if you live right, work hard, follow the law, CAN YOU FAIL IN AMERICA?

reply to post by Polite American


Fail, to attemp and not succeed. For example: You would like to start a business. You start your business but it makes no money and you close or sell the business. Did you fail? No, you started the business. The business failed. But, you succeeded in starting it. does the failure of the business make you a failure? It's just my oppinion but, I would say no.

How's this for failure:


You go to college, make straight-a's, but have to borrow money to go. Then, ONE semester short of graduating, they tell you that you have reached your loan limit.

So you go to work, trying to earn enough money to get you through that last semester, and 3 years later, have only $2,500 saved.

Then, one day at work you have an injury that crushes your spine. Your job provides no form of health insurance whatsoever, and you can't afford it with your $18k /yr salary. From that point on you can hardly walk or sit, and spend all day in terrible pain.

Your wife gets a job for $15k /yr and the two of you can barely keep up with minimal living... including paying a $20 /month phone bill and $70 /month electric bills.

This situation persists with no end in sight. Neither you nor your wife can go to college because physically, you're finished, and your wife can't make enough to keep the two of you afloat, much less pay for school and find the time to go there on top of it.


Would you say that's success, failure, or something else?

reply to post by rockets red glare


but not everyone has the opportunity in this country...
that's the thing, you're assuming universal access to resources and universal opportunity.

not everyone has it, no matter what the myth of the american dream states

reply to post by dionysius9


Not finishing collage when you wanted to, that is a set back, not failure. Companies who provide health insurance do so to atract employees as a marketing tool. If their wasn't 20-40 million illegal workers the competition for workers would be much creater and the chances are you would have had health insurance. We must straiten that out and fast!! sorry to hear of your injury. getting married while you were in collage was a disission, a good one by you, she sounds great. There is aid for hurt people, you may be waiting for SSI I don't know' Your injury is the real problem here it seems. Everything else was just a set back and you could regroup. I really belive if people had an option to get health insirance from other groups, such as their church or any other kind od association it would be a better system. Businesses offered it as an insentive and it never should have become a system. maybe we can change that and get rid of this pyrimid sceem they call social secuity too. There is no maney in it! just IOU's for future generations. It would be better to have a national 401k.

[edit on 12/2/2007 by rockets red glare]

You certainly can not have any earthly conscience control over when you will be born into this world,what race you would be, what sex you will be, or where you would arrive in physical form. And like the previous examples nor will you have control of your exit from a material world, All the above play a role in success and failure. A good question is what one would consider failure as,failure to one person can be success in anothers eyes. To answer the question... In my opinion you can live right,work hard,follow the law and still fail in America,because you have no earthly conscience control over the above which plays a big role in our lives in America.

reply to post by samuraijack


I agree that there are cercumstances that we really have no controle over. My Point was more about our professioal and personal lives. In the United states we have more controle over these events than anywhere else that I have seen. I have traveled abroad. it's not to say that trajity doesn't happen here as it does anywhere. We are people and we are fradgile.

I agree with other members in this thread. It is very easy to fail in America even when you follow all the rules and work hard. I know. I've been there, as I think others here have as well.

reply to post by 123143


you may be right. i think many times "especially in such a competitive world" we may confuse not reaching a disired goal imediatly as failure. Or that when there is failure it is often because of oneself not nessessarily a failure of society or the "system". We make many choises that efect everthing else.

It's a known fact that educated women in America Make less then men with the same credentials, according to a GAO-04-35 (general accountability office) U.S. Government report. There is a wide gap in the wages. Would you concider this a failure on the womans part even though she worked hard,followed the law and lived right? Ofcourse not, but there is a ceiling on the professional career of the woman on how far she will succeed and that is due to our society. That had nothing to do whatsoever with the decisions she made. In the above case our society plays a large role. I think you make your own success in your mind, she can think positive and become successful for making it as far as she did even though there have been ceilings on her success for decades and by not falling short because of the ways of our society.

