice of calm and reason, as well as an informative one on these issues.
Would that some of these folks would listen to the thoughtful Mr. Stimac. That was my experience as well - neither of my parents had high school degrees and yet they encouraged all nine of us to be our best selves through their love and support. And we all became happy, successful and well adjusted adults.
7
Indeed, physics predicts that pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps does not happen. But the idea that anyone can make a living for themselves by themselves in any community does not happen, either. Markets are social phenomenon as are producing goods and services for sale. The communities in which people live are created and supported by those who live in them, everyone. The profits from investing capital are returns on productivity from selling products and services to other people. While those who lent the capital may collect and retain most of the returns, they often had next to nothing to do with producing anything, but claim that they made it all happen so they are entitled to all of the money earned. But the people of the communities where businesses operate as well as the laborers who produce for the businesses are no less responsible for the result, without them the business owners would have nothing. So in fact, society has a claim on the wealth produced in them as do those who labored to create that wealth. Calling providing all with a fair share socialism or communism is misrepresentation, indeed it's just an attempt to fool others into allowing the businesses to take what they may with no consequences.
5
I'm a fortunate retired person with a pension and retiree health benefits that augment Medicare. I'm where I am because I paid a pittance to put myself through undergraduate and then, graduate school as a California resident in the 60s and 70s. And I had the good fortune to be hired full-time by a university where all faculty, staff, and professional staff are represented by unions. I was very lucky; none of this is my doing.
19
@Jean
..........and sadly, much of what you mention does not exist for younger people.
8
This reminds me of the words of an African American football coach at a state-supported HBCU who said that when he requested budgetary increases, his situation was often compared to that of his black predecessors under much worse conditions. White coaches at white state-supported colleges--with worse winning records, but larger budgets--weren't never mentioned.
It seemed that the implication in comparing him with the black coaches who came before him was: "They did so much with so little, you should be able to do everything with nothing!"
9
Kristof's column is the new woke version of Obama's "You didn;t build that!" ... which was taken to mean that no private or individual success is possible in America without the government's help.
It was, of course, a truism. Of course we need roads to transport the goods. Yet sitting on a chair (or a cushy Congress seat gifted by an activist PAC) and complaining does not get the work done. What has Rep AOC actually done for her constituents beyond scaring off Amazon?
5
@Kai
Just google her voting record in Congress, and you'll know what she does.
Just "sitting on a chair" in front of you screen "and complaining" doesn't get any work done indeed ... ;-)
9
@Kai
I suggest you stop watching Fox. The House has passed hundreds of bills since 2018, most of which AOC voted for. As for what she's done for her constituents, you'll need to ask them. You certainly don't know one way or another.
See https://www.vox.com/2019/11/29/20977735/how-many-bills-passed-house-democrats-trump
4
The bootstrap narrative, for those who adhere to it, is based on a moral value, called "har work".
It means that ONLY those who deliberately hurt themselves in one way or the other, deserve to survive and thrive. Those who refuse to do so are rejected as "parasites", who want to survive thanks to OTHERS hurting themselves, which is obviously immoral.
The question is, however: why would we as a society deliberately value working in such a way that it hurts, when we're the wealthiest country on earth, and when a much more fulfilling and beneficial (both for the individual, and society as a whole) is entirely within our reach too?
The answer couldn't be more clear:we don't.
Politicians who spread the bootstraps narrative systematically pass bills that shift wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest financial elites. They vitally need ordinary citizens to imagine that "real" work necessarily makes you suffer, in order to get those citizens to vote for them.
At the same time, making work "hard" for your employees, as an employer, aso allows you to increase your own salary.
THAT is why the ruling class wants people to believe in the bootstraps myth. Because the day they don't anymore, they will ask for DECENT jobs and decent labor laws. Imagining that you're "morally responsible" when you "work hard" increases your self-esteem ... all while reducing your paycheck and quality of life - and that is exactly what GOP politicians want you to do.
10
Wait a second--Paul Bunyan could do it!!
Three cheers for the column. As I am an immigrant who did not go to high school in the US I never understood why that bootstrap saying gets its meaning because I never understand its origin and can never see how it can physically be done. So it is a big and interesting lesson to me.
On the other hand I think you made a tactical error when you said: "In short, even when we were a much poorer nation, we were able to afford huge national investments to help disadvantaged (white) Americans, because they were a priority." I think you could have phrased it a bit better.
The Republican life guard will now say: you see even Kristoff said we could pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Twisting other peoples' words is their specialty, you know.
1
Good job addressing the self-reliance myths that refuse to die.
Nowhere is the "I made it, others could too" attitude more destructive than in the national discussion about health care/coverage. The idea that providing help here removes an incentive to work is a fallacy that doesn't even consider that illness is an even bigger demotivator.
There's no budget-friendly substitute for real healthcare, including spot emergency room visits, but that hasn't stopped the preaching.
One reason we're still debating it: each group that's covered (employees, seniors, union members, etc.) thinks it deserves its coverage but the others do not.
10
ain't easy but can be done. education is the key....and hard work. i.e., start working after school at 15 and one-half and continue working [OMG even full-time] thru undergraduate, then professional school. don't see that old school work ethic as much these days. everyone either wants it fast or handed to them. you saw that on the stage yesterday -- you can have a democratic socialist pie to "share" (hand out) unless SOMEONE makes it. Bloomberg made his and didn't do it via hedge funds either. utmost respect. Bernie never made a payroll so far as I know, nor did Warren.
2
@Mark
Actually, Bernie started a film company in his early days in Vermont, as well as working as a carpenter (!).
3
@Mark
Your assumption that social democracy means lots of people just get handouts is a product of conservative talking points. This myth has been created so that folks like yourself are convinced that nothing can ever change.
And that those who wish for change are "crazy nuts".
When one must invent a straw man to argue with, one must question the strength of their positions.
All other first world nations have more elements of social democracy than the US. Most notably in the form of national healthcare systems. They appear to function just fine.
4
I don’t know many republicans (on purpose) but the common thinking that runs through the few I am forced to talk to is that somebody (one of “them”) is going to get something they haven’t earned. The government is using their tax money to pay for programs that do nothing but reward societies’ deadbeats. Circumstances? They don’t need no stinkin’ circumstances...
7
Excellent piece. But don't forget women being excluded from past programs, affecting their level of wealth, as well.
7
I pulled myself up by my bootstraps against impossible odds, but it was only because my extremely abusive parents were very well educated, and also kept a large library, and because I loved to study. So, by the time I was 10, I had read Mencken, Fowler, Henry Commager Steele, William L. Schirer, Shakespeare, and more. Plus, I had the New York Public Library, and museums, too. Most abused people don’t have the advantages I had; without those advantages I would be much worse off today.
5
This thoughtful and well-written opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof regarding 'pulling yourself up by bootstraps' is a good example of the reason I subscribe to the NYT's. The comments on this article are heartwarming, letting me know that there are other Americans that can see, feel and articulate a degree of empathy for others. As I sit here in my mid 50's reading the NYT's with a cat on my lap and drinking a cup of tea, I remember all the people, parents, friends, family members, teachers and employees that made my life of successes possible. I now take care of homeless pets, fund wildlife preservation and do various volunteer work to benefit and mentor others in efforts to pay it forward. No one can be entirely successful without at least someone in their life that believes in them and for most, (myself included) it takes a team. Thanks again Nicholas Kristof for such a thoughtful piece and thank you to all whom have responded with thoughtfulness toward the plight of others and the less fortunate. As the African Proverb states, 'it takes a village to raise a child'.
12
Thank you, Mr. Kristol. Asking that Mr. Bloomberg begin clearly stating his economic plans for minorities and the poor. Democrats, minorities, and moderate Republicans need to hear what he will do. His Administration promises long overdue programs to directly produce training and jobs programs and much more. Bloomberg is not perfect and no debater but, he can beat Trump and then, as President, strategically, effectively and aggressively attack many of our problems. He's a problem-solver - that's what we need and that's what he is - on both counts. No other Democrat candidate brings us both. Stop looking for romance and perfection. We need to first oust Trump then, get busy cleaning our house. Stay focused on the goal.
2
I submit that the Republicans know that "pulling oneself up by your own bootstraps" is malarkey but it provides them with cover as they steal from the poor to feather their own offshore bank accounts.
14
@Jackson
Trump and McConnell - many times.
They passed a non paid for massive tax cutting bill for the wealthiest, and then use the fact that it means doubling the deficit (after Obama had cut G.W. Bush's structural and record $1.4 trillion deficit) in order to justify deliberately making healthcare and food more expensive for ordinary citizens - even though those citizens continue to work as hard as before.
If this isn't "stealing", then what is it?
13
@Jackson
The trump-Republican 2117 Tax Cut .
3
Years ago when Mr. Obama was being criticized for his "you did not build it" remark I reflected on how many helping hands I had received during my education and the building of my practice. From the public schools I attended, to the University which provided a scholarship for me to play in their orchestra, to dental school in Memphis (where our tuition covered 25% or less of our education cost. The balance was from federal and state funds: ie. taxpayers). Then my post-doc training at a VA hospital that was paid for by federal taxpayer funds as well.
And then I benefited from a fair and honest banking system, the rule of law and IRS rules developed to encourage young people in business.
Yes, I have worked hard for thirty seven years and have every right to call this practice "mine".
But I did not build it alone.
And I did not pull myself up by my bootstraps.
15
For me, the problem with the entire debate is captured in the headline- pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is not "impossible." Any honest person, looking around at his or her own social millieu, knows people who have escaped poverty in large part through their own efforts. This obvious point does not, however make automatically true the counter argument- that there are no real structural impediments to social advancement that make emergence from an economically impoverished background exceedingly challenging compared to more fortunately positioned individuals. I've seen these inequalities in action, having taught public schools in both "inner cities" and in the affluent suburbs.
My professional, personal and intellectual experience teaches me that the solution to inequalities of every kind here in the United States requires a set of policies that even the playing field, by providing everyone with the opportunity to develop human capital in themselves and their children to compete in the world and thrive. In my mind, that means primarily increasing educational investment and opportunities. But such policies can only lead the horse to water, and, again based on my personal, professional and intellectual experience, many will refuse to drink. Why is it unfair to make these individuals responsible for their own outcomes?
3
You have no idea why these children aren’t motivated to study and make good grades. The fact that some students are motivated doesn’t mean that all of them should be or even can.
2
Kristof described Trump as having been "earning $200,000 a year at age three."
The word earning should always be in quotes when income from investments is described.
Investors who play the stock market like Las Vegas gamblers do not "earn" money. They are doing no more gainful work than the three-year-old Trump.
1%ers' false belief that they actually earn their lucre underlies their preposterous demand for Special Tax Breaks, and their notion that their "work" is far more important than ours, which they think justifies America's tiny minimum wage and vast homeless population.
10
For every individual story of someone who was disadvantaged but somehow still "made it" there are millions of people who didn't and will never have a "how I got over" story of their own to tell. Yes, it's easy to say that because I survived an abusive childhood, struggled to put myself through school, and clawed my way up out of that trauma in the face of (ongoing BTW) racism from being black and sexism from being female everyone else should have the same grit and determination and slog it out the same way I did. Or, I can have compassion and empathy for all the people who are struggling to find their way out of their situations, and work to make the pathway out a little easier for them to walk. If you've been blessed, be a blessing.
15
Americans (and especially Republicans) love the “self-made” narrative — they never see or want to acknowledge the many large and small unearned advantages and opportunities that the “self-made” had along the way, from racial and gender privilege to birth circumstances to the temperament of your parents/caregivers growing up to happening to benefit from the right people/programs/policies (and indeed the government) at just the right time. And then, as some commented on here, there’s the privilege of wanting to decide which charities, causes and people are worthy of your charitable millions, thus perpetuating both privilege and the arbitrary nature of good fortune, i.e. getting to decide who will be the next “self-made” success who then goes on to vote Republican.
7
Remember the movie "Trading Places"? I think that speaks to how difficult it is to get ahead. Yes, it's a spoof, but really, it addresses real life.
2
Charles Blow comes to mind as one that pulled himself up by his bootstaps. After reading his autobiography it appears his mother was the driving force behind Charles and she valued a good education.
2
It's a metaphor, which means it should not be taken literally.
3
@Steve
If the "metaphor" weren't the bedrock foundation of American conservatism, I would agree.
4
Items like food stamps help people take care of themselves, and help them succeed.
I know a family where the step father started sexually abusing one of the daughters very young. Because of this, the mother moved out, took the rest of the kids with her, and went on public assistance for several years.
- Had if not been for food stamps and other welfare, her mother would not have been able to afford to leave the abusive stepfather.
- The daughter grew up, got an education, and became successful.
- How successful do you think she would be if she had been forced to cohabitate with her molester for her entire childhood and teenage years? And what about the other daughters?
12
@John C How about, "Give a man a loaf of bread and you feed him for a day. Give him an education and you feed him for a lifetime."? (I know the original; just take this one as a variation on the theme.)
@Glenn Thomas "Give a man a loaf of bread and you feed him for a day. Give him an education and you feed him for a lifetime."
- This saying only works if ALSO feed the man today while educating him. Otherwise, he will always forsake education to prevent starvation.
6
@Glenn Thomas
Makes sense. If one does not need to eat on a daily basis. Perhaps feeding that family while the mother sought a job, or education? But we don't know her whole story.
One of the reasons single mothers need such help is because they can't work with a number of young children to raise. Since child care is so expensive.
4
This is a deliberate misunderstanding of the narrative of lifting oneself by one’s bootstraps. The narrative, hackneyed as it is, does not assume that anybody can become a billionaire. What it assumes is that people should strive AS IF they could become billionaires purely by personal effort. Not everybody who tries hard will succeed. But if you don’t try hard, you will never succeed. If your goal is to live on the dole, as the British say, you will never be anything but a parasite. If your goal is to educate yourself, start a business, become a creator and you encounter a temporary setback, then it is only fair that society should lend a helping hand.
6
@Mor
The problem is that the narrative is systematically used to justify bills that shift the wealth from hard-working ordinary citizens to the wealthiest financial elites.
So no, Kristof did not deliberately misunderstand the narrative. He simply points out how using it in this way is utterly hypocritical and counter-productive.
7
@Mor The meaning you infer from this old adage has nothing to do with the literal meaning of the phrase; that is, I think that you are missing the point.
Boot straps are the loops at the top of each boot that are meant to be used for pulling the boots completely up. It is absolutely, undeniably and unequivocally impossible to pull oneself up by their own boot straps. Someone else would have to do that for you.
2
@Ana Luisa Another article in this issue provides data on the correlation between workforce participation and reduction in poverty. In any case, are you saying that people who do succeed in improving their economic situation, such as my immigrant family, are not working hard? Or are you saying that there is no correlation whatsoever between effort, education, intelligence and success? How exactly does this “stealing” work? This is just empty rhetoric. Every time I hear the binary opposition of “ordinary citizens” and “wealthy elites”, I tune out. I know I am listening to content-empty demagoguery and conspiracy-mongering.
2
I teach at a public school in community where many (not all) have suffered some kind of trauma. It may be the trauma of poverty and racism. It could be the trauma of physical or sexual abuse.
We lack the mental health and support services to serve these students and help them heal, learn and succeed.
It is heartbreaking but we struggle to do the best we can and try
to fight burnout and demoralization.
The struggle is worth it because beauty still exists I need our students and community.
M
7
We need more Mike Stimacs, people with enough generosity of spirit to recognize the need to share, whether via taxes or public programs the remediate the marked disadvantages that so many Americans face. And, even it one does not face the obvious disadvantages of poor parenting or racial bias, if your neighbor needs a helping hand, lend it. Life should not be a zero-sum game. No, that's Trumpworld, a place of winners and losers, not the family of man.
6
A former acquaintance, who happened to be a political conservative, always bragged about how she pulled herself up by her bootstraps and said others could do the same thing. In the very next breath she would say she never could have done it without the help of her family. This always left me scratching my head. Did she really think she’d done it on her own or not? What about all the people who don’t have family who can help? Investment in people is one of the best investments our government can make.
6
When I vote for a bill that increases the minimum wage, I actively improve my own situation - by receiving a higher salary.
Using society as a whole, and the government more precisely, as a tool to improve my own situation isn't contrary to pulling myself up by the bootstraps.
It simply means deciding to use high-quality bootstraps, instead of imagining that somehow the only tools at my disposal are the ones already available in society as it is right now ...
And it's for the exact same reason that the financial elites constantly lobby the government to get yet another pro 1% tax cut or "deregulation" signed into law.
Nil novi sub sole.
4
@Ana Luisa
"Using society ... as a tool to improve my own situation isn't contrary to pulling myself up by the bootstraps."
Not, but blaming others for your laziness and lack of success, refusal to study, refusal to delay your gratification, engaging in antisocial activities, virtue signaling... would be contrary to pulling (the proverbial) yourself up by the bootstraps.
1
@Kai
Ah, but do you believe that the ONLY reason some people are not successful is due to the things you list?
Can you explain hardworking poor people who simply cannot get ahead? Do you account for intelligence, sickness, or disability? For low wages and high costs?
4
Like many essays, this one is partly right.
My parents, grandparents and great grandparents benefited from social programs funded by the government. I think it was my great grandparents who homesteaded in Kansas. My grandfather had a farm on the edge of Bison. When I visited him I would look off for miles into the distance and see wheat fields as far as the eye could see.
The US population was about 4 million in 1790 when the country was born. Now it is about 329 million. The country has filled up. There is no longer a "West" with land that can be divided into homesteads.
If the Fundamental Republican Fallacy is "Global warming is a hoax," the Fundamental Democratic Fallacy is "There are no limits to growth," or "Resource constraints don't matter."
At the end of his article, Kristof argues for a "change of heart." But changing our hearts doesn't help when the resources are gone.
Visit Delhi or Nairobi or Cairo and you see the consequences of too much population growth in the gut-wrenching poverty of the slums.
Global warming is the natural consequence of too much population growth. We now know that temperatures on earth will almost certainly warm up, gradually making many of the equitorial regions of the planet uninhabitable.
We should have heeded the warning of Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" of 1968.
Population of planet earth has more than doubled since then, making our job fighting global warming even harder than before.
3
@Blaise Descartes
FYI: studies show that population growth goes together with a developing economy.
In fully developed economies, such as the US economy, population growth stagnates or is negative.
At the same time, it's the US that has the highest carbon emissions (the main culprit of climate change) per capita in the world.
So instead of asking other countries to stay poor and underdeveloped, we should take the lead and start switching to clean energy, all while helping developing countries to skip our own, dirty industrialization phase (again, the main culprit for the current global warming) and directly adopt clean energy.
And only Democrats propose to do so, and do so as soon as "we the peope"give them control over DC.
3
@Ana Luisa
That was not the point. The population explosion is a major threat to ecosystems, climate, wildlife and social stability across the globe. Every country has the responsibility to - at the minimum - keep its population proportional to the resources it has. Stagnation of population growth is a VERY good thing for the planet.
2
@Blaise Descartes
But your argument completely ignores the fact that US emissions of greenhouse gases per capita puts us at #3,
while India is #20.
Your argument is a thinly veiled attempt to blame the third world, so that we can do nothing. I've seen it before. Its the next step in conservative defense of US inaction, as denial looks sillier by the day.
2
My family and I immigrated to this country when I was 5 years old. Both of my parents went to get their graduate degrees while we lived off 400 dollars a month (illegal wages as they did not have a work visa) as a family of 3 for half a decade. I got great grades in school, and ended up going to a top tier institution for college. My parents went from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. Since then, I've stayed there. By no means can everyone be like my parents, as they are the hardest working and most caring individuals I've met in my life. I have no illusions about bootstraps in this country, I was merely dealt a fortunate hand in the family department. It's a real shame the majority of this country still believes in something so clearly false and to the detriment of our friends and family.
7
The "pull yourself up by the boot straps" myth is only the tip of the iceberg.
The notion that anyone can do anything if they only try hard enough presupposes that, as humans, we are free agents, that we have free will unbound by our circumstances. This is certainly how it feels to us intuitively.
Yet, upon closer examination this intuitive feeling turns out to be nothing but a powerful illusion. Science tells us that our universe is one of physical cause and effect. All events, including our beliefs, thoughts, intentions, and actions or omissions, have antecedent causes - causes over which we have no control. We don't get to choose our parents, when or where we are born, or our brains. Yet, these circumstances, collectively - and completely - determine who we are, how we develop, and what we think, feel, and say.
This view is, of course, known as determinism. It is widely held by scientists, but holds little sway among the rest of us. When science yields counterintuitive, and perhaps unwanted, results, we tend do dimiss them as false, even ridiculous.
Yet, once you realize that humans, like other animals, are just tiny cogs in the machinery of life, of evolution, subject to the dictates of our biological past and the luck of circumstance, much of the emotional turmoil and moral indignation that tend to rule our lives fades away.
Our perceived moral superiority is but a powerful illusion foisted upon us by our genetic makeup.
2
Mr. Kristof,
Thank you very much for your work; I was deeply moved by your anecdote of the man who had a change of heart. One of the things the last four years has done is make hope feel like a distant commodity.
Stories like the one you're telling are the kind of hope I need to see a world with more love & care than hatred. So thank you, and please tell more.
4
This expression is a core part of the GOP mythology/dogma. It's sheer malarkey. The base thinks they are going to get rich just by being in the same party as the billionaires, or some miracle will happen and they are suddenly rich. There is NO chance that will happen.
This is like the old "Acres of Diamonds" sermon back in the 20's or 30's. You'll get your reward in heaven, so keep digging for that coal. Unfortunately the base believes they are all going to get money just by being in the party.
7
@R A Go bucks Sadder yet, rather than seeking real happiness in this life, they spend their time preparing for some dubious, future afterlife and fritter the lifetime standing before them, here and now.
2
@R A Go bucks
As Joe Hill's song went: "They'll be pie in the sky.....
when you die"
The phrase is nothing but words. Those folks who utter it should not give examples of individuals they know who've successfully applied this method, but espouse how they themselves utilize that technique and the heights that it brought them to. Personally I'd rather see a sermon than hear one.
3
"I was privileged to have two parents who valued education"
This is the key and that's not "privilege" it's what we used to call normal until the very government you want me to give more of my hard earned money to decided father's didn't matter.
I pulled my self up with my own hard work and ingenuity from the bottom 20% to the top 5% so please stop this nonsense that it's not possible. Other than my parents I had two things going for me. First, despite the fact that I was bussed into the projects to integrate the schools there, I still got a decent education because there was discipline (principals still had and used paddles), so those of us who were there to learn could. Second, my local public university offered a low cost no frills education. Faculty far outnumbered staff, the dorms and gym were spartan and run down, and we had one student union for everybody.
I didn't become a Republican because I don't see that I had some help and that maybe I should pay some of my success forward. I became a Republican because I've spent my entire adult life watching government exacerbate nearly every issue it's tried to fix. At this point I firmly believe that the 8-10% of my income and countless hours of time that I pay forward in charity to help low income kids have more opportunities than I did as being infinitely more effective than the 30-40% of my income that I'm forced to give the government to waste.
6
Irving Howe wrote a massive book about Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe during the period between the May Laws and the outlawing of Jewish immigration. Importantly, the book describes how there were very few Jewish success stories until the labor laws and housing laws in NYC became somewhat more favorable. From 1882 to about 1905 there were few success stories. The census shows that the vast majority or immigrants never advanced a single step in employment or living conditions. The wave of immigrants that followed were almost all successful. The laws that changed were really quite minor. Poor people can be successful, they just need a bit of a chance.
4
Even in the old Horatio Alger books, the hero does not succeed by hard work and pluck alone. Inevitably he runs into an older influential man who mentors and fosters his advancement. Still true. I have a classmate who was the first black reporter on a daily newspaper? Affirmative action - probably. But I am sure it helped that his roommate's father owned the newspaper.
4
I often wondered about that phrase, now I know, as it seems so does Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. It means trying to do the impossible.
Worth noting that it is important to know and understand one's history.
Thank you!
1
@Monika Yes, it is. It's part of something in the study of linguistics known as, "word pejoration". Another shining example is the expression, "Black Sheep." They are a rare occurrence and once signified something good due to their rarity; only later did it come to signify an outcast.
But to return to AOC. I think she has to fight off the notion that she's affiliated with the "city" mentality and this may have been her way of showing the, "simple, country folk" that, just because something appears home-spun doesn't make it more genuine.
3
And we talk about Horacio Alger as a model for how hard work leads to upward mobility. But if read the books it is really luck that drives the rags to riches narrative
4
@Carol silverman And bad luck also plays a role. Remember the old Mike Tyson quote going around: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."
3
@Carol silverman Very true! I have read a lot of his books, and the poor boy always, through pure luck, finds a rich mentor who helps him. He works hard, but luck gives him that extra edge.
2
The Ben Carson example proves what those who spread the bootstraps narrative claim to deny: if Carson "made it to the top" against all odds, it's precisely because in our society, it is objectively more difficult to get there.
And why is it more difficult? Because institutionalized slavery and racism have systematically given boots to white men while refusing to give them to black men.
It's because the GOP perfectly knows this that they use Carson as an example. But knowing this shows just how unfairly difficult our society treats black men ...
2
Wow, my friend was right I am documented disabled women and have live 300 Percent below the poverty level and I also have mental health issues and can't get the treatment I need to heal to get well. I wrote a song with my partners 13 years ago and the lyrics still ring true (Only worse) for me and so many others at the bottom of the socio-economic stratosphere. It is worse than ever in 2020 like Mr. Krstof says. Our song which was called Hard Sometimes and it's the first line of the son echos Mr. Kristof's words exactly for these times. " It's hard sometimes to keep the faith alive when all you do is strive and never see a dime" " You know it's Hard Sometimes." Like Mr. Kristof says It hard sometimes to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you have no shoes and your feet or beaten up by the pavement got 30 years. Thanks for speaking up for the most vulnerable Mr. Kristof we need a hero like you. G-d bless you! Chaviah Zeltzer Underrepresented Artist and disabled women with no energy for any more boots or any more microaggressions ( straps).
2
And then people wonder why Millenials are for Bernie! Social Democracy is the only answer to inequality and lack of opportunity. Social mobility is now greater in Western Europe and Canada than here.
1
As Bernie Sanders said to Michael Bloomberg in last night's debate, "I'm sure that those great workers of yours had something to do with you making that fortune. Share it."
A better old saying might be, "We all put our pants on one leg at a time."
I read somewhere (probably in these pages that African Americans who make it into the upper middle class are building much less wealth than their white counterparts. Mostly because those black people who make it have more family members coming to them for help than do whites.
We give billions of dollars to already profitable corporations for oil, gas, and coal subsidies and we don't call it socialism, we call it the "free market".
Yet when asked to give millions to fellow Americans for help buying groceries, or paying rent, or health care; we call it "socialism".
"There is a class war, and my class started it and we are winning." Warren Buffet
8
When I was kid, I was taken to a beer bottling (canning) facility to see the assembly line. I was fascinated by a quality control device: as they moved noisily single-file down a channel, beer cans passed in front of a fearful lateral piston--Scylla or Charibdis, take your pick--which mercilessly kicked incorrectly filled beer cans sideways into a rejection barrel.
Conservato-republicans think it's perfectly fine to treat people like beer cans in a factory.
Fine, some people are less able than others, less able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but simply dumping them into a rejection dejection poverty barrel reveals the deep feral sociopathy of conservato-republicans, may they all be deprived of their sinister ability to destroy other people.
4
Helping the poor is entirely different than government run services we all must have. Even Medicare is bizarre it how you must pay into your entire life, and you must buy into Medicare when you are old, even if you'd prefer to keep your money than have their tired insurance that underpays the best doctors so they simply refuse it.
2
@David
Except that studies show that whenever a democratic government decides to use a tax system that is such that the poor get systematically access to healthcare, then poverty rates drop dramatically ... .
And isn't that what putting AMERICA first is supposed to mean ... ??
7
@David
Have you found a way to pay medical bills without some form of insurance, government or otherwise?
If so, please tell us!
Trump great example of a guy who pulled himself on his fathers bootstraps and Hannity will be teaching a course in how to be an ideal sycophant so Murdock can call Trump when ever he wants , same deal he had with Thatcher.
3
The future of the USA is in real jeopardy if we don't reject the false "bootstrap"narrative and instead begins to build a society that treats individuals with respect instead of contempt.
3
The use of this phrase is in many cases an excuse to do nothing and/or demonizing others. In most cases, though, it is implied bragging by the individual as to how well they have done. And the further down the feeding chain a person is, the more desperately the phrase is clung to. Challenging the phrase challenges the speakers self worth, resulting in a most violent reaction.
Also, for every one person who through hard work makes it there are a multitude who after equally hard work merely survive. One needs to truly understand the reality around them, including self knowledge.
PS - AOC is most likely smarter than the entire Republican caucus. She scares the bejesus out of them.
1
"It's hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have boots."..Jesse Jackson
4
A beautiful article. Thank you Mr. Kristof.
2
Mr Kristof
In support of your bootstrap theory, Carson attended medical school and training programs in medicine that would not exist if they were not supported in many ways by Federal and state money. As a physician like Carson(but unlike him in many ways) I always felt an obligation to provide care to anyone who needed it.
5
Kristof is writing some of the best stuff anywhere. There should be a word for folks who have had the good fortune to do well, whatever their circumstances, but put so much thinking and effort into how better to pull the ladder up after themselves.
7
Mr. Kristof I am very grateful we have you to so eloquently document the REAL USA of 2020. My wife teaches public school in Portland and I work as a pediatrician in a hospital where the majority of patients have Medicaid/Medicare, if they have insurance at all. We see your narrative every day. We see the desperation and the mental illness every day. I see how poor standing translates into poor health. My wife sees how desperate, poor, disenfranchised parents abandon their children to fend for themselves. She sees how these children enter the schools already behind academically and how they become difficult to manage. She sees them fall further behind every year as education is put on the back burner when food and shelter are front and center. Ben Carson (and the like) no doubt had a loving parent who provided stability and valued education. Nobody does it on their own. As we withdraw funding for our schools and children's healthcare, we hobble the institutions that at least are trying to help the next generation "pull up their bootstraps". It is ludicrous policy.
Morality aside, even if you are a "captain of industry", what you are advocating for now is destroying your human capital. And no more migrants, right?! The medical analogy is that by taking away health insurance from said human capital, you are forcing this "capital" to forgo basic care and present to out emergency rooms in "extremis". This is more costly captain! For you, for me, for us all.
4
To me, this seems really straightforward: Kids whose parents value education generally do very well in life; and kids whose parents do not value education generally do poorly in life.
This is true (in present-day America, at least) regardless of family's skin tone, ethnic background, religion, parental education level, or parental income. I see this truism everywhere, including in my very own family tree.
Certainly, kids whose families value education _and_ are able to hire private tutors or send them on extracurricular odysseys may do even better (or at least have leg up in the initial college admissions process). But kids who are supported by their family in their education - even without these expensive perks - will do very well, too.
5
Thank you for mentioning public education. As I was reading this column the thought struck me that parts of the country and whole states that are doing well today are those that invested more in their public education systems a century and more ago.
5
This whole idea of 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' is a notion born of two myths:
1)That if someone makes it in this world, it is because they were just this incredible person who worked hard and persevered, they had the 'right stuff', didn't rely on anyone, need anyone
2)Conversely, that if someone doesn't make it, it is something wrong with them.
Sadly, people like Carson who come from poor backgrounds when they do make often espouse this notion, in large part because they hate to admit it wasn't all their effort. Carson had the benefit of a mother who through a church program, got him into a good school. When Carson was getting ready for college it was the late 60's, and colleges were seeking bright, underprivileged applicants, and the same with med schools. It isn't that he wasn't qualified, rather it was that even 5 years before he might have been overlooked. He also had something else, mentors, people who helped him, that others might not have. David McCollough, the historian, has said show me the self made person, and I'll show you 10 people behind them. (Of course, the worst is when you hear someone like Trump go on about all he achieved on his own.......yeah, 680 million is poverty stricken). The best answer to this I ever heard was "you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you ain't got no boots" (I have heard it attributed to several different people, but origin is unknown).
5
@music observer
Note how well your first two points justify standard American conservative ideology. And allows the wealthy to think of themselves as not only rich, but deserving of their wealth. While the poor "deserve" their poverty.
Its the basis for social darwinism.
It's worth noting that the "'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" myth was clearly in full force in 1932 under Herbert Hoover's Republican administration.
Three events stand out:
(1) The Senate's refusal to grant the Army Bonus Marchers request that it approve the early issuance of the bonus [promised to them for their service in WWI] because they could not find work to feed their starving families,
(2) Hoover's order to Douglas MacArthur and his subordinates, Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton to use force to drive their fellow soldiers out of Washington [and killing three veterans in the process and
(3) Hoover's statement on the record that it was not the responsibility of the Federal government to provide food for it's starving citizens even though they could not find work in the failed capitalist economy.
8
Wasn't "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" a maxim used during the Bush / Cheney years. I think it was right up there with Compassionate Conservative.
5
Very wise. Hard work can get you far. Luck and tenacity helps. Living in a country that offers public education, student loans, and at one time corporations that welcomed all comers is vital. We do not buy military commissions here. We even used to reward public service. If you have the right stuff you do not have to be a superior athlete or pop singer. You can or were able to rise above your parents' level. At least to the so called middle class. Which is not a bad nesting place. Levittown was helped by the GI Bill as I recall.
