SimeonTheSapient
15548
366
23
It was never the connections, family wealth, or nepotism.
Jun 22, 2026 1:12 PM
SimeonTheSapient
15548
366
23
It was never the connections, family wealth, or nepotism.
SmashySashimi
“What do you mean you don’t have any bootstraps??? What did you do with them?”
RIxspacexCK
the children of wealthy people can fail at different enterprises many times, because they have a cushion to fall back on. I know this, because i would never have afforded a house, car, even a wife.
TacticalSpoon
This is really just human nature. Researchers had people across all socioeconomic statuses play 1v1 games of rigged monopoly. One player started with extra money, the other didn't get anything for passing go. When the advantaged player inevitably won, they all thought that it was mostly due to their gamesmanship and not the handicap.
torokunai
"late-stage capitalism" is modeled by end-game Monopoly, yes. Part of the success of the American Myth of the 1800s is we did have an entire continent to steal, settle, clear, and farm.
lightfoot2
NARRATOR VOICE: "It was, in fact the connections, family wealth, and nepotism"
copingcabana
There's always money in the banana stand, Michael.
MarkTwainsMysteriousStranger
How much could it cost? Ten Dollars?
OhIfIMust
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ebony-horton-paid-off-220000-worth-of-student-loans-in-3-years-2017-3
Pulsifer
Absolute classic. I have it bookmarked for if I'm ever at an ER with low blood pressure. I want them to try this before doing anything else.
GimcrackGewgaw
I had never seen that. "If I can do it, anybody can"!!!!!!!!
OhIfIMust
I feel so inspired!!
BenderRodriguz1010
The bootstrap quote was originally to demonstrate an impossible task, not "lift yourself up."
OhIfIMust
Duh, just use the seat of your pants, like the Lorax.
androgenoide
Terran81
It is so annoying trying to get someone who’s overused this phrase to understand this. I’ve literally said “grab your shoelaces. Now lift yourself up by them you fuckwit. Do you get it now. The phrase was meant as satire when it was first said. You’re not a goddamn cartoon character.” Then hear them continue to use the phrase anyways.
Sorrontis
well, yeah
thebigbaka
rolliefingers
Meh. Legacies have an advantage because their class donations are locked in, and not for any other reason, believe me, that's a huge priority. The rest of what he said is basically: "social connections exist," which isn't really the new, groundbreaking information he's pretending it is.
Nanntuckett
We’re in late-stage capitalism, where the rich were born rich, the poor were born poor, and there’s little chance to move up because the system is rigged against us. I know people working three jobs who definitely work more than a billionaire, but the latter gets to keep all the money…
OhIfIMust
So, feudalism.
Goldensands
No honestly, feudalism might be preferable. If the current trends of capitalism continue, then, in the words of Oscar Wilde " [...] if we are to have industrial tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first".
meme2zombie
I remember once Musk was bragging about how he did 120hrs of work a week. Even ignoring that his idea of "work" included like lunches and networking and just sitting in meetings as people told him about all the work they did for him: at the time he was the CEO of 5 different companies, he just admitted that a CEO does half the work of what we consider a normal full week.
Litarider
There has almost never been an opportunity to move up.
OhIfIMust
Ebony Horton paid off her big loans in record time, through hard work (at mom's company,) economizing (living rent-free at grandma's house,) and passive income (renting out the condo that mom bought her as a wedding present.) And she's so inspirational, with the hopeful message "I just want them to feel empowered that they can pay if off. If I can do it, anybody can."
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ebony-horton-paid-off-220000-worth-of-student-loans-in-3-years-2017-3
deadmanreaper13
"Anybody can" said by a person owning and renting out 5 APARTMENTS!!!
SilentScreamsX
I feel like I'm stuck somewhere in the middle.
My parents are moderately wealthy (retired at 60, low 7 figs in the bank) and they rent this 3 bedroom house to me. It's a £1200p/m house that I get for £400p/m. That won't even get you a bedsit in the UK these days, so I'm lucky in that regard. They've given me a leg up, and because of it I'm able to keep my head above water, but that's all.
Mostly I wonder how the people who don't get any help from their parents manage...
Blackfinity
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life." - Jean Luc Picard, ST:TNG
OneMoreLime
Woah woah what do you mean you pay your own rent?
