If All The Wealth In The U.S. Were Divided Up Equally ...

Are you seriously telling me that you've only found one thing that you are good at in life?

 

At no point have I said or implied that I've only found one thing that I am good at in life. With that being the case, this question makes not one iota of sense. Do you care to elaborate?

 

We *could* compete if the Marxist Democrats would get out of the way. Energy is a major cost sector in manufacturing and so is shipping. With our electrical grid we should be able to undercut *anyone* on the cost of electricity. And our highway and rail system is second to none when it comes to hauling freight.

But when the goal is to raise energy costs high enough to make wind and solar look competitive it kills any chance of our competing by using that cost sector to our advantage. We still have shipping cost advantages but that is not enough by itself to be competitive.

 

Because that's what you're saying when you talk about having a career, you're saying "this is who I am, this is what I do." Well I'm sorry if some people are much more than that. I'm sorry if one answer is just not enough to fill the greater majority of one's life. By the time my daughter was five years old she spoke at least three different languages and if you asked her what her primary language was I'm sure she could not tell you. It is good to specialize in something, I don't knock that, but a specialist cannot complete anything except what they specialize in. I can walk into a forest, clear the land, connect both city water and electricity utilities, dig a foundation, and build a house from the ground up. I can also breed dogs, train them (excessively), and match dogs to the right owner (by breed and sex). Although I don't smoke marijuana, I can grow it (from seed), clone it, finish it, harvest it, trim it, cure it, and extract it (CO2, water, butane, and alcohol). Speaking of alcohol, I learned how to make several types in prison. I'm not too shabby with CAD software or cars either. I know enough about ink and paper to counterfeit money, and enough about firearms and body armor to know what is better than what (depending on the circumstances). I know what steel makes the best blades (depending on the circumstances). Memorized the Anarchist Cookbook when I was 15. Taught myself how to read and write a foreign language, then taught it to others. I know more than a little about material strengths and properties, phase points (pressure and temperature), and soil. The list goes on and on about things I was able to learn and apply before reaching the age of 30 and without going to college, not because I'm smart but because when I set my mind to something I don't give up.

So when you said that construction was my career, you were mistaken. Life was my career. When you said a person at my age has to save-up $750,000 to retire, I'm telling you that that simply isn't true to someone that knows how to take nothing and turn it into something. Everyone does no always go to college to earn a six-figure salary, so that they can retire at an early age without living in a cardboard box. The median income in the US is only $50,000 a year and the median cost of living in the US is $53,043. The average retirement age in the US is 62 to 65, but that has more to do with boredom than it does with savings. I don't have to go out and seek work because people bring work to me (at a generous reward). You see all those smart college grads, with good jobs and incomes, wearing suits and ties, asking idiots like me do do something for them (because they don't know how to do it). And I love taking their educated-dollars (that they paid in advance for) because I know they feel entitled after sitting in a classroom for an additional 4 to 8 years to learn less than I know. I remember this one college professor, a mathematician that wrote many a text books, challenged me one day to a problem (ABCDE multiplied by 4 equals EDCBA) that I solved in 20 minutes. Here's another one from a logic professor (if you find your self in a room that only has two doors [one is good, one is bad], no peeking, with two people [one always tells the truth, the other always lies] and you don't know which door is which, or which person is which, but you can only ask one question to one of the individuals before deciding which door to pick, what question would you ask and which door would you choose?) I figured out that one in no time also but I think I might have had an unfair advantage because I'm an identical twin and understood it better. I grew up in chaos, not harmony, so I can see the order in it. I remember the first time I got a physical evaluation via puzzle test. They just dumped all the puzzle blocks on the table and told me to solve it. It was a timed-test, but the clock didn't start until I touched the blocks, and they really just wanted to see what order I put it together in. So I just looked over the arrangement of the pile of blocks and then grabbed the pile with both hands and pushed all of the pieces into place at once. I was told that they'd never seen anyone do it like that before (it took me about 3 or 4 seconds). They don't teach that in school. Just like they don't teach people how to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. Some things are just natural. People survived for millions of years (meaning that babies were being born without doctors, food was being eaten without grocery stores, clothing and shelter without manufacturing plants, languages developed without schools, and goods were traded without currency), before we evolved into a dependent society of government and sovereign nations. And they survived on separate continents before the first boat was ever constructed. I retired from employment by company at age 38, and you're really not understanding how I was able to do so because I lacked a significant career?

