In the previous thread about success, luck, capitalism and morality someone asked:
What about John Key? Born into a poor family now worth $50 million.
Let’s take it as read that Key is very smart and very hard working. But once again, plenty of people are smart and hard working but aren’t worth $50 million. So what’s going on? Is Key exceptional, or can his success be put down to privilege and/or luck?
Firstly, Key was born into a poor single parent family. But he was also born in 1961, into one of the most generous welfare states in all of human history. So there’s an element of luck right there – a child born into Key’s circumstances today would not enjoy the same benefits as he did.
Key got a free secondary and tertiary education, and then shortly after he finished university and no longer needed state funded welfare and education the fourth Labour government was elected and set about dismantling the welfare state and turning it into a free market economy in which people who happened to have the financial skills that Key had been trained in at the taxpayers expense were, suddenly, richly rewarded. If he graduated today he’d have a massive student loan and face terrible job prospects with strong competition.
Key also worked in the finance industry. This is an area of the economy that is supposed to control the efficient allocation of surplus wealth, but Key worked in finance during a period in which the industry transferred that wealth to itself, which made the people working in it incredibly rich but also came close to destroying the global economy. So we can’t really say that this distribution of wealth was moral, and while I’m sure Key is smart, hard working etc there was clearly a huge amount of luck involved.
There is truth in what you are saying but you still miss the point.
Yes you need luck to make it rich but you also need to work hard and smart
mallard is approx the same age as key why isnt he worth 50 million(you dont see many muilt millionare teachers)
Comment by graham lowe — February 13, 2011 @ 10:05 am
Yes Graham, we should all be currency traders for Merrill Lynch and not loser teachers, who of course never work hard and are really really thick.
Comment by Guy Smiley — February 13, 2011 @ 10:18 am
Yes, everyone knows currency traders produce more value than teachers. Highly leveraged large stake betting on semi-random numbers deserves reward; educating children is for suckers.
Comment by Stephen — February 13, 2011 @ 10:34 am
Luck + Smart + Hard working = Rich
Smart + Hardworking = Many people in New Zealand
The difference is Luck.
Comment by aj — February 13, 2011 @ 10:38 am
Key was lucky to have been at the forefront of Forex trading in New Zealand at time when not many people worldwide were interested in the NZ dollar but the likes of George Soro and Andrew Kreiger were playing the NZ markets unencumbered. Won’t take anything away from Key’s tenacity and foresite to enter the emerging forex market but a lot of his entry level success was the arrogance of youth meeting unregulated forex cowboys with money to burn.
Comment by Ms M — February 13, 2011 @ 10:40 am
I think, Graham, you missed the point. What danyl is pointing out isn’t that John Key hasn’t worked hard, but that there is undoubtedly an element of good circumstance and luck. Saying that someone has had good luck as well as working hard (and taking advantage of their good circumstance) doesn’t negate that fact that they also worked hard, nor is it a slur on their work ethic or attitude or anything. Luck and hard work can coexist, it isn’t a contradiction.
Comment by LadyNews — February 13, 2011 @ 10:42 am
Well … there also is an element of choice here, too. A lot of people choose to go into teaching despite the comparatively poor economic rewards because of the other things it provides as an occupation … such as personal satisfaction and happiness. That’s why you see people treating it as a lifetime career. I’m not sure that currency trading has the same pull, which maybe is why you have to pay people so much to do it?
So – some people who could probably make lots of cash in the financial markets don’t, cause they don’t want to.
Comment by Andrew Geddis — February 13, 2011 @ 10:48 am
I would add single-mindedness and being unscrupulous to the above. If your goal is to become very rich, be reluctant to pay your bills and do not give to charity. At least until you have become very rich and can modestly and publicly donate to charity; tax deductible of course.
Comment by ianmac — February 13, 2011 @ 10:51 am
Another point. Key’s mother came from a wealthy family of Austrian leather merchants, so the social capital of the well-off would have been woven into his upbringing despite its toughness. Knowing about how business and wealth works is an important advantage. Perhaps it could be taught in schools?
Comment by Sacha — February 13, 2011 @ 10:55 am
It must be luck. How else explain Helen Clark a millionaire several times over, and being born into the farming aristocracy that sees her a big shot at the UN.
JC
Comment by JC — February 13, 2011 @ 10:59 am
This all reminded me of the following hypothetical musings of FDR (here: http://exiledonline.com/this-is-our-capricorn-one-moment/) – specifically re: Obama’s ‘Sputnik moment’ speech and a hypothetical reflection on FDR’s Great Society. Like most political commentary I read a bit of our ‘great’ political leaders (and their own commentary) into this. I figured you may enjoy it Danyl (and Lyndon etc.)
