Let us give thanks

On the list of things to be thankful for, geography has to be at the top.

We all like to think that we basically deserve what we got. Oh, perhaps we had a couple of lucky breaks, but we worked hard and followed the rules, and we earned what we have.

But that is only true if you restrict your comparison class to other Americans, or other Americans with functional families. It certainly isn't true if you compare yourself to the rest of the world.

An African farmer can, through the same kind of hard work, diligence, and excellent planning that you exercised, become a perhaps slightly less hungry African farmer. He is not free to do the only thing which could possibly bring him anywhere close to your level of prosperity, which is move. If he tries to do the sensible, foresighted thing in order to assure himself and his family a better tomorrow, men with guns will meet him at the border to push him back into poverty. If he succeeds in evading the men with guns, he will be labeled an illegal immigrant, forced into the gray economy by his lack of papers, and routinely excoriated by talk show hosts.

Any American who thinks that they earned what they have is like a marathon runner who started 100 feet from the finish line. An accident of birth got you 99% of the way there. The last 1% may have been run at impressive speed, but there's something unseemly about bragging on it to much.

Comments

An accident that my forbears sailed in a creaky wooden boat here; liven in drafty wooden houses; worked the land; fought in many wars; built a just (or not half bad) society; were open to all sorts of other people and ideas; and made tremendous sacrifices.

I know both first hand and from history that nothing great is acomplished without the dint of tremendous work and effort. For you smug washington wonk types to say we started 100 yards from the finish line is so condescending. And yes, I work my ass off for what I have. When I hear I concert pianist, I never think they started near the finish line, even if they were born into a family of concert pianists. I have seen a lot of this world and it does not work that way.

And believe me, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with bragging.

Posted by Jozef | November 23, 2007 11:12 AM

Why is there a finish line in the analogy? Is there some "winning" condition in life I don't know about?

Posted by Jody | November 23, 2007 11:12 AM

Jozef, out of curiousity, how did your tremendous work and effort result in you having ancestors that did all these things?

And if a higher quality of life than those of African farmers only comes to those who personally work their asses off, how come I have such a good life? I can assure you that I don't work my ass off and I know I haven't made any tremendous sacrifices.

Posted by Tracy W | November 23, 2007 11:26 AM

What is this a response to? I am proud to say I am an American when I am abroad because I consider mine to be the greatest country in the world but I am not bragging about how well off I am because of my own efforts. I am bragging about the good ole U.S. of A.

Having said that, if I didn't earn what I have, then who did? Should we have the U.N. divvy up my stuff? It is mine and I will decide what happens to it thank you very much. Cold dead hands and all that.

As to illegal immigrants, despite your (our) sympathy for their plight, they are a problem. We can't have 6 billion people move here and still have anything like our current society. Obviously that wouldn't happen. Once enough others came here to drag us down to the point where our standard of living isn't much different than every other hellhole, the flow would stop. I prefer not to see that happen and I freely admit that it is selfishness on my part. I want my kids to have a good life and I don't see it happening with open immigration. The 30 million illegals we have now are already putting enough of a strain on the system.

As it is roughly half of Americans don't pay any of the federal income tax that goes to buy programs to take care of the poor. That is already to my mind dangerous. Bringing several tens of millions more poor here and then letting them or their kids vote for more programs for the poor is not going to be stable long term.

Posted by CAL | November 23, 2007 11:34 AM

Megan and Jozef are both half-right. We should be thankful to be Americans, but not because it's some cosmic accident. Getting you to where you are took a lot of effort, and the chances are that the people who made that effort faced barriers comparable to that African farmer's. There's nothing particularly unseemly about taking pride in that.

Posted by John Tabin | November 23, 2007 11:41 AM

How about being thankful for weaker social/cultural norms for "sharing"?
Across vast portions of Africa, anyone who is even slightly successful is immediately swamped by relatives demanding that they get "their share" of the wealth.
The perverse incentives caused by such cognitive holdovers from our hunter-gatherer days probably has more to do with suffering in Africa and around the world than geography does.

Posted by bil. | November 23, 2007 12:13 PM

I think Jozef misses the point. We are all lucky to live in a society where socioeconomic mobility is even possible. In so much of the world, economic and geographic conditions make true success on a local level impossible, while political conditions make emigration to a more economically favorable climate impossible. For many of those African farmers, the American dream is quite literally an impossibility no matter what they do. On the other hand, for almost anyone who is here in the US, socioeconomic mobility is possible with hard work and ingenuity (see, eg, the recent study that showed individuals who were in the lower class 10 years ago now make almost twice as much as they did then). Admittedly, massive mobility may require some lucky breaks- but you can't get lucky if you don't try in the first place. In the African farmer's case, however, it's not even possible to make an effort that would result in a lucky break.