3
Yes. Yes. Yes. This can't be said enough. I believed in this false narrative about myself for decades and have only recently seen how utterly wrong I was. Thank you for spreading the facts.
4
Luckovich cartoon clearly articulates the philosophy of republicans' living welfare provided by the state (government) as the lifeguard is paid by it, while accusing other of asking for the same. Socialism for the rich, heartless capitalism for the working class.
5
A society is judged not by the success of its best and brightest- but by the success of its least fortunate.
5
I am struck -- and stricken -- by the number of commenters here whose young lives were burdened by the alcoholism of their parents.
Do you think that in a more just society, in a society where poverty was not such a looming factor in the lives of so many, where jobs were competing for workers instead of workers competing for jobs, so many would have been so afflicted that alcohol would be so attractive a remedy?
Thoreau wrote "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." That evil is poverty.
And many of us here grew up in years when the economy was doing pretty well.
Let's devote our time and energy to seeking out the real roots of poverty. Alcoholism is a symptom; so are addictive drugs. We must look deeper. Be radical. Go to the root. Eradicate that root!
My late and much-loved grandparents sought that root, and when they saw it, devoted the rest of their lives to pointing it out. I was not a willing listener, but after they were gone, I finally got serious about reading the writings that inspired them, and got inspired too.
The woman who developed the Landlords Game, which we know today as Monopoly, sought to demonstrate that root, and the solution; her inspiration came from the same thought.
Take the time to read the writings of Henry George. Start with Social Problems, a collection of essays, or some speeches, available at wealthandwant.com You'll start to see the root of the problem --- and the remedy.
3
ALL higher mammals VITALLY depend on the group they are part of, in order to survive.
Claiming that dependency on others would be a BAD thing is merely based on the fear to acknowledge our vulnerability, as "social animals".
4
You say it is impossible but I did it. I come from a poor background, single mother household and through making good choices that benefit my life I have risen into the upper middle class simply by working hard and making good choices.... anyone saying it can't be done is lying to you either because they do not have the drive to succeed on their own or because they are envious of other success and want to take it from them without putting in the hard work.
4
He actually says that literally pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is impossible, which it is. He goes on to state that some people DO rise from humble beginnings, but that evidence indicates that such upwards mobility is declining in the US, and that it was always supported by significant government programs.
You are welcome for the summary of the article that you obviously did not read.
10
@Mystery Lits
You made good choices because you were taught what "good choices" means in the first place ...
And secondly, it's not because some people survive in a system that refuses to put America as a whole first, that that's necessarily the best system for ALL American citizens ...
3
@Mystery Lits
Those of us who clawed our way out of poverty understand that success in America is generally a combination of hard work, discipline, and smart choices.
2
“’Pull oneself up by the bootstraps’…has become part of America’s mythology.” The dangerous significance of mythology in the American psyche needs to be emphasized more.
Since its inception, America has run on myth rather than reality. Self-reliance, rugged individualism, meritocracy, the Calvinist Creed – all are elements of a mythological package that disguises reality.
This mythology is a drug, a disabling psychosis parading as transcendent virtue. It holds that failure is no one’s fault but your own; it smears egalitarianism as “socialism.” It reduces society to a cynical Darwinistic landscape of competing individuals rather than a functioning collective.
And religion is part of this delusional mind-set. I realize that Kristof is religious, but I respect his sincerity in recognizing religion’s responsibility rather than using it as a crutch or a vehicle for hypocrisy as too many do.
Many of the people who embrace the myth of self-reliance are the very people who have suffered its cruel consequences. Yet, they religiously cling to it as more important than practical social strategies for jobs, education and healthcare.
Furthermore, these believers preach that it’s your own fault if you are not successful, but if they are not successful, suddenly isn’t their fault, but the fault of immigrants.
“Self-interest” disguised as self-reliance has fueled free-market policies that have funneled the wealth and power to the top, and caused our current social desperation.
8
One can very significantly better one's condition by avoiding controlled substances, finishing one's education, not becoming pregnant prior to wedlock or while in one's teens and by not committing crimes and gross misdemeanors. What causes Kristoff to ignore these unarguable means, all within one's personal control, of "bootstrapping?"
3
I don’t think (based on reading the article closely) Kristof is denying these obvious behaviors as helping to ensure personal success. He is observing that a large number of us are not set up to succeed due to race, class, family and social problems that DO impact our choices, etc. OF COURSE making all these good decisions helps! But stuff happens in people’s lives, some due to being young and inexperienced, some due to bad influences, some to personal faults. Who among us can say they never made a bad decision? Should we smugly judge from our self-righteous pillar of comfort, or should we try to find a way to make America great again by lending a hand?
4
How many women would actually believe the bootstraps narrative?
They've nurtured both their children and husband their entire lives.
You have to be a man, coming home to a wife who does your cleaning and child-raising and feeding in your place, and then just seeing that as "normal", to imagine that whatever you achieve in your job/career, you did it all on your own ...
9
So what is it that the GOP wants: to "put America first", or to pass bills that force citizens to avoid collaborating with and helping others as much as possible ... ?
4
grew up in a lower middle class family in central Nebraska. My parents valued education; their plan for me was to go to a junior college and study architecture. Forunately, I scored at the top of a statewide scholarship competition, and now have three college degrees and a law degree from Harvard. Bootstraps? Hardly. Enlighted educational programs.
3
I was one of the lucky ones who actually did "pull myself up by my bootstraps." However, my bootstraps included two devoted loving parents, excellent local schools, inexpensive college education from a Big 10 University (I graduated HS in 1972) and a good job at a financial institution that paid for the majority of my Northwestern MBA. I acknowledge that I did all the work - and even went to graduate school while working full-time - but the most important factors in my success were completely out of my control. These included my loving, devoted parents, who stayed married for 62 years, the fact that I am white and the fact that I never suffered any trauma - including sexual abuse. I am beyond grateful for the gifts I was given in life and am quite happy to give back to others who are not so fortunate.
7
Timely column. With the topic of socialism vs something else on political debate stage, the topic you raised is at the heart of the American Dream debate about how our society can become a better place to live than it is now.
Your paragraphs describing the reality of America's success ring true as the fundamental difference between our two political parties: big vs. small government, and free enterprise vs regulated enterprise.
"Ah, but why did the pioneers go west? Because of government benefit programs that granted them homesteads! Ten percent of America’s land was given out as homesteads, and perhaps one-quarter of Americans (almost all of them white) owe part of their family wealth to the homestead acts."
"Then there was the American investment in free high schools and in state colleges and universities, plus gigantic programs like rural electrification and the G.I. Bill of Rights. In short, even when we were a much poorer nation, we were able to afford huge national investments to help disadvantaged (white) Americans, because they were a priority."
Like Mike Stimic, my wife and I realize that we have an obligation to support government programs that provide rungs on the ladder of opportunity to all people. Our favorite rung are programs that make the fun of being human available to all children. From pre-birth, pre-school and k-16 we see the benefits to humanity if we start early with the ladder of opportunity for children everywhere.
3
I am so fortunate (read: “lucky”). I was born a white male and had a roof over my head. I grew to 6’. My alcoholic father wasn’t around much so I learned to change my own bicycle tire. I went to college, dropped out, went back on government financial aid, graduated and got a relatively high paying job (for Michigan at that time). I haven’t suffered medical issues. I landed new job after new job by being in the right place at the right time. It’s true I worked hard but so do so many others who just haven’t had quite the same luck as I had. It simply amazes me when people think they were entitled to their success. No one and I mean no one succeeds without luck. In my opinion, those who say otherwise are just choosing to conveniently forget.
7
Every advancement made in life came to me because I had mentors
Reminding me that I had value as a human being and these adults validated my worth as I expressed my personality .
If I didn’t have aunts and uncles protecting me and surrounding me with choices my parents would have destroyed me.
My PTSD is real and emanates from physical abuse by a dad that was a convicted rapist. He never attacked me sexually. He beat me with a belt or his fist. He threw beer cans at me. I could go on. ....started at age 2.5. Ended at age 20.
Yet at age 68 .... I survived and was very successful. There were times when mentors and relatives would tell me to take heart and do not be discouraged and at those times I would hear.....” just pick yourself up by your bootstraps “ and don’t be discouraged. You can do this!!!”
In my professional career as a nurse and educator I made a choice to give back to those needy like myself ,growing up with inadequate parents.
So perspective lends to this phrase.
It isn’t the best encouragement but it is meant as such. You cannot do it alone though. Takes that “ village” women leaders always discuss.
10
“There but for the grace of God go I” as my grandmother would say...There is a problem in the “richest country in the world” when any one of us is one illness or accident away from bankruptcy. All you smug “I’ve got mine and you are just lazy” people included...
9
"...the bootstraps narrative implies that everyone can pull a Ben Carson (Carson himself falls for this fallacy). This is like arguing that because some people can run a four-minute mile, everyone can."
Excellent summation of the bootstrap trap. I'm also struck by how obtuse conservatives were in criticizing AOC for her comment on the physical impossibility of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.
I don't know which was worse: they just knee-jerked attacked her for her outspokenness, or the fact they didn't even get her irony in making the comment in the first place.
Conservatives love to judge others, by their station, not their circumstances. I'd love to know how these finger-waggers would fare if they hadn't had help every rung of that ladder to success.
6
Show up for school and get your high school degree.
Don’t give birth to children while not married.
Support your children - with a job.
Don’t do drugs.
Don’t do crimes.
4
Why not? Donald Trump is a lifelong hardened criminal. And he is the President.
5
@Chuck Burton And don't forget he also fathered a child while not married to her mother.
3
My brother in law, a college educated white American, believes anyone can have a college degree and a six figure income.
Those that don't are just lazy liberals.
You can't reason with that.
3
All my Republican friends say people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Then when they have children, they move to the best school district they can afford.
In addition, all my Republican friends take their mortgage deduction and child deductions which is government subsidized housing and childcare.
6
I disagree. We all need good government. but in the end it's you, the individual, who is responsible for your life. I'm not responsible for your life. The government isnt responsible. Your parents or your wife aren't responsible. No, only you are responsible for your life.
I'm a transgender woman who spent 4 years addicted to heroin. I managed to quit heroin, finish college, start a company, and last year my company revenued almost $4 million. I just got bought by a group of investors and in a few months I'll be a millionaire.
Why? Was it government that allowed this? No. Was it priviledge? Well, since in 2011 I was homeless and working two temp jobs, and since transgender women are not well thought of in today's society, again no. Was it luck? Yes. to a great extent. However, the biggest reason I'm sitting here today with hundreds of thousands of dollars in my bank accounts is because I worked incredibly hard. I worked weekends. I've flown 24 times since Jan 1 of this year. I just got home at 9 PM from working all day. Im flying Sunday to Virginia to serve as a panelist at a summit, I dont have weekends. I worked my butt off because I know that no one besides me is going to hand me a million dollars.
I'm 31 years old. My goal is to make $10 million in the next 5 years and retire to become a real estate investor. I will do it. I know I'll do it because I will pull my bootstraps so hard they will rip off. I dont need anyone else but myself to reach my goals.
2
Sounds like your work is your gender reassignment and talking all about that- flying around the country, blowing giant holes in the ozone layer.
This is a country full of your fellow citizens, and we all need to have some degree of comfort and sustenance- not everyone can be a trans woman and fly around, talking about that- and even if they could, it will kill the planet if all y’all ‘fly all over for my fancy job’, folk, keep jetting about like Don Draper in1960.
2
@Jacqueline By real estate investor, do you mean someone who develops the land to create housing, jobs, office and commercial space? That's useful.
Or do you mean someone who sits back and collects rent from others -- rent which is largely a function of the location and the government services which our tax dollars pay for -- today, that's taxes on wages, and buildings, and purchases, and products that have components from the 'wrong' countries?
A great economist pointed out that landlords grow wealthy in their sleep, without lifting a finger.
They grow wealthy because land increases in value due to increases in population, particularly in and around our great urban centers; due to public investment in infrastructure and services which make a place a good place to live and to do business; due to technological innovations.
That wealth rightly belongs to all of us.
Has it ever struck you as interesting that Great Britain has the "House of Lords" and the "House of Commons"? The Lords, a hereditary group, are largely landlords. (So were the fictional Crawleys) And the rest of us are commoners, without much access to the commons without paying some individual for it. But the individual didn't create the value.
It is nice to be the Duke of Westminster. That is a privilege -- a private law that grants things to some at the expense of others.
The rental value of the land is rightly our COMMON treasure, not an investor's pot of gold.
Natural Public Revenue
3
@Jacqueline
Huzzah! Enjoy your success.
Thanks Nic for reminding us of the obvious, lest we forget. Those of us who grew up in 2-parent nuclear families with middle class values and occasional parental kicks in the butt always had an advantage and I learned this in my 30s, almost a lifetime ago. Expected to be educated and to perform gave us an enormous edge. It is truly a shame that so many white people can’t see this clearly.
3
I came from an abusive and broken home life...my father died drunk going 120 mph in a new 59' Buick with an underage girl.
At 9yrs old I was rejected and slapped around by my mother.. she went on to marry 3 more times. Did not talk to her for 25 years.
Music saved me.I'm a self made man/musician who worked his buns off and ended up playing in a major symphony orchestra....
Student loans paid off and so is my house...No regrets .
3
Mr. Kristof, while I agree that not everyone can pull themselves up from poverty by their own bootstraps, some can and do. We need safety net programs and we need incentive programs that help people get an education, be it college or technical. At the same time, people need to work hard.
My parents had lost three of their parents by the time each was ten years old. My mother was "farmed out" to a family down the street, while my father, the youngest of his family, was taken in by various relatives while his older brothers lived elsewhere. Neither one finished high school. They scraped by for decades, but finally all that work led to a successful business and a comfortable retirement, with money left for us children.
But we children also worked. We all paid for our own college education. We all continued to educate ourselves. Each became successful in his or her occupation.
My sons lost their father when they were 2 and 6. My elder son died in an auto accident, but my younger son got a law degree after switching from a different advanced degree.
Our family learned to work hard and expect to do our best. My grandson will soon do the same.
I find all too many young people in their 20s today expecting to have what I have in my 70s. I skipped coffees and meals out to afford a house and to raise my children. They expect to have it all right away. It doesn't work that way. Safety nets, absolutely, but not a free ride.
3
@Barbara you and your family have had significant challenges and tragedies. I am sorry for the loss of your son. But you say that you are in your 70s. Your parents would have been of my grandparents' generation and they had stories to match yours. The key difference - my grandfather and his siblings; your father and his siblings - it was possible to not finish high school and still achieve some measure of success through hard work. It was possible for you to work your way through college. My grandfather worked through high school, combined his way through normal school and then took night classes and summer classes while teaching in order to earn his bachelors. Would that work today? Today, if you don't have post-secondary credentials you can work 18 hour days and still struggle, still not have health insurance, still be one illness or car-breakdown away from losing your job(s.) Forget college. Things are different in other ways - laws regarding the supervision of children, school attendance, transportation of children - I was lucky. By 9 I could stay home with a cold without costing a parent her job. I could babysit and earn money at 12. My grandfather still thought we were spoiled "I was out earning money way before 12." I have coworkers and clients who are desperate - a teenager gets sick so they have to take off work and then their meager paycheck gets docked. They are not eating, let alone eating out or buying expensive coffees. Transportation - I am out of space so...
4
@lamack I didn't have enough space to mention how my parents both worked 15-18 hour days to try to make ends meet and lost a business before making good. I worked 3 jobs at one point...even though I had a profession. The people you mentioned from today have the same challenges my family has and had.
1
Incredible timing! I had a very heated argument last night with my partner on exactly this topic. He’s extremely progressive in almost all ways, but as a wealthy, childless white man he refuses to believe that not everyone has access to the choices he has. I was a bootstrapper myself - single mother on welfare with an abusive ex at 21. I chose to accrue massive college debt with the bet that I could ultimately climb out of poverty. I went on to graduate school, worked some really great jobs and am now a consultant. Easy, right? Well....I am white and went to really good public schools. I had a 2 parent household. I had plentiful food and decent clothes. I was also gifted with a very high IQ that was recognized early in my life (one cannot underestimate the effect of growing up in a climate of high expectations). This is why I refer to myself as “lucky” - and that gets some people mad. Yes, I worked my booty off for it all, but I went in with a winning genetic lottery ticket.
7
It's easier to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you already have boots. Leveling the playing field with free child care and quality early childhood education can help.
7
"government benefit programs that granted them homesteads!"
What gave government the right (and the means) to own that land in the first place?
The taxpaying citizens (almost all of them white, in your own words).
1
The formal name of fallacy number 3 is "survivorship bias". You can read about it in Wikipedia.
1
Same with " a rising tide lifts all boats" My response is " yea, if you can afford to own one.:
6
Every Republican knows that giving parachutes to passengers in a doomed airplane would simply destroy their will to fly.
3
You can’t do it! Don’t even try! It’s hopeless! No—it’s sad someone would think that way!
"[I]t is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."
Martin Luther King Jr.
6
How lucky or unlucky you are in life is the most important factor in your success or failure.
5
Life is a team sport. A human being is simultaneously both an individual with rights and a member of society with responsibilities.
The Libertarian Dystopia we now live in was a lie that an actor told us 40 years ago, and we believed him.
You want to live in a truly strong country? Help your fellow Americans as much as you can.
119
@Gustav
You want to live in a truly strong country?
Vote for Bernie Sanders!
With medicare for all, and free/affordable childcare for All, Quality early childhood through grade 12 for All, and tuition free continuing public education for All,
America will be stronger and society and the economy will thrive, and opportunity will become more equal,
and the American Dream will be revived.
Perhaps America will no longer have the world's highest rate of incarceration.
President Sanders!
A Future To Believe In!
4
When I graduated from High School I was kicked out of the house by my alcoholic single Mom. I had sustained a broken back with collapsed disks playing football the previous year. I could barely walk.
I left home with an old rusty pick-up truck, a mattress, my clothes, and $7.00 in my pocket. Luckily, an old football buddy rented me a shed to live in behind the house he was renting in the Los Gatos Hills of California.
I worked as a musical instrument repairman - as my injuries restricted my ability to work higher paying construction jobs - and I was earning about one hundred dollars a week. Then Proposition 13 passed and the school music programs were decimated. Not being able to afford the gas for my pickup, I would walk the 28 miles round trip to work and back. On many days, the only work that would be available was a $15 dollar repair on a trumpet, which I received $7. On some days there was no work.
I survived by eating one bowl of oatmeal a day, often supplemented by walnuts or apples I would steal from the yards I would pass on my walks to work. Eventually all my clothes began to wear out. Trying to walk into a business to apply for another job was pointless, even though I tried. I looked like a homeless person. I was in constant teeth gnashing pain.
By the grace of God I was given a talent for music. I began hooking up with bands in the area and soon had a way out of my predicament. I met and married a beautiful Finnish woman. I now live in Finland. Saved!
6
For years the gerrymandered, Republican controlled Wisconsin Legislature justified spending cuts on social programs as a spending problem. The argument goes as follows. The state cannot (read Republicans) raise taxes because taxes are too high. We cannot afford to increase spending on _____________ (fill in the blank, i.e K-12 education, state universities, Medicaid, public transportation, public health, social services...). There is no money. We need to act like the hard working families that sit around the kitchen table and tighten their belts when times are tough.
Clearly, the way out of poverty is to sit around the kitchen table while cinching your belt until your eyes bug out...while pulling up by your bootstraps.
6
Most increases in wealth happen on a generational scale. People leaping up the social ladder as a result of their own hard work and luck is uncommon. It does happen, but it's not the model for American success. The true American model is families gradually increasing their wealth and passing it down to their children, who start off better than they did.
My grandparents started poor, and clawed their way into the lower middle class using the booming post-war economy to their advantage. Both my parents grew up in tiny, cramped houses in poor rural communities, but had parents that sacrificed for them. My father enlisted in the navy and they paid for his college education in engineering, and my mother worked to help pay her way through college, which she was able to do because her father helped support her. My parents were solidly middle class by the time they met and had two children.
I started life considerably better off than my parents, much less my grandparents. I didn't grow up in a tiny home in a poor rural area where clean water was a luxury. Education was something my grandparents lacked or lucked into, for my parents it was something they struggled to attain, for me it was essentially a given.
This isn't a sensational meteoric rise from rags to riches, but it's a dramatic improvement in quality of life over 3 generations. That's the American story.
7
I believe the Atlantic had an article recently pointing out that we are now, on average, declining in our family wealth, and quickly. My father’s generation used the GI Bill to significantly raise our family wealth in one generation. Now it is being systematically transfered to the corporations that provide his assisted living and healthcare. I have seen my wealth dwindle over the last thirty years as turbulence in the labor and market penalized me while making the CEO richer. America is well on its way to becoming a banana republic.
1
"I was privileged to have two parents who valued education ..."
So having two parents is a sign of privilege now?
I find this new furor about 'bootstrapping' interesting. The idea seems to be to play down the notions of accountability, responsibility, hard work and delayed gratification: you are not successful because you worked hard. You had the unfair privilege of having had two loving parents.
3
There are an infinite number of variables that define the trajectory of peoples' lives. Sometimes people just get lucky. Sometimes people, who try just as hard, if not harder, don't get a break, ever. Sometimes it's just one thing that stops someone from reaching the heights, sometimes its a myriad things. When looking at the numbers of those who find the success they've worked for, it's more often to do with sheer luck than the effort they put into it. Life is no different to the diverging personal narratives of battles during wartime; whereby a few yards can separate experiences of brutality and safety.
Sure, if you don't try, you're less likely to succeed. But there are plenty who try and don't succeed. There are also some who don't try at all and become presidents.
4
I agree with Nick, but we have to realize that America doesn't have an infinite supply of helping hands. That said who do we help first? We should start with the homeless, ill and addicted. Some institutions need to be asked to do more for America, especially those subsidized by government contracts and tax breaks: universities need to keep tuition down and American enrollments up.
2
I would like to thank my bootstraps: growing up in a town with the state flagship university; low tuition, thanks to state subsidies; parents who valued education AND were familiar with academia, who understood the application process, who understood the requirements of college coursework (vital if you live at home); who understood that doing WELL in college opened further doors. Growing up with a roof over my head, food, heat, a hot shower. A working stove and refrigerator. Not growing up in an abusive or neglectful family. Having access as a kid and young adult to health insurance. Not having family members with catastrophic long term illnesses or disabilities. Driving instruction. Someone able to lend me funds for my first car. Minimal public transportation in my hometown - wasn't great but there is none where I live now. Roads. The public libraries where I supplemented my education. Other things I don't remember. And federal and state aid programs - because my life is better if the people around me have roofs over their head, and food and medical care for their kids. I work with them. I know what hurdles they face. It is because of them that I realize how many bootstraps have lifted me up over the years. Others have different stories, different bootstraps but if they think about their lives they will remember.
6
Misunderstand some might do. You treat others as you would be treated if you were them in their position, not as if they were you – as one is now – as they are not!
Difference, it might seem such might be.
1
It's just selfishness by any other name. Yens of millions of Americans every year vote Republican because they don't want to help others. They vote for many Democrats who promise to cut taxes to, which has just become code for letting the poor die in the streets — and they do! Visit San Francisco, Los Angeles or Honolulu recently? Abandon all hope yee who enter here.
Christianity has failed to produce a population of believers who harbor christian values. It is a failed belief system.
Who has succeeded? Secular governments in Western Europe — it's called Democratic Socialism. It works. It's more christian than the christians are.
5
Yes, pull yourself up by your bootstraps goes right along with arranging your own conception to a white, upper middle-class family in the United States of America instead of to a teenage girl in a refugee camp in Yemen.
4
If Donald Trump did not start life with 100 million dollars, he would probably be cleaning toilets. No employer would tolerate his attitude and sense of entitlement. Golfing and insulting others is not a good work ethic. Would you hire someone like him?
9
$400 million inflation adjusted
1
thank you!
may your story of the Stimac conversion plant a thousand thousand thousand seeds of reality-check-cum-greater-generosity in the minds of other cocksure self-made-men
despite all my admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson, the myth of "self-reliance" has caused a lot of mischief... as the "Republican Lifeguard" cartoon headlining your piece so mordantly captures.
What I believe many Americans underestimate is how crippling fear can be. How much time and energy it takes to worry about feeding yourself and your children on 3 minimum wage jobs, becoming homeless if you break your ankle, not being able to replace your fridge if it breaks down.
In all countries I've lived, that is never a worry. Break my ankle? Unpleasant. But my health care is paid for, my employer legally cannot fire me, my salary is paid.
Lose my job? Get a basic income from the government that allows me to feed my kids, keep my apartment, replace my fridge. Get help finding a new job, get paid training if I want to switch fields. Get subsidized childcare to have the time to do these things.
That is an ENORMOUS load off a person's back. Without that worry, I have time and energy to flourish, to work hard, to go back to school perhaps. It's only then I have the space to find those bootstraps everyone keeps talking about.
10
I just this very minute finished your chapter in your book “Tightrope” on this obsurd notion. Thank you Nicholas and Sheryl for you in-depth and amazingly researched book..
2
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
If you work hard, you can make it.
Social Darwinism.
Calvinism.
"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"
"They're takers, not makers".
"Let them die and decrease the surplus population."
Certainly doesn't sound like "we're all in this together" or "it takes a village", does it?
3
Nope. Hillary Clinton, lost to Donald Trump. The village was rejected.
A well worn Republican mantra they spout to less fortunates while living on daddy's wealth.
2
And how do we know Ben Carson was not the beneficiary, like Clarence Thomas, of affirmative action? He's the right age group.
1
“It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” - George Carlin
4
Bravo Mr. Kristof, another myth bites the dust.
3
Trump WAS NOT "earning $200,000 a year at age 3". That money was a gift from his dad, part of the $400 million or so that daddy Fred provided him over his lifetime (mostly in ways that broke the law).
His sister, Marian Trump Barry, recently gave up her lifetime federal judgeship so she would not have to answer questions about the illegally obtained millions of dollars she pulled out of her daddy's businesses.
That family make being a con artist a tradition.
2
Small quibble: Donald Trump never "earned" a dime; not at age 3, nor thereafter.
1
Bottom line seems to be that, in order to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you've first got to have some boots
2
What a child born in 1950 grew up understanding: “When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
What any child born since 1970 has grown up understanding: “You don’t need to work hard to succeed, you don’t have to mind your teachers, you’re special, you get a trophy for just being YOU, and the government will pay you for your failure in life.”
And you wonder why we have a homeless problem?
4
@John A ridiculous generalization ..."any child born since 1970...". I have two children born in the early 70s. They have five children between them. Their two oldest are college freshmen who just made the Deans List and are in school thanks to generous scholarships received as a result of studying hard. Both of my children are productive and hard working as both of their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents were before them.
You should do some study about the homeless before you accuse them. Most are the mentally ill and/or addicted we don’t want to pay for treatment for.
It's also impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots.
1
The Republicans have been dumbing-down the people for years – I can remember Sarah Palin getting cheers for ridiculing the Democrats and their snooty educated ways. Trump was elected by white people who lost their jobs because the coal mine or the factory closed. They didn’t take advantage of re-education programs, or tried to move, and instead blamed foreigners and Democrats for taking their jobs.
They sat and waited for someone to save them. And all the other white people felt sorry for them.
Now if these people were black, we would have heard a whole lot about bootstraps and personal responsibility. Instead, Trump lied to them and told them that they would get those good miner jobs if they elected him. As far as I can tell, they still believe his lies.
1
I have been saying forever that if republicans and conservatives believe in a pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethic then our inheritance tax should be 100%. But no, they want a tax of zero. Hypocrites.
3
I've always thought the term 'pull yourself up by your boot straps' was ridiculous and insulting. I'm happy that someone is pointing it out.
I was raised in a family that valued education. However, my father was not a good provider. Then, I had help from my mother - who later divorced my father - my elder siblings and from outside my family as well. I know that I wouldn't be where I am today without the love and care of so many people. I am grateful and I try to help, too. However, I am totally in favour of broader actions that may help people who are not so lucky to know the right benefactors but can contribute to our society if their problems are properly addressed.
I like your correspondent’s change of heart.
I think it puts people on the defensive to say that growing up in a 2-parent, non-abusive home is “privilege.” As with “white privilege”, the lack of equality experienced by others is a violation of their rights. Focusing on rights is more productive than implying that those who are white and from stable homes enjoy unfair privileges.
And I am a liberal and very fortunate, but some of that IS due to my own efforts and my husband’s. He’s the son of Holocaust survivors and grew up working class. My dad taught public middle school— both my parents were college grads, but money was tight.
My husband and I both went to state university and then worked our butts off to advance in our careers while responsibly raising our children.
Our siblings have not been as successful, and that’s been due in part to bad choices they made. I am not suggesting that they are bad or undeserving. I am recognizing that, for example, I had strong undergrad grades, prepped for the LSAT, studied hard at a top 20 law school, and passed the bar exam. I recognize the benefit of student loans— but I also get tired of hearing about out-of-touch coastal elites. If I could do it, you can, too, as long as you put in equal time and effort.
I don’t look down on those with other values. I don’t see what it gets them to complain that mine included hard work.
12
Not necessarily. You had good grades, and I’m assuming above average intelligence. What about people who don’t? (Perhaps your siblings?) Not every advantage is privilege, but not everyone can succeed through hard work alone. Many who work hard have two part time minimum wage jobs. And are not thriving these days. Investment by society in public education is at a real low point and a change of culture and thought is needed to realize what blessings our tax dollars are to us. Education, roads, safe medicine, environmental safeguards , military protection, law and order, consumer protection, etc.
14
@Lawyermom
No one is saying that hard work isn't involved,of course it is, and no one is saying that you or anyone else didn't earn what you have. That said, you are missing some fundamental points:
1)You grew up with two parents who were college educated. They knew how to prepare you for college, they likely helped you make your choices,figure out funding, etc. Compare that to a kid who grows up around poverty and no knowledge of how to succeed.
2)Your husband grew up in an era when blue collar meant a living wage with benefits, many jobs were unionized.
3)You both went to state schools when they were affordable, you could work your way through them, thanks to government spending. Have you looked at the cost of state schools these days? Plus back then aid was more readily available for working or middle class families.
Your siblings raise an interesting idea. Despite having parents and resources that allowed you and hubby to do well, they failed, despite having the same environment you mention, they have no excuse. However, can you say the same thing from someone who unlike yourself, lives around poverty and ignorance, around people who have never gone to college, who don't have living wage jobs, who basically doesn't stand a chance? A child doesn't choose to be born into such a situation, the life choices or situations of others led them to living in that kind of place.
8
@Lawyermom
Here's something you really need to consider:
You are not a liberal.
Liberals have empathy, and understand societal conditions and trends. Conservatives pretend that theirgood fortune and other's bad fortune results completely from individual choices.
For example- the gap in income between those at the very top, and the vast majority of us, has been growing for 40 years. And, it is well known that the middle class is shrinking. Do these trends result from the "bad choices" of most Americans?
7
If we wished to do so, we could end poverty in this country tomorrow. We won't because of the prevailing belief that poverty is a choice, not an economic imperative. I have friends who fervently believe this and are outraged that their tax dollars go to programs designed to help people who simply refuse to reach for their bootstraps.
If we examine the biographies of people like Ben Carson, who overcame impoverished backgrounds, most of the time we'll find a catalyst: an inspiring teacher, a helpful relative, a fortuitous moment of being in the right place at the right time to seize an opportunity. As millions of Americans can attest at this moment, it takes more than hard work and perseverance to overcome the bad causes that create the quagmire in which they find themselves.
Investing in education is the key to eliminating poverty, but politicians would rather talk about going after bad teachers and self-serving unions than providing resources to impoverished communities.
3
This "If you want it bad enough, and work hard enough, you can do anything" motif is rampant in today's zeitgeist. While I understand it is less helpful to suggest our young people give up, perhaps a dose of reality is what's needed. Kids should not be nourished on unrealistic dreams of vast wealth or celebrity fame - what's up with that? Not everybody gets to play first base, and the sooner kids learn that the better.
What this incessant chant of "you can do anything" is doing is offering pie in the sky to many kids who might be better off setting their sights on becoming a not-famous productive member of society. Those people are the real heroes.
4
"Yes, some Americans soar from humble beginnings; more often, the top is occupied by those who, say, were earning $200,000 a year at age 3, in today’s money, as President Trump was."
If you look at actual statistics on wealthy people, instead of using anecdotal evidence, you will find that more than 90% of them earned their own fortunes. They mostly had their own businesses, or were successful professionals who saved and invested. The top 5% of wealth starts at about $2 million, and most of them are in the $2-10 million range. These people spent a lot of time working and saving.
Statistics also show that by the third generation, most family wealth is lost. The children and grandchildren grow up in an affluent household, and run through all the money by the time they die.
It is true that not everyone can become wealthy. Life in the US is so soft, most people are content just to go along and not put out much effort. There are lots of TV shows to watch and football games to go to, and that's what they do. Only a small number of self-driven people chose to compete in business and devote all their time to making money. Many of them are successful.
1
A job is the best social program.
