What determines how your life will be?

lemurcat2

What is casual? Like freelancing? Or being an independent contractor of sorts?

paperpudding

Casual is you dont have permanant hours.

not free lancing or contracting

Usually (but not always) somewhere where the hours are not many or are variable or intermittent.

Slacker16

You know, reading through this thread, I keep seeing comparisons between the modern US with that of the 50s and 60s...

Here's the thing: as a highly developed country, the US's main economic competitors are western+central Europe, Japan and, to a lesser extent, eastern Europe and China (there's also Australia and Canada but, put together, they have ~1/6 of the US's population)... during the 50s, and even the early 60s, most of these countries were either still recovering from WW2 or communist whereas the US came out of it with its infrastructure, social order and, by and large, even demographics pretty much intact.

It's just not the same situation today.

NorthCascades

14% of employees in America's largest grocery chain are homeless or have been in the last year.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-01-11/2-out-of-3-kroger-workers-struggle-to-afford-food-housing-survey-finds

This is not the kind of world we should be living in.

Carlos_421

NorthCascades wrote: »

14% of employees in America's largest grocery chain are homeless or have been in the last year.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-01-11/2-out-of-3-kroger-workers-struggle-to-afford-food-housing-survey-finds

This is not the kind of world we should be living in.

A closer look at the info in this article reveals that the survey did not use a national sample, but rather selected employees from 3 specific areas with extremely high costs of living and high rates of homelessness.
The one example it gives of an employee who has to earn recycling money to afford food was essentially working full time hours at just a few cents less than $15 per hour.
In most parts of the US, that's enough to get by.
I was making less and my wife wasn't working when I bought my first home.
This isn't a "Kroger pays too little" problem.
It's a "cost of living is too high" problem.

NorthCascades

Carlos_421 wrote: »

This isn't a "Kroger pays too little" problem.
It's a "cost of living is too high" problem.

A distinction without a difference. People doing their party and working can't afford to buy the food Kroger sells.

TakeTheLongWayHome

Yup. I know a cashier at my local Kroger and she told me that she has to shop elsewhere to be able to afford it. It just seems kind of hopeless out in the world right now. Maybe it’s just here in the U.S. Maybe it’s just me. Seemingly endless problems with no good solutions.

Carlos_421

NorthCascades wrote: »

Carlos_421 wrote: »

This isn't a "Kroger pays too little" problem.
It's a "cost of living is too high" problem.

A distinction without a difference. People doing their party and working can't afford to buy the food Kroger sells.

If you want to actually solve the problem there's a huge difference.
If you only care about the symptoms, not so much.

Of course, treating only the symptom while ignoring the root cause simply allows the real problem to become worse and worse, creating more and more disparity.

HelPur25

I was reading recently about the 18 Early Maladaptive Schemas. It's the theory that there are basically 18 different negative cognitive mindsets that people can acquire 1 or more of early on in life. These negative outlooks can hinder one's own success in a variety of ways. There are online quizzes you can take to see if you have any of them, and there are therapists certified in counseling people who have them. It was very interesting and made a lot of sense to me.

LaurenMargott

Lots of things influence your life and how it ends up.

1. Social status at birth. Rich kids vs poor kids. Rich kids are more likely to succeed, sure poor kids can, but it takes a LOT more work and a setback can be completely devastating.
2. Health. Being born with a disability or illness or acquiring one over your life time. You have to navigate a world not built for you, can't work for X company to get your first experience in industry because their buildings only have stairs, can't work full time because of health limitations, can't work at all while you have surgery and 2 years worth of physio to recover from a big accident (me). I speak from experience on this one. I was about to buy my first home when I had an accident at work, I still have not caught up to my peers almost 10 years later, I had to do all that work and training all over again. Start a career in my 30s etc. I still don't own a home.
3. Luck. Plain old luck. Not everyone gets that lucky break and for everyone who does a lot of people fail.
4. Where you live, born into poverty as a girl in a country that sells kids into sex trafficking or marriage?
5. Education
6. Hard work

And so so many other things. While hurdles can be overcome it's unrealistic to think that every single person will overcome every hurdle placed in front of them. That doesn't mean they didn't work hard, they didn't want it or they didn't deserve it. They just didn't overcome it because the same hurdles can be a lot harder for some people.

siberiantarragon

I think the #1 factor is having at least one authority figure you can trust and rely on in childhood. If you don't have that, you're probably always going to be majorly broken in some way.
Oprah had a bad childhood but she also did have one competent parent (her dad) although unfortunately she didn't live with him until her teenage years.
A lot of people say stuff like "I was abused as a kid and grew up normal" without taking into account that maybe they had other mitigating factors like a non-family authority figure, grandparent, etc. they could turn to for support. They're comparing their situation to that of a person who maybe didn't have certain advantages they had.
Complex trauma literally causes the brain not to develop properly, and an improperly developed brain cannot compete with properly developed ones. For people who grew up with complex trauma without positive mitigating influences, they might be successful for a while and have friends and relationships for a while, but it always comes after them in the end. They end up homeless, jobless, alone, dying premature "deaths of despair," etc. Maybe a few outliers manage to escape it but this is generally their lot in life.

bojaantje3822

LaurenMargott wrote: »

Lots of things influence your life and how it ends up.

1. Social status at birth. Rich kids vs poor kids. Rich kids are more likely to succeed, sure poor kids can, but it takes a LOT more work and a setback can be completely devastating.
2. Health. Being born with a disability or illness or acquiring one over your life time. You have to navigate a world not built for you, can't work for X company to get your first experience in industry because their buildings only have stairs, can't work full time because of health limitations, can't work at all while you have surgery and 2 years worth of physio to recover from a big accident (me). I speak from experience on this one. I was about to buy my first home when I had an accident at work, I still have not caught up to my peers almost 10 years later, I had to do all that work and training all over again. Start a career in my 30s etc. I still don't own a home.
3. Luck. Plain old luck. Not everyone gets that lucky break and for everyone who does a lot of people fail.
4. Where you live, born into poverty as a girl in a country that sells kids into sex trafficking or marriage?
5. Education
6. Hard work

And so so many other things. While hurdles can be overcome it's unrealistic to think that every single person will overcome every hurdle placed in front of them. That doesn't mean they didn't work hard, they didn't want it or they didn't deserve it. They just didn't overcome it because the same hurdles can be a lot harder for some people.

This is basically my argument too but I'd describe it as 95% luck, 5% choices. Social status, health, intelligence, looks, personality, education, born into poverty, where you live, authority figure you can rely on: all of that is down to luck. Sure, your choices have some influence but it's often about noticing an opportunity and taking a chance.

Joke Hermsen has a cool book called Kairos, about the right moment vs linear time. I think her right moment is kinda what I'm referring to.

Maybe my percentages aren't 100% but it's just a lot of luck and a little choices. And I think that's why a lot of people 'fail': they had a great idea for an invention and they could've trusted the shady-looking dude to invest in them but their mother was dying and they chose to take care of her instead; they did everything right and were aiming to cure aids but then they get shot by the cops for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; they invested in cryptocurrency early but had to sell when it was worth $1000 because their daughter's debt at the casino got too high; they were a competent lawyer making $3500 an hour but then their kid died in a car accident and they couldn't find the will to live anymore...

I can go on and on but I think you get the point. Sometimes we prioritise things that are important to us so we miss opportunities. Sometimes we don't see opportunities because we're focused on something else. Sometimes our opportunities are taken from us before we can take them. Sometimes we don't live long enough. Most of it is luck imo.