Sta.sh
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this journal 
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One question was not at all about art, but rather about America. The student in question is Finnish, and asked me this:
When asked about job opportunities in America, an american university professor who teaches graphic design in the UK mentioned the "american dream". He said that it is a common belief, that everyone is the architect of his own fortune and if you do not succeed you're just lazy. However, according to him, in reality most of your study opportunities and career success are tied on how much money you have. What are your thoughts on this?
This is what I wrote:
Wow, that's a big question. How long do you have?
I live in a liberal part of the U.S. Here in the state of Washington, we just voted to legalize gay marriage and marijuana. Culturally this is a VERY different place than, say, Texas or Alabama.
I would say the notion you're describing is a core belief of American conservatism. A conservative relative of mine has repeatedly put it to me in pretty much exactly that way: "in America, if you work hard, you get ahead." It's not true at all, of course. We have terrible income inequality and not a lot of class mobility. I grew up comfortably middle-class and have had the luxury of doing what I want to do with my life as a result. Had I been born into poverty, I would, statistically speaking, most likely still be poor, and I would never have had the opportunity to pursue a dream the way I have. To me, that's scandalous. If it were up to me America would have a much better safety net, and thereby enable people to take risks and chase dreams without worrying that they might starve to death.
American conservatives like to claim they speak for America as a whole, but they're wrong, as we saw in the last election, in which conservative politicians and ideas got clobbered. Mitt Romney basically ran his presidential campaign on a version of the "everyone is the architect of his own fortune" line, and he lost badly to the first president ever to successfully pass some form of near-universal health care. I take that as an encouraging sign about where the country might be headed.
But it's always a fight against the rich assholes who want to tear up the social contract, and the gullible rubes who can't see through their smokescreen talk about "freedom."
(It's worth noting that American racial politics are mixed up in all this. "Lazy" is often code for "black." White southerners were all for an expansive social safety net until black people got legally guaranteed equal rights in the 60s, at which point they became terrified that "those people" were a bunch of lazy moochers who would take advantage of the system. Modern conservatives mostly deny that this is still what's going on, but look how deranged they are by the fact that the rest of us twice elected a black president.)
No, what matters when getting a job is knowledge, college, and portfolio (The last even goes for non-art jobs, like engineering. I'm using "portfolio" more generally than it's common usage, to mean "past experience, and what you have to show for it". A guy who worked with Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works (the best aircraft engineers in the world) has a much better chance of getting hired than an ex-car mechanic, for example.).
"College" and "Portfolio" are obvious and explained, but let me explain what I mean by "knowledge"; the person has to know the opening exists. Connections help, but they don't land a job alone, so I'm grouping them with "knowledge".
Statistics might show poor stay poor and rich stay rich, but how much of that is due to the economic system? I'd say it's got more to do with psychology (self-doubt, determination, fear, confidence) and culture (are they being ridiculed or rewarded for being smart? Do people shortcut themselves so they don't appear "nerdy"? Are they taught to value education and career, or not?).
Furthermore, statistics may show x, but they only reveal a correlation. It takes much more than statistics to reveal an actual cause/effect relationship. Plus, there's always the fun fact that statistics can be toyed with. For example; statistics say you should avoid being airlifted to a hospital in a medical emergency, or possibly even avoid the hospital entirely. You're most likely to die if you're airlifted, and hospitals are places where people die far more often than anywhere else, after all.
Furthermore, system-leeches do exist: [link]
Systems are in place to allow people who can't afford it to go to college. They work. They work so well they're abused.
It's frankly pretty disheartening to see how easily people are suckered in by it, tough I comfort myself with the fact that as long as this inequality persist, there will be more people screwed over than does the screwing, and you can't pull the whool over everyones eyes all the time. Eventually it will come back and bite them in the ass. Hard. Or so I'd like to imagine anyway....
The problem we're facing in modern times is that of stagnation, too much in the hands of too few.
That's when it ceases to be capitalism and mutates into a sort of neo-feudalism.
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But good luck fitting that onto a bumper sticker.
I remember this one conversation I had with a friend who was very conservative at the time. It all started when I told him how the rich should be paying more taxes instead of less because they actually have the money to handle such finances. He then disagreed with me saying that the reason why the rich pay less is because the deserve it for working towards their fortune. I was dumbfounded by what he said. He then went on to explain to me why this is through this analogy.
People who work hard in school get good grades. Those who don't get the worst grades. Put simply, the wealthy get A's and the poor get F's. If we were to drop the grades of all the students who had been given A's to a C so that all the students who are failing would get the same grade, would it have been fair for the students who actually earned those grades to lose them just so that a lazier student can pass? I was even more dumbfounded than before. And a little irate.
I was a good student. I gotten plenty of A's and worked extremely hard at them despite of how hellish my high school schedule was. I was also very poor. Still am and might always will be. Heck, I was actually worse off because I spent a good part of my childhood being technically homeless. The kicker? Both of my parents were military. So yeah. What this friend of mine said? Completely. Utterly. Unapologetically. Offended me. Basically, I don't DESERVE to be given any rewards because I am not working hard enough for it! I don't DESERVE to have a better living because I didn't metaphorically bribed the school system to give me the A's I want! And I sure as hell don't DESERVE to be seen as an intelligent or upright member of society because I wasn't born under far more favorable circumstances!
It goes without saying that I chewed his sorry hide good that day. My language being FAR more graphic than what I'm implying now. He never talked to me about politics ever again since that day.
Or, put another way - my thinking on pretty much anything related to such matters has been improved by reading the graphic-novel, "Economix" - which I recommend to anyone reading this journal comment.
Im sorry, I dont mean to be an ass but I have heard this journal pretty much word for word before a hundred times from other artists.
...well, honestly, no, not that much more likely.