Posted by Mark | November 23, 2007 12:16 PM

It's for this reason that I guffaw at anyone who argues against inheritance of wealth. Most of us in the First World are as rich as we are largely because of the citizenship we inherited - only people prepared to give that up have earned the right to be taken seriously when they bleat about inheritance.

Posted by dearieme | November 23, 2007 12:58 PM

Africa is #1 or #2 in most surveys of (natural resource) wealth. There have been some startling successes in the area that suggest it's not the people, it's the government they permit and/or are enslaved by. And perhaps we're complicit because of our own tradition of providing welfare rather than refusing to allow the slave owners to participate in the infrastructures we build and maintain. Perhaps someday we'll have a theory of latent wealth - that is the wealth a government denies its citizens/subjects/slaves when compared to free citizens elsewhere - given the presumption that we are all born equal.

For a sobering reflection of how best-intentions with no appreciation the human condition just increase dependency, misery and suffering, (re)read Dark Star Safari by Theroux.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0618134247&itm=1

Posted by Ari Tai | November 23, 2007 4:15 PM

"Having said that, if I didn't earn what I have, then who did?"

Your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, to some degree, and our national ancestors to another.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have it, but for much of what you have, you should give humble thanks rather than take pride of ownership.

Posted by Njorl | November 23, 2007 4:54 PM

Look at the USSR - incredible resources and a history of misery

Look at South Africa, Nigeria, a host of places. And yes, I work and uphold what my ancestors have built.

I've seen many countries where the women carry wood and water on their backs and heads and the men drink coffee and tea all day.

It is not all an accident that these thing are as they are. Once we all admit it's just an accident, well, hell, let's let the Pol Pots and Maos of the world decide how to redistribute.

Posted by Jozef | November 23, 2007 7:31 PM

A valid point, though perhaps overstated for some readers.

Not all of us went to a top 1% high school, then opted to take a pay cut to take a job we love. I had more of a head start than most Africans, but I had to pay my own way and risk prosecution for working in the gray economy and driving a salvaged, uninsured car, etc.

Granted, my life was not so hard by any historical measure, or even relative to 75% of the world's people today. I am thankful for what I have. I did work my butt off, though. I'd place myself in the last five miles of the marathon, not 100 yards. Staying ahead takes some effort; still readily achievable, but not a cakewalk.

It's true that some refugees, North Koreans, etc. simply cannot leave without a high risk of death. On the other hand, if you put your mind to the problem for a few decades, you just might come up with something (think "Born in East LA", though higher stakes and longer time horizon). It's not a matter of crossing the border on a whim one random morning... It's more like preparing for the Olympics, or a PhD dissertation.

The real problem isn't the difficulty crossing... It's the lack of knowledge about the other side. If people knew basic economics (i.e., don't breed so much while poor)... If they knew how easy it is to support yourself on gray market income (cheap digs with roommates and low-end food and attire from Target)... They'd make more of an effort.

As it is, border crossing seems impossible, the payoff seems illusory, and day-to-day decisions make it harder to achieve.

Posted by Stephen W. Stanton | November 23, 2007 9:43 PM

I can assure you that I don't work my ass off and I know I haven't made any tremendous sacrifices.

Based on his/her own account, this Tracy W sounds kinda worthless. Can we trade him/her in for a hard-working African farmer?

Posted by Colin Fraizer | November 23, 2007 10:14 PM

Three quarters of the people at work are in the U.S. through the H1B visa program. A handful of them are from Eastern Europe, and the rest evenly split between India and China. There's also a strong Vietnamese contingent, who either are children of refugees or were refugee children themselves.

So, not all Americans started 100 feet from the finish line. There are people who ran the whole race; they're just apparently not the kind of folks who'd be known by the usual posters here.

Posted by garysixpack | November 24, 2007 4:50 AM

Jozef, out of curiousity, how did your tremendous work and effort result in you having ancestors that did all these things?
Um, flux capacitors don't build themselves ...

Posted by guineapigfury | November 24, 2007 9:38 AM

It seems pretty obvious that Americans are where they are because of the labor of their ancestors. My great-great-great grandmother, Sarah Francis Hancock, raised her ten children alone after her husband died at the age of 46 when her youngest was five years old. All of this without plumbing or electricity on the Texas frontier. I can't even imagine...