At my Jesuit Catholic parish in Washington, DC there is a quote on a wall from the late Father Horace McKenna, S.J., (a tireless worker for the less fortunate) that reads simply: “The poor can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they have no boots.” It is worth keeping that in mind when people proclaim that some Americans are too lazy to succeed.
5
Yes, it can be done. You can either pout and lose or you can grasp that roulette wheel and have a teensy chance at the prize. But please, if you win, don't crow about how you spun the wheel. Twas a job offer, a random occurance or forty, twas luck. The losers of the World Series are often the objectively best team and some guy in some ghetto somewhere might have been the star pitcher if only he'd been able to afford decent equipment and coaching.
Perhaps someday we'll insist that all schools get equal resources regardless of the color of the kids and the class of their parents. Until then, some kids go barefoot while others get rocket-propeled boots.
Ain't it amazing how Ivanka, who has been showered with unearned riches says that nobody wants to be given anything? That it's best to let folks succeed on their own? Try it yourself, girl.
Humans are collaborative. We do best when we pool resources and join talents. Competitive zero-sum dynastic capitalism is killing us and the planet. Feel the Bern, yet?
4
the problem conservatives have with AOC on bootstraps is they ignore the real data. Equal opportunity across multiple criteria no longer exists in the US. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/business/economy/social-mobility-south.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
https://www.nber.org/papers/w22910
https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-success-income-inequality-2014-1
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/10/opportunity-atlas.html
3
When I was a kid I had to walk to school both ways uphill........... alot more difficult than pulling myself up by my bootstraps
BTW it was always snowing during my walks
2
If I'm poor, it is due to my circumstances.
If you are poor, you did not work hard enough.
If I'm rich, I've earned it.
If you are rich, you stole it.
Welcome to America....
4
You failed to mention why the government had all that land to give out. They stole it from the Native Americans.
3
Actually, there would be no Republican lifeguard at a beach which minorities use.
3
Here's what the data says: white male, worshipped by his mom, mentored by a successful dad. That's who can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Increasingly, it's a woman or black man who meets those criteria, who can do it. But that, too, is a genetic coin toss. So how do we explain Oprah Winfrey? It's the interior. Not the exterior. Nurture those interior skills instead of the exterior ones that are thrusting people into opportunities they are ill-equipped to capitalize on. Then we'll have real mobility. It has to start in school.
Democrat policy proposals to the able bodied on welfare - just stay there as we soak the rich-middle class! Really Nick!!!
2
Facts and logic are so passé in republican circles.
It’s all about feelings and imagination now; I don’t feel safer, I feel like things were better before, gay marriage is destroying the family or offend my magic friends in the sky. Why must you keep bringing up these silly facts? Oh yeah I also read that The Twitterverse is real life today.
1
GOP Core Belief - We used to walk to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways!
I have been thinking about this very point with regard to my family. My great-grandfather came from Norway in the 1860s and eventually landed in Idaho where he homesteaded the maximum amount of property that he could. That land along with some additions that were later purchased by my grandfather stayed in our family's hands for three generations. Never once did we consider that we got this land for free, by first, taking it away from the Shoshone, who never recovered from the incursion onto their land by immigrants such as my gteat grandfather. These new immigrants were further assisted by the United States Army who destroyed the Shoshone at the Bear River Massacre. I often think of the slaves who were promised 40 acres and a mule, but it never materialized, and in its place, they were given Jim Crow laws, vagrancy laws, and forced prison labor. The boon extended to my great-grandfather fueled the success for his descendants. For the Native Americans and ex-slaves, what they were given, was a raw deal, and one for which we still pay the price today. White privilege is not so much a privilege, but it is a lack of introspection and recognition as to how we were given an overwhelming a head start in the race of life.
3
I was a college professor for three decades at a mostly white university where the relatively few blacks that attended were almost always from the middle class. They did just fine.
One time, however, I had an older student in one of my classes who was clearly not from the middle class. He was struggling to keep up, and was able to attend college only because, having been in the Marines, the military was paying his tuition.
Outside of class, I required he meet regularly with me in my office so I could help keep him on track. We would always end the meetings by talking about his life in the military, and his hopes and aspirations.
One day I inquired about his background, and he replied, "You don't want to know, Professor." I indicated with my eyes that I did want to know, at which point he pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of a truly dismal, green, peeling-paint hallway with garbage strewn on the floor and a single exposed lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
He then said, "This is a recent picture of the building where I grew up. I'm only here because the military saved my life."
Yes, I too think the military probably did save his life.
Btw, I am still friendly with him on social media. He is doing just fine post-college.
5
I thought of two things:
One was the obvious correctness of the piece.
The second was how there's nary a Republican in America that would scoff at a perpetual motion machine if they found out about it on FOX.
4
Can we stop saying “earning” for passive wealth transfer? Trump was not “earning” $200,000 at age 3. He was receiving it, he was getting it. But he wasn’t “earning” it. It was simply a private entitlement. Why not discuss like any other form of welfare?
6
The Washington carpenter's letter to Kristof closely mirrors my own upbringing. My folks weren't violent. They stressed the benefits of education. And -- this is a late epiphany for me, I am embarrassed to admit -- I was born white. That last fact, alone, gave me a tremendous leg-up in life.
Anyone with a similar upbringing who thinks he/she succeeded without all those benefits is delusional. If you were born on third, admit it; don't claim you hit a triple.
4
Why do we encourage poor, uneducated people to marry and procreate? Whoa! We are limiting their ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Maybe we should be honest and let the poor, uneducated folks know they’ll probably never earn enough to fund housing, food, childcare or transportation. I’m not sure about the likelihood of making it on one’s own from those circumstances. A pipe dream.
1
Talk to the successful of tomorrow- they all act as though children are pets. Luxury pets, for the fortunate, and that any one who has children and doesn’t magically also earn $200k per year, has done something awfully rude and ignorant and possibly even malign.
It is disgusting that young people from the upper class now sincerely believe that the poor do not even deserve the consolation of children and that their offspring will inevitably be toothless failures.
When will we invest in all of America again? I went to fancy college and ended up waiting tables again at 40 thanks rich folk for the recession the year I managed to get through that fancy college.
1
With the social net provided today, it is quite possible to pull yourself out of poverty.
I did it.
From Brussels? You pulled yourself up from American poverty, in Brussels?
2
One has to be careful of collapsing into trouble through judging others – those higher socially or more wealthy – as though you were judging yourself just here and now – we aim to further ideal equaling through engaged responses and great taxation!
@M. C. Major Just a great, possibly miserable, thought sometime quite wrong one might meet with, or notice, an error and know that (certain!)
When ambition turns to greed, corruption and hatred, our 'City upon a hill' becomes a wasteland, its foundation cracked, its citizens neglected. In order to go forward, we must first go back to where,why and how we began.
Nice piece, Mr. Kristof. As always.
2
"It’s particularly hard for people to scramble up when they come from violent homes, poor schools or foster care, or face impediments of race or class. These can be challenges, but they can be addressed to some extent — but not by sermons about bootstraps."
Is there a reason gender was omitted? Kinda strange, given your fellow writer's story of her time at Uber and earlier and the worldwide war on educated women.
3
There is a reason why America harbors at least 20 million Latin Americans, all of whom started in extreme poverty, many if not most of whom came from family situations that were abusive. Many endured domestic violence, family alcoholism, and organized crime. All came from nations with barely functioning governments, controlled either by oligarchs, mafia leaders, or military dictators. None were white and none had college educations.
They came to America illegally, and risked persecution, and even prison, because they understood that everything Nicholas Kristof just wrote about America is wrong. And so they have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and made this nation a better place.
But don't let any of that get in the way of the progressive victim machine. It rolls on perpetually and reflexively.
2
@Chuck French
"progressive victim machine" ... catchy way to try to shame those of us who believe this country can do better and that the wage gap is unacceptable. Perhaps its a phrase coined by a privileged white guy who is afraid of losing his power and feels like a "victim" to Progressive attempts to right the power imbalances in our society?
1
Everybody's Talkin about pulling yourselves up, but what about somebody who does not want to? my father supported us, but he was absolutely miserable. what he truly wanted in his life which was missing was the creative Liberty 2 explore art. ironically I think it finally killed him. he waited until we were all grown before he left but at that point he was past his prime I guess you could say. he never could really summon the energy. my mother on the other hand spent her entire married life trying to get him to be a good bourgeois. with her it was always about the money. don't get me wrong she was the wonderful mother however leaning so heavily on my father to make all of these decisions that were going to make her comfortable. well that didn't work. and guess what? she died miserable. Great American Dream.
1
Great column but I don't think this way of thinking has been solely a product of the Republican party. I'd say plenty of centrist Democrats believe the same thing and craft policies around those beliefs. I remember Obama chastising African American young men to "pull up their pants" as if the fact that they wore those (ridiculous) no belt pants was the problem. The problem was the lack of opportunities in their neighborhoods, the problem was the schools in their neighborhood were run down, the problem was they were disadvantaged right from birth and no matter how many times President Obama, or anyone else, tells them to pull up their pants it won't change that.
Thank-you to Mr. Kristof for explicitly pointing out this long held myth, planted by the greedy to justify their greed and their privilege. Our country is designed to maintain the ruling class (legacy admissions to Ivy Leagues, for instance), and to keep the majority in cuffs.
1
Enslaved black African men, women and children and colonized and conquered brown Indigenous men, women and children weren't American immigrants nor refugees with any boots nor straps to pull themselves up to the white European Judeo- Christian men, women and children who owned them, their lives, lands and natural resources.
They and their heirs were always separate and unequal by their physically identifiable human characteristics. Along with their unique American political educational socioeconomic demographic histories.
2
You don't have to be a "communist loon" to logically grasp that our strength lies in the collective, in our ability to cooperate.
Cooperation not competition. The former represents our better selves, the latter our most venal.
4
There is the wonderful commercial by LeBron James in which the camera focuses on him as he says, "even better, wouldn't it be wonderful if there were no more humble beginnings?"
2
While external factors are important, it is important to recognize that personal decisions can make a huge difference in outcomes.
A friend of mine has two daughters, both raised in the same household. One has a successful career and marriage, the other is a single mom who loves drugs and can barely hold a job. The difference is the kids they hung out with in school, and personal decisions they've made.
3
My birth certificate says Hispanic, and I love my culture, but I'm also half English and you would probably call me "white" if you met me. Seems like this is necessary to say because the white-privilege narrative is so important to Kristof.
I'd would have appreciated more specific ideas for solving the problems affected people that are struggling. I work in nonprofit and led a small organization that worked with urban communities that are primarily black and entrenched in a cycle of poverty. It is so complex but the best solutions are those that start in the schools.
I don't understand why newspapers give space to articles like this. You're not saying anything original or insightful. You're not offering a specific solution or call to action. Your carpenter example is no more meaningful than your analogy of people who can run a four-minute mile.
For the record, I grew up in poverty (in central Florida), single mother and not much of a family. I made good grades was able to figure things out on my own. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps but I don't judge/assume/finger-wag at anyone. I'm intentional about how I help others, raised good children, and don't shy away from discussions like this.
I don't know you personally but suggest you focus more on actions than using catch phrases that place people into convenient little boxes.
3
I'm not sure why so many comments reflect such a misunderstanding of Mr. Kristof's article. He is merely stating the obvious truth: that nobody is able to thrive and succeed without a combination of good luck and support from some source - no one! Whether that support comes from a single mother who is determined to keep her children alive and capable of achieving more than she has; or from the good luck to be born into a community that values education as the route to a more successful life, the indisputable truth is that no person is able to achieve without the help of others. Which does not necessarily equate to "welfare" or governmental largess.
3
“Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is a convenient fantasy for those who want to justify the wealth and opportunity inequality chasm in our society.
Always remember, with modern American conservatives, the cruelty is the point.
Interesting how many commenters define "success" as "getting rich".
Maybe it's time to consider a different metric?
2
If we really think about it, without the constant daily services of thousands of other people, we would quickly become naked and starved and paralyzed. Who provides the electrical power to your home? Who has the skills to put a roof over your head? Who knows how to build a road network that you depend on? Who can make the clothes you wear? Can you do all of that?
3
While pulling up from the boot straps is absolutely necessary for success, it is not sufficient. It clearly "takes a village" for you to succeed and that is after assuming you have the same opportunity and a level playing field. To be at the right place, at the right time.
It speaks volumes when a single earner in the fifties could manage two or more kids and today two earners can barely manage about one child! Obviously single parents have it harder. You can pull with all your might, but it depends on where your shoe is, to stand a chance.
1
Read a book called ‘Nickel and Dimed’ by Barbara Ehrenreich. She is an undercover journalist working different low wage jobs in different locations to study the effects of the Welfare Act of 1996. The book came out in 2001 and it is an earlier and much more extensive version of this column
3
Could not agree with you more. For some, the bootstraps are just not long enough!
This is The Great Lie that has always been perpetuated by conservatives.
They say work hard, pull yourself up, etc. and then they makes sure there are barriers in your way, especially if you are a person of color.
They try to deny these same people, food, a decent place to live, health care, and an education.
They say one thing, but really live by the words of Judge Smails: "The world needs ditch diggers, too."
1
I wish that this column was simply read aloud by any one of the candidates on the Democratic debate stage with a simple conclusion..."this explains why we are Democrats."
There is a caveat you see in advertising of a lot of financial products: "past performance is no guide to future performance".
Many commentators seem to believe that they "bootstrapped" themselves to success so anybody can do today what they did fifty years ago. Not so! Apart from the quantum of luck that helped them, the world is a nastier and more brutal place than it was fifty years ago. I saw this for my own sons, so I am not citing theory.
Your government and mine have destroyed whole industries in the name of economic dogma. Money has been squandered on unproductive edifices rather than roads, rail and factories. Your pitiful excuse for a president built luxury accommodation instead of homes, contributing to the millions of homeless. Wages are so low that a person can work two full-time jobs and not be able to afford a place to live.
Before you pontificate about your success "walk a mile in the other man's shoes". Then view your life through a modicum of humility; and perhaps extend a hand to some one who is struggling. Start by voting for federal assistance to those in need; it will not bring on the apocalypse.
1
Mr Trump may have had an income of $200,000/year at age three, but I’m sure he was not earning it.
2
No. It is not like saying that because someone can run a 4 min mile, then everyone can.
It is like saying that some people work incredibly hard, training and dieting hours per day to be able to run a 4 min mile. Other people work incredibly hard to learn a construction trade and achieve success. Other work very hard to overcome a disability, learn to read while blind, take the subway to work without legs.
The point is that ANYONE can work hard. Regardless of difficulties or disadvantages. To become accomplished at something. That will bring achievement.
I have never met anyone who worked really hard that did not become accomplished in at least one thing.
The things that Americans consider disadvantages and impediments, are laughable for 80%+ of the world's populations. No American is truly disadvantaged by world's standards. There are people in Africa every day pulling themselves by the bootstraps with no medical care, no personal safety, massive class discrimination, real lack of food (not the obese "starving American" kind), with real violence and war around them. If they can do it, any American claiming it can't be done here should be ashamed.
3
Thank you for this, and your article recently about your home town. I look forward to the day when we retire this myth. It is simply not true anymore. At least not under our current system. If you are born on the wrong side of the tracks your dad can’t call in a favor and get you an internship. Chances are because you can’t afford high-quality food, you’re overweight or sick. Study hard and make good grades, but you can’t afford college. No degree, You’ll end up in retail. Try to get a scholarship? Rich parents bought their children all the spots. The system is so rigged.
1
Being overwhelmed and defeated by abuse and neglect, an adaptive strategy by a child so treated is to dissociate (go unconscious while awake) during the abuse and to numb themselves from the left over feelings of terror, grief and rage that are compartmentalized, usually for a lifetime, yet go unprocessed only to manifest themselves in all manner of mental illness and mood disorders. The strategy is counterproductive and self annihilating as an adult, and is near impossible to break free from without serious commitment and ample evidence based treatment.
3
If the "prime working age" is 25 to 54 then Medicare and perhaps SS should start at 54.
4
@caljn
Everyone Brags about Scandinavian countries but the Japanese retire at 55.
1
I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. Studied hard. Worked harder. Didn’t need or want affirmative action. Paid my own rent and worked nights and weekends.
Once inner city voters understand this, they can have a piece of the American Dream. I won’t hold my breath.
I've made this comment, numerous times. The bailout of Wall Street and the banks made many rich at the expense of others.
The effect of low and lower interest rates is also regional. Folks retiring from NYC jobs have pensions that are greater than the wages of highly educated folks, in other parts of the country.
A cousin of mine, who retired from a New York State job remarked, that his area in Florida is filled with "rich sanitation workers and poor everyone else"
Those policies also helped the fellow in the White House. He's paid the nation back for his weird good fortune by establishing a new culture of lying and deceit!
6
That change of heart is what we need for our country as a whole. American children need fewer wagging fingers or homilies about bootstraps, and more helping hands.
Won't happen with a Republican government. The American children you talk about aren't white.
1
I once watched a panel discussion in which one of the participants said his advice to the poor was to not be poor.
This statement has stuck with me as a symbol of wilful ignorance about people's lives.
1
The original is from the book The Adventures of Baron Munchausen...the Baron, a notorious braggart is telling people about the time he fell down a bottomless well and kept "falling and falling and falling and falling..." until one bystander says, "But if it was a bottomless well how is that you are here before us?" The Baron responds, "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps." The expression means to do the impossible...but like Ben Franklin's "God helps those who help themselves," (which was originally mean to point out how often God seems to help those who steal--who, "help themselves")--the subtle irony has been lost until the original meaning today means the opposite.
1
What is wrong with helping each other make this place a better world for all people? Everyone needs help and has received help. Live your life as generous, kind and honest. What's wrong with that?
4
It is appalling that GOP lawmakers, which are always espousing the bootstraps mantra and cutting social programs, are falling all over themselves now to protect their own jobs even if it means turning a blind eye to Trump's illegal actions.
2
AOC had it right. That is why she was so criticized by the right wingers.
1
Yes, some people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. However, some people have neither boots nor bootstraps, (figuratively i.e poor education, poor housing, no healthcare, etc), so it would be nice if the government (we the people) were to provided them with boots and bootstraps so that they have a fair chance of pulling themselves up.
1
As usual Nicholas confuse two closely mnemonically-related ideas: a hand-up versus a hand-out.
Most Americans rabidly support and advocate a Hand-Up.
The Economist magazine report on the Global Poverty - the largest study of its type in the world famously said "Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again"
What accomplished this? Two Things: Free Markets and unfettered Capitalism.
What had failed prior to this? Hand-Outs.
Sometimes [most times!] bootstraps work better than handouts.
And we don't have to "TRY" ala Kristof - we already know they work.
3
I am not you, am no millionaire.
I should act appropriately with reference to who others are – their identity – not just that others are – the fact of their existing!
@M. C. Major I am saying respect not what’s the same as much as that not the same. See differences and push for what can be the sameness and be certain to have correctly finished what is now done...
@M. C. Major See differences and push for what can be the sameness and be certain to have correctly (that what is at an end, and business, it should in so many ways be seen as right)!
My husband became a successful professional after being raised in a very poor family. The children are the innocents. He grew up on welfare and food stamps. He received Pell Grants to attend college.
I would never begrudge these programs. They are vital to the innocents.
1
No encouragement, no confidence? If you don't have true grit, or common sense, i.e., hard work equals a positive outcome, it's gonna be hard to pull yourself up; what for? I bet Ben C. had an "encouraging someone" in his life. I know someone with just a high school education. She told me her grandmother always told her she, "could be or do anything!" I believe this is what has given her true grit and confidence! I doubt kids from impoverished conditions get much of that --encouragement. Pre-K educational programs *for all* would be helpful. "Investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
1
The very fact that immigrants came to this country for opportunity belies the bootstrap theory. They didn't migrate to Siberia or Somalia. And if they could create so much better lives for themselves solely on their own efforts, they could have remained in their countries of origin. They came to this country because there was an opportunity infrastructure created by their predecessors that enabled them to thrive. The video of Elizabeth Warren making this point during her first campaign for Senate is still relevant and should regularly be re-posted. There is no such thing as a self-made person.
1
I give your new letter-writer friend a lot of credit -- he read something that might have been out of his comfort zone, thought about it, and came up with a logical conclusion. Now can we get a copy to the 40% of the country who needs to read something similar?
2
' "Stimac says he now favors substantial federal programs to provide opportunity and address addiction, mental illness and education, adding, “This is a real change of heart for me.” '
This perfectly illustrates the best of what liberals can be and have to offer.
Liberals encourage opportunity, compassion and self-reflection in themselves and others. They are often more aware of the obstacles in the path of these three virtues. When they see something bad happen, they often think/ask:
* How does this affect others?
* Why did this happen?
* How likely is this to happen to others in the future?
* What can/should I do about it?"
Science, evidence, context and circumstance serve as tools to their moral compass and their faith.
Too often and for too many today, instead there is the tendency to rationalize and distance oneself from compassion and the moral obligation to support basic human rights and freedoms as evidenced by these thoughts:
* unless it has happened to me or someone close to me, it's not that important
* those who experience bad events somehow made bad decisions to make themselves more likely to not only experience the bad event but *deserve* it, especially if the other is of a different ethnicity, gender, nationality or religion
* their way is the best way for everyone and in all circumstances
Caring for others and critical thinking are strengths not weaknesses.
3
Yeah, it's impossible. We're all subject to an iron law of dependency on public largess, with statist policy the only means of surviving individually or collectively. The American myth of self-sufficiency or even freedom of self-determination is outdated and has been thoroughly repudiated by the "best" thinkers.
Once you say it out loud like that, it is exposed for the grim collapse of will that it is. I'm not going to waste your valuable time recounting tiresome anecdotes of brave families washing up on our shores and succeeding across generations without the overwhelming awe and majesty of government programs (maybe some infrastructure like interstate highways and public education... but not to quibble). Doing so would only get in the way of Kristof's powerful and compelling narrative.
1
It is possible to rise from poverty through education, hard work, perseverance, and resilience. You need to have adults in your life who value education, model hard work and perseverance, and instill resilience. My parents did just that as first generation Americans who didn't speak English till they were in first grade. My father was a polio victim at age 2 and worked every day since he was 13. I saw him get up in the morning, get dressed, head to the subway and go to work. I saw him work two jobs when necessary. My mother always had at least a part time job outside the home. The home was a tenement. I didn't know it then, but we were the working class poor. Reliant on public health to see a dentist. Never owned a car. Always told to study, work hard. I did. I got full scholarship for undergraduate school. I was PRIVILEGED. If a child doesn't see these values and life skills at home, it is very difficult to rise up, and the cycle repeats for generations. It is not a failure of individual will.
3
Privilege is real. Here in Palo Alto, the children of tech execs can easily get internships, access to capital for their startups, access to the best career coaches and more.
I grew up middle class to two educated parents. But I never had access to private coaches, country club connections and easy $.
There are no bootstraps. This false narrative will damage the country.
3
I'm happy to know the origins of the term--makes more sense than current usage.
It's unpopular to say this, but it is likely that the biggest factor determining how well a person who starts on the low end of things does is intelligence. Even worse, the only systematic predictor we have for intelligence is genetics--it only explains about half, but no other measurable factor is found. Family environment advantages tend to disappear by high school. Lots of exceptions, and luck by definition is unpredictable, but genetic driven intelligence is probably the biggie. Mr. Kristof's immigrant father was successful and very smart. His son writes for the NYTs. Love to know more about Ben Carson's family.
@rawebb1
In my experience, personal drive and desire are the prime factor. If you are motivated and disciplined in what you do- you can still do quite well. There are plenty of examples highly intelligent people who go no where and the duller tools in the shed doing well.
1
A few years ago (2015), Nicholas Kristof told us "Inequality is a choice," yet now he is advocating "more helping hands," rather than equality. Exactly when will "more helping hands" end the stratification of society and result in equality? Why is he abandoning his ideal of equality?
Like many candidates who vociferously rail against inequality, yet their proposals, like bait and switch, will never achieve equality of income and wealth, why falsely claim to stand for equality when they are insincere?
Interestingly, while Kristof mentions the land given to whites by the government, he omits mentioning the theft of that land from the American tribes nor any provisions for its return, as if lands it distributed honestly belonged to the government.
2
I often find myself wishing middle America was less invested in right wing tropes and more invested in the true meaning of "capitalism" and its essential ingredient, a level playing field. When the government invests in that level playing field by funding education, healthcare and infrastructure while legislating on behalf of those who need freedom from the constraints of poverty, we will finally be free from the malignancy of monopolism and oligarchy. Despair is the only alternative...this from a lifelong, well educated capitalist.
3
I would bet that the minority of those who were able to jump social classes had at least one person to whom they were "important". It could be a single mother, father, grandparent, uncle, guardian, etc. The concept of being "important" to another human being during the formative years is critical to self worth and to achieving any success in life. When a young child senses that they are "important" to a trusting and nurturing human being that feeling becomes internalized and eventually that child grows into an adult with a strong sense of self worth. The person who feels important to him or herself has the tools for success whether it be in a career or as a parent. The poor souls who never felt important to anyone are likely to be doomed to a life of underachievement.
5
@Robert Gendler I agree with you. I would add "teacher" to your list. Many/most of us who have done well in life can identify at least one teacher who helped us find our path. And may I also add this: many children who survive a difficult childhood possessed an innate ability to identify adults-- often unrelated to them-- that they could look to as role models, advice counselors, or just the source of a friendly smile and greeting. Both of my parents were those people to many children we brought home who were not so fortunate as to have this in their own family. I wonder if and how society could build on that?
1
My "bootstraps" in a tenement apartment in inner city NY of the 1950's included rent control, a union wage for my dad, a stay at home mom, health insurance, outstanding public schools, an entire neighborhood of parental guidance and the bookmobile.
Yes, there was once a time when we were "all in this together." Then came the Reagan Republicans.
"You are on your own" was their disguise. They started looting the Treasury with unnecessary tax cuts. Many of the very rich turned their back and pulled up the lifeboats.
Finally, none of this would have been possible absent the fact that "white privilege" played a large role in my outcome.
Virtually everyone I have ever met in my several walks of life are NOT looking for a handout. They want a helping hand and a level playing field.
Please help me remind Trump supporters of these facts. Ask them to vote for Mike Bloomberg this Fall. Mike is a metaphor for the American Dream,..... and he is busy giving all of his lifetime earnings away.
4
To be able to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you first of all need boots.
After most Western countries switched to a democratic political regime, "socialist" political parties were invented in order to install labor laws. Conservative political parties were a reaction against the demands of those "pro ordinary citizens" parties, and tried to protect the (by definition largely inherited) wealth of the aristocrats, the old financial elites.
The very purpose of labor laws has always been to make sure that people earn wages that finally allow them to buy boots too.
Because once you have them, you CAN go to work - something you have to do in order to survive, if you're not part of the wealthiest elites.
So yes, the bootstraps narrative has always been fake news, invented by the elites to protect their own, disproportionally big wealth. It's time to get rid of it, and have fact-based laws again. If the financial elites in Europe can live with this, surely those in the US can do so too.
1
The myth of the American Dream was forged back when this was basically a "virgin continent", made ready and open for development/success by anyone with the ability to get here and work hard.
That situation is no longer the case. The GI Bill was what I saw construct the golden era of the 1950's when I grew up. An entire generation of citizens were able to go to college and buy a first home, and their children were educated in our vaunted public school systems that were the pride of the country and gold standard for the world. This created the mythic Middle Class that fueled our prosperity and science leadership.
3
The rugged individualist living free is someone living alone in the wilderness, the Jeremiah Johnson figure. As soon as people form communities they become mutually dependent and what affects one affects all. That’s just reality.
The kind of social arrangements which reactionaries seek with their self reliance blather is having license to take what they want before everyone else. Societies which are on the way up are inclusive and those on the way down tend to descend into rigid hierarchies with elites who greedily take so much that they stifle all others from prospering.
All of the wealth generated by our modern civilization is the product of everyone, to prosper depends upon all benefitting. The idea that wealthy people are makers and those who produce the goods and services for wages are takers is inane.
2
Bloomberg is under a lot of heat for saying working class and poor people don't fit in to the corporate environment while donating 137 million to help them adapt. Being working class and worked for corporations I found him to be right. I never fit in. Are we going to say if some of those kids make it in the corporate world they didn't do it on their own? You better believe they did.
There's a difference between the above a self made man who drifted through the best colleges, went on to discover himself, wandered the night clubs and opium dens of Thailand, and then takes his rightful place as chairman at daddies company when they threaten to cut of his money.
Everyone knows they should count their blessings. Some of us are to proud to say we had good breaks. Some of us are negative enough only take inventory of our bad luck. I don't see any reason to tell people they didn't do it themselves. I don't see any reason to thank the government for doing what they were paid to do. And don't ask me to thank you. Thanking people is a middle class thing.
2
Why does it always have to be one or the other? Let's encourage personal responsibility and sound choices at the same time we provide generous systems of support based on equity and dignity.
1
Bravo, Mr. Kristof. So many people who think they’ve achieved things completely on their own or without benefit of privilege seem outraged by the suggestion that maybe they’ve had a little help. Reminds me of one of my very conservative friends who grew up in a solid middle class home and was put through college on his parents’ dime but didn’t see that as any sort of advantage, claiming “yes, but I had to do the work to get the grades!’ When I pointed out that he was given the opportunity to do the work and get the grades, an opportunity that many poor kids just don’t get, his only response was a blank stare - didn’t get the point.
The exceptional will tend to succeed even in rough circumstances. But the real test of a society is how it delivers for the ordinary person.
4
Even two parent families working more than two jobs struggle to make ends meet. Housing in the SF Bay Area is expensive. Rent for a one bedroom is $3000 per month. If you spend one third of income on rent you need a job paying more than $50/hour. People have long commutes for cheaper housing meaning less time with children, to be involved in their children’s schools, less family time and more stress. Low income housing is often near highways bringing pollutants and asthma. Many people are on the edge of the whole thing crashing down. Sick kids, a lost job for staying home with them. Life is a constant struggle for many.
2
It's important to remember that for every story about an individual who "made it" through their own hard work, there is a equally compelling story of an individual who, despite trying to work hard, faced some challenge that simply couldn't be overcome. Perhaps the individual was an accident victim, a wounded soldier, an assault victim... the list is long. The point is, we cannot judge others.
2
@Jeff P
.....true, but for those on top, its mighty convenient.
What many folks seem to forget is that in order to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps, first one must have boots. Amazingly there are many people in poor circumstances that seem willing to chop off their own feet so that people with 10 walk-in closets can take their boots and shoes. It's been that way for years, and Donald Trump is the end result.
There's little I can add to what Mr. Kristof said. I’ll just say that if someone isn't making it because of a lack of education, a lack of job skills, having serious health issues, and so on, in a caring society we would find a way to give, yes, give them the help they need to overcome those obstacles so they can make themselves become a contributing member of our nation. After all, if that is what we want them to do, whey wouldn’t we? I suspect that people who haul out the bootstrap theory are using a code that means they DON’T WANT those people to succeed. And you know who those people are, don’t you? (They’re THOSE people. Say no more!)
1
Democratic Party policies, put forth in federal, state, and local laws like a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, disability compensation, and social security make people dependent upon the government, instead of their own resources. Republican Ideologues say that's wrong. They want American citizens to be free of government, including government protections like the minimum wage and social security. They have been working to make Americans FREE of all possible government benefits and protections for decades on end.
When everyone in the USA becomes free the way Republicans want us to be free, ALL our quadriplegics will pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Maybe not.
1
@BigGuy
And remember, each and every one of the reforms you mention were opposed tooth and nail by the GOP. They are now in the process of getting rid of them.
Some of the comments here are complaining about the absent fathers, drug addicted parents, and so forth, I get that. But what about the children left in their wake? This is what we're talking about. The children didn't have a choice in this, they don't get to pick their parents.
So they need some programs or assistance to level the playing field. There's nothing wrong with that. While people champion the billionaires getting pardons today, what about the little guy and girl?
And congrats that some of you dug yourself up from the depths of despair. Not everyone can do that. This thinking is what I call the Michael Jordan Coaching philosophy. Jordan, a great player, was a lousy coach. I heard he'd look at a player and just say, drive and jump over him and dunk it, like I did. Well, guess what, not many are like him, and that's why he was a crummy coach. He didn't understand that most can't do what he did. So yes, give us your bootstrap story, but remember, not all can do that.
2
I think the real issue with breaking through the "Bootstraps" argument is that many very successful people do work VERY hard. My father always earned a very comfortable living and had a wildly successful decade in the 90's (which allowed for investments and additional savings. It also resulted in great opportunities for my sister and I.) My father also worked very hard; he certainly earned his living. How then to convey, that I work just as hard in my job at a state university but make literally one sixth of what my father made? How do you convey that most people are working incredibly hard, but that some peoples' skill sets just aren't monetarily valued? My father was in sales. He was very good at his job, but had it gone away no one would have died or even had their lives change very much. Compare his best years (+$300,000 / year) to nurses or teachers. Road repairmen or police officers. There aren't bootstraps so much as a lot of luck, and a weird societal assignment of job value.
3
I grew up in a typical second generation suburban two parent family. My dad went to school on the GI bill. There was never a question that we three girls would go to college in the 70's. But we had a safety net at home. Yes we had to work hard but we knew it would pay off.