 

The discussion at that very moment was about the notion of a career. The sum total of what I said about a career in the post to which you replied, was the single sentence of...
"I think it is safe to say that your work in contracting can be construed as a career seeing that the definition for career is "an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress."

Out of that you replied with "Are you seriously telling me that you've only found one thing that you are good at in life?". That reply make ZERO sense. Now that you have elaborated further and asserted that I am essentially saying "this is who I am and this is what I do" it makes even less sense. Do you even know what I do ? I don't recall saying anything about what I do. You are the one laying out your work history, NOT ME. Even if I had mentioned what I do, that wouldn't mean that I'm telling you Ive found only one thing that I am good at in life. It would mean that I was telling you what I do for work, which up until this point I am reasonably sure that I have not done. I recall mentioning what jobs I had as a kid and making a vague reference to the notion that I have started 2 companies in my life, but beyond that I don't recall discussing what I currently do for work. Your elaboration only serves to further create confusion because it doesn't comport with what we have actually discussed.

-Indeed people are much more than what they do for work, and I have said nor implied anything to the contrary.

-I have no doubt that you have a plethora of abilities, skills, interests etc, as does everyone. I have said nor implied anything to the contrary.

-For the record, the smartest person I know did NOT go to college, and he's the smartest person I know by a LONG SHOT. Its not even close, he is truly a genius to an almost freaky level. At no point have I said or implied that people that do not go to college cannot be intelligent because that simply is NOT what I believe. On the other side of the coin, I know people that had a 4.0 in college that I would categorize as downright stupid.

Generally speaking however, for most people I would categorize the decision to NOT go to college as not a smart decision. Obviously some people are not cut out for college or some have extenuating circumstances where they simply could not, but for the vast majority of reasonably intelligent people, getting an education is a smart move. Take you for example. You have went to great pains to express that you are intelligent, and I don't doubt that to be the case. You have also went to great pains to document your financial struggles and have implied that your policy position is guided by your struggles and that I am not qualified to have an opinion because I have not shared similar struggles. For you, going to college would have been the smart move financially, even if you had to go $100k in debt in order to make that happen. You would not have had so many experiences making minimum wage or below, and for the vast majority of college graduates, their earnings tend to follow an upward progression whereas most blue collar jobs tend to be mostly stagnant in terms of wages. For the people without a degree that do get into good paying jobs, their options are typically more limited because of their lack of a degree. Most management type jobs require a college education, and if you are in one that does not have that requirement, you tend to be more beholden to them because you cannot always freely transfer your skills to other companies or industries that do in fact require a degree. I realize that you are in construction, which probably has less degree requirements than many other industries, but if you DID have a degree, your options going forward would be much greater because you would then be able to apply what you have learned to other perhaps better opportunities that do in fact require a degree. That's not to say that a person cannot still succeed without a degree, I am referring to the notion that on the whole people that get a degree are going to earn more and have greater career flexibility than will their counterparts without a degree.

As for my genius friend that did not go to college....he has had a plethora of low level, low paying jobs. Its not really for me to judge his happiness, but if he wanted to complain about low wages, I would say that him not going to college is a major part of that equation. With his intelligence he could have worked for NASA or something of that nature if he had chosen to actually apply his intelligence. As for my friend that had a 4.0 in college that I would characterize as not intelligent?.....she is a teacher that works 9 months out of the year, raises her 3 kids, and is married to her husband whom is an investment banker. The two of them met in COLLEGE, and they live what would be characterized as an affluent life. So the smart guy made a dumb decision, and the stupid girl made a smart one, at least from a financial perspective.

You didn't retire, you quit your job and decided to be a private contractor. I wouldn't have understood how you could have financially quit working at such a young age given your timeline of events, but once you clarified that you didn't quit working, there is no more confusion. I'm not sure why you are now acting as if there is.

