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Originally Posted by Assorted  I agree with you to an extent. In Canada, we are more healthy than our unfortunate southerly friends. I feel grateful everyday that my family hasn't faced any enormous health difficulties yet. Or any accidents. One of my family member has had complications, with frequent thousand dollar needle shots, but nothing that's burdening.
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I'm sorry to hear of your relative's problems.
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| Quite frankly I'm very lucky, I get to share the little wealth earned from years by my family, ride in a 750i everyday, crank up the heat to 25C in the winter, grand watches and cars for birthdays. From your perspective this might be very crippling, life's not fair, why am I getting along life so easily. |
"I thought I had a poor lot in life because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet."
Of course life is unfair, some are born with horrible birth defects, or something like progeria where they die of old age at eighteen. Others are born beautiful and perfect. Crap happens.
On the whole I've had a good life. I have a great family, I've enjoyed good health for the majority of my life despite abusing my body quite a bit when I was younger. I don't really have any complaints about how I have lived.
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| But look at it from my family's point of view. My father's family immigrated to Canada two decades ago, naturally without any money, since the purpose of immigration was to improve quality life and contribute to society. Employment was plentiful. Dish-washing, paper, the large sum of the service industry. He could have taken an easy job of being the bus boy, or serve as a waiter. But he took the job of management -- this might sound all high and mighty, but managing is the dirtiest job in the service industry. Unlike those trades people with salaries and labor unions to save their behinds, managers have to wake up early to make appointments, fix appliances, clean out garbage, make important decisions and being liable for it, and many more. Finally, he comes home past midnight everyday and sleep on the couch. No time for drinking or socializing, and only occasional relaxing time. Eventually this became routine, and our family was able to buy out the business and maintain it. He could have easily taken out a student loan to take a degree of higher education and never have to worry about business-level responsibility. |
My wife is a manager also, although she does not have to do some of the nastier things you mention. She leads by example and is basically the "fixer" for the corporation she works for. If there is a store that is doing badly, she goes in, gets rid of the unproductive workers, hires and trains a decent crew, straightens out the messy store and then goes to the next one and does it all over again.
Meanwhile the store she just fixed gets handed to another incompetent manager (good help is almost as hard to find as a good job) and then a couple of years later she goes back and straightens it out again.
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| So did my family (technically my two parents) earn the extra wealth? Certainly, moreso than other families who sit around and let the government money chime in, or who aren't willing to sacrifice anything to get the most out of what little they worked for through means of corrupt labor unions, unfair taxation, the irrational system of the narrow minded "special interest groups", and extremely overweight people on disability. |
From what you relate it seems that your parents did indeed earn what they have.
There are basically two ways of getting through life. One way is to work your butt off and have very little life but a lot of material possessions.
The other way is to forgo many of the material things and have more of a life.
When our daughter was growing up, both my wife and I basically devoted more time to her than to furthering our careers. It certainly paid off for our daughter, she is now a stay at home mom with three children and a husband who loves her. Some of her friends with more "successful" parents have done far worse in life.
First point, you don't see no hearses with luggage racks.
Second point, there are few people who, on their deathbed, say "you know I really wish I had spent more time at the office."
Life is short and the older you get the faster time seems to go by.
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