And I quote: “I feel sorry for myself rather than pulling myself up by my bootstraps and wriggling into a rich woman’s uterus while she sleeps so that I can be born rich”.
/linkwhoring
Comment by Patrick — February 13, 2011 @ 11:03 am
It’s somewhat concerning that John Key is held up as evidence of some bizarre bootstrap your way to wealth dream, where anyone can make it if they really want to (and poors are just too lazy), while simultaneously being exceptional, something most people are not. He can’t be both, yet it’s a worryingly common view.
Comment by The PC Avenger — February 13, 2011 @ 11:04 am
I wrote about this luck thing a few weeks back at my place, after Chris Trotter had written a column about Key’s on-going popularity, and how it seems to have arisen because people see him as big a modest and hard working chap who has had just a little bit of luck. The usual cheer leaders on the right seized on the Trotter column with glee, entirely missing his rhetorical point, that we are deluded about John Key’s ‘little bit of luck.’
Chris Trotter’s column: The appealing Kiwi ordinariness of John Key
Strangely, we don’t seem to mind if our leaders are richer than we are. Money, after all, is a wonderfully democratic thing. With sufficient hard work (and just a little bit of luck) just about anybody can become rich.
My response to it: A little bit of luck
First of all, there’s the luck of being born with a white skin. John Key has never had to experience walking into a shop and being regarded with suspicion just because his skin is the wrong colour. Then there’s the luck of being born male – he doesn’t have to justify his pursuit of career at the expense of having children, or carefully plan childcare if he wants to do a full-time job. Nor has he constantly had to calculate whether he is phsyically safe when he walks down a street, or has a few too many drinks. He was born able-bodied: no having to negotiate all the barriers that society places in the way of people with physical disabilities, from cars parked over kerbs and pavements, to lack of toilet facilities, to public places that are accessible only through a back door right round the back of the building, to work patterns that demand 10 hours phsyical effort a day, to… the list is endless. He was born with sufficient neural connections across his corpus callosum, so that he is a quick and able thinker, able to grasp difficult concepts quickly and easily. When his family was impoverished during his childhood, because his father died, there was a good quality state house available for him to grow up in, providing him with security. He had the extraordinary good luck to be born to a mother who made it easy for him to get through school and university, who assumed that her children would pursue higher education. He had the good luck to go through university at a time when only a small proportion of New Zealand’s population did so, which meant that the government funded virtually all the tuition and living costs for students – no student loans for him. And so it goes. John Key is an extraordinarily lucky man.
Comment by Deborah — February 13, 2011 @ 12:04 pm
Yes, but there are many – perhaps the majority of our society – who have a comparable constellation of what you call luck and I would call circumstance – perhaps it is luck if it positive and circumstance if it negative. While it might explain why most of us dont end up like Blanket Man (a well known Wellington vagrant) or a gang member or a gang member’s spouse and the general performance of most of us it doesn’t come close to explaining specific high performance of any kind, well paid or not. By the way the image of all those University teachers consciously deciding not to be insanely well paid money market dealers is very amusing.
Comment by Tinakori — February 13, 2011 @ 1:34 pm
the image of all those University teachers consciously deciding not to be insanely well paid money market dealers is very amusing.
I used to work in IT in the finance industry, and left because I hated it. If I’d stayed I probably wouldn’t be as rich as Key, but I’d certainly be a multi-millionaire, which my job as a university researcher is unlikely to lead to. Working in finance is lucrative, but also unpleasant and meaningless, and in my opinion there’s simply no amount of money that can compensate for spending many years of your life doing something unpleasant and meaningless.
Comment by danylmc — February 13, 2011 @ 2:03 pm
I don’t really think of it as ‘luck’ it is more ‘making the most of opportunity’. Of course there is an element of luck in the opportunities that are presented.
Comment by ieuan — February 13, 2011 @ 2:07 pm
John Key was born into a society that at the time rode on the sheeps back. The jobs that were most needed were relatively low skilled, easy to learn and which provided a sound and even income till retirement.
However, he prospered and got rich in an entirely different society that valued education, technology, experience, interpersonal skills and good judgment. By its very nature this is a more unequal society.
That pioneering society was risk averse because it had good things going for it, and so it was also somewhat a stagnating society at a time when the rest of the OECD was recovering from WW2 and turning to innovation and technology. And that second NZ society was always going to struggle to catch up once Britain joined the Common Market.
Key’s “luck” lies in his European mother of an oppressed and detested culture. She knew that education and wealth would go a long way towards making people look past the Jewish heritage .. much the same way more recent Chinese and Indian shopkeepers knew education was a way out of the shop for their kids, and yeah, the same as thousands of Maori knew there was something better than the freezing works.
