Money and Success: The Myth of Individual Opportunity

Money and Success: The Myth of Individual Opportunity

Most of the people in the country are continually struggling to get a decent income. Currently, there are limited job opportunities, and the available job positions get preserved for individuals having some connections. In today’s world, there is a deep correlation between money and success. People believe that they must have money to succeed in life. The allegation, to a certain extent, is true. People must work hard to get some income that they can use either for investment purposes or for improving their lives (Davison). The income can get invested through education or venturing into a lucrative business opportunity. Without the seed capital earned from external sources like employment, loans, or donations from family and friends, success becomes difficult.

There is also allegation “money follows the money” whereby the rich become richer while the poorer become poorer. Such a scenario is widespread. Most lucrative business opportunities get acquired by influential and politically connected people with vast sums of money. In most cases, the connected individuals receive first-hand information regarding lucrative business opportunities before an ordinary person gets the information. Such a practice is common in the stock market. For instance, in the stock market, when an organization wants to acquire a rival, it is the insiders who stand the best chance of having such information beforehand. The insiders could be traders, employees working with the organizations, friends, and relatives to the company’s stakeholders. In most cases, people directly or indirectly associated with the organization stand a better chance of acquiring or disposing of stocks that can swing either way in the market. Through such a tactic, money tends to follow people who get connected in one way or another.

Another credible example could be having a close associate working with the procurement department. The employee from the organization can give a close associate some of the secrets of winning tenders. The scenario implies that money must get involved to attain a certain level of success. However, on the other hand, since the poor in most cases do not have such connections, they tend to lose the lucrative business opportunities, and even if they did have the links, they lack the necessary capital to benefit from the presented business opportunity.

The poor people in society are also oppressed in one way or another. Colombo (366) gives a situation where the employees have to involve in many shifts in order to raise enough money to buy the basic need due to low payments. These workers have to burn and burn, and when they complain, the employers dismiss them without any genuine reason. In coping with the situation, they look for shifts from different organizations that still do not fully supplement their needs fully. These individuals’ spending habits get associated with the bottom of the pyramid. For instance, if a poor person purchases essential item likes milk, they end up paying for the retail price.

On the other hand, if the affluent orders for cartons of milk, the order gets supplied through the wholesale price, meaning that the rich buy their products at more subsidized rates compared to the poor. Surprisingly, it is the rich who earn more and can easily afford the prices of commodities and other essentials during the off-peak season when the prices have sky-rocketed (Tschachler). The spending habits of the poor have also limited their investment horizons, and this is why the less fortunate in society find it difficult to invest in low-risk high return investments.

The rich or affluent in society invest in low-risk high-return sectors like the real estate, agriculture, and money market. The poor do not have disposable income, and even with the little they can afford, also if they invest in such markets, the profit or turnover appears insignificant because of the level of seed capital invested. For instance, a poor person finds it difficult, purchasing a property worth $50,000 even if the same house gets discounted. The same person cannot afford investments like stocks. But a rich person can easily afford the same home which they can, later on, dispose of even after two decades where the price is likely to have increased by four or five folds (Garrett). The situation means that the rich person becomes richer. In contrast, the poor person remains wallowing in poverty by continuing to pay for rent because he could not easily afford to raise the initial deposit required for mortgage financing.

Despite the advantage of being rich versus the disadvantages of being poor, every person, to some extent, has equal opportunity in life, albeit the different levels of opportunities presented to them. A child coming from a poor socio-economic background can take advantage of numerous scholarships and grants to excel as an “A” grade student. The same pupil is likely to get an excellent job with a high income and can, therefore, take advantage of investment opportunities like company shares or property purchases in the same manner as their affluent counterparts. In also a different scenario, an individual expert from a particular sector, can also acquire an opportunity because of his professional expertise and not due to financial capacity. For instance, a medical practitioner can be given a contract to run a company clinic. Such opportunities do not require massive financial outlay.

There is also the case when talent is involved. For instance, a professional footballer does not require a connection from “God-father’s” or business associates to succeed; it is their natural talents that make them outstanding among the fan base. And as a result, success beckons on their door. Therefore, regardless of a person’s socio-economic background, an individual’s commitment also plays a crucial role in ensuring that a person succeeds in life despite the widening gap between the rich and poor in society.

There is also a correlation between hard work and success. Most people are perplexed with the definition of hard work. Working hard does not merely imply getting so much dedicated to the job description. Still, it also means being fully engaged with other personal responsibilities, like taking care of your family, upgrading the education level, improving the home, or taking care of the parents or siblings. Therefore a person’s commitment towards their lives should be all-encompassing hence involving their entire life. For instance, according to Colombo et al. (351), hard work and thrift are what made Sam the rich man of his time. He relates having money with meeting the basic need of the family, and without that, members struggle as they wallow in poverty. The motive behind this is that success came with being busy as one grapples with his or her daily life.

Sometimes people get faced with financial distress due to poor planning, which is the number one cause of failure. Individuals with poor financial organizations tend to give excuses like there are inadequate job opportunities, or the economy is slowing down or contracting (Magnus). Such individuals must understand that despite financial handicaps, people are snapping, taking advantage of the economic doldrums to enrich their lives. For instance, during economic recessions, realtors take advantage of defaulted mortgages to purchase properties at a lower price. These houses get sold according to their real market value after the economic correction. Therefore, money and success are a myth of an individual opportunity. Money and success depend on the manner an individual perceives the current situation, whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. For Sam’s case, the author briefs on the way he buys the panties and sell them, making a limited profit; but his hard work and family support raises her status to the world’s limelight (Colombo 352). At Wal-Mart, the employees even attempted to form unions for collective bargaining power since the lower wages they earned could not satisfy their needs.