John Catsimatidis
Apr. 3rd, 2015 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sathorJohn C., as we'll call him, happens to be the owner and a board member of United Refining Company. Today, while I was conversing with one of my friends, I decided to look up a little info on him (I get huge kicks out of reading "early life and career" sections of wikipedia articles on rich, famous, and powerful people - Rick started this whole deal with Karl Rove today.)
Currently, his Networth is 3.1 Billion dollars. I'm fairly certain he's a Forbes 500.
He was born on a small Greek island, and his parents moved to the US when he was 6 months old (NYC/Harlem.) He graduated from a NYC public high school specializing in engineering, mathematics and science (they have those? My public school specialized in nothing, and barely had any funding whatsoever. We had books printed in the mid 80s.) His father worked as a busboy. John C. received a congressional nomination to West Point (presumably, his parents weren't natural born citizens and had no connections - this is where things get fishy.) but instead of attending West Point, he went to college to study electrical engineering. He worked at a grocery store with his uncle "Tony" (Mafia anyone?) at this time. About the time he was entering his second year of university, Tony sold him half of the store (and he paid for this how?) he then proceeded to purchase another grocery store immediately after that. He dropped out of university. Within a couple years, he had bought a few more stores.
Wikipedia quotes him as saying that by the time he was 24, he was earning 1 million dollars a year (in 1972.)
Now even with as few details as this, I want to point out - this is a story of what essentially amounts to winning the lottery, or, alternatively, criminal enterprise. The idea that a 19-20 year old could afford to purchase half of a store in a major US city (or have the credit to do so?) is by itself, questionable. But to be able to nearly immediately after that purchase a /whole store/ and then within two years after that, purchase numerous more - and be making 1 million/year within five years...is literally insane. It's impossible, by the rules, okay? I don't think there's any question in that.
There's things left out of this story - like how maybe his parents were incredibly wealthy already and footed the bill (and his dad never was a busboy.) Or how he traded oil illegally with the Russian mafia to get started (heard that story from an old-timer at United.)
I really do reckon, and I really do -truly- believe, that most people who end up like Catsimatidis had a lot more on their side than good ol' determination and willpower to succeed. A hell of a lot more. And one needn't look far to see examples of individuals with a hell of a lot of intelligence and potential who can't even get a foot off the ground.
If you ask me nowadays, I'd tell you - life is mostly a lottery. There are things you can learn and skills you can build, and friends you can make, in the limited amount of time you have here...but there's no telling how any of it is gonna work out. Especially when you're young and can't see the forest for the trees, anyway. Some people have stacked decks, and some people have terrible hands.
We're not even close to a meritocracy, but there are those who will try to convince you that we are. I'm not sure a society based on merit is even possible, anyway - people are always going to give special privileges to friends and family, and being born with wealth makes a whole slew of things easier in life. A lot of the kids I knew who grew up in poverty...never even had a sliver of hope to get out of it. They'll be lucky if, in this economy, they can even do as well as their neglectful parents did.
Currently, his Networth is 3.1 Billion dollars. I'm fairly certain he's a Forbes 500.
He was born on a small Greek island, and his parents moved to the US when he was 6 months old (NYC/Harlem.) He graduated from a NYC public high school specializing in engineering, mathematics and science (they have those? My public school specialized in nothing, and barely had any funding whatsoever. We had books printed in the mid 80s.) His father worked as a busboy. John C. received a congressional nomination to West Point (presumably, his parents weren't natural born citizens and had no connections - this is where things get fishy.) but instead of attending West Point, he went to college to study electrical engineering. He worked at a grocery store with his uncle "Tony" (Mafia anyone?) at this time. About the time he was entering his second year of university, Tony sold him half of the store (and he paid for this how?) he then proceeded to purchase another grocery store immediately after that. He dropped out of university. Within a couple years, he had bought a few more stores.
Wikipedia quotes him as saying that by the time he was 24, he was earning 1 million dollars a year (in 1972.)