 

I don't have anything against gaining a college education. What I have a problem with (regarding college) is the skyrocketing tuition rates. Many colleges justify these inflated rates because the built a new (or a newer) stadium, or some other amenities that make their school more attractive but do very little to help students get a better education. They have made colleges all about the icing instead of the cake. And I understand why these schools do this, because they have limited vacancies and all these parents waiving donations to buy their child a seat at the table. These schools have money, literally, being thrown at them forcing them to sell entry to the highest bidder. They should be building more colleges with all this money, but that would mean hiring more teachers, and good teachers are hard to come by. The more qualified schools there are for students to get into and teachers to teach, the more the price goes down, and they don't want that. We see the same things in healthcare with hospitals that have insufficient bed space and doctors relative to the communities they serve. This is highlighted when you compare the US to the rest of the world. That it why it is so expensive for everyone here and we cannot do what other nations have no problem doing.

I know many people like myself, that wanted to go to college but either didn't see a path to get there or that the price-tag was worth it. Some of them went on to be successful without it, but the majority of them got stuck under someone else's thumb, or buried with no hope. The ones that feel lost (but not yet screwed) generally go into the military (just to feel like more than nobody). Now I'm not going to say that's the only reason people join the military. I grew up with my GI Joes, building model airplanes, tanks, and war-zone environments, while watching every war movie ever made. War is glamorized to young boys that have no idea how horrible the experience really is. But it is presented in such a proud glamorous light to maintain our voluntary service. There are two kinds of people (for the most part) that would continue to sign up for service without being ignorant of what they are really signing up for; the lost & the psychopath. Only an idiot signs up claiming that it's their patriotic duty, because unless you're ducking a draft patriotism doesn't have anything to do with the wars we've been in since WWII. What we go to war for today is only corporate interests in the international market. When I tried to sign up it was because I was lost, not delusioned by the glamour. Fortunately every branch turned me down and I found some direction for my life anyway.

Construction did not consist of the greatest portion of my employment, or working history. That industry (construction), of which I worked in several different areas of, was only one of the more profitable areas of employment that I had (working for someone else). But most of the highest paying things I've done did not involve me working for someone else. In prison (which did consist of a large portion of my adult life), I worked clearing trees and running a store box (not working in the prison commissary,but competing with the prison commissary). I also taught Arabic (but that was mainly volunteer work). The reason we have not discussed what you do for a living is because I never assumed what you did, the way you did assume what I did. You were the one who brought up this "career" issue,(not I), implying that everyone does identify with some sort of career industry, I don't. That is why I was mystified that you singled one career industry out to weigh my worth off of. I spent more years cutting down trees than any other thing, but I would never claim that career because that's not something I was interested in or wanted to do. I can do a lot of things well that I don't necessarily want to do (like being an electrician or a welder), so I rarely mention them. I would think that this is true for most people.

 

- I am not defending colleges. I have plenty of issues with everything from skyrocketing tuition rates to their shameless leftist indoctrination. The leftist indoctrination is not an exaggeration, it is truly off the charts, especially of late. My daughter gets assigned papers on political topics from professors that openly express their leftist views, and my advice to her has been give them what they want to hear. You may say that is a cowards way out and perhaps it is, but the reality is if you want a good grade, you are best served by agreeing with them. I can envision that someone could probably still get an A on a contrary paper if it was incredible, but you can rest assured that contrary papers are going to be scrutinized and criticized to a much greater degree. Sometimes the path of least resistance is the best path.

I instead am defending the BENEFITS that come from having a degree. I am not even focusing upon the actual education that one receives, because in truth people in most majors learn far more when actually on the job ( although the extra education is still a very good thing). It is the benefits that matter most. A college degree gives a person far more flexibility and on the whole a far higher income during their 40 or 50 years of work. For that reason, a college education is a more than worthwhile investment into ones future, regardless if they need to take out 50 or 75k in loans to make that happen. While I realize that college is not for everyone, it should be the goal for most. I am under no delusion that everyone is going to go to college, I am speaking more to the advice I would give to any kid as they are growing up. Obviously if that kid is as dumb as a box of rocks, I may change that advice, but if they were a run of the mill trouble maker that is reasonably bright but gets bad grades, my focus would be on turning them around and getting them on the path to go to college. You may not always succeed on getting them on that path, but it is a more than worthwhile goal. I don't think that the cost of an education should be what keeps any poor kid from going to college, and with Pell Grants, Financial Aid, student loans etc, anybody is financially capable of getting that education. The bigger problem as I see it in disadvantaged neighborhoods is that not enough parents fully understand the benefits of a college education, that it is an incredibly wise investment into ones future at any price, and that anybody can financially go to any school they can get into regardless of its cost. On the whole, education is not stressed in these areas, and you predictably see low high school graduation rates in addition to a low college attendance rate as a result. It doesn't have to be like that. It starts with the parents. I don't say that to attack these parents because they simply do not know any better because they themselves were never taught any better. Its not necessarily their fault that they don't know any better, but they are the main key to fixing the problem. There are in fact many families in disadvantaged areas that stress education, and those are undoubtedly the relative few that end up going to college.