America was built through long physical and intellectual effort. We were also aided by the natural selection effect of immigration: the people with the most get-up-and-go got up and went to America. We were mostly lucky that our formative years came right when the idea of democracy was in vogue.

We have to remember, though, that it's not all over. We pay those ancestors back by paying them forward and leaving an even better America for those to come.

America is an idea, not an accident.

Posted by Rob | November 24, 2007 10:44 AM

You can substitute time for place in this discussion, and have the same result. Your life is almost certainly *way* nicer for being born in 1960 instead of 1860 or 1760. The fact is, where and when you're born does determine a lot of what's possible for you.

Posted by albatross | November 24, 2007 7:32 PM

My birth in America was no accident. All 4 of my grandparents crossed the great water in the early 1900s to get here.

By doing that they avoided the troubles of 1933 - '45.

Lucky they had the foresight to leave early and avoid the rush.

Posted by M. Simon | November 24, 2007 9:48 PM

If you believe in the gene theory of evolution, then it could all be less accidental than Megan believes.

Posted by DCPI | November 24, 2007 10:56 PM

Megan-

If he tries to do the sensible, foresighted thing in order to assure himself and his family a better tomorrow, men with guns will meet him at the border to push him back into poverty. If he succeeds in evading the men with guns, he will be labeled an illegal immigrant, forced into the gray economy by his lack of papers, and routinely excoriated by talk show hosts.

"You cannot enslave a 'free' man (one who knows he is free...)- the most you can do is kill him."- R. A. Heinlein

Posted by fletch | November 25, 2007 12:36 AM

In other words, you owe 99% of your earning power to your American citizenship. Hence the concept of the "responsibilities of citizenship". Perhaps the society that enables you to earn all that money might even have some legitimate claims on you.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 25, 2007 9:23 AM

An accident that my forbears sailed in a creaky wooden boat here; liven in drafty wooden houses; worked the land; fought in many wars; built a just (or not half bad) society; were open to all sorts of other people and ideas; and made tremendous sacrifices.

...and did so in a country that didn't border Germany, Russia, or both.

Posted by Brittain33 | November 25, 2007 6:25 PM

Ha ha, brooksfoe is so far off the mark as to be not even wrong when urging, "Perhaps the society that enables you to earn all that money might even have some legitimate claims on you." First, my eldest daughter is named Society and she does not exhibit the greed and strong-arm behaviors attributed to her by so many folks here. Second, all statists make the same excuse for coveting their neighbor's goods as brooksfoe, even the ones in states where "all that money" is only a bare subsistence.

Jody's point about "Where's the finish line in that analogy" helps illuminate the error made by Miss McArdle and Tracy W: They both pick an arbitrary starting line. Today's Africans are the heirs of those who threw the ancestors of most of today's Americans out of the African continent, which had an environment far better suited for neolithic peoples than the Ice Age climates of the Near East and Europe.

For at least 10,000 generations the Africans could be said to owe us, the non-Africans. Note that the present value of the wealth transfer implied by the typical person who talks in terms of "deserves" that non-Africans are owed by Africans is a figure that far exceeds one trillion trillion trillion dollars. (I have surely overlooked at least a factor of a few more trillion there.) Still, I'll happily settle for merely a draft of a mere few hundred trillion on an adequately capitalized US bank and call it even for my share of what Africans owe me. I can't speak for Society, however.

Posted by michael i | November 26, 2007 4:59 AM

We should be thankful to be Americans, but not because it's some cosmic accident. Getting you to where you are took a lot of effort, and the chances are that the people who made that effort faced barriers comparable to that African farmer's. There's nothing particularly unseemly about taking pride in that.

Taking pride in the achievements of your ancestors is one thing.

Taking personal credit for their achievements is another.

Posted by Tracy W | November 26, 2007 5:00 AM

Based on his/her own account, this Tracy W sounds kinda worthless. Can we trade him/her in for a hard-working African farmer?

My employer seems to find my work valuable, at least valuable enough to pay me more than the national average.

But I've seen people working their asses off in both Vietnam and the USA, and compared to them I'm lazy. And I know I haven't made any tremendous sacrifices. Tremendous sacrifices applies to what my grandparents and great-grandparents did during WWII. I've had the easy life by world standards.

Posted by Tracy W | November 26, 2007 6:19 AM