Now even with as few details as this, I want to point out - this is a story of what essentially amounts to winning the lottery, or, alternatively, criminal enterprise. The idea that a 19-20 year old could afford to purchase half of a store in a major US city (or have the credit to do so?) is by itself, questionable. But to be able to nearly immediately after that purchase a /whole store/ and then within two years after that, purchase numerous more - and be making 1 million/year within five years...is literally insane. It's impossible, by the rules, okay? I don't think there's any question in that.
There's things left out of this story - like how maybe his parents were incredibly wealthy already and footed the bill (and his dad never was a busboy.) Or how he traded oil illegally with the Russian mafia to get started (heard that story from an old-timer at United.)
I really do reckon, and I really do -truly- believe, that most people who end up like Catsimatidis had a lot more on their side than good ol' determination and willpower to succeed. A hell of a lot more. And one needn't look far to see examples of individuals with a hell of a lot of intelligence and potential who can't even get a foot off the ground.
If you ask me nowadays, I'd tell you - life is mostly a lottery. There are things you can learn and skills you can build, and friends you can make, in the limited amount of time you have here...but there's no telling how any of it is gonna work out. Especially when you're young and can't see the forest for the trees, anyway. Some people have stacked decks, and some people have terrible hands.
We're not even close to a meritocracy, but there are those who will try to convince you that we are. I'm not sure a society based on merit is even possible, anyway - people are always going to give special privileges to friends and family, and being born with wealth makes a whole slew of things easier in life. A lot of the kids I knew who grew up in poverty...never even had a sliver of hope to get out of it. They'll be lucky if, in this economy, they can even do as well as their neglectful parents did.
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Date: 2015-04-10 12:55 am (UTC)Until we get election reform, elections aren't going to be much good, but I think we will get it, because even some of the GOP are beginning to rebel against their corporate masters now. Inequality has been as bad as this in our nation before, and been redressed - the rich may be greedy but they're not stupid; sick, unhappy workers and impoverished customers are bad for business, and revolution is bad for everybody.
I'm afraid it is going to have to be by government mandate - government meaning We, the People expressing our collective will through the elected representatives who work for all of us, not just the richest 1%. Those plutocrats aren't going to voluntarily give up their ill-gotten gains - they'll yield only what the law requires them to yield, and they'll fight the reversal of Reaganomics as hard as they can. But they are a tiny minority of US citizens, and they do not get to hold all the rest of us hostage to their power-agendas indefinitely.
Thoreau said "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Kurt Vonnegut said, "Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything." I think both quotes have some truth in them, but they're not the whole truth. I knew both those quotes before I was 12, too, and had read enough grown-up literature to have had 'fair warning' - if such warnings ever did any good to someone without experience enough to understand them.
My life is comparatively excellent. So is yours, I daresay, if you compare your life to that of the majority of people on this planet, rather than to the super-rich 1%. But being smart, capable, good-looking and a good person is no guarantee of anything - and whoever told you you'd have "no problem" was an idiot, because everyone everywhere has problems. It's like Terry Pratchett (RIP) said: “If you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
I expect you got caught up in the Self-Esteem fad in education, where kids were constantly told how special and wonderful they were for doing ordinary things. That whole ploy back-fired - it either turned kids into entitled brats, or set them up (like you) to be discouraged when they discovered that their alleged wonderful specialness plus $2.00 would get them a cup of coffee in the Real World.
It wasn't meant to be cruel, but it kind of turned out that way - because you're right; life is hard even for the young, smart, healthy, pretty and privileged, let alone for those who are none of those things, viz. most of the human race. Children deserve at least a heads-up about what's to come, and they also deserve to be taught perseverence, because at the end of the day, it's the person who keeps running longest who wins the race.
Of course, there has to be a goal; running randomly in different directions doesn't avail in a race. If one doesn't choose a goal, or if one's goal is to remain free to run randomly in any direction one pleases, naturally the people who do have fixed goals will be tearing past like the wind. No point in envying them, or in pitying them either.
Continued again...