-I don't necessarily disagree that the military attracts a fair amount of people that are lost, but I would argue that for those people, it is a great means of learning discipline, self pride, and generally turning ones life around. I also take some exception with your characterization about those joining out of patriotism. There is something noble about serving ones country by being the tip of the sword. It is not the tip of the swords role to be evaluating the various reasons why their country chooses to go to war. They are not qualified to do so, nor is that their function. There is a degree of nobility by giving oneself in that manner. Granted, all of the "lost" people are falsely wrapping themselves under the patriotic banner, but there are SOME people that choose to serve because of legitimate patriotism.

-I think you are FAR too focused on the discussion surrounding the definition of career. Its really not that important. If you want to consider being a dishwasher at 16 as part of your career...have at it. For purposes of this discussion, it just really doesn't matter.

-Its funny that you say I "singled one career industry out to weigh [your] worth off of". I actually don't believe I did that, but since you brought it up, there is some truth to that assertion. I will use some fictitious numbers to illustrate my point. If you make $200 k per year managing a specialized team of construction contractors, your market worth in that job is obviously $200k. If a direct competitor desperately wanted you to come work for them doing basically the exact same job, they would probably offer you $230k as an incentive to come work for them. Hence your new market worth would be $230k ( the worth of anything is what someone is willing to pay). If on the other hand, your life dream was to be a police officer, in order to make that switch, your worth to them would be whatever an entry level police officer makes, lets say $50k. In that sense, your worth IS in fact tied to your career industry. Where it gets complicated is if you wanted to switch to another industry into some type of managerial role. Since you were a manager of construction contractors, your argument would be that your career is in fact managing as opposed to construction, and that your market worth should be determined by your previous role. Whether they accept that rationale is up to them, but that would be your argument. Not having a college degree would make that argument an uphill climb. Through this, you can perhaps understand my point about career. Stepping away from any dictionary definition, I would say that career is any position that helps to add to your market worth for the position to which you are applying. There aren't many positions as a 40 something man where your dishwashing job at age 16 has any bearing on your market worth to them, unless perhaps you were applying for a dishwashing job.

-Lets be clear. The reason we haven't discussed what I do is because I haven't bothered to type it. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with whatever you did or didn't assume. I didn't ask you to give me your work history, you chose to do that completely on your own. It wasn't a function of me at all. Conversely, the fact that I haven't typed out what I do isn't a function of you. I don't shy away from discussing what I do, I have in fact done so many times on this board. I just never saw the need given the context of what has been discussed.

 

If I recall correctly, you did assume I sold drugs? All of that aside, I do agree with what you said about college. You are expected to parrot what the professor wants to hear or it'll cost you severely. They don't like cleverness that makes the teacher look bad, because that just threatens that teacher's career. College is a good thing, I like college, I just don't think the price tag quantifies the ROI. Because its true, when you have a degree your resume goes to the top of the stack, and you'll be offered more money than a competitor that lacks a degree. Starting with a higher pay is often better than climbing the latter with years of examples to prove your worth. But the truth is that unless you really enjoy what you do, by the time you hit 40 you're really just punching the clock. It doesn't take long for an employer to notice that. And when it is noticed that you're just another paper-weight on the payroll you employer is going to consider replacing you with some new fresh meat coming out of college for half the pay. And they're going to do it for five reasons: 1) because it's cheaper for them, 2) because the new person (although less experienced) will have newer information that they learned in college, 3) the newer person will be more ambitious, 4) they will be younger with less healthcare requirements, 5) they can short-change you your retirement pension. They don't want to hear about an employees marital problems, their kids, their other commitments, they only want someone that's going to get the job done. And if you're attractive, that's a company bonus. This is why I say its more profitable and job-security-wise: safer to have your own company than it is to work for someone else. There are more risk in operating your own company, but you'll be more inspired to succeed when its your company on the line.