Key and these people never really knew adversity because they saw through it to the future and organised themselves accordingly, and the advantages and disadvantages of free education, welfare, race, creed or class were neither here nor there to them in pursuit of their goals.. perhaps their biggest piece of luck was having stable and supportive families.
You see, in this second society of education and technology, race, colour and culture are less important.. in a way that an earlier agricultural and static society never was in NZ.
JC
Comment by JC — February 13, 2011 @ 2:09 pm
Perhaps the point is Darryl that you think finance is unpleasant and meaningless. Might others – equally or more intelligent – not?
Comment by Tinakori — February 13, 2011 @ 3:10 pm
Tinakori: “…the image of all those University teachers consciously deciding not to be insanely well paid money market dealers is very amusing.”
While I probably wouldn’t have made it as a money market dealer, and likely never would have risen to John Key’s level of wealth, I would make far, far more money had I chosen to pursue a job in a corporate law firm. I didn’t, which is probably an indictment on my character.
But please don’t laugh at me. It makes me a sad little Panda.
Comment by Andrew Geddis — February 13, 2011 @ 3:14 pm
Th point i am trying to make is that i am lucky that i was bought up on a sheep farm not the son of a gang member from otara.
i now own a 1000 cow dairy farm due to a head start in the wealth stakes but more importanly alot of hard work and understanding what skills i had and useing them to my advantage.
i grew up with people richer and smarter than me but they didnt use these skills to improve their life.
Yes luck is important but the harder i work the lucker i get
Comment by graham lowe — February 13, 2011 @ 3:54 pm
I work in finance now, love my job 99% of the time (not when I’m in the office on a beautiful Sunday afternoon!) and object to Danyl calling it meaningless.
I think that’s because I can see how the decisions I/we take affect the wider organisation, and ultimately the rest of the country. I suspect Danyl’s view is born less of ‘finance’ itself and more of the periphiary nature of working in IT, which seems to always be on the ‘outside’.
On a side note, there was actually a really interesting CNBC documentary on last night – “Goldman Sachs; Power and Peril” which traced Goldmans origins and its role/response to the financial crisis. Seemed to me to tread a fairly balanced path, and didn’t fall into a Michael Moore-esque pro or anti stance.
Comment by Phil — February 13, 2011 @ 4:18 pm
Nor is a big intellect any guarantee that you will make money in the financial world or succeed in any field really. Long Term Capital Managment had intellect to burn and nearly punched a very large hole in the financial universe. See the Wikipedia entry.
Comment by Tinakori — February 13, 2011 @ 6:11 pm
“you think finance is unpleasant and meaningless.”
i think it’s more than you have to be a particular kind of arsehole to work in finance…
Comment by che tibby — February 13, 2011 @ 7:22 pm
In fact, John Key was born into wealth but his father died young.
The wider issue at play is social mobility. It was far easier to upskill a generation or two ago, even if it wasn’t the most efficient system. Now it increasingly seems to get ahead you either have to be born into a minimum level of wealth, or be incredibly psychopathic (both of which are common in the high finance sector). And I have no time for ‘ladder kicking’, which seems to be becoming the new tall poppy syndrome.
The following article gives some feast for thought.
SF Reporter – Born Poor?
Comment by DeepRed — February 13, 2011 @ 9:51 pm
you have to be a particular kind of arsehole to work in finance…
Maybe it’s the same kind of arsehole that makes sweeping generalisations about everyone working in a particular industry?
Comment by Phil — February 13, 2011 @ 9:59 pm
In my experience, Che, the arsehole ratio is constant across occupations.
Comment by Tinakori — February 13, 2011 @ 10:09 pm
@phil “merchant banker” isn’t a cliche i made up.
and i didn’t say that the whole industry is made of wankers, i said you have to be a particular kind of arsehole. ref: merchant banker.
my personal opinion is that the facade we see on Key is a manufactured one. the real Key is under there somewhere.
probably playing a pipe organ in the basement.
Comment by che tibby — February 14, 2011 @ 7:32 am
Whoa! It’s like a case study from Outliers!
Comment by George D — February 14, 2011 @ 12:51 pm
my personal opinion is that the facade we see on Key is a manufactured one
Come on Che, there isn’t a senior politician on the planet that doesn’t have a ‘manufactured facade’ or public persona they can turn on and off almost at will.
Comment by Phil — February 14, 2011 @ 1:07 pm
“probably playing a pipe organ in the basement.”
good analogy. all wind but no music. like farting
Comment by Alistair — February 14, 2011 @ 1:34 pm
JK is a very good puppet, like Pinnochio.
Comment by peterlepaysan — February 14, 2011 @ 11:02 pm