Are People without Nice Things Lazy?
There exists a very human tendency to ascribe one’s own personal successes to hard work and failures to bad luck. The flip side is that many people look at the successes of others and attribute them to good luck, and their failures to a lack of personal responsibility. The reality is complicated, and parents need to teach their children that.
The person who works hard for little money may simply have thrown their heart into a less renumerative field, may not have applied themselves to their education or career, or the deck may have been stacked against them from birth, making success that much harder. The person with greater wealth may have been born in fortuitous circumstances, but may have had to overcome serious personal difficulties (so easily hidden) to achieve their current financial stability. Plenty of rich and poor work hard, and plenty of rich and poor do not.
Financial success is a useful indicator of hard work, but it is faulty.
Most people have some cross to bear, and most people fail at something, but these things are easily hidden. Better to withhold judgment, offer help when it is needed, and congratulations when it is due.
-From an anonymous commentor to the New York Times on July 15th, 2010
