Reply to What exactly makes someone a “striver,” and why such disdain for them?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hear a lot of hate in this forum about “strivers.” What is it exactly that makes someone a striver? The fact that you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor by buying a pretty house or nice car? Is it something more sinister like refusing to associate with people who don’t run with the right crowd?

And why do we hate this strivers? I hear the term associated a lot with new money. I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to better your financial situation. And for the record, a lot of people from old money families came into that money from slave holders, factory owners before the days of safe working conditions, large plantations, etc. Frankly, I’d rather be a self made striver than have had great grands that got rich off the blood and toil of suppressed classes. [/quote]

I agree with you re strivers. But your second comment about old money is far off the mark. The Civil War destroyed slave wealth which is why the south was so deeply impoverished after the war as almost all southern wealth was tied up in land and slaves, the latter freed without compensation and the former badly devalued by the war and collapse of plantation agriculture.

Most of what people like to think of as "old money" is recent wealth, definitely post Civil War (which was 160 years ago) and most within the last few generations. And a great deal of it is finance related. And not sure you can legibly argue the working classes were suppressed when for that period the American working classes were the most well paid in the world and immigrants flocked to the US specifically because of the generous wages and higher standard of living for the American factory workers. [/quote]

Most of the big old money in this country are descendants of the Industrial Revolution robber barons and the bankers who got their wealth out before the crash.

The civil war and depression/dust bowl brought down a ton of family wealth.

There are a ton of families like mine who have always had enough money, land, etc but it’s not Mellon money.

The idea that the big old money families pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, made their money ethically, and just worked hard is a myth.[/quote]

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