Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
It&#x27;s not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you&#x27;re born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you&#x27;re a dope and spend money from Dad&#x27;s inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won&#x27;t be successful but you&#x27;ll still have a net of some kind. You can always improve your lot, but where you start has a large impact on how much of phase space you can reach, so to say.<p>I think the mentality is shifting a little as millenials and gen z are slowly letting go of the meritocratic myth, but blaming internal motivations more than context is a problem in the American conception of the world we still suffer from as a nation. The inability of us to accept that our actions are not the only determining things in our lives seriously limit our ability to fully comprehend the world and how it really works which leads us to thinking ideas like work requirements are actually sane rather than completely counterproductive.