This is not competition. This is a sickness of character.
I know I speak this from a place of privilege, but it's positively heartbreaking when a child has to even be aware of their parents' financial insecurity.
Quite a wonderful story nevertheless.
And that's how our society is shooting itself in the foot. Good financial decisions that lead parents to success should be studied, praised and replicated by as many people as possible. But instead we label them as "privilege" and try to beat them down until everyone is poor.
My parents' good financial decisions are definitely my privilege. They weren't my decisions and yet I benefit. My parents' luck is definitely my privilege. The luck wasn't mine and yet I benefit. The way that society saw me as a child because of who my parents were is definitely my privilege. I didn't clothe myself or put food in my own mouth or take myself to school or buy myself books. I didn't choose to be visibly the same as those in power around me. And yet in all of those ways again I benefit. And all of the ways that one does or doesn't benefit from the entirely un-earned circumstance of being born to their parents, their parents also benefited or didn't benefit from being born to their parents, and so on. Hard work is hard work, but it doesn't eliminate privilege.
I would never tear someone down for hard work or taking risks — but some financial factors aren’t equitably replicable. We should be honest about what influences people can and can’t have on their outcomes. Not all success is privilege, but not all success is earned, either.
I don’t think it’s fair to represent efforts to improve equity in our society as “beating successful people down until everyone is poor”
Edit: or why this submission is in your bio? Oh, you're just gaming clicks for your blog.