RobertAG25772
Even if you can’t afford boots?!
pgdave
I grew up not poor, but solidly working class. My mother stayed home, my father drove for UPS. I'm quite rich now, but it's not because I worked hard, it's because I got crazy lucky that my talent is programming and I was born at the right time to take advantage of that. I don't work nearly as hard as my mother or father ever did - it's all luck.
themuffulettaisalsoaverygoodsandwich
it's not all luck. it's about 50% luck. you have to meet luck halfway. if you don't do your part, then luck can't take you the rest of the way.
the hell of it is that there's no substitute for the 50% luck.
Callipygius
Yeah, I attribute my success much more to luck than to parents.
GimcrackGewgaw
What's interesting is that when I talk to people with a lot of privilege, they are worried they won't be able to pass it to their kids. Even people with money are feeling precarious!
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
Yes, it's crazy. One of my friends, he has a 6-figure job, but couldn't buy his mom a new car when she needed one (his family had no money). But back in like 2005, when he was making $60k or so, he bought one no problem. The money just isn't covering as much as it used to. Plus the raises aren't there. He put his entry-level starting salary into an inflation calculator, and it showed he's only making $15k more than when he was hired, even though he's a senior manager with 25 years experience.
xxxxxxzzzz
DARE?
PixelSprite64
liveOffOfDownVotes
They mean hanging the rich people with your shoe strings
10outof10wouldmarry
Used to get most my meals from church donations when I was a kid with a single mom. What I learned about being successful and unsuccessful comes down to what they both have in common, which is failure. Everyone fails. The only difference is whether or not you choose to give up. Took me 12 years of not giving up to find success. A shorter road sure would have been nice, but it's not impossible. Same lessons I'll teach my kids who will be born into wealth and privilege, who will pass on the same.
GimcrackGewgaw
It's not about giving up. Privilege gives you more chances, more ability to take risks, better chance of capitalizing on opportunities. My kids they have that. They can take risks and fail and start over because they will start adult life with no debt. They will always be able to make rent, to eat, to afford to have kids. My daughter's summer job went belly up. I hired her immediately. That's the kind of thing privilege gives folks - endless helping hands along the way.
10outof10wouldmarry
I read the meme as: people with privilege dont have the right to tell a poor person to work hard because "what would they know about it?". My point is more about how a privileged person may already have the correct answer regardless of their personal struggles. The advice shouldn't be ignored or scoffed at because of the messenger. The impression i get from this type of meme is it's use to ignore the lesson that hard work does in fact pay off. Feels like people dont believe that anymore 😟
MissySassy
THIS
nowinsituation
I find more liberals and leftists amongst those who grew up with privilege than those who grew up working class, and same for those who were poor and became wealthy- they tend to sometimes be less than generous. Personally, poor who get to stability and middle class tend to be the most understanding and gerneous. But there are assholes in every socioeconomic class.
dontrike
You find that? And where did you find this?
nowinsituation
in my home town and state...
dontrike
Wow nothing tangible, just your "feelings."
nowinsituation
Same as the original post...it s just an opinion...like most things
dontrike
And opinions are not a shield against people calling out how shit it is.
JohnWickdidnothingwrong
Baloney.
Hexrowe
Mmm. Contrary to conventional "wisdom", suffering is not, in fact, ennobling.
torokunai
defenders of the system implicitly acknowledge that their solutions for people will only work for a small fraction of the 50% of the population who don't have a pot to piss in (vs the top 5-10%).
"Don't study Sociology, learn a Trade" -- electrician salaries go to zero if everybody did that.
The key thing is to remove the rent-seeking in education, health care, and housing. Those are the big 3 rent-taps on everyone.
ToSisPoS
In other words get rid of for-pay education, medical insurance, and landlords. The three most common parasites in North America.
SlowerYouSloth
Work smart, this is a key
Becker37
I come from periodically homeless poor. I never had a birthday party and only one year I can remember getting a gift. It was a small watch. Less than a month before my brother got a Nintendo Gameboy. I thought I was just a bad kid. Later I found it's because he saw our father fucking our oldest sister. Yeah, that's my background and it never got any better. So please, tell me how trying harder can undo all the damage life has given. I work like a slave. Where's my opportunity?
L80Wynne
Who TF can even afford bootstraps these days?
Tolocamp
I once dated a girl form a well-off family, not even wealthy or rich. We spoke about the things we did as children, and she just went on and on, how she was horseback riding, kickboxing, playing two instruments, in a gymnastics club. Probably at now age past 3 not involved in at least two sports/activities at the same time.