The poor people that you chronicle in your new book have very little chance of being successful unless they find a mentor or some type of net. Critics of the poor, including readers on this thread, think that as long as they work hard(@minimum wage) that they will achieve the dream regardless of their circumstances.
Sorry, not in today's economy.
We may think that a State University's tuition @$8000 is a bargain but if 40% doesn't have $400 saved for a rainy day, how on earth could they even dream of that education?
It is obvious the solutions will come from the private sector
How sad when we could build one less nuclear sub and probably pay for universal pre-K.
BTW This mess started with Reagan's cut of school lunches. Think-did any of your kids go to school hungry? Pretty hard to care about education when one's belly is screaming
Hope we can get the pols onboard
6
It's funny that those who constantly refer to the bootstraps myth, are conservatives - historically the people who defined themselves by their aristocratic roots and who wanted to protect their wealth against the new political parties, who supported labor laws, decent wages, and access to education and healthcare for hardworking non aristocrats too ...
And even today, the only political party to systematically (and since Trump, ONLY) pass bills that shift more money to the financial elites and away from the 99%, is the GOP.
How can you EVER put "America" first, as a government, if simultaneously you want to protect and pass bills that only benefit the wealthiest elites, all while asking an indeed physically impossible act from the 99% others ... ?
It all just doesn't make any sense, does it?
2
In my experience, there are far too many among us who are too poor to even HAVE "bootstraps." And whatever opportunities to aquire said bootstraps (nutrition assistance, affordable housing, public education, affordable heathcare, protection from abuse and exploitation) are being aggressively stripped away by a political party that seeks to criminalize and even demonize poverty.
2
Mr. Kristof, what about altruism in policy making? I seem to remember in days gone by, politicians using the "greatest good for the greatest number" test.
1
Sure, I "pulled myself up by my bootstraps" but would not have been able to do so without the government programs that were available to me. I owe much in my life to liberal thinking legislators who put country first and provided opportunities for its citizens. My parents could never have afforded the education I received if it were not for these wonderful programs.
I am grateful and give back a little by volunteering as a math, chemistry, and physics tutor at the local community college. It is the least I could do to help, often underprivileged, students realize that they can do well in these subjects and perhaps attain their dream of "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps". I am impressed by their motivation and desire to improve their lives. Often they return to school after years in the workforce. As Ted Kennedy said in another context, the dream lives on and will never die.
Good government funded programs are key to allowing people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps". We often don't even realize that the programs we take advantage of are government funded. I for example, am a product of the New York City school system of the 1960's. I was invited to enter a program called SP, special progress, because I was a good student. i went to a junior high school in a lower middle class neighborhood in the Bronx and because of the SP program, i did the seventh and eighth grade in one year. This program gave me one additional year of earning power before I retired and increased my social security benefit, yet another government funded program. In the ninth grade we were all given an exam in the fall. I did well and gained entrance to the Bronx HS of Science, at the time at least, the best high school in the country. In the fall of my senior year we we all took another exam that was the entrance exam for the City University of New York. I did well again and gained entrance to CCNY. This was essentially a free education paid for by the tax payers of New York under a government program to educate the youth of New York City that began in the 1800's. I graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. Two years later, after my first job, I went back to CCNY to obtain my PhD, again for free because of NSF grants that supported the engineering program at City College and other universities around the country.
5
Thank you for this editorial. I am a white privileged woman who worked in the low income minority communities of Los Angeles. Having had that experience I saw first hand how impossible it was for many to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps." As you said, many coming from abuse, violent and unsafe neighborhoods and the constant trauma that they face every day. I have also thought, yeah it's easy for average white people who come from middle and upper middle class families to succeed when they have all the ingredients in their favor. But put them in a low-income poor neighborhood their chances of success are much lower. How can a privileged person make that kind of statement when they have no idea how difficult everyday life is for people of color and poverty? It just shows how disconnected we are as a nation.
Again thank you for this article.
5
Government programs have always been the bootstraps Americans have relied on to get a hand up. In 1935, when times were tough, we had the Works Progress Administration employing millions of able body Americans including women. We need to start another WPA program today to help those struggling.
2
No offense to the writer, but this kind of column should not have to still be written. We are all better off when we work together than when each of us only works for self and one's immediate family. In this country, racial and ethnic distinctions and prejudices muddy the waters in a self-defeating way.
2
@arp
No. It MUST be written, because the GOP, with their power in Washington and far too many states, is in the process of eliminating every program designed to help
those who need help. You live in Iowa, its happened there.
1
Mr. Kristoff mentions the pioneers who benefited from the Homestead Act. He doesn't mention that the majority of them went bust, and were bought out by land speculators from back East. Hence the refrain in the old song, "While starving to death on my government claim." Using conservative logic, the fact that some survived means the others deserved to starve.
2
@Frank O And those pioneers were forced west by the privileges of earlier land speculators, who bought up land and held it out of use.
We all need land. The land is rightly our common treasure, and the way one should gain secure possession is by paying, to the commons, the annual value of that land.
Instead, we pay landlords and land sellers, for access to something they didn't create. And on top of that, we must pay taxes on our purchases, on our houses, on our wages, on imported items. What a system!
Adam Smith saw it. David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, too. Henry George pointed the way, and a generation of Americans understood it. Unfortunately, the idea was not so popular with the monopolists who funded many of our top universities, and teaching these ideas was not a route to tenure.
But the validity, sanity and inherent justice, not to mention the economic efficiency, of these ideas still stand. Explore the ideas via https://schalkenbach.org/introductionto-the-ideas-ofhenry-george/
3
No one pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps. On the other hand no one succeeds, or should expect to, without a lot of work and sacrifice. I think it is important to recognize that there are two sides to this discussion. Government has to provide opportunity, individuals have to make good use of those opportunities. I relate to your carpenter friend in many ways. Like him I grew up white, in a stable, loving family that was just barely getting by economically. I the first in my family to ever go to college but eventually earned four degrees and spent the the first half of my career as a successful engineer the second half as a successful lawyer. I never could have done any of that without not only a supportive family but supportive mentors, co-workers, bosses, clients, professors and friends. It's true that none of us builds anything by ourselves - not even our own lives. It's also true that I worked very hard. I worked multiple jobs while earning my degrees. Both as an engineer and a as a lawyer I worked sometimes 7 days a week, 20 hours or more a day. I can't even tell you how many times I had to miss events important to me because they were important to my friends or family or even had to be out of town or over seas. It's fair to expect people to be wiling to work hard and sacrifice - but only if they are truly given a fair opportunity as I was.
@KenC I am sorry you missed so much of life while working. I doubt however that you worked 20 hours per day. In those remaining 4 hours it wold be impossible to eat, travel to work, do minor chores, bathe, and sleep. Setting aside your exaggeration, I still feel sorry for you, and the children, family and friends who might have benefited from the greatest gift of all-- your time and attention. Go in peace.
I beg to differ with Mr. Kristof in one respect. "[T]he top is occupied by those who, say, were earning $200,000 a year at age 3, in today’s money, as President Trump was."
Mr. Trump has never earned a dollar in his life. It was all given to him (by Daddy) or (Trump University and the Trump charity debacle) stolen by him. His business ventures end in bankruptcy. So will his political venture, the problem there being that the "business" is the United States. But please don't talk about Trump "earning" money.
5
While I completely agree with the points made by Mr. Kristof there is one nagging concern about this discussion. Why is it that some people from disadvantaged backgrounds excel in life and why is it that some people with every possible advantage fail? Is there something we can learn from this that can result in policies which promote success?
High quality day care and preschool might be one part of the solution as they can help nurture a person’s innate abilities at an age where basic character traits are being set. But what else can we learn from those who do excel to help everyone reach their ultimate potential?
3
@Bruce claflin
The point you miss is that our government has pursued 40 years of policies that favor the rich minority over the less rich vast majority. This is GOP policy writ large.
It is not accidental, nor is it about the personal failings of the 99%.
4
Part of the problem is the false dichotomy of capitalism-socialism that we continue to fool ourselves with. There is no such thing as a purely capitalist economy. At least not in the true invisible hand sense. Pure capitalism disappears when you introduce rules, regulations, central banks and giant businesses that have limited liability. And none of that is going away. Similarly, there is no true socialist economy. All economies are mixed.
I am a big believer in theory. I think theory is important in order to give you a base to work from. However, no theory survives first contact with people in the real world. And it will always be so.
This idea that success is the result of the pure effort of the individual is nonsense. Let's take the biggest example of all: Jeff Bezos. What is Amazon without the internet? It is the Sears and Roebuck catalog. That is it. Without the infrastructure that Bezos had nothing to do with, who knows what he would be doing.
6
@Andy Makar
Our society has been brainwashed over the past 40 years to believe that everything is personal. Nothing is societal. It effectively supports the GOP notion that the system is completely fair, and if you are not on top, its your fault alone. Chomsky has been talking about this propaganda coup for decades.
Of course, "personal failings" does not explain why the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans has been, and still is, falling, or why fewer and fewer own of control more and more of the wealth. Its the result of government policies and a changing world economy. But even here, on a NYT comments thread,
many still discuss the issue like its only about what an individual does. And few seem to grasp that their reasoning means the vast majority of Americans are now lazy or make bad life decisions.
@Andy Makar
Indeed and guess who invented and financed the internet in the beginning.The Pentagon with our own tax paying money
One if the real facts that drove many to vote for Trump was the perception that the liberal “elites” have stacked the economic deck in their favor while rhetorically patronizing ordinary working folks. As Trump cynically put it “besides talk, what have they done for you?”
The so called liberals have benefited, often at the expense is those no so well off, from globalization, high technology, Wall Street and access to quality education, healthcare and housing beyond the grasp of millions. NYC and State are cases in point with de facto school and housing segregation.
Bernie attacks the billionaires and offers unattainable solutions. But the mirror must be held up to a wider swath of those who benefit from the 21st Century economy. Our future will not be saved with an us versus them (1%) approach, but with a sense of a national community that we are all in this together.
3
@Asher Fried
The wealthy (through their GOP and DLC enablers) have molded American economic policy to favor those at the top. As a result, the middle class is shrinking, and many of those still in it are struggling to maintain their position.
This is not news.
The wealthy waged class war for 40 years. And won.
Its time for a counterattack.
The wealthy will not cooperate in the changes this nation needs.
Here in Oregon there seem to be two reasons for poverty:
1. Drug addiction and mental illness. Oregon eliminated public health care for the mentally ill and dumped them on the street.
2. No-Fault Divorce has produced an exponential growth of single mothers with children on welfare. 90% of those living below the poverty line are divorced women with children.
4
@Astralnut
You miss the article's point. Most Americans are having a hard time keeping their economic life together. To
blame individual flaws, and concentrate on only the underside of the underclass, misses the need for our society to return to policies that favor the majority, not just the 1%.
Great column as usual. The GI bill after WWII was crucial in educating a generation of men (few women), who went on to achieve financial stability and success. Ditto the virtually free colleges in California, compliments of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. One could attend UC Berkeley's law school in the 1960s and emerge without any debt.
Higher education was, and remains, the ticket to a better life, but the Master Plan philosophy has been tossed aside, as a generation of conservatives--and sadly, liberals as well--have added administrators, who focus on getting money for ever more buildings, fancy rec centers, and sports arenas at the expense of students and faculty.
3
One thing that strikes me about the usual Republican narrative is how they talk about "wasting money" on the poor through the middle class, but how tax cuts are an "investment" in our economy.
The language is precisely and deliberately backward. Spending money on all of our citizens is an investment in our health, education and well-being. Giving money to the already affluent is wasting money on the wealthy, who have plenty of reserves to fall back on.
6
Escaping the socioeconomic situation one is born into gets commensurately harder the more obstacles in one’s way and the lack of positive support for attempting to do so.
Specifically, the more disadvantaged identities one has, the harder it is for a person to elevate themselves out of their situation. The reasons are systemic and are baked-in to our society. If you’re born White, het, male and in America (thus a native), your chances of escaping are far and away higher than if you’re a female Immigrant of Color and identify as LGBTQI+.
Where this starts is primary and high school public education. Because school budgets are based on local property taxes, there exists a gross disparity in the quality of the education a child receives based on their zip code. This is irrespective of race and is nearly entirely socioeconomic, backed by a mountain of robust, repeatable, peer-reviewed literature.
I married into a socioeconomic disadvantaged family and the quality of education the children received, several generations of them, stunned me for being so bad. From school facilities that subjected children to cold rooms in the winter and stiflingly-hot in the summer, to children vs teacher ratios, to the quality of the teachers and responsiveness of the school administrators (which was reliably poor over generations).
If we honestly expect people to escape the situations they are born into, we cannot hamstring them with poor education when it matters most.
.
4
I read a study couple of years ago, which indicated the United States ranked 79th as a country where someone could, through hard work and dedication, elevate their economic status from the lower economic status in which they were born. 79th. That means the ability to "pull one up by the bootstraps" is easier in 78 countries than in the US. Hmmmmm.
Rags to riches in the US, and the opportunity to do it are a myth.
3
I read a couple of years ago, a study that said the United States ranked 79th as a country where someone could, through hard work and dedication, elevate their economic status from the lower economic status in which they were born. 79th. That means the ability to "pull one up by the bootstraps" is easier in 78 countries than in the US. Hmmmmm.
Rags to riches in the US, and the opportunity to do it are a myth.
1
I am realizing that I need to look at where my money is going a lot more closely, as I am being charged to financial death by various vendors, and have had high medical bills. My pay has stayed the same over the last two years as costs have gone up. It shouldn't be a struggle to boost our social safety net up from the paltry level it is at now, since this country is awash in money for the upper class and corporations, but people keep voting for corrupt looters in the form of Republicans. They work to destroy the social safety net, even though they have so much. Are they just flat-out evil? If you are wealthy, why would you want to hurt those who are not?
7
I am so glad that Mr. Stimac read the Kristof book, which lead him to form a new understanding of how a variety of advantages can lead their beneficiaries to excel, while disadvantages can lead to multi generational barriers.
May many more of our fellow citizens follow Mr. Stimac’s lead. That way, perhaps we can enact more policies that truly benefit those who need our help.
4
One place to put our money is in these 'failing schools' you mention. The schools are failing because they are in rough neighborhoods with multiple problems. Turn the schools into neighborhood community centers/schools so the entire school community includes their parents who need help. Children cannot learn if they go home to a stressful environment.
Provide bootstraps that actually work.
4
When people paint in broad strokes (a simplistic either/or) of how the world works, it leads to increasing polarization. Saying that 'lifting themselves up by the bootstraps' is an absolute myth, makes it so people who do have an independent streak are overlooked.
As a minority startup cofounder whose business is growing, many of my peer group who didn't spend their 20s working nights and weekends, have fallen under the far left spell. When media mouthpieces insist on black and white narratives, it directly impacts our lives and how we view each other.
I'm the biggest believer that luck plays a huge role. I also believe that there are ways that we can support people with an independent streak. Policy-wise this might be exploring more ways to support entrepreneurs, rather than fixating on job guarantees by the government. Making sure small businesses aren't gouged by taxes, and that we can bring over our CTO who has been working day and night for us (w/an Ivy League MEng degree) from remote to in-person.
There are enough people out there like me, who view politics in the current iteration of capitalism as relevant entertainment content aiming for high ratings and subscribers. I respect that politicians are playing their part, and have no interest in targeting them with vitriol. I want everyone to achieve their innate potential, but want solutions that are smartly implemented. This can be inclusive of our nation's needs, reflecting democracy, and not mud-slinging either/or.
2
In some ways I have to agree with you.I consider myself a success because I have four great kids.Went to City College in New York great education with no tuition.Medical School that I worked to support myself graduated with 1000 dollars in debt an zero help from poor family.Tuition was 1500/year .With tuition 50.000 a year plus living expenses I could not have done it on my own today.Why is education so expensive?
AOC is the worst enemy of the poor.She and her ilk blocked Amazon from coming to NY.She is a disruptive anarchist .
4
Amazon came anyway, without the tax breaks.
Agreed. But the "bootstraps" or older "Horatio Alger" myths have always been around, for reactionaries and conservatives to use as weapons against any reform whatsoever. They pull out glaring exceptions, and hold them up as routine. They ignore the reality that, in capitalist or even mixed, economies, most people will not become fabulously successful. So, what to do to make it so that the vast majority does not live in squalor, while a few live well?
3
I'm college educated, and have good job skills. However, those skills, even though flexible, are slightly outdated and I had a longer job search after getting laid off. Add to the fact that I'm paying out of pocket for daycare and have a small radius in which to hunt for another job to stay near that daycare, I'm going backwards economically.
But, getting my taxes back in the form of lower-cost daycare and all-day Pre-K is called "free stuff" by conservatives.
8
The two world wars of the twentieth century caused the largest transfer of wealth in human history. Europe's wealth was transferred to America. They also boosted American manufacturing. America was the right country at the right time. America was built on the world's colonial wealth. I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just a fact. That's over now.
The only hope America has in the next century is innovation. Without education there is no innovation. As our wealth is transferred to the third world (for lack of a better term) we become more like them and they become more like us. Get used to it America. The boomer dollars are running out.
3
Exactly so, Nick. The paucity of comments for your column speaks volumes about the problem. Hung over, one supposes, from 2008, still after a dozen years of brisk recovery, the nation still suffers from a corrosive empathy gap. To paraphrase the great philosopher Pogo, we have met the enemy and they is us.
2
In economics class I learned about the "fallacy of composition", the fact that an isolated case cannot always be generalized into large numbers of cases. Example: If an isolated person strikes it rich and earns a million dollars, it does not mean that everybody can get rich and earn a million dollars. There's not that much money to go around.
Republicans apparently don't take economics, or if they do, their professors avoid awkward topics.
3
President Obama had it just right when said nobody does it alone, As we go through life we all benefit from kindness, effort and even the animosity of others. They all teach us something and contribute to the lives we lead and the success we achieve.
We too often fail to understand the contributions others have made until it is too late to give them the thanks they have earned.
6
The great Scottish political economist Adam Smith would certainly shake his head in wonder that his warnings offered in 1776 fell on deaf ears. There is this income flow called "rent" that Smith identified as unearned to individuals, to those who managed to gain control of land but labored not and produced nothing, yet were permitted to charge others for access and use. The laws of the United States have from the very beginning served landed interests over those who labor. Many of the founding fathers and their generation "made" their fortunes from land speculation. The game has only intensified over the centuries as population has climbed and the ownership of land has become ever more concentrated. Smith provided the solution: tax the rental value of land to eliminate the ability to profit by holding it out of use.
7
This is the most worn and widely-circulated myth of my adult life: that America is not the land of opportunity.
Sorry: if you can't make it here, you can't make it.
As a teacher in an inner-city public school, I witness, year after year after year after year (regardless of occupies the House, the Senate, the Oval Office; regardless of the state of our economy; regardless of food deserts; public transportation issues) student from faraway lands arrive without but a lick of the English language and excel in a class full of students who've been here muddling along for generations. These students figure it out in one.
Having taught for more than twenty years allows me, too, the opportunity to see these same students (those who haven't moved away) and their families thriving and doing so because of good old-fashioned hard work.
5
Don't forget their families and the support most of the immigrant kids receive. Behaviors, work ethics and attitudes are rooted in cultural values, immediate role models and the engagement of family, school and community. while hard work is essential, it still takes a village to succeed.
1
@Amused
It is not old fashioned hard work. The ones who excel even without proper language skills do so because their IQ is above average. Usually the people who emigrate here from far away lands are risk takers with higher IQ from the ones they left behind and since IQ is largely inherited it is no surprise that their kids outperform our kids whose IQ has come down to the normal levels after several generations of complacency
1
@Amused We can make a case that it takes one heckuva nerve to immigrate to another country. A brain, a heart, and courage-- like Dorothy's friends. The emotional IQ to build a network and identify mentors doesn't hurt. Children raised by these people are programmed to try hard as you say. The best of these kids venture out into the broader world of their new county-- going to a challenging school, marrying outside their own culture, emigrating to another state. Thus the pattern continues. The worst that can happen for society is what we have now-- whole regions with no ambition, no inclination to resettle, no desire to leave their culture behind. Textbook case is the Appalachian region. I do not offer a solution here, merely an observation.
Mr. Kristof;
"Wagging your finger" is a cliché; "bootstraps..' is also a cliché.
Parents and the so-called at-risk need to put effort into any successful attempt to overcome drawbacks in life. The individual themselves is the prime impediment/motivational element, to always start outside of the individual limits the effectiveness.
There are successes that lack motivated parents, or role models; just as there are failures with both positive elements. The individual is always the key starting point, family support is the second step up.
Relying on one cliché to dis another cliché is lazy intellectualism; poverty is a symptom, not the disease.
3
Mike Stimic’s story is my story. Beside an intact family, I went to a great suburban public school. We lived in a safe community because my parents could afford a home with a VA mortgage. I was able to attend a Big Ten state university at low in state tuition ($175 per semester for a full credit load). Free public roads to drive to class. An economy that allowed me to work full time in summer and earn enough to pay the next years tuition. My wife’s nursing school was paid in part with Social Security survivor benefits received as a result of her fathers premature death.
All this enabled us to raise 2 successful kids (who also benefitted from high quality public schools and low cost State universities)
Now we are paying it forward. But no one makes it on their own! Everyone got help!
4
In a way, the entire line of reasoning, "bootstrap" vs government programs, is a false dichotomy.
"Change of heart" should acknowledge that "bootstrap pulling" doesn't work, but also that some government programs don't work.
Just as important, we need to get out of this mentality that government is wasting money on these programs, even when they fail. We need to avoid is the falsehood that "government doesn't help".
Do "bootstrappers" care that businesses are rewarded by government programs, allowing repeated write-off of losses for failed ventures? Those businesses failed, so why should the government help?
We need that same attitude applied to every single social welfare program.
Try and try again - with government help.
1
"we do worse than other countries of investing in workers’ education, health care, addiction treatment and job training." And free or affordable child care.
One thing that many commenters ignore is good fortune. My story is much like Mr. Stimiac's. I grew up poor. My father was a truck driver and later a janitor, my mother a seamstress who later worked in a savings and loan. And like him I had a loving and stable family where there was no drug or physical abuse. In my career and life I have been very successful, but aside from years of hard work I was blessed with good fortune. To have a good family yes but also I was fortunate to be born with a gift for academics and general good physical health. I was fortunate not not to have been swallowed by the Viet Nam war. I can't count the number of times I was just in the right place at the right time and having help appear when I most needed it. No one should discount hard work but it is often not enough. The good fortune of being offered a hand up is what often makes a difference. We need to stop finding excuses for not helping people. The Republican Parties slogan should be You Are On Your Own - don't look to us for support. We need something better.
2
So non-abusive households with two parents and good values represents *privilege*. That is what I read you saying.
And so the government should reach out and shore up the children raised in families without such privilege. OK. I could support that. We must break the cycle of broken families, among other thing.
What I don't support is the lack advocacy for a supportive culture from you or the NY Times. Somehow, the notion that America's underclass should hold part of the responsibility is never mentioned. Not in this column or any other column I have ever read here.
It would be seriously crushingly unpopular, for example to discuss missing fathers in urban households on these pages. So you are left ignoring it . . . to your discredit.
Pew research says that single-parent households are basically twice as common in the U.S. as in Western Europe or Asia. Verboten topic in NY Times editorials.
3
@Brian non-abusive households with two parents and "good" values (what you define as good?) *do* represent privilege
You don’t mention welfare for the rich, and the systems that keep them on top.
3
Those who think they owe success to their own hard work alone are deceiving themselves.
2
I'm old and retired and very comfortable, but from a working poor family. The first two years of my education at junior college in Kansas City cost me $64 a semester. The remainder of my education, in Maryland, including law school, cost me less than $400 a semester (I had to work to pay the rent and eat, even with the GI bill). I largely succeeded because as a child I lived three blocks from a public library, and because I was naive and believed the stories I read of overcoming adversity.
The main barrier to upward mobility now is that education has become a business and colleges are run for the benefit of the administration and football teams to the detriment of people trying to get an education. This results in exorbitant tuition and crushing debt. Schools, especially state schools, should be run for the benefit of society, which requires that they be run for the benefit of the students, and not for the aggrandizement of institutions and the people who run them. Private banks should be eliminated from education loans. I believe in my day education loans topped out at two percent interest.
Naiveté is hard to come by these days and can no longer carry you very far.
7
Part of the toxicity from this trope of capitalism, is the devaluation it creates of humans beings generally. Anecdotal evidence is proffered that "I know someone who made millions coming from nothing", as if this were some kind bedrock moral value everyone should aspire to and can achieve, irrespective of evidence that it was always the exception and never the rule, even more so today. But of even far greater importance is the fact that the wealth anyone achieves is never from just their own endeavors. How long would Microsoft last if their physical structures aren't maintained, the bathrooms cleaned, the products transported, the programmers educated, the snow removed, etc. In the end, the labor of the teacher, the janitor, the programmer, the assembler, the truck driver, the cop, the healthcare giver, generate the wealth of our corporations. But under capitalism, that socially created wealth is privatized and we only value the "self-made bootstrapping individual" who made it on their "own", as if. It's long overdue to socialize the profits for the benefit of all who make it possible.
3
Maybe we should have told the recipients of the Great Bailout to pull themselves up by the bootstraps?
123
@emcat
A perfect example of how our nation has two very different standards for those who have, and those who don't.
What about all the "personal failings" of those bank CEOs?
21
@emcat
The bailout was a LOAN. And as soon as Obama became president, he made sure that there were some strings attached: it had to be paid back (1) quickly and (2) with interests.
That's how "we the people" got the money back (and even more than that) already before the end of his first term - all while no longer losing 700,000 jobs a month, but adding 250,000 a month (= a million more jobs per month).
4
@emcat And perhaps today, tell the "patriot farmers" to pull themselves up by their . . . oh, forget it.
7
My dad was lucky to not get killed in World War II. He was wounded and received a Purple Heart. He came home and earned three degrees paid for by the GI Bill. He was white. He went on to be an executive at a Fortune 500 company and retired comfortably at 65.
The GI Bill did not benefit black veterans as much as white veterans because of Jim Crow in the South and racism in the North.
We need Medicare for All and free public university or vocational school for All. We also need to address this climate crisis to leave an inhabitable planet for all of our children.
4
American social philosophy has embedded in it: Calvinism, Horatio Alger, and “How to Make Friends and Influence People.” The first two give support to the idea that hard work and perseverance will always yield success and salvation. The latter provides the methods one can use to cajole and manipulate others to one’s own ends.
Philosopher John Rawls thought experiment, The Veil of Ignorance challenges each of us to imagine a society that we are born into whereby we are ignorant of our sex station, class, or physical abilities. Then from that position you can make decisions about the treatment of others that just might impact you directly.
Suddenly the decision to cut back social programs for the least of us takes on a whole new perspective, simply because that could be you directly impacted.
Unfortunately, too many Americans believe they live in “Little House on the Prairie” when it comes to our social fabric and empathy. Trump loves it.
3
No one has mentioned this yet. English preserves the joke that you can pick yourself by your own bootstraps every time you reboot your computer. As late as the 1970's, a computer could be turned on, but its empty memory could do nothing until you ran a "bootstrap" program. You had to "bootstrap" the computer, later shortened to "boot." It was always a joke.
homestead act being white privilege? Really? Talk about conclusions preceding facts. What about the Donner expedition? There is tons of white privilege. Got that. But come on, let's make a sound progression in logic here. Digging up memes to promote faulty reasoning is too far beyond sound journalism, especially when there is a valid point to be made. Kristof has much to offer. This is not part of that.
1
Much too sensible to be considered.
Critics of the “pull yourself up by your up by bootstraps” should read “Talent is Overrated”. You will see you determination and perseverance are much more important to success than talent, family wealth, and government programs.
2
What's the simplistic liberal alternative to "bootstraps"? "...substantial federal programs" of course. They seem incapable of any other response to the challenges of life.
1
Trevor Noah speaks quite eloquently to this in his memoir, Born A Crime. He uses the biblical “Give a man a fish” metaphor, but it the message is the same. Great book if you have a chance to read it.
2
In the free enterprise promoting state of Texas, you can pull yourself up by your bootstrap if the bootstrap is found on a piece of land on top of oil or gas, or is needed by a pipeline company.
Otherwise, a highly regressive property tax ($7,000 per year for 1,000 sq feet) and every day expenses will sink you. One crown from the dentist, one medical emergency, one car repair.... and the bootstrap breaks.
Mind you, Republicans have lead the state for well over two decades, and they have put in one of the most tortuous tax schemes in the country. Through various avoidance strategy and smoke and mirrors, the wealthy and businesses to hide from property taxes, while the middle class and poor suffer. It really is shameful!
5
"A rising tide lifts all boats!" Except those that are holed or stuck in deep mud.
Like what? Free education? Free food? Housing vouchers? Healthcare? Record low unemployment?
Yes - we (the government) do provide many resources to the poor. And we should. But we should also encourage individual responsibility - two-parent families, no children out of wedlock, no children if you don’t have the means to support them, encouraging education, staying away from drugs and violence, etc. Repeatedly telling people that they are victims of a rigged, racist system doesn’t help anyone. Instead, it encourages a victim mindset.
The lack of any specifics in this article makes it useless.
3
I am sorry Nicholas but it is possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Not for everyone, but often enough that your slogan is badly off the mark.
When I was growing up, we had no car, no refrigerator, not even a telephone. We could not afford toothpaste and used toothpowder (which looks like taclcum powder and is cheap).
I ended up as a student at Harvard and then a professor. So it is possible.
Of course the current day progressives - like you - will say, "What? Studied hard and got good grades? Sorry but these are DIS-qualifications and we cannot let you into Harvard."
Take someone trying to lift himself up by his bootstraps and a progressive will come along and cut the bootstraps. "Success is ONLY to be achieved by government programs!"
You Nicholas have a good heart, but I do wish you had more common sense.
5
@Ludwig For a Harvard professor- you're missing the mark. How did you go from being unable to afford toothpaste to Harvard? A family who valued education and had to foresight to take their children to the library? Living a district with quality schools? Teachers and librarians who took you under their wing? Somehow I doubt it was it was a simple as studying hard.
@Wendy M And federal student loans
While I agree with most of what Mr. Kristof says here, I would add that a major difference between now and, say, 50 years ago in terms of social safety net and educational programs (deficient even then) is the public’s willingness to pay for them. Whenever I hear the term ‘free public college’, for example, I cringe. Public college costs were once quite reasonable, but they weren’t free even if they cost the student nothing directly. They were paid for by taxes. When I was an undergraduate the University of California had no tuition, and ‘fees’ amounted to $321 per year. Following Proposition 13, which froze and rolled back property taxes in the state, the UC system started progressively losing their state funding (it’s a fraction of what it once was); tuition was imposed and has risen steadily. Even in the most progressive state the imposition of serious increases in state taxes earmarked for something like higher education is a difficult sell; in other states it’s nearly impossible. Until people are willing to self-impose the tax levels necessary to reinstitute reasonable social programs, taxes on individuals as well as corporations, none of the things proposed by progressives like Senator Sanders will come to pass. I agree that the bootstraps necessary to change this are social, not personal, but they can only be effectively improved with substantial public funds and a willingness to pay for them.
1
Or in the famous words of the most gushed-over President in history, “You didn’t build that!”
The Dems have been at this weakening of our country a long time...
1
Claiming that pulling" yourself up by bootstraps" is impossible is insulting nonsense.
The opportunity for success requires
1. obey the law and don't get a criminal record
2. do not abuse drugs and alcohol
3. get the best education and work skills possible
4. do not have children before you can support them
5. do not consider yourself a victim since that gets you nowhere
This is true in any country in the world.
6
@jck this is all said from an extremely privileged position for many reasons but "get the best education and work skills possible" results in a WIDE range of education and skills, depending on what is available to folks and "do not have children before you can support them" presupposes access to birth control, abortion, education, freedom from rape, etc. Things that many many people do not have.
@jck
Yep. But to assume that most poor or struggling people have done what you list is hubris. Designed to make you feel better about America's falling standard of living for all but the very top. Just blame others' "faults" for their plight.
And it also does not explain why economic mobility is now better in the EU than the US.
I did it. At thirty (poor people usually start late), as a single mother I went to college, then graduate school. Graduated in the early 90s but couldn’t find a job. Taught adjunct (the burger flipping in academia), then secretarial type stuff to get by.
It took maybe ten years to get a professional position. Took another five before working my way up to a decent salary. Ten years later, at 55, out of work. And the mortgage crisis. Turns out nobody cares if you’re a number cruncher and a programmer if you’re a woman over fifty.
Paid off the student loans— probably twice or more with interest. Savings disappeared trying to keep my modest house. Everything fell apart.
Odds were against it, but that’s when I got married, and that’s the only reason I’m not waiting tables and living in debt now. But every day I know I’m not ok through my own efforts.
What’s more, in retrospect, I can do the math: I never even had a chance. I started too late and too poor.
Bottom line, this bootstrap thing? It doesn’t work. It’s the exception not the rule. Most Americans will die in the same social class to which they were born. We live lives of struggle, low pay, high expenses, debt, and finally that one big blow: job loss, sickness with the big medical costs, or an economic event caused by forces beyond our control. Sometimes all it takes is your car breaking down.
Our society is actually designed to keep us poor, in debt and desperate.
