I think a good thing to point out in the astronaut example is how many people got the job who WEREN'T hard working, in line with what @vil says, and in general no hard work + luck doesn't help you unless it's a no competition environment (like winning the lottery or being born to the right family/country).

i've been saying for a while now that you need luck to be successful and people hate that idea.

success can be from:
luck + hard work
luck + no hard work

but lack of success can be:
no luck + hard work
no luck + no hard work

so without luck, there is no success. hard work is just a multiplier.

Interesting ramblings having nothing to do with my post about Q and news coverage, and mostly dead wrong.

Let me fix those....
Lost a boatload of jobs leaving us with highest unemployment rates since the great depression and the largest number of businesses closing.

Lowering taxes but raising spending, giving us the highest debt and largest deficit ever.
Include emergency spending and this year added well over $7 TRILLION to the debt. Each man woman and child owed $88000 before this year's insane over budget spending in the neighborhood of $7 Trillion that's been reported (which means it could be trillions more in hidden spending). He is running America like a business, and he likes to strip businesses of all cash and assets, putting them in his own pockets, bankrupt them, then walking away leaving his partners ruined. America is nearing bankruptcy, is in massively more debt despite his promise to not only end deficit but end the debt term one. Instead he tried to double it and pocketed hundreds upon hundreds of millions in illegal business he directed the government to do with Trump companies, something no president has ever attempted but Trump's term has been non stop hatch act violations from day one, so he illegally stole hundreds of millions from hard working Americans, again.
Largest GDP drop ever in history, meaning the worst economy ever, not the best.
The deficit this year will be the largest since WW2, more than double the huge Obama 09 deficit that stopped the Republican recession of 08, 18% of GDP.
https://www.thebalance.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306
The debt is 136% of gdp...up 32% under Trump in just 3 years, the Deficit is up 15%. The country reaches a tipping point if the ratio is more than 77%...it's 136%. 77% is when lenders begin to worry whether it's safe to buy the country's bonds. They think the government may not be able to pay back its debt. Under Trump they're fairly certain we won't even try.

Put another way, if Trump paid for his 2020 spending instead of raising the debt exponentially, every man, woman, and child would have a tax bill for $20000 just this year alone, with zero reduction in debt.

Caving in to China after praising them for their Covid response, he's not fighting back over anything. He can't even get a trade deal done after tossing out one we had, this has cost hundreds of Billions in pure wasted money for his ego. China is expanding as we contract in ability, economic strength, and even territory.
He's pro Russia, he's destroyed American manufacturing, education, mail, infrastructure, international standing, trade, and debt. He talks pro American, he doesn't lead or govern that way. He's pro Trump, and has no other loyalties.

The military didn't need a whit of rebuilding, it was quite well funded before, and he inherited the best prepared, best funded, best armed (with the most ammunition despite his lies), largest (measured by equipment, not soldiers), and most inclusive military. He's screwed them repeatedly, by repeated last minute redeployment, cutting benefits, ignoring Russia's bounties on American soldiers and the deaths those payments caused, tossing out decorated soldiers while pardoning and reinstating murderous anti American sadists (stripping them of honor), and now he's screwed up their medical system by screwing up the USPS, delaying their medicine, and killing some veterans in the process, way more than Benghazzi.

Yeah, you are bat shit crazy, ignoring facts constantly to praise Trump over his destruction of our national status on every front.
Just nuts, Bob. You must pretend 2020 didn't happen to believe even one of those lies.

Honestly you could walk down any street in America, close your eyes and spin around. First person you see when you open them would be a better President.

That guy loading stolen TVs in the back of a van?

Better president.

The drug dealer on the corner?

WAY better president (at least he understands business, and you know he knows how to actually make a deal)

2 Year-old who just shit his diaper?

Yep, better president.

And that's not to mention all the hard-working, honest, intelligent people out there.

Biden may not be amazing, but he's competent, he really wants to help people, and you know what, Bob? Unlike Trump, Biden actually cares if his policies Make America Great.

What about me? I do all those things and more. I didn't just change my own brakes, I swapped my own motor. I don't just plow my field, I sow, weed, and harvest that field. I've not only repaired a roof, I've built a few. I know hard work, I was a one man desert racing crew. Now that's hard work, being mechanic, transporter, driver, and pit crew....all at 112 degrees.

So, why don't I love Trump? Because I'm a real conservative....ecologically conservative, fiscally conservative, fact based, socially liberal (the government has no place in my bedroom or my body), and insistent on honesty.

Republicans abandoned conservatism before I could vote.

THEY fear us now like one fears the 100lb ranting sore ridden meth head at the bus stop, not for our strength and resolve, but our dangerous unpredictability and diseases.

Good for her....and them.
A well deserved treat for a hard working group.

Wow, this reinforces my opinion about anyone that states "I'm really smart." This is some incredible ignorance, especially the part where she thinks it was 100% her hard work that made her successful and anyone that doesn't achieve the same level of success didn't work hard enough.