Yeah i tried karate for a few weeks and trialed for a swimming club, but when you have to organize everything yourself as a kid, you just don't stick with it.
ImAWeirdMom
I've had people tell me how they grew up poor and in the same sentence talk about riding dirt bikes as a child.
That isn't poor, dude.
The only reason I had a bike at all was our landlord gave me his daughter's old bike for free.
InfocalypseRising
People who aren't poor think "poor" means "I couldn't have every single thing I wanted"
cjandstuff
One woman I worked with (really sweet person), they were so poor she had to stay at her grandparent's pool house just to be able to save up some money.
Her husband was very poor too. He later became relatively successful at running a business, that his parents purchased for him.
I think we have different definitions of "poor".
0tsoko
My favorite childhood bike was one I found in a pile of garbage on the annual spring trash collection day. That thing lasted all the way till high school.
poochyena
There is a difference between being poor and being in poverty. Poor people in the country side having dirt bikes or ATVs is very common.
unluckyandbored
Used dirtbikes cost virtually nothing, and poor country folk generally know how to fix things (they can't afford new shit, so they have to repair the old shit). You could pick up a broken dirtbike for 50 bucks, tinker with it over a couple of weekends and maybe have it running and driving for $100 total.
ImAWeirdMom
An extra $100 is a LOT to a legitimately poor person. The gas to run it is a lot. Poor people don't own ATVs. People who have some amount of expendable income do. But if you have expendable income, you're not poor.
Poor people have "lights out nights" because they can't afford their electric bill. Poor people eat sleep for dinner. Poor people cannot afford ATVs.
poochyena
again, there is a difference between being poor and living in poverty.
ImAWeirdMom
I grew up on a farm outside a town of 500 people and then inside a town of 2500.
The only "poor" people with ATVs are the sort that think they're poor but aren't.
IGotLordVoldemortsNose
As a poor growing up, i used to see my friend with a bike. I used to think he was rich, but he wasnt really. We didnt really get lunch for school most days, all my friends used to gather at the shops and buy sweets, i would sit and chat, but i couldnt afford to buy anything. But we got love, my mother worked hard to have a dinner each evening. And she got any books she could get for us. And marched us to the library to get us all reading at a young age
Goldensands
And there you go already. I had a bike just fine as a kid. That's not the fking point - you, me, most anyone reading this. Were nothing but fking wage slaves so long as ang billionaire so much as exists. I don't care if you had 10 bikes as a kid, if your parents had to work you were poor. This shouldn't be a fking contest about who was the poorest, it should be about class solidarity Against the thing that's forcing poverty down our throats.
SOLARvsFACISM
Yes, but, if we read some of these stories we'll start to understand why some people vote for Oligarchs. Someone who believes they were poor but owned dirt-bikes, or had to stay in their grandmother's pool house look at government programs to help the poor and think, "Well they should be forced to sell some of their dirt-bikes first" or "Why can't they get a roommate at grandma's pool house?"
SternLecturePlumbing
Finally seeing a doctor for lifelong cough at 30. “What do you mean you’ve NEVER seen a doctor?!!” I remember my single dad screaming “STOP COUGHING” in my face
johnblood616
Fuuck my mom used to do that to my sister.
ImAWeirdMom
Oh my Lord yes l that. I used to get tonsillitis all the time is a child and never saw a doctor for it because my dad's aunt was a nurse and "diagnosed" me.
One time my "tonsillitis" became scarlet fever, it was strep and left unmedicated. Had to go to a free clinic for that
Also missed a month of school once and only as an adult found out I had had histoplasmosis and it caused permanent damage to my spleen.
Not to mention my mental illnesses "all in your head"
Yeah that's how it works
SternLecturePlumbing
My friend, that is why I now work in health. I especially want to teach the kiddos that fall through the cracks and help their families learn. Hope you are well
johnblood616
I broke my leg and my parents didnt take me to the er for 3 days and insisted I was faking it. Once they did take me and I got cast they didnt get me any crutches. I literally had to hop around on one leg.
WigglyBlondeNoodle
I had an old boss try to convince me that he had a normal childhood while saying he would tour the US doing competitive cycling in high school.
I got one vacation out of state as a kid until I could afford my own vacations as an adult.
ImAWeirdMom
Yep. My vacations were tent camping in the back yard. My husband travelled the US for his.