I think that it is very easy to fail in America if you work hard, and follow the law, but the opposite doesn't bear thinking about. I don't agree with your basic premise nor your thought patterns on the matter, sounds to me like you've listened to a few too many Amway tapes in your life, but that's just my opinion. Yes, I'm all for listening to motivational tapes and reading books on the subject, as I have a few of my own, but being a realist doesn't negate anything from them, just means I'm not brain washed into thinking that you can't fail.

Take for example some of the homeless men and women I've worked with in the past. For the most part, they didn't do anything wrong to be on the street, it just happened. They didn't steal from their companies and get caught. For example, I know a man in Nashville who was a decorated Vet. He was living in the Jo Johnson projects near downtown Nashville. Well, about 3 years ago, they tore down the projects to put up new condo's. He lost his home, and in the overflow of displaced people, he got lost in the shuffle. Is it his fault that he's homeless? No, not in my opinion. Did he do anything wrong? No, he was a decorated war Vet. Is it rather heartless to lump him into a blanket statement that implies that he's done something wrong? Yeah, in my opinion it is.

Another example for you. How bout a guy I know in the Charlottesville, VA area. He and his wife got a divorce, and he's basically homeless. He works like a dog day in and day out, yet he can't get ahead. He works by day with a land surveying company, and by night he delivers pizza, yet he's still living in a weekly rental motel room. Did he do anything wrong? No, not really, except not read the signs that his wife was cheating on him and get sick. He was sick as a dog with Phnuemonia and his ex wife moved out, taking everything but a lawn chair and the bills. He woke up and she was gone, with a note left for him and the divorce papers.

Or, how bout a personal example for you, my mom. My dad died on Aug 31, 2007, from multiple organ failure, as a result of Serrosis (sp?) of the Liver. Before he died, he ended up spending almost 3 weeks in the hospital, before dying, while in a coma, in ICU at Frye Regional Medical Center in Hickory, NC. For 3 weeks, mom spent every waking minute either in the hospital with dad or working. Now, she's gone from 2 incomes to 1, and, considering dad didn't have any health or life insurance, a whole stack of bills. While I'm helping all I can, it's not easy to think of the fact that theirs over a third of a million dollars in medical bills that we are responsible for. Now, did mom do anything wrong? No, and I would suggest for NO ONE to even insinuate that she did. Did she work hard, follow the law, and still fail here in America? Yes, she has. Also, keep in mind, dad was a Vet, yet he never got any assistance in life.

Anyone that makes blanket statements like the thread topic needs to think before making them. Things aren't always as black and white as we would hope. Now, is it possible to succeed in America? Absolutely, I myself know many people that have, but they are the exception rather than the norm. I've met and retained friendships with many people over the years who have had the means to live any lifestyle they wanted, yet they acknowledge that a lot of it had to do with persistence, luck, and them being in the right place at the right time.

Anyways, that's it for my ranting on the subject.

regan

By the way, please do everyone a favor and use the spell check feature. Hell, you don't even have to run a program, just when you see a word underlined in a red dotted line as you are typing, please try and figure out the correct spelling. It is rather distracting and makes it hard to follow what you are saying. Also, the bad spelling kinda discredits you a bit, to be honest. You say you are a walking success story, yet you care that little about your spelling and the way you present yourself, even if this is the internet.

[edit on 2-12-2007 by regs]

Originally posted by rockets red glare

 

Fail, to attemp and not succeed. For example: You would like to start a business. You start your business but it makes no money and you close or sell the business. Did you fail? No, you started the business. The business failed. But, you succeeded in starting it. does the failure of the business make you a failure? It's just my oppinion but, I would say no.

I think by this definition and your responses to others' scenarios, no one would be able to fail anywhere, not just in America. While I believe success is all what you make of it in you mind to a certain degree, I think we can all agree that, mainly, success is considered to make enough money to be able to enjoy life, without worrying how you'll be able to squeeze in your next meal of white rice with the car payment being due.

