Success: Solo Achievement, Others' Support, or Luck?
Jenny Odell:
A 2012 Pew study found that 62 percent of U.S. respondents disagreed with the statement “Success in life is determined by forces outside our control.” The number of people who felt this way was lower in Spain, Britain, France, and Germany (where only 27 percent disagreed). Asked to choose between “freedom to pursue life’s goals without state interference” and “state guarantees nobody is in need,” the former won out in the United States 58 percent to 35 percent, with those numbers essentially reversed in the other four countries. In a 2017 study, compared to Democrats, U.S. Republicans predictably attributed a person’s wealth to their having “worked harder” versus their having “had advantages in life,” and they attributed their poverty to “lack of effort” over “circumstances beyond [their] control.
Saving Time, p. 51