Moving onto this issue of military service, I admit that serving instills discipline and dedication. Although with our large population mandatory service of every able body isn't required and would be extremely costly, I do think that mandatory boot-camp should be enacted, but that the voluntary part should come to play in what war trained personnel wish to engage in. Because if it was set up like that then I would believe in patriotism. But when I hear people say it's you patriotic duty to just get trained and we'll send you off to fight in some war that the troops don't even understand why or what they're fighting for (like some yahoos) I don't consider that patriotism, I consider it stupid. In the military you are owned, that uniform says "you are despicable", you follow orders without question or you go to prison. That's just voluntary slavery in my book, it has nothing to do with patriotism.

 

300k isn't much money for a lifetime. The reality is that this redistribution is a hypothetical that will never happen and the bulk of the US wealth is concentrated in the top few percent of the population.

So, the reality is that the amount of money left for the middle and lower classes to claw and scratch for is not enough to go around - by a long shot. Maybe 50k? Probably more like 20k. One can't live a poverty type of lifestyle on that for more than a couple of years.

All that clawing and scratching so your retirement years are lived in poverty and uncertainty? My advice in this scenario is to not bother. Live life while you're young, play and don't work. Suck what you can out of any system that exists unless it is viable for most of the population. The rich don't care about you. Why should you support the system that they rely on?

 

- Most sources I have looked at pegs the difference in lifetime earnings between a college and high school graduate to be about double. If that is the case, ROI more than justifies that investment.

- I have not seen a mass extinction of my coworkers in their 40s and 50s from their jobs.

- Indeed military service is a form of voluntary slavery. That doesn't mean that a person cannoy be volunteering to make that sacrifice out of legitimate patriotism.

 

Maybe you should read this.

 

OK...I read it.

It was a blog entry from a pessimistic Millennial free lance writer whom is struggling to pay her bills while faced with the real world for the first time in her life. There werent a great deal of facts and figures, it was mostly just her opinion and view of the world. Undoubtedly she has been told all her life just how truly special she is, and given a ribbon every time she participated in anything. She is shocked that nobody in the real world is falling all over themselves to congratulate her mediocrity and immediately reward her with a 6 figure salary. Her degree isn't a golden ticket to the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory, it is merely a ticket to play the game of professional life. She will eventually get over herself and wise up. When that finally happens, she will be fortunate to have a degree. In case you were unaware, on the whole, free lance writing has never been particularly lucrative, especially for someone just starting out.

This blog post is newsworthy to you ?

 

I'm not sure why you brush it under the rug as "opinion" when she included several hyper-link statistics to support her argument. Even you right now are admitting that a college degree doesn't guarantee anything, yet it's surely an expensive gamble. I'm more than willing to cite other sources you find so difficult to exist. Finding examples is not at all hard for me. I have some statistics for you right here.

 

You are missing the point. Its not that I thought you would have difficulty finding statistics at "Think Progress". OF COURSE you can. Do kids in college fit the definition of poverty as alleged in your "Think Progress" link?.......I suppose they do. I lived on Ramen noodle while in college, and so did most everyone else for that matter. It was funny when I got my first job out of college. That job had moved me from Michigan to Atlanta so I was in a strange town and knew nobody. When it came time for my first paycheck, the payroll department had screwed up and my check did not arrive on the second Friday. My boss brought me in his office and said he looked into it, and a new check could be there by Wednesday. He asked me if I needed a cash advance, and in all seriousness I replied "no, that's OK, I still have about $17". He thought that was the funniest thing that he had ever heard, and he basically said shut up and take the money.

I was completely serious, because for the previous 4 years I had lived on virtually nothing. $17 was in fact a decent amount of money to me at that time. I guess I technically was poor during college, but if I had the chance to relive those 4 years over again I would do so in a heartbeat. In a lot of ways those were the best years of my life. They certainly were the years where I had the most fun, and the years that I look back upon most fondly. If my college years were to have taken place during todays anti capitalist college environment, think progress could have done a write up on me as the face of poverty because my income too was very low. That characterization of course would be very misleading. Being poor in college is a right of passage. What I lacked in cash during college, I MORE than made up for in hot young college co-eds and 10 cent beer at the college bars where Tone Loc's Funky Cold Medina blared in the background. The same environment exists today. I don't feel sorry for those kids. I envy them.

