<p>He’s not serious.</p>
<p>I hope so.</p>
<p>Rockerguyasj, are you insinuating that I am lying, because I assure you I am not. I’m really not joking, if ALL the salary data you ever saw was for doctors then you would assume that everyone made that much. I also know NOW that it isn’t the case, but if you grow up only thinking about being a doctor and see doctor salaries only, then you logically conclude that everyone makes the same amount of money.</p>
<p>Dbate, </p>
<p>Most parents complain of bills, so children believe their parents are poor, see it works to our advantage. The kids don’t ask for things then. :)</p>
<p>Yes, because a professional degree will provide the same income as someone who works full time in minimum wage. Dbate, if you are really going to attend Yale, then it is logical to assume that you have enough common sense to see the how illogical your assumption is.</p>
<p>The assumption did not seem illogical until I bothered to start caring about issues alterior to myself. I know NOW about economic utility, and value and such. But at 11 or 12 when we are contemplating careers we are not thinking about ever making minimum wage so I never considered it. I didn’t even know what the minimum wage was because I never thought about working at that level. It is now 7.25 which is terrible low and less than I made working at target last summer.</p>
<p>For example we had to do a stupid budget project in seventh grade and I got the job of like a postal worker or a military officer and it was like 30K a year, that seemed impossible to live on I couldn’t even find a decent apartment. And the teacher made up pick terrible jobs I didn’t get to be a surgeon which is what I really wanted. For some reason it only reinforced the conception that people didn’t actually live on that because it seemed entirely impossible and propelled it to the realm of fantasy.</p>
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<p>I find it extremely hard to believe that someone capable of gaining admission into Yale can hold such inane beliefs up until 16/17.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t I will readily admit that I am book smart over street smart. I found it incredibly difficult to tie a tie, but quantum mechanics seemed really simple.</p>
<p>…This is almost frightening. Did your parents like turn off the TV whenever images of poor people came on? How are all the people around you rich with absolutely no idea what it is like to be otherwise?</p>
<p>What magical world are you living in lol and how can I get there?</p>
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<p>This is something that I know other people have to agree on, poor people are vastly underrepresented on television.</p>
<p>What channels are you watching??</p>
<p>Not the news. Not commercials about starving kids. Not BET hahaha.
I really do not understand how you could go along in life thinking like this. You say you’ve ‘traveled’ but obviously only to very upper-class vacationy type areas, and probably not out of the country.</p>
<p>^^ Poor people are more likely to be misrepresented on television. I’m assuming the OP doesn’t watch the nightly news or detective shows such as Law and Order and Court TV?</p>
<p>rockerguy, I agree with you. I’m quite speechless at the OP.</p>
<p>I have been to Orlando, San Fran, DC, Illinois. Most of them were school related type of things so they tend to avoid the poor areas. </p>
<p>This may seem incredulous but I just thought that people were like me for a long time in my life. I thought everyone was Christian, at the same economic level, and had the same level of intelligence. In fact it wasn’t until I got my class rank that I realized that some people didn’t put work into school and when I applied to colleges I was shocked that I was in the top ten percent of students admitted to my state school (University of Texas) and even after getting into Yale I didn’t think I was smart, because I just thought everyone was the same. </p>
<p>I did realize that people had different races, but all the people who I ever interacted with had treated me the same so i never felt different which made me feel even more that people were the same.</p>
<p>Well, you need to realize that you are literally one of a kind.
I don’t know anyone at any economical level who actually thinks that way.
And most black people I know (including myself) have definitely been treated differently because of their race.</p>
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<p>You are confounding my views then (at a younger age) to my views now. I am fully enlightened to the various levels of economic status now. But when I was younger the type of shows you watch don’t really show poverty. Most of the shows are actually about well to do people, even the black ones: Family Matters, The Bill Cosby Show, Girlfriends. The people on there weren’t poor my socialization was not nearly as stratified in terms of economic conditions.</p>
<p>^^ Jayay, I wonder if the OP has relatives. I doubt his or her relatives are this naive about society.</p>
<p>Actually other people do have those views, I was talking to some of my friends about engineering salaries one day and the starting salary was about 60K and even they thought it was low.</p>
<p>Your most likely white upper-class friends?
Expand your friend group a little and you’ll see you guys are truly in the minority.</p>
<p>And right, surely you have relatives that could fill you in? All of your relatives are rich? Your grandparents never endured any hardship?</p>
<p>My friends are actually mostly Asian or white, I do have 3 black friends but their fathers are an engineer manager, a doctor, and a businessman respectively (Idk what their mothers do, but one I think teaches dance or something). The parents of my white and asian friends are mostly businessmen or businesswomen, except one.</p>
<p>Dbate, I grew up watching Family Matters, The Crosby Show, In Living Color, and other black sitcoms. While they have shown the more creative and positive sides of black family life, our parents still taught us that social inequality exists. By the time I applied for college, I was not ignorant of my surroundings and knew such terms such as racial profiling, insurance discrimination (“redlining”), etc. I have also been a victim of racial discrimination because a teacher thought I was academically stupid when he knew nothing about my background. This happened to me when I was 15 years old. </p>
<p>You chose to focus on shows that were not based on reality. They were good entertainment, but the world is not that perfect. Where are your cousins, grandparents, aunts/uncles…?</p>