What strikes me as being conspicuously absent as of late, is the desire of many Americans to work at all. That’s where this magical thinking comes in. Invest in the internet and make millions! Buy a house and make millions! Stuff envelopes part time in your den and make millions!
And when these folks don’t make millions, or lose their ass on a really bad RE (or tech) investment, they turn into victims and expect someone to bail them out. We’re all victims and we live in a culture of entitlement.
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That’s probably because we’ve spent the past few decades denigrating working people (down with the “lazy” union workers…how dare those worthless bums ask for a higher minimum wage, etc.) while putting “dealmakers” (CEOs, politicians, financiers, etc.) on a pedestal — note how wealth has been transferred over this time. When the working masses see the wealth divide grow like it has, they figure they either have to jump into whatever is making the rich people rich, or doom themselves and their families to poverty. The “middle-class” lifestyle has slipped further and further away from most people’s reach, and they are panicking.
It’s much more difficult these days for people to work their way up via real work. Very few workers can support their families in the same way their counterparts could thirty years ago.
So…we get what we reward. A bunch of scammers trying to find new ways of separating other people from their money. You can’t blame Joe Sixpack for trying.
