I worked hard for what I got

I'm hearing more talk that "we the people", the government, should not help people in poverty, "I worked hard for what I got and they just want a handout" is a common statement.

Since many who say this are old white men like me I wanted to add my perspective.

My life after High School

My wife and I worked and made significant sacrifices before we met and throughout our married life. We were successful by many measures. Here’s part of my side of that story.

After high school I worked for a semester at a factory because I didn’t have enough money for school.  College was my decision and my responsibility so I stepped up. Once I could start my budget was tight. Lunch was mainly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and carrots from home or a single slice of cheese pizza from the university cafeteria. Pepperoni was too expensive. Water was free.

I took extra classes and studied hard while in school. When I ran out of money I quit school and worked full time. One semester I helped with a family business for all the ice cream I could eat. When I was working at a paying job I saved up enough in one semester and summer to pay for a year of school.

At one point I moved to finish my degree in another state. The move was in part to help a family doing home hemodialysis. I left my car because I could not afford school, housing, and car insurance. I bought a 10 speed for the 10 mile one-way trip to school riding in all weather for about two years. Riding on snow was exciting. Because of the family connection I got a job as a hemodialysis tech. The 10-hour shifts 4 days a week allowed me to take classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The job required two bus rides, frequently late at night. I was sometimes able borrow a car for school or work.

Eventually, I graduated and got a full-time job in my career, software engineering. In my first 5 years, I changed companies each year, each time being pulled away to a better position because of my work and reputation. In the fifth company, I was one of a few selected for a master's program in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins paid for by the company.

Work wasn’t always easy. Near the end of my corporate career, one company laid me off in part because I stuck with my engineering recommendation that went against management desire. I was right and eventually, they agreed but by that point, I was laid off while on family medical leave protection to take care of my dying wife. I struggled to overcome the misrepresentation from the company but eventually found work again.

I was in a position to retire from large corporations and start service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana before turning 60.  Careful budgeting has allowed me to keep volunteering, now for AmeriCorps.

I made it. I sacrificed and worked hard. My success was all me, me, me. I did it all by myself without any help. If others don’t succeed they are just lazy.

This is the general argument and it is obviously bullshit. If hard work alone determines wealth then many of the women I knew in Ghana and elsewhere would be very wealthy indeed.

Things beyond our control and help behind the scenes are required for our success.

I was born to become a tall thin white man and started in software when there was a critical need. I got my jobs because of many other factors than my hard work. And I didn’t have additional work to overcome being a woman or a minority or having a visible disability. Even my height helped. Change any factor and my success would not have been so easy, or perhaps even possible.

I avoided childhood accidents and illnesses that would have changed my health. At a young age playing with a knife, I could have lost my left eye rather than gaining a scar on the other side of the bone. Who knows what accidents I avoided by turning left rather than right, being late or early? How much unknown help did I get from associates or strangers?

The point is my success depended mainly on factors beyond my control. My hard work and sacrifices surely account for less than 25% of my success, probably a lot less. If I had been born 20 years earlier or later things would have been different. Born in a different family, female, into a minority in this country, or into the majority in a formal colonial country and with the same initial intelligence and the same hard work things would be different.

In the 1970s and 80s I was able to work enough to pay for college without taking loans in part because state universities were still well funded and wages covered more than just living expenses. I started work when many corporations cared about their customers and employees. That made all the difference. Thirty years later the corporation that laid me off mainly cared for shareholders and executives and treated employees as expenses to be reduced. The latter is far more common today making it far harder for those starting out.

Generational wealth is a big factor for some, “being born on third base”. This wealth was built up with government assistance directed almost exclusively to white Americans for most of our history. If you’re white and “from America” you might not have enjoyed immense generational wealth but you still benefited from government policies and aid to you and your European ancestors over hundreds of years.

Many others in this country could not contribute up to their potential because of countless factors beyond their control, such as slavery, forced onto reservations, redlining, and on and on.

I look at all this and recognize the huge potential we have lost in our nation’s past with such nonsense and how much we are still squandering with vestiges of our injustices.

Human resources

I believe humans are a country’s most crucial resource. I want everyone to be successful because that will make my life better, everyone’s lives better.

Success to me means life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

It doesn’t mean everyone is super-wealthy, in white-collar jobs at large corporations, owning a house with a two-car garage packed full of stuff and three cars in the driveway. Some people might be happy, but a country with everyone like that would be horrible.

Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Individual happiness. This is what we say we believe in.  Do you act like it?

Happy families, some with kids, some without. Minimalists traveling without a home working part-time along the way. Scientists and engineers working long hours in their labs and artists in their studios. People building new, restoring old. Environmentalists protecting our future others exploring our past. The more variety, independence, and cooperation we can create by assuring everyone has fair access to resources they deserve as a human the better we will be as a country, happier, and more prepared to face our future challenges.

We need to invest in everyone and invest more in those with fewer historical or natural advantages because they have the most potential for those investments to dramatically pay off. People struggling in unfortunate circumstances through no fault of their own need and deserve help. But those who made bad choices deserve as many chances to start over as those born into generational wealth.

People struggling to survive in low-wage dead-end jobs or unemployed don’t represent a burden to society. They are our country’s greatest source of untapped potential for enormous wealth and benefit to our country and the world.

Thinking that you made it on your own hard work and without help just shows you are short-sighted. Yes, you struggled. OK, you probably had more hardships than I did. But change your sex, race, body type, nationality, throw in an additional childhood illness and two major accidents in the family then tell me that you could have achieved the same with your same hard work.

OK, well my family and friends who normally read this blog don’t think like that. But if it will help take my story as a template to create your own for the next time someone starts complaining about socialism, immigrants, those with a different skin color, people in poverty or other such nonsense. Our stories are important.

We can all do something