PagetheFound
It's not just hard work, you have to know how to escape poverty. Poor ppl can't teach you this or they wouldn't be poor ppl. So you have to financially educate yourself, change surten habits, patterns and mindsets. The system is stacked against you, so you have to learn how to grow within the restrictions and what rules you can make work for you until you have reached high enough the restrictions fall of and options become available to you. It's still long and hard, but doable. IF you know how..
ToSisPoS
For $49.99 you can read my new book “This is Totally How You Too Can Get Rich!” and if you follow my instructions correctly, you also will be rich!
PagetheFound
I'm not selling anything, nor did i say get rich. I said getting out of poverty. Wich is step 1 either way. And there are steps to that. A lot of small thing combining over time to one result. Consistent cost cutting,smart purchasing, making debt work for instead of against you,subsidies, tax cuts, small scale investments, extra income streams and so on, but it is a lot fit all that conversation needed in the comments here. It is out there, for free. Like i said above; you have to educate urself
L80Wynne
You just wrote "surten" instead of certain.
PagetheFound
English is not my native language.
CardboardStomach
You also need luck. You're still reframing it in a way that conservatives often do to call poor people lazy; saying that if they just did something different or sought out the right help they wouldn't be poor. If there was a consistent mindset change or skill that could 100% lift people out of poverty, people would follow that example. But there isn't. On top of all the qualities you listed it is still possible you'll be born into a situation where you never even have the opportunity to escape.
CardboardStomach
Just as an oversimplified example: Being born into a family with no savings, higher education or significant assets. You can't afford to take time off work to dedicate towards developing more valuable skills because you need to work multiple entry level jobs just to make sure your family isn't homeless or starving. These positions often force you into part time to avoid paying benefits, so you're one unlucky illness/injury away from being destitute.
CardboardStomach
If we broke down the details of every individual person's situation you could potentially find avenues for them to start improving their situation. But for every possible solution it is just as easy to create a hypothetical common, but random occurrence that could completely derail that plan. Because everyone's circumstances are unique, to assume that there is an accessible solution and definitive, consistent pathway out of poverty for every single one of them without dumb luck is a big stretch
PagetheFound
Ofc every case will be different, some harder then others. Ofc there will always be outliners. Ofc this only holds true in the west and not Africa. Ofc there will always be setbacks. As i said in another comment: All the conversation needed can not be haved here, all i tried/can do is to give a general outline. And as i said: it will be a slow and hard proces. The key is consistency along decades.
CardboardStomach
Expecting people to suffer from an objectively solvable problem for decades just to not be one missed paycheck away from starving is not compassionate nor reasonable. We've created a system that is so broken, the only way the problem could be wholly and ethically fixed would be if the system itself changed. Any supposed "fix to poverty" that doesn't start with holding the gov't that created the problem being held accountable and changed is just shifting blame and responsibility to the victims
hufflesnuff
Replace the Tuba with a Penis and you're half-way to understanding what Musk and Gates and Thiel and Trump and all actually did on Epstein's Little St. James Island and at his Manhattan Mansion. Of course, that was just for poor white girls smuggled in on H1-Bs and Americans. They had something worse in mind for the rest of the world. https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/italian-noble-investigated-over-sarajevo-human-safari-killings-r3ppvlppl
ipointoutnahtzeesbyreplyingtothem
hufflesnuff
This post is literally about the rich and the children of poor people. How much more on the money does it have to be?
ipointoutnahtzeesbyreplyingtothem
It has literally nothing to do with Epstein unless you divorce it from any and all context and just go "thing bad".
hufflesnuff
I mean, rich people lying to poor people's kids is literally how they recruited from West Palm Beach to Slovenia, but okay.
ipointoutnahtzeesbyreplyingtothem
I mean, the post has nothing to do with that and you're being weird, but okay.
TheMoonBnuuy
did Musk though? It's my understanding he was never allowed in because he was too weird, not for a lack of trying though
hufflesnuff
He absolutely went several times. Check out jmail dot world.
TheMoonBnuuy
all the emails I can find suggest he was only allowed only as deep as the people Epstein didn't trust
hufflesnuff
He repeatedly went there. There are 271 emails covering many invites and occasions. Even more text messages.
hufflesnuff
Here's a good example. Epstein trusted him well enough to say this.
hufflesnuff
And there's this documented dinner.