263
@Chickpea
It is now. And its the result of 40+ years of GOP policy.
But the GOP, and surprisingly far too many on this thread, think its only about personal failings. Why not?
It allows those who've succeeded to regard their success as a lack of "failings", And, it lets them sleep at night.
24
@Chickpea You hit the nail on the head. The system exists to suck you dry. It is the definition of capitalism.
8
@Jerseytime
The GOP is easy to decipher. So the rich dudes who are the real power see themselves as the elite, and they basically say "Well, if I can do it, you can do it, I struggled, too" (remember Mitt Romney talking about his 'early struggles', or Paul Ryan talking about how he worked at McDonalds......). Then you have the GOP blue collar base, who may not be doing too well themselves, but are proud "they don't take nothing" and are almost proud of their failure...and they vote for the GOP in part because they believe them when they say "if we get rid of all those freeloaders off of welfare, you will do well", and another part they look at those getting benefits and are jealous "I don't get that" (often, I might add, way overplayed). Not to mention the blue collar GOP base buys into the idea someday my ship is gonna come in, I am gonna be rich, and I won't want to pay taxes either"..rather than demanding help, too.
6
i’ve been teaching poor young people for 17 years at a small college serving the underserved South of Chicago, and I suggest you’re only 1/2 right, Mr. Kristof, and that as much as I applaud this piece, I can’t help but feel it also contributes to the dueling banjos of American political dysfunction that grows shriller by the day.
Many of my young people come from poor, broken homes; every semester, in each class, I get a handful of unwed mother and fathers who had their first child at 16, sometimes earlier. They arrive unprepared to do college work by bad high schools and uneducated parents. What little personal discipline they have is frittered away on their addiction to their blasted phones (thank you Silicon Valley).
I spend my days trying to teach them basics they should have learned in high school. I try to be their bootstrap. But I know that throwing money at more than half of them, as I throw my best teaching, is thrown away, mainly because half are not willing to put in the work and the sacrifice of short term pleasures for long term gains.
“Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” means that when someone offers you a strap, you put your foot in—and you PUSH. The conservatives are half right on this one, and denying it just gets us caught up in silly “left-right” squabbles. Of course we should help them, but if they won’t help themselves too, the painful truth I’ve learned is I have to let them lie—and move on to the ones who will USE my help.
72
@Paris Spleen
It's weird how educators at every level blame the preceding level for their students' failures. Elementary school teachers blame parents for letting the TV raise their toddlers. Middle school teachers blame elementary schools. High school teachers blame middle schools. College professors blame high schools.
Of course, they're all right to a point, but the real issue is that we have this bizarre expectation people from wildly disparate backgrounds and levels of preparation will be equipped to do the same work as one another.
21
@Paris Spleen Everything Paris Spleen wrote is true. But it doesn't tell the whole story. If our nation hadn't shipped most if its decent-paying factory jobs to low-paying foreign nations, many of these kids today who don't do well in school could and would still have a basically decent life, with a spouse and family, and could retire with enough money to get by. See? There's a bigger picture here. My grandfather only went to school to the 8th grade, yet he worked for 40 years as a pipefitter in a factory that has since been shipped to Mexico.
23
@Better World Believer You are right. And we need to abandon the notion that every kid belongs in college. It would be far more helpful if we had an apprenticeship program for the skilled trades and other programs that provide a path to a middle-class wage for those kids who may not be academically inclined, but are willing to work and learn. There is nothing wrong with being a plumber, electrician or carpenter (to cite a few examples) and these jobs cannot be outsourced.
15
Wow, Mike! You prove that the message of inclusiveness is alive. Everyone should read your story. Too many people think that it’s all about “poor choices.” It isn’t. The role of government is to help ensure the American Dream for every citizen.
27
What do we do when people slap away the helping hand that's extended to them?
Or refuse to stretch a little to grab hold of it, insisting that the person extending it is the one who needs to move closer, even if it means putting themselves in a precarious position?
Or simply say that their arms are too tired and why doesn't the person extend not just a hand, but reach under their arms to lift them, or bend over so that they can use their backs to give themselves a boost?
Absolutely, a hand needs to be extended and there's a lot more we can offer to help people. But they have to be willing to take it.
3
Education is a perfect example. As the wealthy decry property taxes and school funding, schools increasingly rely on parents for donations and tutoring to make up for shortcomings. Thus, wealthy neighborhoods have the "good" schools, and poor neighborhoods the "bad" schools. The administrators and teachers are doing the exact same job at both.
The difference is that the wealthy parents can afford to be hyper-involved at their schools, organizing fund drives for supplies, books, and facilities. They organize and fund clubs and after-school enrichment programs. They shuttle their kids to extracurriculars and tutors. Poor parents working two low-wage jobs are just trying to survive.
In Austin, Texas, a house zoned to a highly rated school can cost double what the same house costs for a low-rated school. Thus, you can draw economic segregation lines literally from the greatschools.org maps. The wealthy schools have all of the opportunity. The poor kids *might* be able to pull themselves up, but it is extremely unlikely.
1
America criminally unequal from slaves and indentured servants to our current billionaires and low-income serfs. Shameful country.
Such bad citizens voting on a select few issues: against abortion (yet, not supportive of education and access to contraception), for guns (yet, not willing to see 'local militia' in the Constitution as what it 'was'; i.e. long before our Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force), immigration (yet, not able to talk about 'limits' and/or our immigrant past and use of cheap undocumented people all over this country). That's the main three issues of the conservatives, Republicans, right-wing, evangelicals. But, not Trump, and not the true leaders of Republicanism.
No, the real issue is money, which is why the first thing Trump and the Republicans did was cut taxes on the rich (themselves) and their corporations (which led to stock by-backs and higher dividends and increasing wealth concentration). Talk this.
Talk the real deal of Republicanism: money. Quit wishy-washing, mealy-mouthing this. Straight-up greed. Not Christian, not giving the second shirt, not my brother's keeper: just selfish, personal greed.
The self-centered are the most self-righteous. I give you Donald Trump. The worst example of a man or a Christian we have ever elected. He is our worst impulses writ large.
The rich own the government and the courts. They don't hate the poor, they just are lost in the poison of greed. They serve themselves. They fight for more mammon. They are lost.
4
Unless we are looking at identical twins, comparisons between the work ethic of two people are meaningless.
Great column. NO one succeeds entirely on his/her own.
2
Conservatives believe that we all need good opportunities but somehow they don't understand that without healthcare, food, housing and a good education, there's nothing close to opportunity for millions of our kids. How do you function homeless, sick and hungry?
For barefoot kids, there are no bootstraps.
3
I feel like the bootstraps concept is being knowingly misrepresented here. Very few (none that I personally know) view the idea of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps as meaning you went from the bottom 20% to the top 20%. It simply means that you worked hard and became a contributing member of society.
To quote Chumbawamba "I get knocked down, but I get up again. You're never going to keep me down", that is the idea behind the bootstrap narrative. It is about understanding that the majority of our country is not born to privilege and even though life is often tough, they keep trying.
21
@SH Everyone I know who is low income is working hard to be a contributing member of society. They just are having a hard time doing so with lack of a proper safety net.
6
@SH
I must disagree. You may have your own take on the concept. But how the author uses it is the standard interpretation. It is, in effect, an American myth about
one's lot in life being entirely the result of one's efforts, and nothing else. Its closely related to the Horatio Alger myth.
5
If you ever worked for a company and had a good idea, you know that it would either be stolen or be seen as a "threat" by a higher up.
Your job would probably be at risk too.
We need more heart in general, something conspicuously lacking in the "leadership" of today's Republican Party.
1
Many of our so-called "self-made millionaires" are not self-made at all. They inherited money, or used their connections, or benefited from government grants and loans, while taking advantage of public highways, mail delivery, tax breaks and other government services to conduct and promote their businesses.
4
The author glosses over the important role race plays in bootstrapping.
Rather than focus on the exceptional--people like Ben Carson--we must assess the overall state of Latinos and African-Americans. Millions are saddled with grossly inferior public school educations, impoverished families and inhabit marginalized neighborhoods.
These millions have no straps to pull up.
They haven't the quality education, extracurricular enrichment and money required to gain entrance to a four-year university/
Until we have a level playing field for Latino and African-American children, we ought not expect and end to the cycle of poverty.
Pelosi for President.
Bloomberg for Vice President.
I thought of it first. And second. and third. And so on.
The sheer gall of Kristof claiming to know why Americans drop out of the workforce is simply laughable. The belief that individual initiative means little or nothing is simply naive.
3
If only a few of the privileged would put on a pair of those “boots”
and try walking in them for a month......
their feet, back and body soon would be hurting,
along with their dignity and self-worth.
1
Ben Carson’s family utilized public assistance.
3
So obvious, but Americans are a hard, cruel people so of course they turn every phrase to be punitive
1
Creating generalities from limited specific incidents or experiences is just plain stupid. As you point out, look at the overall numbers. Where is the wealth in America concentrated, in individuals or families that have passed that wealth from generation to generation, or as a result of the "hard work" of men and women raised with no wealth? And, how do today's nouveau riche become millionaires? Hard work or pushing worthless paper in financial markets? Most of what conservative America believes, in every area, is myth.
3
My daughter shared an enlightening” bootstrap” story with me recently:
An extremely wealthily friend of hers was complaining about all the people getting handouts from the government...if only they worked harder they would succeed.
My daughter, floored, replied, didn’t you go to the best private schools, the best boarding school? “ Yes.”
Didn’t you have the best teachers and tutors? Didn’t you study hard? “ Yes”
Weren’t your parents supportive? Haven’t they given you everything you needed to succeed? “ Yes.”
Than after trying your best, having the support of your parents, and a great education, why didn’t you get into any of the Ivy League Schools you applied to? Didn’t you work quite hard enough?
She got the point.
4
I remember my dad talking about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. I never quite bought it—because I somehow knew it wasn’t us who really needed it. He was a hard working guy to be sure, who provided well for his family and became hugely successful working for Boeing. But, I don’t know if it ever occurred to him that just being a white guy was a leg up—a veritable bootstrap
2
People who use this phrase don't understand that originally it meant an impossible task. It was not about self-sufficiency.
"But when you examine this expression and its current meaning, it doesn’t seem to make much sense.
To pull yourself up by your bootstraps is actually physically impossible. In fact, the original meaning of the phrase was more along the lines of “to try to do something completely absurd.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-nonsense_n_5b1ed024e4b0bbb7a0e037d4
3
Capitalism is by nature defined by and predicated on competition. And in the long haul, competition means that some will eventually fall further and further behind.
Over decades and decades now, white men who have succeeded and passed along wealth, invested in wealth, and had more opportunities to accrue wealth, have outstripped the ability of people of color and those with fewer advantages to "keep up," succeed, and prosper. So -- we have winners, and we have losers.
The American Dream is just that, I'm afraid -- a dream. We need to wake up -- and we are -- to the realization that our economic system, marketing, and high consumption that we buy into (literally) drive some to the top, and others to the bottom.
People who blame those at the bottom for remaining at the bottom need to rethink their thinking -- a few might overcome overwhelming conditions. But the weight of the world is not light. Nor is the obligation to consider empathy, compassion, and humanity -- and sometimes that requires restrained government intervention to supply it.
Some people’s boots are Manolo Blanik’s and some people’s boots are Walmart’s. The Manolo’s straps are purely for show and aren’t really even necessary for “pulling up”. While the Walmart’s are so thin and cheesy that the more times you try to “pull up” on them, the greater the odds that they’ll snap and you’ll fall on your face. Hey, but at least your feet are covered. Some folks, unfortunately, have no “boots” at all.
3
A succinct take on a reining American myth. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says in We Were Eight Years In Power, and I paraphrase: America provides ladders of upward mobility, but not all of those ladders are created equal, some are damaged at their very first rung.
1
Peoples have wanted to ensure equality in their societies for centuries. Many measures have been tried. In the late 18th Century, the French resorted to declarations of rights and then the guillotine. In the 20th Century, the Russians resorted to policy, oppression, and then the Gulag. We've resorted to many more benign policies: charity, food stamps, free public education, civil rights laws, and affirmative action.
Of all the NYT columnists, I think Mr. Kristof is the most decent and kindhearted. After reading his column today my thought is that societal equality has never been achieved and never will be, but we've got to keep trying just so we can look at ourselves in the mirror.
So let's collect more taxes, reduce (drastically) military spending, and launch more sharing and helping programs. The overall outcome might be better than it otherwise might have been, but I think that the mass of people, white, black, and brown, will always lead lives of quiet desperation. Would that it were different.
More helping hands? Yes. But let's be realistic---a few will always do better than the mass because of their own strength, intelligence, decisions, initiative, and tenacity, and, yes, luck. That's the core of the bootstrap theory, and it's as solid as it can be.
1
Consider the possibility America at the present time needs BOTH greater Personal Responsibility AND greater Social Responsibility.
Personal Responsibility: Working hard; obeying the law; being thrifty and frugal; being responsible about getting pregnant and raising children; avoiding addictive substances.
Social Responsibility: A minimum wage for adults that is a living wage; affordable health insurance for all workers and their dependents).
Liberals tend to be blind to the need for greater Personal Responsibility. The gov't can't solve everything.
Conservatives tend to be blind to the need for greater Social Responsibility. Bootstraps and the free market can't solve everything.
4
Pulling oneself by the bootstraps in a highly unequal capitalistic system, where ther opportunities to excell by the poor are far and in between, is mighty difficult. I know, some do it by strong character and hard word and persistence and, if lucky, by a good education and parental support, but that may not even be the average in this highly inequitable society of ours. The adage that "no chain is stronger than it's weakest link" is worth considering. And our humanity demands we stand for each othert, independent of where we came from, and what we believe in. We must integrate all, so solidarity is allowed to show up...and for justice to have a say. Otherwise, peace on Earth shall remain a distant dream. Is that what we want, need?
1
Mr. Kristoff, thank you for this column. Too many of us, myself very much included, take our good fortune for granted, or even worse consider that we achieved all by ourselves.
This is what is on the ballot this November:
1) We are either in this together, or it's every person for him/herself
2) We either respect and defend the constitution, or we do not
3) We either respect and defend the rule of law, or we do not
4) We either respect and defend moral and ethical treatment of others, including the planet, or we do not.
Really, it's that clear. And that important.
4
I think bootstrap proponents don't realize how mundane but insurmountable the obstacles can be. It's about what resources are available to you. Unless you live in a city with good public transportation (not many) you need a drivers license and car to take advantage of opportunities. If you're a 17 year old high school junior with a part time job, living with your grandmother who is on Social Security, being able to pay for a learner's permit, 5 hour class, find someone who will let you practice driving, pay for the actual license, and come up with enough money to get a car--any car that will go--plus car insurance and gas....well, it's not impossible, but it sure is hard to tell your grandmother you can't help with food because you need that money to pay for your permit and 5 hour class. If you're a 25 year old single parent with a job, depending on your sister to provide child care, and she suddenly decides she can't do it anymore, and child care typically costs between $150 and $200 a week, which would not leave you enough income to pay your rent, what should you do? There is an urgency to deal with today's crisis--the utility bill shut off, the speeding ticket that keeps adding up until your license is suspended, the employer who changes you to second shift when you have no child care available, if you're afraid to go to school and leave younger siblings with a mother actively in addiction, well, you get it.
3
I agree. As a long-serving teacher in disadvantaged areas, I have learned that even disadvantaged students can make amazing progress If they have good teachers. Such teachers are the least we owe our children and youth. But if a child is not getting good prenatal care, three healthy meals a day, and a clean, safe place to live and study, that student will struggle to stay awake in class, to focus on studying, to not worry about the dangers at home or in the neighborhood. Then they are disadvantaged in real physiological and psychological ways.
6
Just because one person did anything, means nothing to the multitude. When your zip code is the best predictor of your future, your fate is highly determined. It is the difference between a meritocoracy and an inheritocoracy. Those who inherit success can always find reason that they deserve it. For the most part their reasons are bogus. For them doors opened and they got to coast downhill a lot. Others did the dirty work and cleaned up their messes. Even then, some have managed to really make a mess of their life and the lives of those around them. They fail with much more of a flourish, though, and destroy many with merit and skills with their wake.
Kristof correctly labels the bootstrap fallacy. A zombie idea that will not die. People with talent know the downdrafts well exceed the wind beneath their wings. They are just a bit better at learning from the mistakes of others. It is not a matter of yanking bootstrap as the skill of picking the right people to model. These people are rare in the wrong zip codes. Thus their fate is by and large sealed.
4
It might be thought of as me being "selfish", but when we help others succeed, they will probably earn good livings and spend enough money to increase the demand for goods and services enough to provide opportunities to others to succeed as well, so I have a better chance of having a good life, as a result of having more potential "customers" myself.
4
There's a big difference between the types of services Nick calls for here and cash payments, like a UBI, or slavery reparations, or the dollars my city (San Francisco) hands out to homeless people. Services help people work hard to succeed. Cash often has the opposite effect.
4
My biological father died in a US Army Air Force plane crash when my mother was 3 months pregnant with me. She remarried and I grew up on a small farm in eastern Nebraska--no running water or indoor plumbing--but I was well treated by my parents and had enough to eat. I went to a country school for 8 years, then to high school. I did well in school and my mom wanted me to go to college. She received payments from Social Security for me for 18 years after my biological father's death and saved this money for me. Without this government assistance I never could have afforded to go to college and subsequently to medical school. I worked hard but never "pulled myself up by my bootstraps." Thanks to these payments, my good parents, a good primary and secondary education in Nebraska, roads, military protection from the USSR threat at the time, immunization programs, etc.etc., all benefits from government or my family I was able to make it successfully but did not have to do it all on my own.
13
Here Kristof is on point. Expecting every American to succeed in the same way with different starting points , disparate realities and different kinds of opportunities is nothing short of futile and misguided. Every nation has a guiding narrative and ours is defined by the self-made man. But this narrative, like all narratives and myths, has been misused over the years. It is simply a narrative that resonates with some who erroneously think they truly made it without anyone else's help, which is rare.
It also allows others to maintain the problematic status quo -- a status quo that exacerbates inequality. Although America is in some ways the land of opportunity, because of our insistence on a sometimes inhumane capitalism, these opportunities do not extend to everyone and do not always guarantee prosperity.
The Stimac anecdote Kristof offers is encouraging, but I fear many people will not have the same change of heart. Until Americans realize that we have to reimagine our society, our stringent self-made narrative will be difficult to modify or erase.
1
I enjoyed your article. I just thought I would point out that many of the pioneers went west in groups called wagon trains. Why?
Safety in numbers. In today's toxic political climate they might be called socialists, not rugged individualists. Loved the cartoon.
6
Metaphors are open to interpretation and often mean different things to different people in different contexts, especially considering the diversity of the American populace, which includes many people who do not use English as their main language. Given the increase of deliberately misleading statements in political discourse, metaphors and catchphrases are best avoided when clarity of expression is vital.
I was emotional, positively emotional, while reading your column and the high quality illustration at the top. We always remember "Ciudad Kennedy" in Bogota, where thousands received the help of America The Beautiful, to improve their lives via affordable housing, schools, and more than 100,000 mom and pop stores, to mention just a few of the many blessings that a helping hand provided to more than one million poor people who in a short time became middle-class, and some of them became rich. Just google Corabastos Bogota. American multinational companies have received millions in profits from residents in Ciudad Kennedy, that helped to pay their taxes in the United States. Helping people is also a good investment too. Yes, Ciudad Kennedy also provided gratitude and good image to America The Beautiful.
1
I am from a family of 14 children, seven boys, seven girls. I am number 12. My father only went to the sixth grade, he road the rails in his teens. He married my 16 year old Mother when he was 24. He benefited from FDR's "New Deal". He worked for the railroad, we had a huge garden. I always marveled at the fact that he didn't run off and leave us. All of his children got an education in Good Public Schools from educated teachers. We all learned to work in that garden and how to Can the food for the winter. All his children have done well. I have often wondered how we would have fared in this world if we had been born 50 years later.
3
Thanks, Mr. Kristof, for exploding the American bootstrap myth!
There are several corollaries to the myth. The most ridiculous is the Republican creed that tax cuts incent the rich while welfare grants spoil the poor.
The most pernicious corollary is that social democracy helps undeserving people, "those people". That explains why the Americans most in need of universal health care, child support, and college education subsidies will not support those measures.
Better to deny oneself than help the undeserving. That attitude gives the US the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest life expectancy among developed nations. That attitude creates a rich nation with a few billionaires, millions of working poor, hundreds of thousands of destitutes, and two million prison inmates. That attitude explains a nation that invests in the most-advanced nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, but can't maintain an urban and intercity infrastructure that is inferior to China's.
3
I don't think the Homestead Act history makes the point that Kristof simply describes.
Yes, the federal government "gave" away land, typically 160 acres per applicant. But the opportunity also came with what we now argue about as work requirements: pioneers had to live on the land for some period of time, had to "improve" the land, and had to complete the official paperwork on time. Achieving ownership required independent hard work and discipline, with no further support. Conditions were challenging, to say the least, and many homesteads failed. Even those that succeeded provided difficult lives, but that success was more about the individual family and perhaps local community than an institutional social aid system.
4
Those weren't "work requirements."They provided opportunity to become owners and independence, not wage slavery.
I embraced the bootstrap narrative for a long time. It took raising kids of vastly differing capabilities and my wife working as a high school science teacher for lower level kids to fully appreciate how many people are being discarded by our society.
Environment is certainly a factor, but so many people are just not wired to "compete" in a society that has become too good at filtering only what it wants and discarding the rest. Even average is not good enough anymore.
What we need is empathy for each other. I empathize with the "bootstrappers" and their reluctance to help those that won't help themselves. I also empathize with the "discarded" who've been abandoned.
There are so many smart capable people who are "winning" in our system. It's hard for me to understand why they can't\won't pause for a second and put some effort towards figuring out some sort of system that acknowledges the discarded and offers them some compassion and dignity.
1
Escaping blue collar poverty is very difficult. My father worked two full-time jobs -80 hours a week- for over 15 years, just to make ends meet. There was no time for school or training. Both of my brothers worked very hard. Someone once said ‘The same fire that melts butter makes steel strong.’ I decided to be steel but I was over 30 before I started making a livable wage and there were many depressing days. Pulling oneself out of poverty is overwhelming and difficult and much depends on luck, including the luck of educational circumstances. I could have benefited from a lot more support.
3
I grew up in the supportive socioeconomic environment of FDR, and I came of age after WWII in a technological environment heavily supported by the government. A principal source of R & D came from such gov agencies as DARPA with its concentration on the making of war. What also came from such investment was the beginnings of the internet - yes, THE internet- that underscores such behemoths as Amazon and Google. Our nation now needs new supportive endeavors: those averting climate catastrophe and socioeconomic initiatives to provide new pathways that will enable our citizens to reap more of the benefits that nurtured me and subsequently my children as well.
"Ah, but why did the pioneers go west? Because of government benefit programs that granted them homesteads!"
It's worth noting that they went west through hundreds of miles of empty acres long ago snapped up by land speculators.
Think how those permitted to treat that land as their own have gained over the years. "First families!" "Self-made men." Their heirs able to sell off small amounts to let a few earn a living on long unused land, or to rent it to tenant farmers, sharecroppers. Or sold, with a mortgage beyond what the buyer could pay, to revert to the landgrabber's heirs.
The land speculator creates nothing. And yet they seem to be respected for their "foresight."
Very odd system, isn't it?
It sent people thousands of miles west to find land that hadn't already been claimed by speculators for the benefit of their own children and more distant generations.
Wouldn't many of those pioneers been happier to remain closer to where they grew up, closer to the growing cities, if only they had been permitted to make a living further east, by having access to that land others had fenced off?
One must have land to stand on, land to work on, land to live on. Permitting our land to become the income source for landlords forced sprawl on the grandest of scales.
The alternative? Recognize that at a fundamental level, land is our common treasure. Collect that value from those who use the land and fund our common spending with it. Create opportunity for all.
2
The point of all these government assistance program is not a lifetime of support (although that is sometimes needed in serious disabilities). The point is to give everyone an equal opportunity. To "Level the playing field". Families will always try to give their children any advantages and help they can, it is society's role to help those who do not have these advantages. In an agrarian or early industrial society not much beside grit was required, but today so much more is needed. So what basics are needed to compete in today's world. I would submit that at least Safety, Food, Health/heath care and Education are the minimum. These are not handouts but just bootstraps to pull up, priming the pump if you will.
1
Brilliantly stated, Mr. Kristof. I've been a nurse for 25 years. Why have I never heard of NFP? It sounds wonderful! I'll look into it now. Thanks for your compassionate piece and responses here.
This "bootstrap" myth is one of the most destructive parts of American life. The real shame of this myth is that it perpetuates the idea that everything we achieve in life is through our OWN efforts. Nothing could be farther from the truth. No one makes it through life without help. I recall not too long ago there was this outrage over some soundbite regarding "you didn't build that." Of course, it simply meant that people never build things - companies, families, lives - without help. But this was twisted to mean that people don't build things or that we shouldn't celebrate people who succeed.
In America it seems that no one wants to help anyone any more. We've become so "individualized" that we can't seem to look beyond our own noses and help our fellow man. The shortsightedness of this is only compounded by the fact that for every person in life you help, that help really does come back to you. We'd rather chastise the poor, the uneducated, the rabble of the country than help them make their live's better so that one day we don't have to help.
I've always found this narrative the saddest part of the American Experience.
2
The US and UK have the lowest social mobility and highest relative inequality among major developed nations. This plays out in lower productivity, wellbeing and health, higher crime, and a senseless waste of many people's potential. It was accelerated by Reagan and Thatcher; the public-private sphere and taxation fostered more equality before, with obvious gaps though for minorities some of which has thankfully been addressed.
1
I recently finished my term as a board member of a small charitable foundation.
One of our favorite grantees is a preschool located near a public housing project. They have a track record of taking children ages 1 to 5 and doing for them what most middle-class parents automatically do for their children: provide medical and dental care, nutritious food, and opportunities for active play and culturally enriching activities, along with therapy for children who have had traumatic experiences, as many have.
They also involve the parents or guardians at every step of the way, because often the parents had chaotic, deprived upbringings and don’t know how to raise the children, even though they love them.
The preschool has followed its “graduates” for 25 years and finds them to be much more likely to finish high school, go on to further training or education, and stay out of trouble than others who grew up in the housing project.
What if our nation had spent trillions on programs like this instead of on futile and destructive attempts to “fix” other countries?
6
In general, I observe more and more people not taking advantage of the opportunities that are afforded to them in this country. Things like free k-12 education and unlimited opportunities to earn their own living. They don't "try" at anything and then go on to blame anybody/everybody for the consequences. By virtue of being born in this country, we have already been given many things. These opportunities were paid by the sacrifices of everyone who came before us. It may sound harsh, but I have absolutely no sympathy for able-bodied people who just want to sit on the couch all day while spewing hate/discontent.
17
@Lyn Robins But why is it that some kids don't try? It seems to me that most elementary school kids love learning, but by middle school a lot of kids tune out. Surely we can't blame the kids for this!
12
@Lyn Robins Here’s the problem. Some people are born into anymore opportunities than others. In North Carolina if you are born to privilege you go to Charter School. Depending on your privilege you send you kid to a good one or a bad one. If you’re not born to privilege you go to public school which the state legislature has been starving of funds in an effort to snuff it out entirely.
@Lyn Robins what a canard. Poor working people are often working multiple jobs, spending hours on buses to get there, and barely getting by. Not couch sitting. Or riding their Pelotons.
1
Besides Ben Carson, there are a significant number of blacks who rose from an impoverished background to success today. Some of them may even be journalists for this paper. The question is what differentiated them from others still mired in poverty? Was it just a matter of luck? Are there programs that could increase the number of Ben Carsons?
While food stamps and welfare benefits may help some poor people, those who became successful did so despite receiving welfare, not because of it.
Education is key, but when politicians cater to the teachers' unions and don't allow black kids to escape violent and failing schools they are condemning another generation to a world of lost opportunities.
And as the carpenter notes "I was privileged to have two parents who valued education (though they never went to college)..." How can we get more poor parents to value education?
109
@J. Waddell What is your basis for concluding that most poor parents do not value education? I think it is clear that most poor people do not have access to a quality education, not that they don't value or wouldn't welcome one. The current administration's war on public education is only making the problem worse.
I know you think teachers' unions are the problem, but you are mistaken. Most of our states do not pay public school teachers a living wage.
As to your question of what differentiates a Ben Carson from millions of others who grew up in the same conditions, there is no one answer. Yes, luck has something to do with it. The luck of having an exceptionally motivated parent, teacher or mentor. Or the luck of being exceptionally intelligent or persevering. It is wrong and immoral to condemn people for not being exceptional.
180
@J. Waddell There are a number of programs like Nurse Family Partnership that coach parents on supporting young children. They have fabulous results, including higher high school graduation rates, fewer encounters with police, less teen preegnancy, etc. They pay for themselves up to seven times over. If we want to help at-risk kids, we should spend less time wagging our fingers and more time investing in programs with a solid evidence-base that help those kids.
392
@cds333
Or the luck of being the one person out of 20 equally qualified who is picked for the one available helpful position.* Pure luck.
*Often each such position really is one or a handful. There are not nearly enough in the country for every qualified person. That could be improved.
44
Yes, Europe and Canada have much more robust social welfare systems. That is why you will read about the angst in Europe that they have been left behind in all the innovation that has propelled American technology firms to worldwide success. What is the answer in Europe and Canada? More government intervention and regulation!
2
Mr. Kristof here continues to be a sensible and much needed grounding wire about REAL America and it's People. He and the majority of commentators accurately acknowledge that a child raised in a nurturing and positive environment can with a break or two and a little help now and then, can succeed. That successful formula is more about villages than bootstraps.
1
I just hope that Mr. Stimac - who is from my home state of Washington - will vote with his changed heart in November.
2
Every class I teach on culture and diversity, I play a speech by Martin Luther King Jr, in which he describes many of the countless ways that people of color have experienced systematic discrimination in U.S.history. He eloquently ends with the following:
“It is a cruel jest to say “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, to a bootless man.”
5
Excellent comments that resonate with me, being a solidly middle class white person living in an 80% black, largely poverty stricken small city. The bootstraps admonition is insensitive, but more so it's unrealistic and myopic.
35
@barbie fish
I agree. There are a myriad of variables that make one individual able to overcome their adversity.
8
I had very humble beginnings but I accomplished quite a bit in my life. Like the carpenter in your story, I assumed that my successes were due to my own initiative. How naive.
My successes were aided by very low college costs in the '70s, a strong home and extended family -- even though my father died when I was a teen, and because I was a white male. To be sure, I took advantage of those conditions and my own hard work shaped me into what I became.
But let's not quibble about this, I could not duplicate my path to success today. The doors that were open to me are now tightly closed. That's pretty sad for our country.
12
This was very well written. Thanks. The Stimac story resonated with me. I grew up on a small farm in upstate NY. My folks struggled their entire lives. My Dad died early of a stress related heart attack, and the farm went into bankruptcy. However, as with Mr. Stimac, there was love and support in the house, and an insistence that the kids all go to college. We all did. Two of us are lawyers, my younger brother just retiring. I have been very fortunate, and. like Mr. Stimac, attribute much of that to parents who gave us something much more valuable than money. Again, thanks Mr. Kristof.
7
Having worked in disadvantaged communities, I have seen the positive effects of social programs, especially for children. It’s not enough to tell people to “get a job” if the rest of their experience is chaos. Our society could use more compassion and support for those less fortunate. Thanks for the reminder, Nick!
1
When I was young (I’m now 71) the bootstrap canard was always directed at African Americans. Our neighborhood was working class but the jobs were mostly unionized and paid enough for people to live fairly well. Community pride created decent schools and stable enough lives so that I and many of my classmates made it into college and onto good lives
As I look at America now the bootstrapping demand by conservatives seems to be a justification for destroying working class communities like mine by destroying good public schools, limiting opportunities for college and doing nothing to stop the fraying of the communities America needs to survive. Whether it’s roads, bridges, rail tunnels into NYC, water systems everywhere, public schools and universities and healthcare we’re endlessly told never mind just use your bootstraps. Americans are hard working people and people who expect to work hard. But they (we) don’t realize that the mega rich simply want extract whatever value they can from workers, communities and the nation without any reinvestment. Trump’s tax cut should be evidence enough. Huge gains for the mega rich and to nothing for anyone else.
America is being hollowed out and, without a change in attitudes toward helping all Americans, the deterioration will only accelerate.
13
Several things make it indeed very difficult to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" in today's America (this was not always the case): (1) The ridiculously high costs of higher-education. Basically, this means it is becoming increasingly affordable to invest in your own human capital. That is so un-American. (2) The high cost of housing. It is becoming prohibitively high to buy a home in cities with booming job opportunities e.g. on both coasts. Having a single-family home was very much part of the American dream - now increasingly out of reach. Very un-American (3) The gross economic inequality within America i.e. the difference between the top 1-10% and the Rest. The former own the capital stock, that provides handsome returns. The latter are modern-day serfs (as they were in 19th century Russia). The former are well on track to create an inherited aristocracy (as in Great Britain) (4) The complete lack of a social security safety net, especially health care. This coupled with insane health-care costs leaves the serfs in a perpetual fear of losing everything in a heartbeat (5) No unionization, leaving workers always on the verge of being laid-off. Unlike Germany for instance where workers are represented on the board of companies.