The primary difference financially between then and now is that Millenials mistakenly believe that they are entitled to luxury without first paying their dues. Their financial situation isn't any different from ours. Their (unrealistic) expectations and subsequent attitude of entitlement are the only difference.

 

So your not familiar with the term "the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, as the value of the dollar is ever shrinking all the while"? Because that saying which is supported by many statistical facts suggest that today's kids are coming up in a situation very different from the situation we came up in. In just ten years you can see the difference, twenty years and it's a completely different world. I don't even want to think about how bad it will be if things don't change by 2050, but my guess is that it is impossible for things to continue as they have for that much longer.

 

I was addressing your link referring to "poor" college students.

If you want switch the topic to to talk about the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer, you need to be accurate as to what is happening. The poor are in fact getting poorer. Lower middle class is stagnant, while upper middle and upper class are doing better. The entire concept behind getting a college education is to be in the upper middle class or above. The fear of NOT getting an education is being in the lower middle class or below. At a time when demand for low skilled work is shrinking, it is more important than ever to get a degree.

 

The reason middle class folks are getting sodomized to the hilt is not because of the poor. It is because they are forced to subsidize the rich.

 

Explain that to Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Amanico Ortega, Liliane Bettencourt, Christy Walton, Li Ka-shing....

 

Why?

 

Because none of them graduated college.

 

and?

 

This is a case of correlation, not causation. The driving force behind earnings is IQ, and high IQ people tend to both earn a lot of money and get a college education. I wish I could find them again, but I read two studies, one of college grads and those who could have gone to college but didn't, and the difference in income was minuscule; the second was one of Ivy League grads and those who could have gone to an Ivy League college but went to a local or state college instead, and the difference in income was noticeable, but still considerably less than the average difference between state schools and Ivy League schools. It's not the college that makes the difference, it's the student.

That's the dumbest thing I ever read. From The Motley Fool:

Income Range (AGI).........Average Tax Liability...........Effective Tax Rate (% of AGI)

$1 to $25,000....................................$208........................................1.7%

$25,000 to $50,000........................$1,871.......................................5.2%

$50,000 to $100,000......................$6,251.......................................8.7%

$100,000 to $200,000..................$16,977.....................................12.6%

$200,000 to $500,000..................$55,536.....................................19.5%

$500,000 to $1 million...............$173,678....................................25.8%

$1 million to $10 million............$632,146.....................................29%

$10 million and above...............$7,884,775..................................26.1%

Show me on the chart where the rich person hurt you.

 

Undoubtedly IQ is a factor, but to make the claim that it is THE driving force behind earnings is more than just a little presumptuous. When a good paying position requires a degree, a high IQ person without a degree will never get the opportunity to explain why they are the best person for that position. In this sense, the high IQ no degree person has a MUCH smaller pool of higher income opportunities. While it is true that a higher income no degree person may succeed wildly working for themselves, their opportunities working for others are SIGNIFICANTLY diminished. It is impossible to credibly dismiss this undeniable reality.

Its hard to argue against 2 studies that you "wished [you] could find", but lets not pretend like there aren't thousands of so called "studies" in existence that contradict each other to a massive degree. A conclusion such as you mentioned about college grads and those that could have went to college would be entirely dependent upon how they chose to define and prioritize the variables involved, hence an author of a study such as that can and will get whatever conclusion they set out to prove. As an example I am sure that in some sales fields where a degree isn't necessary you could yield those results, but in high paying fields that require a degree, of which in this day and age is most, the non degreed person is simply shut out. There is no way to credibly ignore this reality simply because you referenced an unknown study that you came across somewhere along the way.

Worth ethic is another enormous factor that you are ignoring when claiming that IQ is the driving force behind lifetime earnings.

 

I'm not quite sure what these emogees mean, but I gave you the simple reply of "and?" because I was hoping that your argument was more sophisticated than what you had said up until that point. My hope it seems was futile. The notion that mentioning Bill Gates somehow invalidates the truism that people as a whole are best served financially by getting a degree, is just silly. You may just as well point to Jay Zee. It would be every bit as credible of a refutation. Some people will also win the Lotto, but I wouldn't consider that a solid plan in life.