OPINION: The reality show star’s views are just age-old class warfare where the rich scold the poor for not working hard enough with no clue about how difficult it is to become rich or how expensive it is to be poor.
Kim Kardashian went full Marie Antoinette when she said her best advice for women in business was to work hard. Wow, the thing separating us from her is work ethic? Really? This sort of upper-class snobbery—the rich scolding the poor for failing to become rich because they’re not trying hard enough—is a self-congratulating mechanism—I’m rich because I’ve worked hard—and it conveniently ignores the fact that in modern America, acquiring wealth often requires the help of a wealthy parent.
Intergenerational mobility in modern America is very hard. We love the example of the person who invented something and rocketed upward financially, but very few people actually leap into a new class. Studies show most people end up in the class that their father was born into. A recent Georgetown study found, “To succeed in America, it’s better to be born rich than smart.” Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown Center on Education and Workforce and the lead author of the study said, “People with talent often don’t succeed. People with talent that come from disadvantaged households don’t do as well as people with very little talent from advantaged households.”
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Kardashian was born very wealthy—her late father Robert was a prominent L.A. attorney—and her rise to success was no doubt powered by the money her father left her—reportedly there was a $100 million trust fund for her and her siblings—giving her the leverage to become a prominent L.A. socialite, which gave her the leverage to create a TV show, which gave her the leverage to create a brand of undergarments that’s made her a billionaire. Surely, Kim has worked hard, but she probably hasn’t broken a sweat since Ray J while the people who actually make Skims, Kardashian’s clothing line, probably sweat every day in the shops in China and Turkey where they work. Kim’s wealthy because she had the financial leverage to build a brand. Most Americans don’t have enough financial security to know how they’ll get through the near future. This isn’t because they don’t work hard.
The second part of Kim’s insane soliloquy included this gem that’s common among the clueless set—“It seems like nobody wants to work these days.” This is more age-old class warfare, the rich scolding the poor for not working hard enough with no clue about how hard it is to become rich or how expensive it is to be poor. But let’s assume or pretend that Kim was talking about the Great Resignation, this moment when millions of millennials and zoomers are quitting their jobs. I saw one tweet where someone said, “It’s giving shackled. I quit.”
Source: Kim Kardashian’s advice on work is just another way of calling poor people lazy