5
This excellent column echoes a recent OnBeing podcast conversation between Krista Tippett and Ezra Klein about his new book, Why We're Polarized.https://onbeing.org/programs/ezra-klein-how-we-walked-into-this-and-how-we-can-walk-out/
In it, Klein points out his increased awareness to just how much of our journey in life is determined by circumstances that almost pre-ordain our chances for success, yet we have little control over. Public policy has increased the likelihood of ample bootstraps available for certain people who may never need them while also ensuring those who would need such support have little to no access to it.
2
Sorry, Nick, but bootstraps did exist and we're a lot better off as a result. When my ancestors immigrated to this country 150 years ago, there was no free education, no "show up at the hospital and get treated for free", no SNAP card filled every week like clockwork. None of that existed, and you thrived or survived or failed. If you were struggling, you sought help from private voluntary associations that sprang up all over the country. And if you failed, often you went back to the old country. It's too bad that Mike Stimac swallowed your snake oil about "substantial federal programs" to "provide opportunity." As someone who worked in and around government for many years, I know that "substantial federal programs" result only in more government, more bureaucracy, more fat government salaries and gold-plated benefits and pensions. They do precious little to help society and at a very high cost.
2
Thanks for this column, Nicholas. I've been arguing this point for years with my Republican friends, who are prone to talking about welfare queens and the like. My most recent retort this stuff is, "If they have it so good making babies, why don't you change places with them." It usually brings silence.
Thanks again.
3
I was at a car show in the small town (soon to be a suburb of a growing Columbus Ohio) and there was a guy standing in the middle of the road espousing the the Libertarian Party. I couldn't help but see the irony. Here he was on a publicly provided street at an event that was provided by the city, there was police officer that was nearby making sure that the event was safe and here he is saying that we should eliminate taxation and government intervention. I am sure that he probably took advantage of public education, clean drinking water from public source, and visited a public park. He was older, so did he take advantage of Social Security and Medicare? My guess is yes (much like Ayn Rand did, even if she used another name). So, maybe we should let this romantic idea of rugged individualism go? I think it is well past time!
7
The bootstrap image never really made sense — how do I pick myself up by reaching down and grabbing my shoes? — so it's helpful to know its origin as a task that was literally impossible.
My wife came to the US from Cuba alone at age 12 and could have luxuriated in the fiction that she succeeded by her own frayed bootstraps. Instead she speaks constantly of the people who helped her, from the saintly parish priest in Havana to the rather mean couple in the US who nonetheless fostered her. If anyone could have sung the bootstrap song, it is she, yet her refrain emphasizes all the help she got along the way.
She's my role model, not because she did it all by herself, not because she grabbed her own bootstraps, but because she grabbed the extended hands along the way, never complained, and got to enjoy her life as a brilliant florist, enjoy the warmth and love of her four children and 10 grandkids.
It's not a story of going it alone. It's so much better than that.
10
My parents brought their family of 6 to the US in 1979 with about $400--the rest of their assets and finances had to stay in their home country. We came here with practically nothing but my siblings and i have all become highly educated, my parents now own their own home and have been retired and comfortable for the past 20 years. But they couldn't have done it without a few years of food stamps, free job training, high quality/low cost health insurance coverage, robust federal student loans, (not to mention a properly functioning public transit system). My parents though say it is now harder for us, as graduates of prestigious universities, to raise families and plan for the future.
5
Nobody starts even, period. While IQ tests are not the be all that many thought they were, they do show something. Children of parents who scored higher than the middle range, also tend to score higher than the middle range. Children of college graduates tend to do better than those whose parents didn’t go to college.
These are trend lines, not set-in-stone predestination. My second career was teaching high school. I have seen good students from humble beginnings be very successful. I have also seen some bad students become successful, but they mostly had already successful parents. But, some students from successful families appear to choose to not be successful.
While “bootstrapping” yourself is possible, it is not at all common, so why should we expect everyone to be able of it? Sociological research shows us the even the most enlightened of us may still show signs of unconscious bias against people of color, including some people of color.
When it comes to successful people, I always remember, and highly recommend, Elizabeth Warren’s comments about the successful factory owner (from her Senatorial campaign against Scott Brown) and how they didn’t do it all themselves.
If you have been successful, think about stopping the chase to get higher, and try finding a second career helping the next generation, especially those from less successful beginnings, be more successful. It takes empathy and persistence, but it is worth it, personally and societally.
2
Why do we erroneously feel that kindness is a liability?
It is not pansy stuff, weak nor condescending.
Kindness sustains an underlying strength that not only supports the moment but sends out ripples of assurance that continue to give clarity as one confronts the challenge.
Why do we tend to choose the tuff stance over kindness, as if taking out the belt is what will motivate our "victim" to have a change of heart? Why do we tolerate the miscue that kicking someoone in the face when they are in a hole will help them climb out of that hole. Meanness only creates fear that never generates a long-lasting solution.
Kindness is powerful. It stops confusion and anxiety in its tracks. It immediately creates space for a new solution to grow in. It allows self-empowerment. It inputs self-confidence and self-esteem. It reminds us that life also embodies unconditional mercy. In fact, throughout evolution, it is the stuff of lifes shining moments, surprise turn-arounds and stupendous success.
6
When people like Mike Stimac dig a little deeper, and realize that for some it takes more than will and hard work (even if one has put himself through college and started with very little) that is when the difference starts to happen.
2
Amen!
My story is similar to Mr. Stimac. I was born to working parents (military and post-office) who divorced quickly, leaving us kids to grow up in a tiny apartment with well-worn and patched clothes.
But we did not go hungry, we were not asked to sit at the back of the bus, we were not thrown out of lunch counters, we were not fire-hosed or set upon by police dogs, and we did not see any neighbors lynched.
My well-being is as much a result of the luck of my place of birth as it is to the long hard hours of work that came afterwards.
3
Thanks again, Mr. Kristof. I would add religion to the toxic elements that impede success in this game-fixed society. And for those pressing their stories of their own and others' successes, I would have them remember percentages; in other words the exception proves the rule. Those who don't "make it" vastly outnumber those who do.
2
You don't have to convince anyone who just read your article that social safety nets are important investment for our society. You have to convince the people who need those safety nets the most that there's no shame--especially in this economic environment--in thriving because our government took advantage of economies of scale and used some of our tax dollars on education so they didn't have to spend even more on prisons.
1
Monty Python had a line that might be a GOP anthem: "Always look on the bright side of life." Of course we must see the bright side. But must we be so dazzled by it that we deny the other reality? We need to ask what kind of society not only tolerates poverty but takes it as a sign of successful policy? There is often a touch of schadenfreude about seeing the failure and difficulty of others. But we have enduring racism. We have at least 50 million fellow citizens living in poverty. We have at least another 50 million working poor. What kind of society produces that kind of widespread misery? We have rising mayhem on the streets of NYC. We have rising suicide numbers, including in the NYPD. The opioid crisis is not over. What is wrong with America? It is not the shortage of boot-straps or even of junk pop-psychology. It is a problem experienced by all societies in all times, and to which they have responded in different ways. At present, responses are often glib or non-existent. There surely are bright spots, lit by great people, but they are a minority. Our political woes, our climate woes, and our coming economic woes are built on selfishness and schadenfreude.
4
Compared to so many others, my life has been a walk in the park. My parents were both well-educated and successful but, as children of the depression, they were very cautious. As one example, Dad once told me he and Mom decided to have four children "so that two might live". We fooled them by all living, but not without some difficulties. My older sister had German measles in utero and became the second person in the US to have open heart surgery in 1945. I had polio and spent years between hospital care and recovery.
But, armed with support and good values, we persevered with parental and external support from scholarships and other sources.
But one factor we had is missing today for many. We had lower expectations for things which were not critical to success. No cellphones. No Air Jordans. No new car every few years. Keds were fine for us.
Today the ubiquity of television ads, Facebook posts and Instagram photos of elaborate meals have raised the bar encouraging the least advantaged among us to overextend themselves for ephemera. Even today my car dealer bombards me with offers to "trade up" to a new model with a lower monthly payment. I'll stay with my paid up vehicle for now, thank you, and put that payment to better use.
8
After 40 years with one company, my father was earning 18K by1986 when he was forced to retire. He and mom raised three kids on that: I'm not certain how.
All three kids went to college: one on an athletic scholarship: me, by working construction on summer breaks at a time when wages were such that it proved enough to pay my own schooling. ('71 - '75)
My employer after college paid 1/2 of my law school tuition for night school.
None of that is possible now.
Wages are stagnant and higher education is inexplicably expensive.
I had help.
Not certain how someone presently in my past circumstances could do the same.
10
My father went to Georgia Tech free on the G.I. Bill. The success of his long-haul trucking company was made possible by the interstate highway system. Medicare kept him healthy until his mid-nineties. He was raised the son of a sharecropper/bootlegger and died a multi-millionaire, all because of government assistance and generosity. As my dad’s life story shows, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help” needs to be regarded as a positive statement, not the mean-spirited jab that Reagan intended.
24
Thank you. There will always be some people who game any system. But indeed, many many more people need this support to go forward and join society and contribute and become self sufficient. Where self sufficient mean benefitting the same way the rest of us do!!
I suspect many of the western pioneers were also funded by the wealthy out east, but I don't have data on that.
Thank you again for your amazing research and writing!
3
The physics of bootstrapping aside, my sister and I grew up in an upper middle class family in which our parents, rather atypically for our class, cut us loose as soon as we graduated high school. No financial help whatsoever, no living at home, almost no advice or guidance, nothing... we were out on own. My sister went to vo-tech school, struggled financially, worked hard and is now upper-middle class. I joined the Navy, eventually went to college, and pursued the career of my dreams, also becoming upper-middle-class. Bootstraps? We both had the advantage of a good public school system and parents who constantly drove us to work hard and stressed that no one was going to give us a handout. And yes, neither of us had to battle discrimination (although I managed to succeed as a gay man in an industry that would not have welcomed gays not so long ago.) But I guess my question is, how did we become a society where having parents who model stability and hard work is 'privilege', and how do we become a society where valuing hard work, stability, and independence is the norm rather than 'privilege?'
12
I'm staring at retirement and just finished paying off the last of graduate school loans. More conservative friends and family taunt me about Democratic proposals to eliminate student debt--after all, I had to pay out, why shouldn't the next generation? But here's the thing...undergraduate school was tight, but doable, and I was debt-free in less than a year; graduate school was a bonus (and paid for itself eventually).
Most importantly, I think we have no choice but to educate the next generation. The current situation makes me think we are eating our young.
6
The best way to give back to society is through a good tax system that the population supports and adheres to. The basis for success of all social democracies.
4
My father was a military officer, which made my family of seven solidly middle class. My parents were loving and supportive and believed that education was essential. He even told my sister and me that we should go to college, even if we just wanted to be a housewife. He wanted all five of us to be the best we could be. But my siblings and I were lucky because college was cheap and my father could afford ,sometimes with great sacrifice, to pay for it. I was lucky because I was born into a stable, loving home. I still believe what my father said, “Ninety-five percent of life is luck.”
7
Neurosurgeon, author and podcaster Sam Harris often notes the role of pure luck in the outcome of literally — *literally* literally — every person's life.
Based on neuroscience, Harris does not ascribe to the idea of "free will," per se, and I agree with him. In short, he argues that if one could rewind the universe (i.e. every single particle of it) by, say, 10 minutes, then hit "play" again, one would not be able to make a different decision than one did on the first time around, because the initial conditions would be precisely the same. Harris still believes that we must take responsibility for our actions, by the way.
Given that, and given that every condition of any human's existence is or was not a function of their personal moral or ethical choices — for example, what ZIP code they were born in; their ancestry; their intelligence, attractiveness or lack thereof; etc. — luck becomes an incredibly powerful determinant of wellbeing.
In theistic belief systems such as Christianity and Islam, adherents ascribe life conditions to a (completely undemonstrated, by the way) higher power that chooses, either arbitrarily or purportedly based on human beliefs and actions, rewards or punishes pitiful, puny humans. Thus, a child dying of starvation is in some way "responsible" for its plight, and a man who was "earning" (I use the word ironically) $200,000 a ear at age 3 is beloved of the Almighty.
Sure, fellas, sure.
4
This is the year 2020, but it could well be fifty or sixty years ago: Growing up in a small Maine town during the sixties and seventies, I knew young people whose homes had no plumbing, and a couple whose homes had no electric power service.
Many of the young men and women I met in the new, all volunteer Air Force during the mid-seventies joined with the hope that they could escape poverty, abuse, and being stigmatized. The Air Force offered me free college and the possibility of a meaningful career. Being the 'product' of a broken home, latch-keyed and poverty stricken, I lacked the self confidence to take them up on the offer. I'm lucky. Despite a feeling that I didn't deserve to 'succeed', I have a home, a spouse, and though I never feel entirely secure, I am more so than I had ever expected to be.
Success doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's an all but magical combination of determination, support, and luck involved. The people I've met, and whom I consider to be successful members of the human community make that very clear.
6
"I worked hard for my money" Statement by Bloomberg at the debates last night."
Did he pull himself up by the bootstraps? No. He had the help of his employees who pulled him up by their hard work.
This is true of all the "self made" billionaires of the world and has been since the work began.
Ninety fine percent of the people work exhaustingly hard at what they do and will never be in the millionaire/billionaire class.
6
I'm afraid Mr. Kristof's cogent history of the "bootstrap" metaphor is yet another example of addressing a symbolic and powerful conservative trope – individual initiative is all that is needed to succeed on our great country – with logic.
By bringing a knife to a gun fight, we Progressives will never succeed in winning the day – logical argument is simply no match for symbolism.
Only when we have Progressive candidates who can energize the electorate with equally powerful messages, messages that reflect the hopes and dreams of people everywhere, will we succeed in winning over the "other side."
1
Great editorial. Some have quit thinking and given into animosity for the poor. If they are the enemy, then the rich are relieved of responsibility. They don't need a conscience. Mitch McConnell says that in 2020 the Democrats are coming after every successful person in the US. I don't know what he thinks we're going to do them, but paranoia is selling well. Trump has played us well.
3
I grew up in an abusive home. I went to 12 different schools growing up because my mother moved so often. I ended up on the streets eating scraps lying about my age to get a fast food job and still finished my high school diploma. I joined the military for a roof over my head and used the GI Bill to attend college and then got a well-paying job. And I've spent the last several weeks getting screamed at by several people I've lived with in college telling me I don't care about poor people because I don't want to vote for Sanders.
Adversity builds people. Free builds contempt. I have little doubt that free college in this country will be used by a good amount of decent people, but it will also fuel a bunch of aimless people who frequently skip class while they enjoy their newfound freedom, just like many of the people who had their education handed to them when I went to school.
Assistance is fine. But if you don't earn the things you get, you cannot hope to appreciate them in the same way that someone who has earned it. We have a crisis of laziness in this country, and a serious lack of people fighting the good fight.
8
The American people need to tell corporations to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, because we are ending corporate welfare.
They are going to pay taxes just like the rest of us.
7
My grandparents came from Russia with nothing and their 4 children became college graduates. Which college? The City University in N.Y. C. Which charged no tuition until the 1980s.
Yes, they worked hard. But they had help in the form of free college, with no need of crippling student loans. And their grandchildren (such as moi) benefited from that leg up.
9
@Willa I too attended a city college with low tuition (and lower status as a graduate.) It wasn't free and I had to work full time to pay for it. I lived at home with my parents while my more affluent friends were partying in their dorms. I graduated with no debt and no prospects and had to default on a credit card to pay for computer science classes. I paid a price in credit worthiness and learned a valuable life lesson. Anyone 'crippled' by debt has made a very poor life decision. Even if that debt was used for getting an education. The idea that I should be expected to bail them out of their debt from their expensive private school education is ludicrous. I have already paid by the lower lifetime career status of my school as well as my tuition and books. I earned it all by myself, working full time while in school full time. My two sons, likewise have gone to state Universities and accumulated no debt in the process. This leaves me with no sympathy for those who ruin their lives by assuming massive debts for any reason.
1
The GOP since the 1920's believed that the federal government's only purpose was defense. That's why they despised FDR who said no.
Today's GOP has taken its belief even further. It actively seeks to deprive (for example) health care for Americans. Government is not only indifferent, but punitive.
Elect the GOP again, then expect the destruction of Social Security and Medicare.
6
Vox had a great article on how luck plays into success. How it is almost impossible to get ahead without it and how it works at all stages of ones life.
The Radical Moral Implications of Luck in Human Life
3
I work with children who don't have 1/10th of the advantages the I grew up with. It makes a difference. It is much harder to succeed as an adult if you arrive in adulthood with baggage. We need to provide supports where we can.
5
I don't know what level of privilege Mr Kristof grew up in, but from my 2 successful friend come from the most humble beginnings.
They didn't drink, they didn't do drugs, they went to to tough high schools and didn't get into trouble, they didn't date girls until their early 20s . They worked really tough jobs from 14 years old.
Their is a path - it's not impossible - it's been their for a 100 years - but the less money you have, the narrow the path.
Or you could be a Kennedy...
5
I was raised in a college town, my father a professor. Money was tight but education was nearly free. My husband came from a more affluent family, with more security, and some college debt.
We are both children of privilege, both well educated, driven and competent. And we found ourselves facing the reality of using our retirement up before we ever got to 65, because American corporations find 55 year olds to expensive and useless to continue to employ.
We had no bootstraps to pull ourselves up with. We could not force the computers or headhunters who discarded resumes to see value in a person in the late years of his career. We were dependent on **luck** to give us the opportunity to survive; it was luck that eventually someone open to a different type of candidate read the resume. We survived through luck, not pluck, because the pluck meant nothing without opportunity. And we are educated, competent and driven.
How can we judge people whose luck already ran out, and who cannot get over the hurdles placed in front of them, when as smart as we were, those hurdles impeded us?
Some people dig their own holes, and some are tossed into holes other people dug. Give them a ladder.
18
While some valid points are presented here there is one glaring omission- the role of making wise choices. Dropping out of school, using drugs, allowing oneself to get pregnant - these and others like them are bad choices and are the responsibility of the individual, not society. It is impractical for society (whoever that is) to micromanage the activities of its constituents. Or to even consider that.
Some people are born with fewer opportunities than others. That’s just a fact of life. But as Victor Frankel points out so well in his book, ‘Mans Search For Meaning’, while one has limited control over what happens to him, he has complete control over his response to what happens to him.
The first step in ‘picking oneself up by his bootstraps’ is to make the choice to improve one’s life. That choice is available to everyone and while it may not be easy, the opportunities to improve oneself are greatest in the United States.
As countless people have demonstrated, you are only a victim of circumstances only if you choose to be a victim.
9
The environment for expanding government programs described by Mr. Kristof is not favorable as long as those who benefit from education loans (such as I did) fail to pay their debts. That is the current experience...most Americans know nothing about the success of the Homestead Acts. In the current context, there’s a big difference between helping a young woman learn a trade in a technical institute and lending her $120K to help pay for a degree from some fly by night institution which job placement record is abysmal. USG programs as currently structured seem to have no ability to assess the payback...for society and for the individual.
4
@JPE The cost of a college education has gone up far faster than the salaries of college graduates. Is it any wonder that many of the loans are not being paid off?
1
The richest usually inherit, but we need our myths, or hopelessness would prevail.
Myths are the opiate of the people.
3
IF your bootstraps came from a home with two parents, they will give you a leg up in bootstrapping.
That hasn't changed.
The rest of your argument falls into the Obama, "You didn't build it" lie. Sure the government- our taxes- helps with schools, roads, servies, etc. But to claim that because of this, the individual's choice to forgo or delay gratification is not the most important part is off.
Working in a college with many first generation students, many the kids of single parents (I always let my students know of their Professor's humble beginnings as proof that, yes, hard work and bootstrapping pays off), I see far too many kids bootstrapping for me to believe it's not true.
These are the kids like so many before them who work hard, do the right thing. They go to community college for two years to save money, then transfer to a state school. Work while in school and graduate with not too much debt, then find work.
They do this knowing it will pay off. That they are responsible for themselves. They pull themselves up with their choices.
Mr. Kristof may have created a "new" definition of the term adding in the Government's hand, while discounting individual choices and decisions.
And once you take out the individual's choice, of course you will find they "didn't build it."
8
Tell me professor, where exactly was the lie in President Obama’s statement? Contrary to what you may believe NO ONE makes it “on their own”.
Discouraging that you’re shaping minds, I’ll also assume you make it a point to disparage President Obama and other Democrats regularly.
1
I remember a friend from high school reading Ayn Rand and getting very invested in the idea of rugged individualism, and against government funded programs.... and yet she had no problem moving from Maine to California in order to attend a publicly funded college.
9
As someone who actually DID have to pull themselves up (well, more than most), there is apart of this story that is missing: Anyone who has truly had to endure such struggles would not wish them on anyone else. Those who genuinely struggled are some of the most ardent supporters of helpful government programs because they know too well the bad luck and happenstance that can befall any of us.
29
Mr. Krisof,
The United States of America DOES have one of the world's largest social safety/welfare nets in terms of sheer numbers.
If you add up Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security (retiree and disability, especially disability), AFDC, Unemployment Insurance, "free" public school, just to name a few,
well, it is not like we are holding everyone out there down.
Something is wrong in America, but, I don't think lack of spending on social welfare programs is the problem.
I think the problem is FAR more complex than "we need more social safety net".
That lack of social welfare is what LBJ thought he was solving 50 years ago.
But, in spite of all that Great Society spending for all those years, PLUS huge increases in Social Security disability, nothing changed. Or, maybe that is wrong, things are worse now.
All this talk of social welfare in the USA misses something important. I wish I knew what. Because, the USA DOES spend HUGE amounts on social welfare.
and the USA DOES have growing third world like poverty.
7
One of Bernie’s best statements during last night’s debate was in response to Bloomberg’s claim that he made his money from his own hard work. As Bernie pointed out, Bloomberg had many people doing much of that hard work for him. These successful billionaires have made their wealth off the backs of many hard working people, not just of their own employees, but of the hundreds of thousands who also help maintain the infrastructure of our country from construction workers to teachers to government clerks to sanitation workers. Thanks for pointing out that those who claim to have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps have done no such thing. They fail to acknowledge the support of the hundreds who have supported them and subsidized them through their low wages.
12
"Some people do manage heroic journeys to the top. Ben Carson grew up as an impoverished black child of a single mother in Detroit and became a pediatric neurosurgeon and secretary of housing and urban development. Bravo to him."
No one makes that journey without the help of others.
You did well in school? Someone recognized that and lifted your bootstraps, somewhere along the line.
I can look at my own life and can see many events where someone interceded for me to motivate or amplify my efforts. Or give me a needed boost. From the very circumstances of my birth, both my community and the moment in history that I was born into.
Thank you for this column, Mr. Kristof.
8
So other than the usual attacks on white (males), what does this piece have to offer? What other developed country doesn't have a similar state where those who come from lesser means generally achieve lesser outcomes?
There will always be those that flourish regardless of their background and there will always be those who fail regardless of their background. The world isn't fair and it never will be. To think and argue otherwise is a fallacy and a waste of breath that could be better focused on more achievable goals.
7
In my experience, the people who are the most condemning of those who struggle to rise - "It was difficult for me so I don't see why you should have it easy" - are the ones who have received a lot of help but don't want to acknowledge it. Kudos to Mike Stimac for recognising it in his own life and being open about it.
6
I've decided that our cultural inability to help others succeed is rooted in our Puritanical beginnings. Those who have succeeded look down on those who still struggle with judgment that colors everything. So, if you don't succeed, it's clearly your fault. You were the person who (pick one or more) didn't work hard enough, didn't pray long enough, didn't skip enough meals, didn't get up early enough, etc. We give lip service to helping others, but in reality, it's not ingrained in our collective psyche. I don't understand it. Never will.
8
My husband and I both pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps from large, lower-middle-class families to now belonging to the bottom rungs of the 1%. We both worked hard to do it.
He did this with a free university ride and pilot training at the Air Force Academy, and I did it with a mostly free private scholarship paid ride through public university and professional school. These starting opportunities paid off handsomely for both of us and the taxpayers who receive our large tax payments.
Some are born with a silver spoon, but most of us obtaining wealth are given plenty of help by others. Anything to encourage young people and their parents to recognize and take advantage of this is crucial.
I have Kristof's new book and am hoping to start on it soon.
7
Keep up the good work, Mr. Kristof. Your book should be required reading for the 1%.
3
Americans need to change their myth. And Sir Nicholas of the Kristof tribe points to where it needs to change. We need to concentrate less on Me; and more on We. In doing this we will return to all that made us, at one particular point in our past, a great People. That should be the true heart of MAGA.
John~
American Net'Zen
7
My brother and I were born to working class parents in the 1950's. Neither mother nor dad were college graduates; in fact, dad only finished 8th grade, before going to work full-time. Our parents managed to send both of us to college.
Yes, our parents were instrumental in our success, emphasizing that we study as we grew up, but sharing equally in our success was the state of Ohio, that, in the 1960's and 1970's, had abundant grant money available to help pay the way for students from poor households.
My brother and I lucked-out being born in the 1950's, because had we been born today, in this age of hatred and ignorance, there is no way we would have been able to afford college. No one "pulls themselves up by the bootstraps." Without good luck and better timing, the country we live in today will ensure that you are held down.
22
Thank you for this column. To paraphrase the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is cruel to tell a man to pull himself up by his bootstraps when he has no boots.
In my state, the investment in public education has declined Over the last 32 years. Yes, we have head start and the Hope Scholarship for college, but there is still a large performance gap between public schools in rich and poor areas. The price of instate college tuition has risen astronomically since I graduated in 1992. Ask any teacher in Georgia about their salary. There’s no union here to push for better salary and working conditions for teachers so that talent is drawn to the profession and will make it a lifetime career.
When you combine the decline in education with a dysfunctional state public benefits agency, you have many working poor who cannot consistently maintain the health insurance for their children provided by Medicaid and CHIP as well as supplement their diets with SNAP benefits. Good health and nutrition have been shown to improve children’s chances for success in the classroom. This is a help, not a crutch.
Many of the people I meet in my profession are simply moving from one crisis to another because their family’s stability relies on a frayed shoestring. Many have lost hope. And that is by far the cruelest condition.
16
Though this "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" canard uses pretty words; it is every bit as vicious as its cousin -the human meritocracy fallacy.
The idea that a child raised in poverty with a single parent has an equal, or even a fair opportunity to receive health, education and wealth as an adult in the same measure as a privileged child has been attractive to generations of Libertarians and Republicans as exemplified by Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, and Paul Ryan.
However, it is worse than empty. It is demeaning, heartless and gives cover to many who are just fine, thank you, with teaming, suffering underclasses.
9
Excellent column. The psychology of wealth is such that many people born into it seem in denial about how they achieved it. Ann Richards had that great line about George H.W. Bush, when she said that he was “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” Donald Trump seems to have a giant case of amnesia about where the wealth came from (his father, Fred) that even allowed him to become a real estate developer in the first place, and then that bailed him out of some giant failures. And, ironically, Fred Trump made a lot of his money building government-subsidized (the horrors!) housing after World War II.
So, ergo, a good chunk of Donald Trump’s money can be originally traced to federal government “giveaways”. Using today’s Fox News-fueled Republican talking points, wouldn’t that make our president a “socialist”?
15
@Jack Sonville and once Donald Trump burned through the money he inherited from his dad, he turned to the Russian oligarchs, who have been bankrolling him ever since with dirty money that he launders for them.
1
Tough call. Nothing wrong with suggesting the harder you work the luckier you get. And parents can rightly bristle at the notion they should not be able to confer the results of their hard work on their children - who after all are the very reason they worked hard.
Yet the tax system is badly flawed in terms of providing the conditions for a healthy democracy and the use of the myth of the self made man to justify its inequities does not help things.
4
One could say that Donald Trump pulled him self up. Yes he was given millions,but he turned it into billions. That could be said of a lot of successful people. They may have done well,but somewhere in their life they had a helping hand. It helps to come from financial security or a loving family. For many, that “tiger mom”was an important part of their success. When I was laid off from work, the first advice given at the unemployment office was to “ network “ . Go to friends and family or networking gatherings to see what jobs were available and who could help. In the end,few do it on their own and got some help along the way.
2
Trump pulled every con job in the book, stiffed people who did work for him and engaged and continues to exhibit mob like behavior. If this is your definition of success, then you can keep it and is a snapshot of the problem on this country.
3
Let's be serious here. Trump got half a billion dollars from his father. Through a combination of incompetence and greed, he has turned that into a negative net worth. It's all a facade, and he owes much more to shady creditors in Russia and Saudi Arabia then he owns.
Trump's illusory success in the eighties was due to his incessant self promotion, hucksterism, welching on debts, refusing to pay contractors and workers what he owed them, and outright criminality.
Remember, this is a man so cheap and dishonest that he used funds from a charity he ran to pay a $7 scouting fee for his son. That's the same charity that he was forced to close and pay 2 million dollars of restitution after his repeated looting of it for his personal benefit.
And now, as promised, he is running the country like he runs his business.
2
@Vincent Trump SAYS he has billions, but who really knows? We still haven't seen his tax returns. What little we have seen suggests he is a lot less wealthy than he claims. His casinos kept going bankrupt. Banks stopped lending him money decades ago. According to his own sons, most of the money since then has been coming from Russia.
2
The idea that one quarter of Americans (whose color is not relevant for this argument) owe part of their family wealth to the homestead acts is preposterous. Our family of seven is very fortunate to farm on what's left from 80 acres of land homesteaded (purchased from the gov't, cheap but not free) by our ancestors, seven generations ago (now it's only 7 acres, the rest sold over the years to pay taxes and bank notes).
The author just needs to do a little math to see how many descendants most families would have after seven generations to share the wealth from this parcel. If they had only 2 kids/generation, that's 128 descendants. One or two patronage jobs or benefit programs in the city over this time would surely infuse more wealth among these descendants then most homesteaded land... which was rarely in Napa Valley.
There are very few of the original homesteading families around where we live. Many, if not most, lost their property to essentially land pawnbrokers, often during the depression. Yes, unimproved land that was purchased in the mid to late 1800's for 1-5 dollars/acre and now fetches, often improved, for 1-3 thousand/acre. But if you figure inflation in, expenses/resources used to improve the land, and taxes paid over all those years it's not a killing and typically rarely spread over ALL the descendants (as that silly bit of data, cited from a politicized article, would suggest.)
7
Government dependency was a plausible argument a generation ago? Something tells me that when that argument was made a generation ago, leftists had the same sorts of replies they do today (and in fact many did). Dependency and disincentives have always been hazards and still are. That doesn't mean we don't need any government programs, only that we have to be forthright about their impact and their need for reform.
There is a tendency on the Left to romanticize the disadvantaged, as if they're better than the wealthy. Being wealthy doesn't mean you're going to be a good person, but you're more likely to find good people in higher-income neighborhoods (but this claim is a death sentence in a democracy -- and peripheral). Despite popular imaginings, you don't often succeed here by being a scoundrel (don't look at the president to substantiate this).
I agree with some of what you say, but this is a matter of degree. And degree matters: Bernie Sanders talks about the world like a real-life socialist. It's difficult for Democrats to come out and say Sanders's conceptions are absurd; the reason is because they share his principal concerns. His is a case of, "If some is good, isn't more better?" And that's Tea Party territory. Your objection to Sanders seems to be that he can't win rather than that he's got bad ideas. I object to that objection: He has bad ideas.
This subject drags me into the Bootstraps v. Government debate, and I actually think our problems go beyond that.
2
You’re more likely to find good ppl in higher income neighborhoods?!? Wow..sure.
Since you think benefits should be more tightly regulated, I’m sure you’d agree we need an end to corporate welfare and tax rates should be returned to pre reagan rates correct?
I’m assuming you live in a higher income neighborhood ergo you’re a “good” person who realizes reagan took a meat ax to education and slashed the 🔥out of taxes, leading us to where we currently are.
I think the pulling yourself by the bootstrap imagery is more about being willing to take risks and perceiver towards one goal.
Nothing is really falling on the lap of people in the lower socio-economic rung of the ladder. So professional or financial success for people not coming from money requires a go getter attitude.
This being said, there are a lot of people playing the lottery with not so many winning. Hence if you only look at the winners you may erroneously conclude it only take buying a ticket to win.
This is the fallacy of the pulling yourself by the bootstraps, ignoring the people that did not make it and assuming they did not try.
I have been and am quite successful.
However, I have to recognize it could have very easily be a different outcome for me.
For example, I know quite a few physicist that had to reinvent themselves as software engineers since there aren't to many well paying jobs in physics. They did not need 8 years of university to do those jobs.
My first job after a post doc, I was the one hire out of 300 applicants. Most of those applicants had Ph.Ds. Most of them deserving of good jobs. A number of scientist get trapped being under employed as post docs and glorified post docs for many years. That's only one field, I suspect this is true in many other fields.
Being overqualified for many job is also a big problem specially latter in life. Having gaps in resume because of child care or health problem, same thing.
