“After all, if you just work hard everyone gets a shot at the middle class, right? Those left behind in a land of opportunity must be deficient or lazy or plain uninterested. But social mobility is not a train you get to board after you’ve scraped together enough for the ticket. You have to build the whole bloody enging. Some have nothing to work with expect a spoon and hand-me-down psychological distress.”
Rick Morton, One Hundred Years of Dirt, 2018, p58.