It’s not about the money

On a recent business trip to Austin, I arrived at the airport four hours early so I could hop on a couple conference calls prior to my flight. While I waited at an airport restaurant, I took particular notice of one of the janitors who was an absolute cleaning machine. She worked quickly to empty the trash bins, clean all of the floors and surfaces, bus all of the tables, and communicate her plans to the restaurant staff. Her pace was frenetic, and she moved from our restaurant to the next place of business without a moment’s break, then to the next, and to the next, keeping the same pace over the roughly three hours that I sat with her in my view.

Recently, VC mogul and Silicon Valley legend Tom Perkins made headlines for uttering the statement that essentially compared the brewing “war” on the wealthy to the Holocaust. While it was assuredly an outlandish and offensive comparison, it’s only one of many recent statements made about the war on the wealthy that has made news across the US, particularly in the tech and finance capitals of Silicon Valley and NYC, respectively, where the income disparities between the top 1% and bottom 99% have grown to historic levels. Although it’s a bit of an oversimplification, the tension that’s central in this disagreement pits the 1% view of “We’re wealthy because we work hard. You’re poor because you don’t” against the 99% view of “the ‘game’ is rigged to favor the wealthy”.

As I sit and watched the janitor at the airport, I couldn’t help but thinking of how simplistic it is to simply attribute financial success to hard work (or more specifically, to attribute lack of financial success to lack of hard work). Sure, hard work is typically a prerequisite to being wealthy, but it’s by no means a guarantee of it. Some of the hardest-working people I’ve met do jobs that pay very little, sometimes because it’s something they love, or sometimes because they just need the job. Poverty is a complex and multifaceted topic with no single cause. So is wealth. But as I’ve studied, read, and listed to experts talk about the reasons for financial success, there is one important factor that the typical person almost always ignores or refuses to acknowledge: luck (in this case, a catch-all for things that people cannot control directly).

There is plenty of research to show that people are prone to attributing their own successes to traits like hard work, intelligence, and perseverance, but their failures to other people and bad luck. This phenomenon is called misattribution, and its affects people’s attitudes towards all aspects of their life: money, career, love, and more. But there is no doubt that luck plays an incredibly important role in failure and success. One of my favorite examples of this reality is from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. In it, he discusses how the birthdays of Canada’s most successful hockey players tend to cluster around particular months. I won’t go into the details, but long story short it provided compelling evidence to show that the junior hockey program age cutoffs for elite players tended to favor players from certain birth months. Yet I’m sure you’d be hard-pressed to find any successful pro hockey player who would give credit for his success in the NHL to the age alignment dates of his junior hockey programs. Or, to keep is more relatable, answer this question: do you believe you’d be as successful as you are if you were born in Ethiopia or Afghanistan, or even on the streets of Compton?

I’ll be the first to admit that there are probably millions of people who are content to sit at home and collect government checks. But I haven’t seen any data to show that this is anywhere near the norm among the poor. I’ll also be the first to admit that very successful people, on average, work very hard too, much harder than average. But in our brain-based economy, I’d argue that they’re also, on average, more intelligent - an advantage that is shaped partly by genetics and partly by favorable early life factors (e.g. proper nutrition and mental stimulation), factors that are almost entirely outside of the control of the individual. It is also likely that they were surrounded by people (parents, teachers, mentors) that nurtured their talents and steered them away from crime, heavy drug use, and other unfavorable influences. Now of course there are people who grow up with many advantages and fail, just as there are people who grow up with many disadvantages and succeed (my parents among them). But if it’s simply a matter of hard work, why pay for expensive private schools (as opposed to local public schools), provide children with healthy nutrition options (as opposed to cheaper/calorie fast food), and help nurture their children’s interests (often at the expense of the parents’ own quality of life)? The fact is: external factors matter, and wealthy parents can provide their kids with many advantages that poor parents often cannot. Combine this with an investment tax system that disproportionately rewards wealth with more wealth (Google “Warren Buffet and secretary tax rate”), a political system that is increasingly beholden to rich special interest groups, a legal system that disproportionately arrests and jails the poor for crimes that they commit at the same frequency as the rich (case in point: illegal drugs), and financial windfalls that pay huge dividends to poorly-performing (or unscrupulous) corporate execs or things of nebulous value (Snapchat at $3B??!?! Okay, okay, that’s the last time I’ll bitch about that), and it’s no surprise that the poor feel increasingly disenfranchised and angry. While there may indeed be poor people that hate the rich for just being rich (just as I’m sure some rich people hate the poor for being poor), I’d be hard-pressed to believe that such attitudes are anything more than outliers.

So what can be done? First, stop calling it a war on the wealthy. It isn’t. It’s a attack on an increasingly unfavorable system. It’s a lack of economic mobility that surpasses most other developed nations. It’s a world where the Walton family can make billions of dollars, mostly from an inheritance (luck), yet still sees fit to pay many of its employees minimum wage or below. Second, encourage your companies (no matter how small) and your friends, to give back to those less fortunate and provide reasonable benefits to all employees. Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, is a very rich guy, yet he pays his people well and has created a culture of giving (including 1% of all company profits to charitable organizations). Craig Jelineck, CEO of Costco, has a business that’s famous for low prices, yet he pays his cashiers a $40k+ salary with benefits. BloomBoard, the startup where I work, carves out time for employees to do charitable work. Anything is better than nothing, so start small and go from there. Third, let’s start to put our collective brainpower and network together to solve these major problems instead of creating apps for teens to sext each other (ok, that was the last time I’ll bitch about Snapchat). What drew me to Silicon Valley was the idea of working together to change the world for the better, yet I’m increasingly skeptical that that remains a factor that drives people’s actions and decisions. And lastly, understand that your success is undoubtedly the result of a lot of hard work, perseverance, and creativity, and you should be commended for that. But also understand that at least a little bit is attributable to some factors outside your control, and give deference and respect to people who got a crappy share of it.