Honestly, at this point in my family's lives, I would consider just a $20k (after taxes) per year a big success for us, a family of 3. Interesting is a previous poster's mention that Americans are lowering their standards farther and farther. It also concerns me why our middle class is disappearing and millions can't afford health insurance here in America: who once had the largest middle class in the world with half our workforce, women/wives, still at home. By my own definition at least, there seems to be a lot of failing going on.

reply to post by rockets red glare


Yes you can fail in America and not from your own doings but by others wanting something more, such as greed, improper dealings, labeled as not being a team player, an older American but not quite AARP status, brain burnout, their incompetence excuse or believe it or not the war in Iraq etc.
In my special circumstances I have said so many times I am no David but I have had to fight so many Goliaths with armies, the system needs to change to give us old farts another chance to go forward and not wish us to go whither away and die.
I am glad I am not alone in this quest, good luck to all looking for work at this time in the history of America and have a very Merrry Xmas , gwhint

My experience goes thusly. I am only a high school graduate. I married late in life 30. I am still married after 14 years and raising three straight "A" students all of which are active in outside activities. We own two paid for autos, and owe less than 85k on a 300,000 dollar home. We have no credit card dept and both a savings account and 401K. We have also suffered a failed photography business, Shut down a successful repair shop. Lost our butts on some other business deals. We have learned that you must live on less than you make. We have made less than 70K collectively all our lives. However we are successful not because of financial savvy but because we take the initiative when a problem approaches and become proactive. We are healthy as well as our children . We support each other. We do things together and look to one another for advice. We are a family unit. We believe in one another. This is what makes us truly successful. Even if we lost all of our possessions we would still have the family unit to depend on for support. Money doesn't make success, attitudes do!

respectfully

reluctantpawn

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by rockets red glare

 

...insanity

sorry, just one word is a counter-point to everything you've said. if you're born insane you don't necessarily have a chance at success.
look at the homeless population. most of them aren't homeless because they're just lazy and don't work hard enough, most of them are mentally troubled and don't receive the help they need.

sorry, but you're just wrong here.

I love how rockets totally ignored this comment. I guess you have to pick and choose your battles.

First off, dont give me crap for typos or misspellings. I know I can't spell, and I am not going to check every word for a mistake. Well ok. You can give me crap if you want, but if that is the only point of your post, what a waste of a comment!

I'm sure the tiny percentage of people who were wrongfully accused and sentenced to prison maybe even death could put up a great argument againts rockets.....well except for the ones that were senteced to death. If that doesnt constitute a failure then what in the world does?

Children born here of immigrant parents who have an illegal status must leave with parents if deported. Now, if the children are hard working, living right, law abiding people who positively contribute to their community, something went terribly wrong! (I am not stating my stance on immigration my point of view on that issue is irrelevant).

A hardworking mother, right above the poverty line, who lost her only son to a senseless robbery/murder. Her health soon after deteriorated as a result of liver cancer that was diagnosed before her son's death. Of course she was unable to work after a while and had to move down south with with cousins who helped to take care of her. She was not happy down there, although she would never ellaborate. She felt so alone and depressed, I guess it was a relief for her to pass away.

The fact is that there are many things in life that can't be controlled and those factors can totally destroy your life. Just being born by a particular person can screw up your chances of being a "success". No amount of motivational talk is going to get that man out of debt, save his business, marriage, bring back a dead child, heal sicknesses, or magically make life perfect. All it can do is boost morale.

[edit on 31-1-2008 by Chartreusechick]

Originally posted by hikix
Well if someone that has the grammar that you do succeeded in America, then you are right anyone can do it! Seriously, you don't even know how to spell succeed? (sucseed) thats really bad. Public school?

that real. i'm with you on that for sure. get ure words right bra

I suppose it depends on what your definition of failure is.

I met a 40 year old professional in the hospital who ended up on welfare and Medicaid. This is his story.

He got good grades in school, went to college, got his Masters degree, got an excellent job in the engineering field, making good money, got married, bought a house, had children, and put in over fifteen years with this corporation.

Then one day he had a serious heart attack and ended up in the hospital cardiac ward. Because he was so ill and near death, he was in the hospital for weeks and weeks. Well, the corporation he worked for had no choice but to let him go (how they put it). There went the family income. Next went the insurance coverage, then the home.

When I met him, he had nothing left to lose. (He was back in the cardiac ward by then.)