The police are, and always have been, tools for those in power to stay in power. Most places they don't even try to combat financial fraud, wage theft, and all that, even though it does way more damage (like the 2008 collapse). The illusions of equality and justice are there to keep the masses from rioting in the streets, as is the self-serving promotion that 'anyone could become one of us, if you just work hard enough'. Truth is it doesn't take hard work. By and large, rich people were born rich, or have psychological deficits that allow them to exploit, harm, and even kill without remorse. Shkreli and his ilk have 'what it takes' to get rich in America. People with hang-ups like ethics and morals will always be left behind until the system fundamentally changes.

Every government in the world has always been run by the privileged. When you have power and privilege it's inevitable that most will use the one to protect the other.

Fear not about the harshness. Spitballs at a battleship.

I see your passion and your good intentions. I can tell you invest a lot of yourself into it. Make it count. Be an example of your hard work and concern.

Teach without teaching. Share your treasures with those who are looking for you. Don't hunt them down. Offer what you got and let them take it. Don't scare the people that could love you for who you are.

Now, I gotta go make some work those budding paramedics.

Even if Americans wouldn't accept the level of taxes and other wealth distribution methods that happen in Denmark, I think that we'd almost certainly be net better off / "happier" / have a higher standard of living if we moved in that direction at least a little bit.

Yes, Americans want to be rich. But, the 1% is going to be relatively equally happy whether they are 10 times, 100 times, or 1000 times richer than the 98th percentile just below them. Today, that disparity is massive. In eras that the GOP likes to remember as the good ol' days, say the 1950s, rich was still rich but nowhere near as far beyond the middle class as it is today.

High(er) taxes, particularly on income in those top percentile tax brackets, allow for the superior infrastructure, health care, and educational opportunities that benefit *everyone* and allow for the "American Dream" of anyone being able to make it big with a good idea, a lot of hard work, and a little luck. I don't think that recipe for success actually pans out in modern America, and that is a shame.

The reputation of ants as a hard working pieces is IMO highly doobie dubious.

Thanks to your father-in-law for all his hard work.

Looks like it took blood, sweat and years to find, create, and assemble such a fine one man show.

C'mon siftbot! Did you really give it your all? How hard can it be to find a stinkin' thumbnail?

You been drinkin' again?

Don't worry about it. I wouldn't want you to have to get up off that couch and work your servos a little.

I crafted my own thumbnail the good old fashioned way. HARD WORK!

God forbid, I ask you to process and push a few data bits around.

I've had ENOUGH!

I wholeheartedly disagree. Those professions you mentioned require extensive knowledge of multiple disciplines and an ability to interact with other professionals, not a singular ability to preform one singular act. The criteria are varied and there is no one way to determine future performance based on any single test of abilities. Edit : Temperment, perceived social standing, manners, vocabulary, intelligence, education across the board, etc all matter in those professions, but not in basketball.

Yep, agreed, just pointing out that sports are not immune.

Those people are deluded. We don't live in a vacuum. People consider race, if only subconsciously, pretending we don't is just dishonest, and more often than not just an excuse to discriminate against others, if only by ignoring the extra obstacles they overcome to be equal.

MY policy would examine a person's entire situation, financial, local, familial, social, educational, employment, extra curricular activities, etc. and take it all into account when determining what kind of hard working student to admit. If admissions tests included all those and more in their decision, not just a single biased test result, race could be excluded unless diversity is required. Because diversity is required, both morally and legally, it would be good to start there and examine the results, then maybe race/gender could still be ignored, maybe not. We don't do that, so we can't know, but we do know the tests we use like SAT tests are biased and don't measure achievement, only specific wrote knowledge, which is a piss poor measure of a student's potential.

I think I understand your position, I do think it's important to not swing the pendulum of injustice harder in the other direction and instead work to stop it in the middle, I just disagree with your theories, your methodology, and I think you ignore many major factors and the desired/required result in order to stand immovable in your position.

1) Yes, but that's much more easily said than done, and many people disagree too. I feel that it's far cheaper to pay to educate other people's children (I have none) and have them become far more productive citizens than it is to insist (despite all evidence to the contrary) that hard work overcomes all obstacles, and everyone is capable of doing the work required for success. This theory removes responsibility to help others and puts blame squarely on those who've failed. Convenient, but just wrong.

2) In a vacuum, that makes sense, but not in real life. The refusal to acknowledge the disparities in opportunity to prepare for that singular performance is where the racism lies.
It's actually illegal to use just race over performance merit in most places as I understand it. Ethnicity/gender are usually only one small part of the equation. If they could be replaced with a numerical opportunity score, used to modify performance scores,
I would support that, but good luck figuring that one out to anyone's satisfaction.

3) Yes, people always resent being forced from a position of power. I do think it's important to constantly revisit the issue to insure policy doesn't foster inequities, particularly since that's the point of the policies, eradicating inequities.

4) Predicting the naive would be suckered by a professional con man telling them platitudes, sure, but predicting so many of the educated would go along for short sighted, purely tribal reasoning, that's tougher.

5) Certain groups of people have been claiming white men are the downtrodden powerless whipping boys since the 60's. It's getting closer to true, but we aren't near there yet, it just seems that way to those less socially powerful than their fathers. Sure, there are outliers where the white male gets the shaft due to race, but we still come out well ahead in the balance by any objective set of criteria..