6
I did it, and under the conditions at the time (decades ago), doing it ethically was not quite impossible. And to most appearances, I'm white--that, and having parents more educated than most were where we lived, helped in ways that I was aware of at the time and remain aware of now. Helping others get out is now one of the ways I give back. I didn't do it all by myself; some caring people here and there were able to lend a hand, especially with my efforts to get a real education. Invest in other people, invest in the habitability of our planet, invest in your own capabilities--these things are the antidote to regret and despair.
6
Suppose you buy into the idea of lifting yourself upward and you want to go to an elite college, the Ivy League, say Harvard or Princeton. That's where the rich sent their kids and, presto!, those rich kids tended to do alright in life.
Suppose you are really smart but not brilliant. If you went to a public school where my brother and I were sentenced to attend for five years, in Bennington, Oklahoma, your chances would be...zero. Without checking the record, I can say beyond a doubt if even one kid has gone from there to the Ivy League he or she must have had a genius level IQ plus other advantages. The teachers are worthy and they try hard, but very rural poor schools don't provide the necessary groundwork that an Ivy school wants.
The top schools moved carefully toward a more meritocratic system of admissions (and exclusion) after the 1960s and '70s, but, guess what? The rich kids still get in. If they did not, the big name schools would be betraying their core constituency of rich folks who pour money into them like a flood tide.
This is just one system holding back people of talent, brains and great potential. The greatest impediment is poverty itself because poor people spend an inordinate amount of time just dealing with poverty.
21
@Doug Terry
Some of today's rural poor kids have it better than even twenty years ago.
Scholarship organizations like Questbridge are particularly interested in rural youth. These kids up at places like Yale, Grinnell, Amherst, Wellesley, Williams, Pomona, Stanford, MIT at rates that are cheaper than their in-state college. Questbridge parents don't take out loans, and the students work summers or during the semester to contribute.
1
@Lee Thanks for your comment. I am aware that among the Ivies, as an example, that Princeton has done more to broaden its admissions than others. Harvard accepted a kid who had been home schooled but I take no great notice of that because it seems to be a case of exception proves the rule.
My first boss in television news carried around his Harvard degree with pride. Being from Texas, he was part of the earlier admissions policies to "round out" each class with people from all over. Now, things have changed. In one recent year, the majority of minority students at Harvard were from outside the U.S. so a black kid from South Carolina or Los Angeles might have some difficulty finding his peers for social comfort.
My point is this: our system of higher education that generally weeds out students from less than perfect backgrounds and weaker schools is part of the problem of generation by generation inequality of opportunity. Is that what we want? For those who can send their kids to elite schools, the answer is yes.
2
At 28 years old I was a hopeless alcoholic, consuming a fifth of liquor or more a day. One night I had it, called an AA hotline and the next day, not having health insurance, I was placed in a 28 day recovery program for the indigent. When I left treatment, I was penniless, homeless and had destroyed all personal relationships. A counselor loaned me $200 and the only housing I could afford was a flop house occupied by alcoholics and addicts. I got a job, rode a bicycle and when I didn't have enough money, I ate at the local St. Vincent de Paul's soup kitchen. I got two jobs, then three jobs, rode my bike 22 miles every day to work, saved as much as I could, finally got an entry level management job, then a better job succeeded by even better jobs. It took me 5 years before I had enough money for a car.
Decades later I ended up actually becoming the CEO of a midsize company. Thirty four years later I am retired and continuously sober since that day I entered the treatment program. I am very proud of what I have accomplished in my life, having endured what were unimaginable challenges.
When I rarely start thinking what a remarkably strong person I am and how I did pull myself up by my bootstraps, I remind myself that had it not been for that government subsidized alcohol and drug treatment program that accepted me when I decided I wanted to quit drinking, well frankly, I think I would have died decades ago.
At some point in our lives, we all need a helping hand.
90
@Rich D
Kudos to you, sir, not only for your diligence and perseverance, but for your honesty as well.
Most folks fail to realize that all those "heroes" of those old Horatio Alger stories of bootstrapping success had the benefit of a helping hand.
13
@Rich D I think you are a strong person who is "appreciative" of that leg up which saved your life back when. But you also had to walk the walk, considering recidivism in alcohol addiction it certainly wasn't easy. I have a brother who is in AA for close to 35 years now. He tells me he is sick of burying people, so the reality is most people fail at recovery for a variety of reasons, but the point is they were not as strong as you and my brother and they paid the price.
4
@Rich D
Congratulations Rich D.
There is a big difference between the "helping hand" that you received and the lifelong subsidy that many other "poor and unfortunate" people receive for much of their lives.
The government must level the playing field, but the playing we have to do it ourselves.
7
The point of this is that there are advantages money can’t buy. But, conversely, there are shortcomings only money can overcome. Let’s start with a living wage and access to affordable housing, healthcare and education — that is, promote the general welfare —and watch what happens.
27
Between the hip hop, drug and alcohol driven pop culture and Hollywood a large majority of the younger generation base their values on these cultures . There is no sense of history and what came before them in today's short sighted Twitter culture. Just look at the flesh exposed pole dancing Superbowl half time show. We are more concerned with "Kool" then good values. Young people today don't have the same values instilled in them that Ben Carson did. Whose fault is that? It's all our fault for not helping those that need it "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". We have created monsters with warped ideas that stifle counter expression. Seeing through the racial lens has fostered hatred of the other. We have forgotten that our nation is one big family helping those that need it. Rather we are so fragmented and polarized that we can accomplish very little and therefore pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is so much more difficult then it was in the past. But if you persevere it is still possible. So never give up hope. The American dream is still within reach to those that work hard and are honest with themselves and really want it.
8
So the phrase originated as a kind of joke or tall tale, a fable of impossibility, then became a prescription for self-reliance and industry, and is now apparently a bugaboo with the left because working hard to improve one's lot isn't all it's cracked up to be and more government programs will fix everything? The ideas should not be mutually exclusive.
4
The "bootstraps" narrative is a toxic one, and I cannot grasp how people ever became convinced that just because a very few succeed against long odds, anyone who fails to do so deserves to suffer. Most people, by definition, are not extraordinary, but somehow in our system the unprivileged ordinary do not deserve a fair shot at the decent standard of living that is logically commensurate with the prosperity of this country. One would think, given the stated principles of this country, the fact that's it's in our national interest to have all citizens be able to maximize their potential as individuals, and, yes, all that basic human decency stuff, that there would be a baseline acceptable standard of living in this country that we the people would be happy to pay taxes to sustain. Privilege will always be an advantage, but with a reasonable baseline standard of living, the "pursuit of happiness" line won't be just a cruel joke for anyone who is underprivileged, unlucky and less-than-extraordinary.
10
I'm not sure what is the point of this column.
We all can benefit from having good parents who support and don't abuse us. Those who don't have such parents do indeed have a disadvantage.
Some of us overcome the effect of a disadvantaged upbringing; some don't.
So what is Kristof trying to say? He concludes the column correctly. We "need fewer wagging fingers or homilies about bootstraps, and more helping hands."
But all that he writes before that is vapor.
7
Until we decide to provide a good education regardless of zip code can we even begin to use terms like pulling ones self up by his bootstraps.
We are too immature as a nation to provide a good education for all without blaming the student for her/his circumstances
8
Most people aren’t lucky. Some people just aren’t that smart. They may be very good and caring people, but they maybe just aren’t that business savvy or good at school. The difference is, the less brilliant people who are born wealthy won’t ever have to worry about going into crippling debt due to medical bills from a freak injury or illness.
The whole “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” thing always seemed a little odd to me because what if people just aren’t good at business? Do they deserve to suffer? I know not everybody is going to get rich, thats not the point, it’s just that the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” argument is usually used against providing affordable healthcare, education, childcare or any form of welfare. Even if America were a perfect meritocracy, since when was not being smart such an awful sin that it means you should be denied basic empathy?
I’ve known plenty of well-off people who are very kind and good people but absolutely wouldn’t have what it takes to make it out of poverty, I’m extremely glad they aren’t suffering as a result of it.
30
Thank you for this article! I feel like we are finally starting to have the discussion in this country we need to have.
Love to see more articles such as this in the times.
5
Nothing that Kristoff writes of or that AOC does not understand about concerning the subject of bootstraps changes the simple lesson my father and grandfather taught me at age seven about finding a certain fortitude within myself, that each person has if he will seek it, to excel through effort. Choose wisely whom you take your life’s lessons from.
7
@John No one is trying to change that lesson. The point is that everyone should be able to find that fortitude in themselves, but not everyone has your father and grandfather, or even a stable family and food on the table every day, which makes that lesson harder to learn. You say choose wisely whom you take life's lessons from, but this presupposes that everyone has decent choices. Not always the case.
17
@Susan There was a time in America when the norm was for every child to have a father and a grandfather (or two, if very fortunate) to guide and counsel. Then the onslaught of the Left’s attack on the normal American family and its values began, and we have what we have now. Your crocodile tears over everyone not having a father in the home or food on the table, as a direct result of this coordinated, sustained onslaught, are noted, as hypocrisy and as a warning for the future.
1
Thanks for the powerful essay maki g many poignant points. It's troubling to see so many that have profited from government programs (that brought their family tremendous wealth) now fighting against programs aiming to give others a leg to stand on & similar opportunity to prosper.
5
Does more help by itself necessarily help though? For instance, the argument that we need to spend more to fix broken schools in America is belied by the fact that countries like Japan actually spend less per student than the OECD average on education. In America oftentimes the arrow of causation runs opposite what people expect. Worse school districts may have higher average levels of expenditure per student because we end up throwing more money at problematic situations rather than additional spending substantially improving student outcomes.
I believe we should exercise open-mindedness and compassion in dealing with others, but at the same time I've been frustrated by how easily progressives will trot out the same old tropes about privilege or socioeconomic status explaining most of what we see in this country. I know this is hardly an apples to apples comparison, but it might be interesting to note that the poorest ethnic group in America on average, African Americans, have a per capita income slightly above $20,000 per year. This is very comparable to China's PPP adjusted per capita GDP of $20,000 USD. How privileged were the first generations in China to grow up after the end of the Cultural Revolution?
America is a wealthy first world nation. Saying that certain people were privileged to grow up in stable two parent homes is just ignoring the heart of the problem. Moral decay perpetuates more moral decay. Material well-being by itself can't fix broken values.
4
@Yan Shen This is a disingenuous comparison. Try to live as a single in my hometown of Houston, TX for $20,000 a year. I'm sure it's possible, but that is a VERY low income when one considers the cost of living in the city. For $20,000 a year, a person could perhaps afford to live in a cardboard box in Manhattan, if they were exceptionally frugal. Anywhere it would mean no or deeply insufficient health insurance, no savings or safety net for an unforeseen cost, no ability to pay for childcare which further depresses professional opportunities, poor food and a constant, all-consuming struggle to keep up. This is not China; please don't judge Americans as suffering from "moral decay" when you are not assessing them by a real standard.
19
@Yan Shen
"...apan actually spend less per student than the OECD average on education."
Yes, but Japanese school children clean their own schools.
We don't do that here except in Montessori classrooms, some of which are in public schools.
Hooray Mr. Kristof. We need more columns from the NYT challenging the mythology of the USA. Only when we break out of our so-20th century ways of thinking (and even then they were at best partially true), can we effectively confront our 21st century challenges and return to at least this part of the mythology: that the USA is by, of and for the people.
8
Re: "Some research finds that upward mobility has tumbled in the United States over the last half-century and is now lower than in Europe."
Republicans and especially Trump like to "trot out" the American Dream and that the citizens who need help are lazy, "only takers", and are ripping off the country.
Some recent research has said the "American Dream" is alive and well...in Denmark.
19
In tonight's debate Mayor Pete pointed out that America is no longer able to fulfill the American dream.
Denmark is where the admonitions of Horatio Alger can still can lead to upward mobility.
2
I was raised with that old saying, and was told that I could only ever depend on myself and my own efforts. With that instilled in me I did pretty well, but not as well as I might have, and finally learned the hard way that as hard as I tried I could never get the soles of my boots off the ground.
Whenever I hear that phrase since that realization, I am reminded of a quote by Carl Sagan who said: "If you truly want to make an apple pie from scratch,first you have to invent the universe". Meaning of course, that everything in the universe is interconnected, and therefore inter-dependent.
But that's a lesson ignored by conservatives, who live by the Law of the Jungle - everyone for themselves, and to the strongest goes the spoils. We are seeing the result of this philosophy right now. Conservatives see the government as their enemy, because it interferes with their goal of unchecked wealth and power being allowed to be held by the "fittest". But the reality is that our country is strongest when the majority are sharing in the wealth and power they help to create. Ever since Reagan sold his lie about government being evil, conservatives have been able to whittle it down and reduce its role in protecting people and leveling the playing field. Until we roll this "trickle down" system back to pre-Reagan days, no amount of bootstrap pulling is going to change things for average Americans.
47
Between 1850 and 1870, seven percent of the land in the United States was given to 80 railroads; mostly in the west.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company is a corporate law case of the United States Supreme Court most notable for a headnote stating that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment grants constitutional protections to corporations.
Today corporations are "the people" whom Congress represents.
10
"Pull oneself up by the bootstraps" has become a metaphor that means the opposite of its literal meaning. Doesn't Mr. Kristof understand metaphors? Words change meaning: 200 years ago "condescending" meant gracious.
Free high schools and state colleges, homesteads, GI Bill educational benefits and other government help were available, outside the South, to all Americans equally.
Don't incite racial resentment and hatred by claiming racial discrimination where there was none.
9
@Jonathan Katz I think the point is that the meaning of the metaphor changing over time to the opposite of the literal meaning says quite a lot in itself about our culture.
3
"Outside the South"? Leaving aside the heartlessness of simply dismissing the experience of a large swath of black and brown people living in the south, it sounds as though you are not aware of the virulent racism present throughout the country to this very day. Boston, where I enjoyed going to school, might be the single most racist city in this country.
2
The fact that you pointed out those benefits were available outside the south shows the racial disparity that is no longer limited to “the south”.
I can’t imagine how utterly lacking in sight you’d have to be not to see the massive inequality in this country, truly that is a gobsmacking statement.
1
Malcolm Gladwell made this point well in Outliers: there really aren't any. It may look like Bill Gates is just a genius and pulled his boots up by himself but he had a lot of help in his youth. Good column, but needs to go to the Fox audience.
10
@kschwrtz People from Seattle know Bill Gates came from money. His dad is a successful lawyer who was partner in a well-known firm and his mom was a trustee at the University of Washington (before Gates became wealthy). Gates also went to the poshest private school in Seattle, Lakeside, and so did Paul Allen. (My brother attended summer classes there one year.) On the other hand, Gates himself has never bragged about making it solely on his own: others might say that but not him.
7
The key point was made by the carpenter and general contractor, "But now I realize it is more than hard work and family help. I was privileged to have two parents who valued education (though they never went to college), I am white, and there was no abuse." Of all the programs we might support, none would help as much as encouraging and supporting two parents to stay together, instill the value of education, and impress them of the necessity of courtesy and fairness towards other people. Regardless of whether one believes pulling up by the bootstraps was meant to be literal or figurative, providing helping hands (meaning government handouts) will not make up for a lack of good parenting.
6
So, yet again, you are ASSUMING that all children have even the opportunity to have two parents who are together. And that if only "we" could teach them to teach their children better then everything would be fine. This is so ridiculous. There are millions of children who have never and will never have two parents, and your judging their single parent for trying to do it alone will never change that. And when that single parent is working two jobs just to feed, clothe, and house that child, how much quality time do you think that parent has to help with homework, read to that child, and make certain that everything in that child's life is going well? What would help that child IMMENSELY MORE than his/her parent working two jobs JUST TO PROVIDE NECESSITIES, would be food stamps so that that child never has to worry that at the end of the month there won't be food in the house, or after paying the rent or the electric bill there is no money left for food. There are millions, MILLIONS of children in the richest nation in the world who wake up hungry and go to bed hungry, and it is NOT BECAUSE THEIR PARENT IS TOO LAZY TO FEED THEM, or because their parent needs to be lectured about how he/she needs to teach them better about the importance of education. Stop blaming people for being poor. There are millions of people in this country that if they just had some help could truly change their lives for the better. I'm willing to bet you are anti-choice, just don't expect help, right?
1
There's a little-discussed problem of downward mobility of people raised in middle-class families who do not or cannot offer them support as young adults. Those young adults are assumed to have the advantages of the wealthy - but are actually in the same economic position as poorer kids. Better schools only go so far when you don't have access to education beyond high school without assuming enormous debt, going without medical care, working jobs for wages that have been losing ground against inflation for decades.
The fact is, this has been a problem for nearly 40 years, if not more. It has affected most of the adult population that has not reached retirement age. It is almost entirely unrecognized as a key reason we are falling behind the rest of the first world as a nation. I'm pleased that people who were born with challenges get ahead. We should remember that financial stability is not necessarily hereditary.
14
It is amazing to me that only the (rare) exceptions to the rule are considered when sustaining the dictum that, in this country, it is possible to pull oneself up by the bootstraps from abysmal conditions. We should be much more concerned about the majority that could not make it against nearly insurmountable odds, despite working and fighting hard. The goal is not for all to rise from utter poverty to extreme wealth or brilliance. The goal is to provide everyone with the basic human needs, and thereby offer to all the same opportunity to the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of freedom.
16
Nicholas Kristof should attend a few college graduations in May and June in New York. Just even a few City University campuses will do. If he does, he’ll find hundreds and thousands of immigrant Americans and children of immigrants who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and are well on their way to their American Dream. Despite all the doom and gloom, American public schools are still very much vibrant ladders of social mobility. He’ll meet daughters and sons of working class who are armed with newly minted degrees off to start their jobs in Big Five accounting firms (Baruch College), Amazon and Microsoft (engineering programs at City College), and public schools (Hunter College). He’ll also find that it’s not just the government that builds the ladder of mobility but also community-based organizations, ethnic churches, and networks of adults who care deeply about young people and their futures. Even in this time of Trump, there’s a lot of room for hope!
7
If you wake up poor in America as a child, you can hit the books, test well, get into a top university (with a scholarship), get a good job and have a wonderful life. That’s a fact.
Yes, it’s an uphill battle, but it’s a battle that can be fought. The same is not true for much of history and much of the world. If you’re not young, you can help your children achieve this dream. That is why the term “boot straps” is still relevant and why these articles bear no weight.
8
Unless, like many poor children in my area you have no place to sleep, your main meal, sometimes only meal, is school lunch, and you are expected to either watch your siblings while your parent works or go get a job to help pay the rent. Increasing rents and decreasing pay mean many poor children have more responsibilities than just doing homework each night.
4
Ok, so you wake up poor as a child. Your single parent works two jobs, and you're still dirt poor. Your school has mold growing on the walls, broken desks, no heat, and cannot attract teachers because of the conditions of the school and because teacher pay in that district is abysmal. So the teachers are either woefully unqualified or saints that do the best they can. Then, when you get home from school, there's nothing to eat. All the money goes to rent, the electric bill, gas to get to work, the water bill, maybe the gas bill if heat is not electric, and let's say a prescription of some sort that is keeping that person alive. Also, mom is never home because she has to work all the time. So, that child, who rarely even has food in the house, has no one to help with homework or read to him/her, is supposed to "hit the books, get a scholarship, graduate and have a wonderful life." That is just ridiculous. What happens if that child isn't smart enough to get a scholarship? What happens if that child is just terrible in math, or has trouble reading, and those classes bring down her/his GPA so that a scholarship isn't an option? There are literally innumerable ways that your "hit the books, get a scholarship, graduate and have a wonderful life" can go off the rails. Your assessment of the situation of poor children is stunningly simplistic and uninformed to a nauseating degree. Maybe if the parents actually had help then your vision of perfect circumstances could manifest itself.
4
Sorry. My stepson flunked out of college. Then 10 years later worked to receive his bachelors engineering degree while earning $35,000 with 3 children. He now makes $150,000. He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. He didn’t receive any special treatment.
10
I'm a person of color, in my 60's. I was born in this country and grew up at a time when we brown-skinned Americans were told that our failures were our fault, and that yes, we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. So millions of us did.
I grew up in a fairly poor, working class family. My father died when I was a kid. No one went to college, or even considered it. I was shuffled around to grandparents and other family members.
Working every odd job I could find, I put myself through college and law school. No "affirmative action" breaks where I went, either. And I've been able to provide for my family in a manner my parents could only dream of.
Fast forward to today - many whites are extremely resentful of my success, and think I've "taken" something that was rightfully theirs, especially white men.
I see the anger in the faces of the young white men such as those in Charlottesville, and think, their lives are so much easier than mine ever was. They have absolutely no excuse for their failures. But it is easier for them to blame people like me than to take responsibility for their own failings.
I had just about every disadvantage one could think of, growing up. Color, poverty, gender.
After more than a half century of being lectured to by whites to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and doing just that, now I'm told I'm an "elitist" who isn't as deserving as they are. My answer? Do the same thing I did - pull yourselves up by your bootstraps.
341
@Orion Clemens I liked and recommended your comment Orion, but I wish you had taken what Nicholas had to say about the expression "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" to heart: that originally it was a joking reference to someone imagining they could do the impossible. You literally cannot do it, so you did not "do just that". You did not succeed despite impossible odds, you just succeeded despite unfortunate odds. It's like how Ben Carson overcame disadvantage to become someone who can perform neurosurgery, but should he need it, he couldn't perform it on himself. Cheers.
18
@Orion Clemens God Bless you on your success! It shows that in this wonderful country you can advance yourself. It takes dogged hard work but it can be done. I doubt it could be done in many other places on this globe.
10
@Orion Clemens
Me too. Excellent comment, and thank you.
11
Mr. Kristof:
Excellent article! I appreciate your in-depth research and journalism. You are correct, it IS impossible to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps and we need to implement programs to give those who need it most a helping hand, especially children who are living in poverty. The benefits would be tremendous to future generations and to America's future in general.
6
I completely agree with what you are saying, Mr. Kristof. However, it flies in the face of several long-held American myths, including that we are rugged individualists, that we are all born with equal opportunity, and that hard work and dedication will surely result in success and attainment of the American Dream (whatever that is). I cannot tell you how many times in the past 60 years I have been told by people that they are "self-made," that "no one handed me anything," and that "I attribute my success to my own hard work and perseverance." Those are the myths because without exception the people I have heard say those things had the benefit of dedicated parents, access to good schools by having grown up in a good school district, living in a safe and secure neighborhood, and countless other factors that are beyond their control. Taking advantage of the circumstances and opportunities deserves some credit to be sure but that is a far cry from being self-made and asserting that "If I could do it then so can everyone else." We would all be much better off as a society and as a nation if we all took a closer look at our own circumstances and recognize that we have all been, and continue to be, dependent to greater and lesser degrees on others.
30
This reminds me of when Obama told business owners that they didn’t succeed without government help in the form of infrastructure (roads, etc.). None of us live and succeed in a vacuum.
52
We are working to help a young, hard-working, responsible, American citizen, the child of illegal immigrants, to get a driver's license. It took four months (and a close reading of the rules of the DMV) to get a learner's permit. Parents can't sort out those details. Now we are teaching this person to drive. The family has no car. Every moment learning to drive is time this person is not making money. Go to community college? Sure. But you need a car to get there and at the same time you are not helping support your family. Bootstraps? Make your own. Our young friend needs a hand up. But the patience, time, and money (it's our car and that of a friend that is used; we paid the money for the 5-hour required class) must be provided by those of us who have something to spare. There is a way up. But it is arduous unlike anything I could have imagined. The things I have understood about the lives of this uncomplaining family have been hair raising. Father leaves for work at 6 AM, comes home at 10 PM (weekends? I don't know): for almost 20 years. Social Security? Even if it is paid he will never collect it. Individual actions like ours are not a policy––not even a band-aid. When I taught university-age students and found them an internship or talked a friend into giving them an interview I would tell them that they had to be sure to help others lower down the ladder. Has greed for our status; fear of potential loss, blinded us to our neighbors?
215
@Ace of Hearts
Having once been really poor (temporarily), I understand what life is like for the really poor (permanently). People truly do not understand how hard it is to be poor; how much time and effort every single thing is. Just think about the difference between driving to a grocery store and having to take a bus there. Think about how that would effect your shopping. Now multiple that simple act by everything you do. And stop blaming those people
33
What if everyone who could offered such a “bootstrap” to someone else? What a wonderful world it would be.
(My husband and I had two foster teens for a short while, friends of our children, who just needed some stability and advocacy added to their own dreams to be the successful adults they have become. Our family is so much richer for the experience.)
12
@Ace of Hearts
When I was in high school, a generous family paid my way to go to Europe with our school group. I wrote them a note expressing my deepest thanks. I received a note from them in return. It said the best way to thank them was to do something similar for some one else in need. I've never forgotten that, and I try to live up to it as best I can.
3
Believing in bootstraps as “The American Way” is just another manifestation of our loss of compassion, community, and care for the common good. Easier to blame the struggling for their failures than to examine the systems that make it so difficult to move out of poverty. It allows the well off to claim credit for their own good fortune, and find fault with those who struggle for making poor choices. It not only takes them off the hook for being their brother’s keeper, it also enables them the sweet certainty of their own superiority.
260
@Kris K It isn't just people who make poor choices who struggle and suffer. The phrase "those left behind" doesn't accurately describe the situation for many. Today, "those deliberately cut out by corporate and government policies" is a more apt descriptor.
9
@Jim No, you're the one mythologizing. There are plenty of people who do everything you proscribe, and even have a bit of a rainy day fund (though as we know, a lot of Americans don't), who are one medical crisis away from losing it all. Our country's values are gone.
3
Thank you Mr. Kristof for revealing an 'idol of the marketplace' that was unfamiliar to me as such. You have added to my understanding in two worthwhile ways. Cheers!
4
Indeed. That possibility is no longer an option. I work at a food bank and let me tell you, being able to shift ones circumstances is very hard when the minimum wage does not come close to paying for housing, food and transportation to a job, much less providing care for your kids. The math isn’t there. I see people on a daily basis who actually have a job who cannot afford to feed their families as well as provide housing daycare healthcare and other basic costs of living. It makes me so nuts when people who are sitting in high-rise apartment buildings that cost $4000 a month in rent criticize folks who are just trying to get through the day and provide a decent life for themselves their children and in many cases now more than ever their aging parents. This bootstrap thing is long gone. We are in much deeper trouble than that.
297
I grew up in a ghetto to an alcoholic father and a mother who suffered from depression. Despite the toxic environment of my childhood and despite the racism I endured, I became the first person in my family to graduate from college and I went on to earn a master's degree from Columbia. I was precariously middle class and then I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. I had to retire prematurely and now I survive on Social Security Disability payments. Grit is never enough. We all need help from time to time.
805
@mch
Beautiful. And I’m sending my sincere best wishes.
56
@mch
Thank you for sharing your story. I hope you are getting the help you need.
Sometimes it's good to be reminded that LIFE can intervene and bump us off our preferred path. The bumps may be caused by disease, accidents, loss, grief, or insurmountable obstacles of any kind. And when someone's already down, even the perception that an obstacle is too big can make that perception seem true.
During the Great Recession (2008 and following), my husband and I went bankrupt. Almost overnight, the client base for his business dried up. No one had money to pay for the services of his company.
I had experienced loss before--the death of a previous husband, a sibling, my parents. My husband had also by this time undergone the loss of loved ones, but bankruptcy was a different kind of disruption. The loss of loved ones was not perceived as our fault, but bankruptcy was seen by others as the result of our bad behavior.
It took a long time for us to come to terms with the humiliation we felt. Since that time, I try never to judge anyone else for being in financial straits.
Reading Hard Times by Studs Terkel has been a help--seeing how much worse other people have had it in our nation. Being a school teacher in a relatively poor school brought home to me the need to be kind to everyone. Just having extra packages of crackers in my desk drawer helped kids who didn't always get sent to school with a hearty breakfast.
132
@mch My hat is off to you mch. Studies show that successful adults who suffered multiple adverse childhood experiences (ACE) that are decidedly traumatic have more illness and shorter lifespans than adults who had little to no ACE's in their childhood. Toughing it out and making is laudatory, but comes at a price.
30
I work in a poor public school near Boise. I often meet with parents to talk about their kids' progress. These past two weeks were interesting. I met with a series of poor parents, some admitted to being in recovery; a few broken families, one parent who just found a place to live after staying in a car with her kid. They're trying, but they really don't know how the education system works, how special education or pull-out services could help their child. Extra reading that needs to be done, electronics (video games) that need to be shut off? They don't know about it.
Then I had one meeting with a couple who both teach at a local state college. Both very articulate, knew the educational system, and were working in partnership with us at the school to best help one of their sons improve his reading. The difference was striking. Their son was adopted, coming from a traumatic background and now his wise parents are helping him catch up.
No bootstraps here, but a child who went from zero support and a traumatic background, to landing to a very good new family. His future has greatly improved with the new family.
For those who don't think it's where you're raised and it's all some fantastic personal grit story that lands future success, follow me at work some day. If you're living in a car in grade school, your chances of success are greatly diminished.
463
@TRS I've volunteered at our homeless shelter. We have an enormous problem with homelessness because they from all over America to southern California because they know they at least won't freeze to death outside.
I discovered that the largest segment of the homeless population is women with small children, especially after 2008 and the loss of so many jobs, homes and then husbands. Many of the moms have minimum wage jobs, sometimes two, but still can't afford a home so rely on the shelters and live in their cars with their children.
13
@TRS TRS --YOU have done what you could do -- by visiting with, supporting and modeling what teachers still today can mean to parents. PARENTS are the ones who need the support, kindness and RESPECT for what they try to do, often against huge odds, no education themselves. Most of them DO INDEED love their kids and want the best for them. Continue on, try to stop judging your parents and simply do what all helping pros do, give a little more... it works, believe me. Teacher and school psychologist in very poor schools for 25 years.
I'm 63. I am a physician. Neither of my parent graduated form high school (and we had zero investments but my dad had a pension). I grew up pretty poor but because college was essentially free, I made it. I also utilized food stamps and medicaid in my early 20s. I had lots of bootstraps -- as did my sister and several of my friends. We used our brains to get to where we are, but never in a million years would I have made it to med school without help from the government (and I did not have to go $250,000 in to debt). I give lots to charity as a way to given back. We NEED to give me a lifeline.
608
@Donna Barker Thanks for sharing your story. Many of us have traveled the path your sister and friends followed. Most importantly, you choose to give back. You're my definition of an American citizen.
48
@Donna Barker
I understand and congratulate you on being in the right place at the right time to get a good high school education and an almost free college education. You have done well, and love the fact that you are giving back.
I don't understand your last line "We NEED to give me a lifeline." Maybe spell check changed it? Did you mean We (my siblings and I) NEEDED a lifeline in order to be able to achieve what we have, and to be able to give back?
1
@Bob Thank you! Means a lot to me,
2
You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you can’t afford boots or if you have a broken arm and can’t afford medical care. Some are fortunate to be able to make boots. Others are fortunate to know how to repair boots. Some are carried through life and never need boots. But there are others who are given 1000 pair of boots at birth by their parents and then convince the world that they got them by their hard work.
America needs to boot the Republicans out of office.
971
@David I agree with you, a one party state is not the solution, but that will never happen under the Democrats, as the current presidential campaign process shows. Unfortunately, a one party state can happen under the Republicans, very easily. If DJT wins big in November, we will be a lot closer to it. Until enough Republicans as a group start speaking up forcefully about what DJT is doing to things other than judges and abortion (read climate change, environmental care, and medical care, to name three) and then acting (key verb, since words alone don't cut it with me any more, read Jeff Flake) then to me they need to be voted out.
40
@David
I used to feel the same way. But your party has clearly pursued the goal of a one party state since Trump took office, and perhaps ever since McConnell stymied Obama by first saying his only goal was to prevent his reelection, and then
not even holding hearings on his SCOTUS nominee.
Its time for you party to have some time in the wilderness to ponder your sins.
And lets face it, the GOP is not going to be completely eliminated from the government.
27
@Mike S. Best comment ever. You should be writing for the New York Times!
3
I’m actually surprised bootstrapping is still a thing with conservatives. When the cowboy hat wearing crowd at the 2016 GOP presidential convention clapped and applauded when Trump said he alone could fix the problem, in my opinion they abdicated all ownership of the sense of personal responsibility.
20
The only wealthy people I know either inherited it or intentionally sought out a wealthy person to marry.
17
When I was growing up, that statement meant what is now known as "resiliency." There was recognition that we were all in this together and needed to help one another.
11
My son in law is an Australian citizen who has a green card. He started his own business in Los Angeles. He does not have a college degree, but has many skills young Americans do not have. He is a welder, has worked construction and is a carpenter. He worked very hard to start his own business in the United States. That being said he is still harassed by US Customs when he returns with my daughter after visiting us in Mexico. I believe he did pull himself up by his own boot straps but yes, I do agree there are many, many obstacles for young people today and it takes a very strong person to survive in this world.
5
I'm an RN currently employed in a local small-town homeless shelter, where our focus is getting our residents into a job and a stable living situation. The obstacles faced by many of the people we serve are overwhelming. Most have both physical and mental health issues. Trying to access medical care- especially in a rural area, where providers (especially for mental health) are few and far between- when you lack money, insurance, and transportation is nearly impossible. Lack of internet access can make a job or apartment search difficult. Navigating the application processes for things like Medicaid, food stamps and low-income housing is difficult for anyone, much less someone with a limited education.
