The Horatio Alger Concept

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   gmwilliamsposted 5 years ago

   
   For analytical & intelligent thinkers only.  Horatio Alger, an American writer, indicated that there are vast opportunities for people to rise above their original socioeconomic class.  He maintained that obtaining wealth is only restricted by will power but never by one's socioeconomic class.  The Horatio Alger prototype was a poor person who became wealthy by merit & work.   Is the Horatio Alger concept dead in America?  Has it ever existed? Nowadays in America, one's socioeconomic class SETS or DOOMS one for life?  Your thoughts?

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      TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

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         gmwilliamsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Exactly, Tess you are accurate regarding the premise.  I will go further, most successful people came from AT THE MINIMUM the solidly middle class.  Anyone who is born in the lower middle class or lower has a scant, if no chances of success.   People love to maintain that the poor can succeed as well as anyone else.  It hasn't been the case in the past 4 decades.  In the 1980s, there was the beginning of a very sharp demarcation between the socioeconomic classes.  If one was born poor to lower middle class, h/she would be in all likelihood regulated to a lifetime of poverty & struggle.   People refuse to acknowledge this.  Instead they go into attack mode regarding the truth.  Thank you Tess for responding.   Meritocracy is a myth which doesn't have a basis in reality. 
         
         Reality is that in order to succeed, especially from the 1980s-on, one has to be AT LEAST solidly middle class.  If one is in the lower classes, forget about succeeding because it isn't going to occur.   Success is built upon money & who you know.
         
         Tess, poverty is detrimental.   You and I know this; however, there are those who proclaim that there is nothing wrong with poverty & being poor.  They claim that such circumstances "strengthens & builds character" when such is farthest from the truth.  Don't these people read?  Children's brains are negatively impacted by poverty.  People refuse to use logic, continuing in their inverse logic.  People refuse to acknowledge that poor children are doomed, even damned to generational impoverishment.

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            Eastwardposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Looks like you've covered this topic well. Any thoughts on why Americans seemingly overestimate the potential for social mobility and underestimate the negative effects of poverty?

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               TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

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                  Eastwardposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Repetition certainly is powerful and used aggressively in terms of marketing narrative to Americans (not that other countries aren't just as aggressive). I've studied those and related concepts in marketing courses. Plenty do fear democratic socialism, but I myself support Bernie Sanders and his democratic socialist plans. Portugal is an interesting case study and I've had the opportunity to have some great discussions with Portuguese colleagues about how their system compares and contrasts with the US system. Maybe I'm more open to such ideas after living outside the US for a decade, but I think I'd be making the same voting decisions regardless of that experience.

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                     TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

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                        Eastwardposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        Support from around the world is greatly appreciated! It would be nice to have a President that could rehabilitate our international reputation (plenty of work to be done domestically as well!).

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            TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

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               gmwilliamsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Exactly, it INCENSES me when people say that poverty builds character & makes one appreciate life.   Poverty builds character?  No, it doesn't.  It destroys character. Poverty hardens people psychologically.  It makes people bitter.  Poverty drives people into pathologies which wouldn't occur if they weren't impoverished.   To believe that poverty builds character is beyond ludicrous & into idiocy.   Poverty reduces people into a primitive, hellish existence from which there is little to no hope.
               
               Tess, people love to be IN DENIAL regarding their abject circumstances although they subconsciously know that they know that their circumstances are hellish.  It is a schizoid avoidance of their dismal reality.  When you hear that people state that they "were poor but happy", I become nonplussed at their total lack of facing reality.  There are people refusing to believe that poor people are living a hell on earth.    The only people who are happy are those who have socioeconomic wealth.
               
               Being poor to impoverished result in ignorance & other dysfunctions.  I know that.   People refuse to acknowledge this.  There are deluded people who vehemently contend that money doesn't buy happiness.  The hell it doesn't.  I find such people not only deluded but abysmally ignorant.

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   gmwilliamsposted 5 years ago

   There was an article in THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE which discusses the further demarcation between wealthy children & not so wealthy children.  The article states that wealthy children will have even greater access to unparalleled educational & career opportunities while not so wealthy children will flounder in such areas.   
   
   In the future, because of increasing automation & computerization, the educated & skilled classes i.e. the upper middle & upper classes will thrive & the lower classes will become the new, permanent underclass.   The poor will be socioeconomic slaves in the 21st century. There will be absolutely no way that the lower socioeconomic classes will be prosperous.  They will be relegated to low end, slave jobs  & prisons.  If there are wars, the poor will be used as fodder.

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      TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

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         gmwilliamsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Despite authenticated studies & research done on the detriments of poverty, there are people who adamantly refuse to face this reality. They refuse to admit that poverty is wrong. Such people view socioeconomic poverty as some type of bucolic utopia.  They maintain that people have a right to live in squalor & without the basic necessities. Others maintain that "poverty is in the eye of the beholder"-really??  Some have the nerve to state that "they were happier being impoverished" than they are now that they are wealthier.  There are unfortunately those who believe such nonsense.  They feel that one gets happily used to poverty.  Are these people living in reality? 
         
         It is sad that there are people who glorify socioeconomic impoverishment.  I have studied socioeconomic impoverishment in college.  I had associates who came from poverty.  They weren't happy.  Their main focus was to get out of poverty which many did.  There is one here who staunchly maintains that poverty is relative!  No, poverty isn't relative at all.  Poverty has a set definition & is measurable.   This same person indicates that what is one person's poverty is another person's bliss.  What?  Poverty isn't bliss, it is hell.  I never met people who glorified socioeconomic poverty until I came to HubPages.  I am beyond nonplussed & into utter shock as to how people have inverse logic where black is white & vice versa.  Tess, you are always welcome to my posts.

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