The list goes on. We do our best to provide a stable environment for persons who are trying to get back on their feet, but even when you have a whole team of dedicated workers pulling on those bootstraps, the effort frequently falls short. To make things worse, we are located in one of those states where our government is trying to reduce access to all the things desperately needed by our residents to improve their lives.
Vote Blue this November.
43
I went to school on scholarships. I paid for my kids college. A lot of it is about making work a habit and having encouraging parents. My dad finished college on the GI bill and my mom never went to college but not going to college for their kids wasn’t an option. Everyone needs encouragement and opportunity they also need personal drive and responsibility and skin in the game. No one appreciates what they get for free.
8
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying that your scholarships made you fail to appreciate your school? If that's the case, my own experience has been quite different.
8
@Wolf,
So your dad didn't like having a degree any more than you do? You admit that both of you were subsidized and then say that giveaways are bad. Disgusting!
I'm an RN currently employed in a local small-town homeless shelter, where our focus is getting our residents into a job and a stable living situation. The obstacles faced by many of the people we serve are overwhelming. Most have both physical and mental health issues. Trying to access medical care- especially in a rural area, where providers (especially for mental health) are few and far between- when you lack money, insurance, and transportation is nearly impossible. Lack of internet access can make a job or apartment search difficult. Navigating the application processes for things like Medicaid, food stamps and low-income housing is difficult for anyone, much less someone with a limited education.
The list goes on. We do our best to provide a stable environment for persons who are trying to get back on their feet, but even when you have a whole team of dedicated workers pulling on those bootstraps, the effort frequently falls short. To make things worse, we are located in one of those states where our government is trying to reduce access to all the things desperately needed by our residents to improve their lives.
Vote Blue this November.
7
No matter what the statistics say, I don't think you can ever convince conservatives of the fallacy of the bootstrap argument. I remember the attacks against President Obama when he said "you didn't build that" because he had the audacity to suggest that government provides a framework that helps people succeed.
Supposedly only liberal elites went to college while conservatives didn't have such luxuries. Of course the people who work for Fox News went to good colleges. Many Republican Congressmen went to Ivy League colleges. And of course their leader received millions upon millions from his daddy to help him get a leg up. But none of that registers with conservatives because it doesn't fit the narrative.
53
It's very possible to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I've done it myself many times. I picked myself up off the ground time after time, despite the heinous injuries I suffered. People are agents of free will, not passive recipients of government help. While I favor government social expenditures, no one but myself motivated me to keep pursuing knowledge. I did that on my own. I was the one who kept pushing forward. Very few people helped me. No one helped me in the way I wanted to be helped. Still, I kept going. If I had followed your advice, I would have wallowed in self pity.
10
Kristof addresses folks like you and Ben Carson. Some people can run a 4-minute mile, but you can't expect everyone to.
Congrats on a successful life without any external help or motivation though.
23
This phrase continues to carry the same meaning, and you’re certainly right that something has changed: back then it was rightfully understood as self-contradictory. Racial resentment isn’t something we dabble in and out of our country, it’s structured into the backbone of our nation’s DNA.
3
@David
I beg your pardon: your boots have straps and you lifted yourself off the ground using them. AOC happens to be right: it's physically impossible.
You are completely misreading Kristof in a second way (and very strangely, too). He does not advise self pity. He advises admitting that there are times when people need outside help -- not all people all the time -- and also that many people who think they did it all themselves had help they don't recognize.
4
Re: Americans are morel likely to drop out of the labor force than Europeans and Canadians in those years.
The fraction of American in the labour force is known as the labour force participation rate
Labour force participation Rate 25-54, 2019
Date OECD
Switzerland 87.6
Sweden 86.4
Germany 85.5
France 80.5
US 80.3
The labor participation rate is the closest measure economists have to the attractiveness of the jobs offered.
It is higher when the jobs available are attractive lower when the jobs are less so
A look at the US historic participation rate Data FRED
In January 2000, the US labour force participation rate peaked at 84.3%. From then on, it fell, reaching its lowest point in July 2015 at 80.5 %. In January 2020 its value reached 83.0 %
4
@Woof
I remember the job market around 2000. Back then, employers were offering free job training and free relocation for tech jobs. You didn't need prior experience and you didn't even need a college degree. The company I worked for would even buy your old home when you relocated.
Those days are over.
3
Beautiful. Thank you for writing this.
5
I’m afraid the author does not do the subject justice. Most Americans, whether liberal or conservative, do not expect everyone to be an extraordinary achiever like Ben Carson. Neither would they disagree with the fact that the effort and sacrifices parents make are essential for a child’s success. But the fundamental disagreement between the two sides is whether the government and taxpayers are responsible for the parents making the effort and sacrifices.
Social mobility does not happen over one generation. Families rise in prosperity, one step at a time. A child has a better life than his parents, who in turn had it better than the grandparents.
The question we all need to ask ourselves, regardless of our station in society, is have we done the best we can for ourselves and our families with whatever little or large we have? And if the answer is not even close to being a yes, then it’s rather silly to expect others to help us more than they already do.
9
@AS Madhavan
No, that is not the fundamental disagreement, and you seem to have failed to notice what Kristof is writing about.
2
So, children who live in poverty because they have parents who dropped out of high school for a multitude of reasons, and can only get a job making 7.25 an hour, should just starve to death? If that child's parent works two jobs just to not be homeless, that child should suffer the consequences? Your entire premise is based on the assumption that all "families" have the option of bettering the lives of their children. That is preposterous. There are MILLIONS of Americans that could ACTUALLY improve dramatically their own lives AND the lives of their children IF ONLY THEY HAD A LITTLE HELP. You obviously have absolutely no idea of the actual state of affairs for the millions of poor people in this country. Do the actual work to inform yourself of the truth of the situation before you offer this ridiculousness.
3
When they analyzed Brexit they found the vote of the English working class was decisive. They voted for change because much like America your neighbourhood schools and the resources of your community cannot compete. They believed things will never get better.
I am reminded of Pandora and her box. When all the evils are unleashed upon the world only hope remained in the box.
I fear America has let hope out of the box and it is at the mercy of evils of this world.
8
@Montreal Moe
Actually, it is pretty clear (to me) the working class voted for change because the Tory government's 6-year austerity program was impoverishing them. Just like here in the U.S.
7
@Thomas Zaslavsky
Thanks Thomas.
The discussion I heard went back to Thatcherism and 40 years of voting Democratic Socialist and seeing nothing done to improve their lot in life. When our Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland gave her address to the Aspen Ideas conference in 2013 she specifically mentioned English and American vulnerability because the hierarchies are so entrenched and the chance of upward mobility for those whose educational realities allowed them to fall back very early and never let them catch up made things like Brexit and Trump inevitable.
Trump's minions and the English working class are in fact doing rather well but inequality is on the rise and we have frightened the heck out of them because we have not provided them with a positive future.
I use Pandora's box because even in ancient Greece hope kept people alive regardless of circumstance. Ford's assembly lines are never coming back and computers will take over the jobs they are doing. Something we mistaken for being Luddites.
Freeland's lecture and the book are called
Plutocrats: The Rise of the Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.
Freeland was a Russia and Ukraine economic expert in 2013 and a journalist and public intellectual
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9LIVa3WVPo&t=704s
4
@Thomas Zaslavsky they also believed all the lies the pro brexit spewed.
3
Speaking of narratives we ought to discard, one of them ought to be the unquestioned one that the sole virtuous end of public policy and private effort is people getting "up." Let's aim instead for dignity, health, and a modicum of security for all, regardless their income or potential social mobility. Pretending we're one day going to eliminate poverty by helping people up is as cruel and unreal an idea as people lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps. There has never been nor will there ever be a society, an economy, without a lot of poor people. Let's stop treating them like dirt. Doing so will generate more "social mobility" than any targeted set of supposedly "enlightened" policies that still harbor at their core that old, old discrimination between the deserving and the undeserving poor.
29
@RRI
Treating poor people like dirt is a sure way to perpetuate poverty.
1
When I hear that inaccurate old canard and slur, my response is:
“ What about those that don’t even have Boots “ ? They never answer. Most people do not have the triad of intellect, self confidence and perseverance to succeed without HELP. And not necessarily College Degrees. Technology and Trade Schools to Provide real World training, to earn very decent Wages. Childcare provided for young Parents, while they are in School or Training. Basic, decent HealthCare for ALL Students and Children.
Yes, it will all cost Money. Perhaps the Rich might actually have to pay their fair share. Finally.
55
To those who think handouts lead to dependency (as though struggling Americans were stray cats who'll never leave your front porch if you feed them), the problem isn't the handouts per se, but that we a) don't provide handouts sufficient to meet basic needs, and b) we don't also provide the type of financial advice and life skills training necessary for the recipients to fundamentally change their situation.
33
AOC pointed out that bootstrapping began as a humorous expression illustrating an effort to do something impossible. Republicans don't get the joke. Or perhaps they do, and it's on the rest of us.
There are no self-made men or women. A handful of people may rise in an extraordinary fashion, but nearly all of us are limited or raised up by our circumstances. The best way to get rich in America is to have rich parents and go to first-rate schools.
The saddest thing about the condition of our current society is the wasted lives, the wasted human talent, the potential never achieved that would have enriched all of us. It's not just the poor who suffer the effects of poverty. It's all of us, rich, and middle class included.
122
@writeon1
Research has amply demonstrated that we pitiful humans tend to believe we "deserve" anything good that comes our way, but not anything negative (illness, being swindled, whatever).
1
I've felt for years now that the ultimate test of a nation is how it answers the question: What do we do with those who cannot or will not help themselves? Because in every society you will certainly have both groups.
Many are genuinely disabled and unable to care for themselves. No one in America that I know suggests these folks should be abandoned and left to die - the harshest conservative in America will still agree that we ought to do something for those "who actually need it." And, if you have lived in countries that do not have the social safety nets that we take for granted, you know how horrible it is to see the disabled begging for change on street corners.
But then you have those who choose not to care for themselves. According to most conservatives I know, there are a lot of people who are entirely able to work but simply refuse to - they would rather sit home and collect government handouts. And that is the heart and soul of most of the problems people have with our social safety net: many are convinced that the system is being horribly abused. Indeed, the fundamental concern of our nation turning into a "socialist state" is the all-too-popular mantra that, "sooner or later, you run out of other people's money."
Conservatives have spread this fear for years: that "the libs" want to take money away from working folks and give it away to the unworthy, so they'll keep voting Democratic.
Problem is, it isn't true.
15
grew up in housing projects in Brooklyn
went to the navy at 17 and been on my own since then
went on to college and earn 2 masters
created a business and sold it
yes, I think I pulled my self up by whatever straps my mother had on our boots and my father earned climbing telephone poles in NYC.
16
@alec
You also went to the Navy, which is part of the government, and which, I imagine, helped you in your life going forward. So in a sense, a government program helped you get a leg up.
I don't know what the G.I. Bill is like these days, but I know after WWII it helped a lot of white veterans which helped build the middle class. But it did practically nothing for black veterans.
I don't mean to take anything away from your accomplishments. Just getting into the Navy is an accomplishment. But understand that not everybody has the makeup to start a business. And understand that a lot of folks wish they had a father who climbed telephone poles. Of course nowadays you need your father and mother to climb telephone poles.
14
@alec And now the big question: Does what you achieved make you more or less inclined to help people from similar backgrounds as yourself to make it in the world?
1
The housing projects. How did your family get into the housing projects? Aren't they government financed? And you had two parents who apparently cared about you. Please read this column again,carefully.
2
I grew up in a small home, raised by an alcoholic single parent as an only child. I was the first person in my family to go to four year school, and graduated in 2010. Of course, I couldn't find regular work related to my undergrad degrees, so I went into sales.
I worked in sales for five years before going to law school. Now I'm a practicing attorney. Will I crack the top 10% of the economy? No.
I agree wholeheartedly that the game at the top is rigged, that our system is failing and inadequate. We need more investment in public schools.
As much as children need a "helping hand," they need less screen time, more work (not busy work, but, actual work), less helicoptering parents, etc. We're not generally raising strong people in our country any more, and the great divide seems to be at whether you were born pre-internet or post-internet.
35
Over decades, my working class grandmother, mother, and I all benefitted from the education and opportunities provided by public schools. So I know what is possible.
In the 1970's then Gov. Reagan slashed funding for public education from pre K through university. His scheme spread like wildfire across the nation. What Pres. Trump calls school choice is another GOP scheme to destroy public education. As essential programs and the social safety net are trashed by GOP predators, parents, students, schools, and communities struggle under unimaginable burdens.
Public schools are supposed to level the playing field of opportunity, but Republican national and state administrations craft policies which perpetuate the inequities of our larger society. They care more about the 'unborn' than what children need to thrive.
'Up by your bootstraps?' My foot!
107
Hard work matters.
I recommend reading the "Path to Power" by Robert Caro. That book is FULL of case study after case study of people coming from abject poverty to financial and professional success.
The truth is most people have become soft. If a person works an intelligent 14 hours days for a decade I can almost promise success. Instead they go home and do nothing productive.
People aren't honest with themselves. If you aren't an academic type then don't try to get into an Ivy League school. If you aren't over 6 foot maybe playing basketball professionally probably isn't going to happen. (although it can be a great hobby)
When people recognize who they actually are, instead of who they think they should be they can start focusing on things that work and ignore what doesn't. People need to get gritty again.
If you do everything, absolutely everything you will win. Put your full weight into efforts. It is worth it, and for more than economic gain.
10
The same should work in reverse though. People born into great wealth and privilege who don't work hard and have intelligence should suffer the consequences. Unfortunately that almost never happens; as we have seen with the college admissions scandal and the Trump clan, mediocrity is often rewarded and encouraged at the upper echelons of society.
54
@Kathy no argument from me there. However, I suspect that we should not focus what other people do or fail to do, but what we do or fail to do.
Kind regards,
@Travis
Your "almost promise" isn't worth the bootstraps it's painted on. I'll bet at least 99% of those people had help from someone, probably several someones -- a mentor, a higher-up who lent a hand, etc.
1
Kristof summarizes the liberal viewpoint - but it is simply wrong. Sure, no man is an island. And yes, it is rare to "soar from humble beginnings" to become a surgeon like Ben Carson. But that's not the point ! Rather, the data show that making a few key choices makes it almost certain that you will reach middle class even if you were born poor - marriage before children and getting an education.
Kristof speaks of the higher government spending in Canada and Europe. We have already tripled our spending per pupil on education (after inflation) since 1970. Yet, 31% of poor children drop out before completing high school. In other words, the support does exist but too often, the opportunity is not seized.
Instead, liberals contort basic American principles and call them "privilege". " I was privileged to have two parents who valued education, I am white, and there was no abuse." Having two parents shouldn't be a privilege. Yet, 40% of poor children are raised in single parent households.
Government policy can change this. Shortly after AFDC and other Great Society programs paid parents to stay home, the predictable occurred. But now, we reward parents who work such as Earned Income Tax Credits. As expected, most of the poor work - at least part time. They simply do not earn enough mainly due to lack of education and needing to support a single household. We can change this. We just need to stop accepting that poverty is a life sentence.
9
@Alan Backman
You are wrong. You don't believe me? -- produce evidence. Your personal conviction has no significance.
It is now visible that lack of employment in the community is a major cause of one-parent households, regardless of race, religion, or national origin.
2
@Alan Backman My father was born into a poor family, his parents divorcing when he and his siblings were young. My dad, the oldest left school at 14 to help support the family. Only the wealthy and nobility in those days stayed on at school and went to university. My parents married had two children and bought a 3 bedroom detached house. My mother gave up work when I was born and never worked again. My dad retired at age 62. They were not rich by any means but they were solidly middle class. This is in the UK. Fast forward. My father died and left enough money for my mother to pay to be in a nice residential care home now that she has senile dementia. If and when her money gets to a certain point the local council will kick in and pay. Her medical expenses are all covered under the NHS.
My father, a blue-collar worker worked hard but clearly it wasn't education that got him there. Amongst other reasons it was the safety net and the NHS that had come into being. He never had to worry about medical bills. He retired with a "real" pension and a nice state pension. Companies were loyal to their employees back then. He was never layed off. In today's world especially in the USA upward mobility is harder. In the UK my husband and I were educated at our companies expense, taking one day off a week to attend college but paid a full salary. That was our bootstrap along with a good safety net and the NHS. We paid for our children to go to college in the USA. That was their bootstrap.
2
Oklahoma is a conservative state, but it seems like all the small town museums, including the one in my town, are dedicated to the glorification of the Oklahoma Land Run. There's even a statue depicting the land run on the courthouse square here. The local people seem to have forgotten where all this free land came from.
Interestingly enough, due to price gouging on seeds and equipment, within ten years of the land run, most of the people who staked a claim lost their land due to debts. They got free land from the government, but lost it to capitalism.
94
@Linda
That's why Oklahoma had a socialist armed uprising in 1917, the Green Corn Rebellion, that was backed by the Socialists, the Wobblies, tenant farmers, Native Americans, blacks.
It didn't succeed.
Four years later, Oklahoma had the largest incident of racial violence in the United States: the Tulsa Race Riot (mentioned in HBO's Watchmen.)
This is a cautionary tale. When economic situations are bleak, and people don't see a way out, they turn to violence, either against the capitalists or against scapegoats in society.
10
I work in manufacturing. The vast majority of my coworkers are very conservative. The other day at lunch, they were making fun of AOC saying that she didn’t understand the saying. I’m new here, so I’ve kept my politics close to my chest, but I felt like saying that *they* were the ones who didn’t understand. It’s like a whole different world out here y’all.
550
@Matthew Crawford Hm. Please clip my column and leave it at the lunch table. But don't admit you ever read me! :)
421
@Matthew Crawford
Matthew, you’re doing a great service, for yourself. Keep reading, learning and writing. And especially VOTE.
Find your political tribe. They are there, but probably not vocal, especially at Work.
Good Luck.
100
@Matthew Crawford Here in NYC, many of us make fun of AOC. We plan to vote her out.
9
A good extension of the analogy is that, to be successful at pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, you need some form of assistance. In physics this can be accomplished with a block and tackle, for instance, multiplying your own efforts and making the whole idea feasible. It still requires effort on your part, but without the mechanical device assisting, you are doomed to failure. This pretty neatly correlates with the social reality.
14
@Bob Myers
Even the block and tackle just raise the feet, leaving the head to smash on the concrete.
The bootstraps just aren't enough.
It is like the type that come out here to the Pacific Northwest and figure they are going to go out and rough it to the max, taking with them a factory made axe, modern oil-based clothing for warmth against the elements, a precision made rifle and modern, smokeless ammo, and all the convenience of a vehicle to carry a half ton of camping gear, and they are convinced that they are roughing it.
What they called an Adventure we called daily survival.
Brute force and money is not enough to really LIVE, yes, you may survive a season or three in an expensive endeavour to 'see what it is like'.
But you would do a sight better to go into the local communities and learn from the people, and help the people there out of their own troubles. Money is hard to come by when the same small amount is circulated by the population, and certain places are money sinks where the money leaves the area, such as for food or fuel.
And with food, fuel, infrastructure and hard work, people can be made to thrive again, but only if some of those who sit on mountains of cash, yet yearn for real experience, were to adopt towns or counties and make SURE that everybody has a Living Wage Job, and quality education for the children, then those are the bootstraps by which Civilization works to haul each of us out of the mud.
We have to work together to get us all out of the mud, and those who have the Finance, and nothing else, need to change their view and only TAKE a living wage, instead of all they can.
20
Well said. Quality comment.
And this is why many Americans feel like "failures" if they can't pull themselves up. In our society ambition means making it to the "top" and making lots of money. If you went to college, when your parents didn't graduate from high school, that is success. If you are employed and able to support yourself in the time of stagnant wages you are fortunate. Be proud if you come from an abusive home and were able to break the cycle and not abuse others. I used to hate my "lack of ambition" and still occasionally have feelings of inadequacy because I'm a nurse with a bachelor's degree. As an American, I grew up with the bootstrap message. I still feel like I squandered opportunity and could have been "more" even if I grew up in chaos. My background isn't so great (see above) and I still question if it's me, or my circumstances, that limited my education and career. Probably both.
28
@Lori
This illustrates another problem: People no longer respect working people who are simply good at what they do, if they don't make a lot of money.
Nurses are skilled, trained people. WE NEED NURSES—tons of them. A good nurse makes a difference to a patient vs. a bad nurse.
I wish more people would take more pride in how well they do their jobs, and more people would appreciate that. We've been influenced by the Republican worship of money and the equation of money with value.
Why look down on, say, janitors—when WE need and want janitors? And we want them to be good ones despite the lack of respect we give them.
If we truly stopped making money and prestige the measure—because we know in our hearts they're not—how would we look at our work?
Think about that.
8
Mr. Kristof, I am so happy to see you make reference to the huge benefit conferred on millions of white Americans by the Homestead Act. You are right to note that that one piece of legislation underlies so much of modern white Americans' wealth.
The converse of that is the broken promise of "40 acres and a mule" for newly-freed blacks in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The promise of land distribution in 1865 would have provided the basis for a strong black middle class in the 19th century. Andrew Johnson's decision to rescind that promise and return the land to the slave-owning traitors who started the Civil War ended that possibility. It also served as the basis for so many later racist policies that deprived black folks of land -- such as tenant farming and red-lining.
I also want to say something about Mike Stimac's recognition of how privileged he was not to be abused. The lingering effects of abuse -- on people of all races -- are under-appreciated by almost everyone who has not suffered from it. I am white, was raised in a reasonably prosperous middle-class home and had the opportunity to attend first-rate public schools. I was also physically and emotionally abused constantly for my entire childhood and youth. The education enabled me to enter a profession and lead a normal life. The abuse led to decades of PTSD and kept me from achieving much professionally. Abuse is never really in the past. People need to understand that.
175
@cds333 This is similar to my story unfortunately, though my background was more humble and the straw of trauma I suffered as a child less severe, a log of it at 19 left me still able to attend university and get a degree, but not able to consider further formal education or a career using it as realistic options. "Minor" neuropsychological injury, stress/anxiety/personality/identity disorder.
5
@cds333
Miss Eye- thank you Madam for your succinct portion about the rescission of the forty acres and a mule during the "supposed" Reconstruction. How come no one talks or comments about the time that some Wxxxx people destroyed "Black Wall Street" in Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma? And buried, burned, and otherwise obliterated an attempt by people of color to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? HBCUs trying to keep people of color educated but having their funding reduced and perhaps even being closed? There is not enough time to speak about all of the injustices, atrocities perpetrated on people of color that are still going on today. I borrow the words from Malcolm X- "Ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what he does!" partial quote (1992) I don't have any answers.
4
@cds333
I'll re-post this in case you (or Kristof) over-looked it:
The idea that one quarter of Americans (whose color is not relevant for this argument) owe part of their family wealth to the homestead acts is preposterous. Our family of seven is very fortunate to farm on what's left from 80 acres of land homesteaded (purchased from the gov't, cheap but not free) by our ancestors, seven generations ago (now it's only 7 acres, the rest sold over the years to pay taxes and bank notes).
The author just needs to do a little math to see how many descendants most families would have after seven generations to share the wealth from this parcel. If they had only 2 kids/generation, that's 128 descendants. One or two patronage jobs or benefit programs in the city over this time would surely infuse more wealth among these descendants then most homesteaded land... which was rarely in Napa Valley.
There are very few of the original homesteading families around where we live. Many, if not most, lost their property to essentially land pawnbrokers, often during the depression. Yes, unimproved land that was purchased in the mid to late 1800's for 1-5 dollars/acre and now fetches, often improved, for 1-3 thousand/acre. But if you figure inflation in, expenses/resources used to improve the land, and taxes paid over all those years it's not a killing and typically rarely spread over ALL the descendants (as that silly bit of data, cited from a politicized article, would suggest.)
1
My dad took a job that he didn't really want, as a prison social worker. It came with a low rent house across the street from the prison. The prison happened to be in a rich town (though the prison was literally separated from the rest of the town by railroad tracks) that had excellent public schools.
There is no equal opportunity in America. We all need some help. The poor have no one to help them except for churches, charities and the government.
55
@tanstaafl The government isn’t much help. If you’re poor in a red state, you face regressive taxation, substandard schools, substandard benefits. If you’re poor in a blue state, you face skyrocketing cost of living. Generalizations, yes, but you take my point
1
@tanstaafl : equal opportunity does not mean "equal outcomes for all".
Sounds like your dad had a pretty good deal there -- a good secure job that came with a LOW RENT house!!! and in a rich town with excellent schools!
Why are you complaining about that? most jobs don't come with ANY house!
I get the point AOC was making but her though process came across as concrete making her look silly. Everyone knows its a colorful metaphor. Does she need to explain that there are no actual "chickens of the sea" too?
6
@EW
Could you perhaps think outside the standard box, like AOC?
2
You might add to the myth of bootstraps the canard, so often promulgated by your colleague Thomas Friedman, of "lifelong learning", where the onus for failure is placed solely on the shoulders of the worker, who is supposed to struggle their entire working life to remain a useful corporate widget. CEO's love this catchphrase because it absolves them of any responsibility, where once companies actually invested in their employees in the form of on-the-job-training. Now, workers are as expendable as paper plates, so you are expected to show up on the first day fully formed, like Athena out of Zeus' brain, with a resume five pages long.
Most adults are simply not equipped for the Sisyphean commitment to continuous learning, not even in areas in which they might have an active interest, much less in the mastering the mindless tasks they are expected to perform in the workplace. Additionally, the rewards are hardly worth in most cases, because the value you have added to your company all floats magically upward into the pockets of a few.
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Add to that the joy of jobhunting in your 50s and beyond AFTER you've retrained, and how you get to explain to 30-something recruiters why you made "changes" and why you've had more than one job. Go ahead and retrain but be prepared to be viewed skeptically even if you do because, you know, the engineers worth anything are CEOs, right? Not the downsized into a second or third profession.
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I’d add, these same adults are given sole responsibility to figure out their Byzantine health insurance, invest wisely for retirement, do the calculations to obtain proper withholding, and get their kids educated and cared for....or their parents cared for....while having a job, or navigating the absurd rules for government assistance. It adds up.
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@Yeah Don't forget to exercise an hour a day also! And don't neglect your social life and get 8 hours of sleep each night. You are expected to fit those in too.
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Great article thanks, and kudos to Mr Stimac.
USA needs a total re-boot and those substantial Fed programs would be a good start.
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Insightful and plainly obvious. We need to rework our priorities as a nation. How long can we get by mortgaging our country to enrich the plutocratic class and the military industrial complex?
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I'd like to hear an explanation of just exactly how the children of poor Americans who can just barely make ends meet are going to launch themselves by their bootstraps.
The stories one hears are representative of how it was in the 1960's when public education was very very inexpensive. I went through the U. of Calif. on a few thousand dollars a year, living at home. Not true now!
Kids are going to be on their own by the time they get out of -- free -- high school and fully qualified for minimum wage jobs. Then with two jobs one can barely eke out a living for basic expenses. Where do the resources come from for even a basic community college education, including the time off from work to do the studying.
I shudder at the thought. But our millionaire and billionaire Republican Congress men can find unique stories that claim it can be done. NO in can't.
Those same folks whine at the fact that there are no trained workers to fill the well paid jobs that go wanting. Why are the jobs empty? because the candidates are working at McDonalds or changing sheets at the local Marriott.
That Republican thought process is what leads to a society like that of Brazil with poor hidden away in the rat infested favelas and the rich play on the beaches in their bikinis.
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@DGP The junior college I started at in 1972 charged 4 dollars an hour for tuition. Back then, states and counties (it was a county college) thought education was so important that they covered a significant cost of going to college. Now, most of my friends work at a nearby huge university. Everything has to be a profit now. Non-credit community classes cost hundreds of dollars because the university has to make a profit. Travel for students has to cost thousands because the university has to make a profit. States used to think classes and travel made for a well-rounded person and cut the costs to students. Now, colleges gouge all the money they can get out of student.
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@DGP And yet, a much greater percentage of Americans attend and graduate from college now than in past decades. So, your claim that college is less attainable today is not supported by facts.
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@Baron95 But far more need it, it is far more expensive, and far less succeed to the same degree despite it.
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To those (usually the wealthy) who argue that the trappings of wealth are not essential for success, and that you can just work your way to riches if you try hard enough, I always present them the following challenge. Move to a poor neighborhood, send your kids to a bad public school, don't pay for their education, don't loan them any money, or introduce them to anyone important. I'm sure they'll be fine, because determination is all they need.
It's like beauty queens talking about how physical beauty is secondary, and that the real deal is in the heart. But they keep dolling themselves up.
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Mr. Simac's comments are very enlightening. We can't seem to grasp that helping a 2-year succeed offers many positive returns on our investments. Many of the tax breaks and government subsidies to businesses are not as visible as a single mother receiving food stamps or the children having pre-K education. The fossil fuel industry receives billions for instance. What we allow from pharmaceutical companies and such are legalized white collar crimes. Michael Bloomberg will probably get my vote in the presidential race (not primary), although he is not my first, second, or third choice. At the end of the day, he has the money to compete. Our democracy is in tatters from all of the donor money now in our elections.
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Lots of exceptions but none of them violate this historical fact: Our country has never had equal opportunity for all and often even for most. There were some groups on the rise others on the slide. Our government was founded to reduce the extremes of either poverty or wealth. What a goal that our founding fathers had.
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It's not just about people succeeding due to good genes, good parents, and luck. Slavery and the later systemic denial of opportunity has pushed down the most talented people growing up in the most loving homes. It's not about noblesse oblige to throw some help to the "less fortunate" - it's about reparations for what has been stolen.
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I know about 15 people who have started companies. All except one did it with family money.
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@Jacob Mecklenborg A few years ago, I dated a guy who had found a successful tech company and sold it off for good money. He came from humble beginnings and told me how 80% of the entrepreneurs he encountered in his field came from money if you scratch beneath the surface just a bit. He and his business partner found they often bragged about making it on their own when in reality, they often had investments from their parents and a financial safety net if they failed or it took a longer time for their plans to come to fruition.
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@Jacob Mecklenborg : anecdotes are not the plural of data.
I would be interested to see really legit research on how many entrepreneurs started from (more or less) nothing and how many had significant family money at the very beginning.
Just saying "you know some folks who started with family money" means nothing.
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I did it with $10k my wife and I saved up three years ago. Last year my company revenued $4 million. My Dad is a millionaire too and he started his company from money he personally saved. He also refused to give me a cent after I turned 18. I'm 31 years old and I am about to become a millionaire. Why? Bootstraps. As a transgender ex-heroin addict I dont think my priviledge had anything to do with it lol.
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Wise, important message. Thank you.
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This old Horatio Alger story just never dies: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2014/09/the_self_made_man_history_of_a_myth_from_ben_franklin_to_andrew_carnegie.html . It appears even more resistant than the "cannot tell a lie" myth constructed about George Washington. It is remarkable just how much we underestimate luck--not that hard work does not help it along.
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"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots." -- Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
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@Glen
Remember when Pres. Obama said something like that? And the 'self made' bullies were at his throat. It was somewhat ironic seeing billboard signs with rude messages they put up at their businesses - strategically placed along public roads (which no doubt they built themselves;)
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There's a powerful line in Linda Britt's play, "American Dreams: Immigration Stories," that provides a question for the privileged among us: "What did you do to earn what you were born with?"
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@Jim McKeever Yeah, Jesus never said: "Blessed are those that chose their parents wisely." Such impossible ability is increasingly necessary in Australia today.
3
Occasionally, it's nice to read the obvious, if only for confirmation. The perpetuation of this phrase amounts to gaslighting the American people. After graduate degrees and 40 years of hard work every day, I have less than my parents and always will, and everyone I know who wasn't born to money is in similar shape. Those born to money, though, have so much more than their parents at their age and don't seem to know how to spend it all.
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"When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this month dismissed bootstrapping at a congressional hearing as “physically impossible,” outrage reverberated across the conservative media world."
Excellent example of how Republicans are succeeding by turning the observable facts on their head. It's happening everywhere.
That's how they defeat objective science when it suits their needs.
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Deft-handed KGB tactics, are destabilizing the entire notion of the enlightened West.
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@American
Those are home-grown American tactics. We have the best propaganda apparatus in world history, from Madison Avenue to establishment information to right-wing propaganda media. The proof: nearly everyone in this country believes it.
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@LynnBob
My mother once said to me that she had "pulled herself up by her bootstraps". I responded that there were only two things one could do in that position: turn a somersault, and stick one's head where the sun doesn't shine. She was not amused, but never claimed that again.
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On the bootstrap narrative, "I did it, so can you," Mr. Kristof says, "This is like arguing that because some people can run a four-minute mile, everyone can."
I like his analogy, but I think it's more like saying, "Because one runner won the Boston Marathon, anybody can."
When one thinks of who gets into top universities, gets the best jobs, makes the major leagues in sports or the star in the best movie, it's a zero-sum game. Most people lose. This doesn't make them losers, it makes them unlucky in the lottery of genes and resources and committed parents and networks of privilege.
We can do better in America.
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Even in entertainment- everyone is a son or daughter of someone famous these days, no more scrappy kid from the sticks makes it big stories, only Harvey Weinstein and then slink home stories.
3