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Homeless Student Is Intel Talent Search Semifinalist
An anonymous reader writes "Samantha Garvey, a senior at Brentwood High School, has managed to become one of the remaining 300 semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search this year. Her research focused on mussels and on her discovery that they change the thickness of their shells if a predator such as crabs are introduced. Why is Garvey's achievement so impressive? Because she and her entire family are homeless, and rely on a local homeless shelter. Such a situation would stop many students from being able to focus on studying, let alone a research project, but Garvey has instead used her situation as motivation."
This is the first time in my life that a homeless person made me feel like a loser.
You guys over there need more homeless people.
Je me souviens.
Well done of her to rise up and be counted. Amazingly, despite everything thrown at her by people who would go so far as to condemn her for the social and financial position of her family, she's using it as self-motivation. Has to be cruel to be homeless and one of the National School Lunch Program kids in a world where many children go out of their way (starving effectively) to hide the shame of their family's misfortune.
Any candidates for public office feel like giving her parents some employment or shall we go the usual route, use her as an example the American Dream isn't dead, yet, and then abandon them for the next popular thing on the campaign trail?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The summary says her research is based on her family living arrangements. Is she planning on growing a shell or something?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
So are all homeless people geniuses or have they just stumbled across one homeless person who happens to have a brilliant mind and extrapolated that finding to all homeless people?
America (I'm addressing you as a whole).
How is it that you allow young people, let alone whole families, to be homeless, to live in "shelters".
WTF is wrong with you people?!
You are supposedly the most powerful nation on earth, the wealthiest, the nation that is spoken to exude opportunity and success from every pore.
And you have whole families, school children, living in homeless shelters.
I don't care how they came to be in the situation, it doesn't matter how that happened, what matters is resolving it, providing the social, housing, and financial support to ensure that every body can call somewhere home.
For every one remarkable individual like this who manages to overcome the adversity, I hate to think how many are dragged down by the circumstance.
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She seriously does have the cutest smile. The grin she was wearing in the photo with the article about this at KSL was the highlight of my day. Smart and photogenic is a good combo. She will go far.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
She's a semifinalist. I hope Intel's judgement of her research isn't affect by the press coverage. It would suck for someone else's superior research to get shafted because he wasn't lucky enough to be appealing as a human-interest story.
On a similar vien, this is why you see more hardworking asian students (or first generation students who are forced to work hard by their parents)!? Once you are privy to poverty (even if you are not poor yourself) and have seen a better life out there.. you'll give your life to hang on to it.
The linked article kind of doesn't mention that her family was in the shelter for all of a week earlier this month. Still a nice accomplishment, but none of the work she did was done while she was in the shelter.
She's a semifinalist. I hope Intel's judgement of her research isn't affect by the press coverage. It would suck for someone else's superior research to get shafted because he wasn't lucky enough to be appealing as a human-interest story.
Check out her pictures. I know when I was in a high school science fair, being attractive won out over superior research. I'm guessing it's still the same. Oh and my research project sucked. It was seeing other classmates with better projects lose to her smile that taught me a valuable lesson. Good PR is usually trumps good science.
... and an abysmal failure by our society.
Check your premises.
I think the obvious choice would be for Intel to toss her an education, no matter how things play out. They almost certainly have a philanthropic element to their accounting, so funding a beautiful homeless poster child's education can only yield positive PR. I mean, it's gotta be better than turning her away, only to have the press find her as a smack-whore doing some Intel exec, two years from now. Homeless women have very few options.
My first thought as well. Women's best path if they look at least as good as her is to learn the ways of being sweet to and pleasuring male clients, and exploiting their best years (starting at her age) as escorts. Marry a sucker around 30, maybe sooner if she's hooked a good prospect, all the while saving for her future. Have a kid, divorce the guy, collect alimony.
This "talent contest" is cute, and a nice way to get PR for Intel. It, of course, works for those who win the contest, but it suffers from a major problem of scope in terms of being something to aspire to.
That problem is the superstar mentality. It's seen in sports, and it's being brought into all other areas as well. The slightest hint of musical talent? Maybe your son will be the next Curtis Jackson! Your son tops the scoreboards of a public server in Quake? If Jonathan Wendel can brand himself into a success, why can't your little Jimmy?
The problem, though obvious and following directly from material in the first day of Econ 101, must still be explicitly spelled out and repeated again and again: expected value. Either you take the +EV move and build a comfortable life, or you roll the dice. Ever the worse for instilling the rationality of the choice, too, if that 1 in 10,000 chance actually pays off, because, behold, there the camera is: focused on the winner, and not the 9999 Walmart employees.
Samantha deserves to get the credit for not letting distractions others have created around her from stopping her desire to forge ahead.
That is the American spirit alive and well in the U.S. It is the spirit that entrepreneurs must have to try and try again, as not all efforts succeed.
Being homeless is so easy to have happen if one or two key earning parents get laid off and can't downsize quickly enough in a major downturn. It is not possible for everyone to come out whole. It is just the enforced position you sometimes get thrown into when economic events flip you upside down.
>Such a situation would stop many students from being able to focus on studying, let alone a research project, but Garvey has instead used her situation as motivation.
Ah, I see we're going with the "X was successful despite his/her obstacles, so those with the same obstacle have no one but themselves to blame" angle.
Welcome to America, where they celebrate people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps but never question why that was necessary in the first place.
You are supposedly the most powerful nation on earth, the wealthiest, the nation that is spoken to exude opportunity and success from every pore.
And many of my fellow Americans also insist that we're a Christian Nation too.
We're are a people of denial and hypocrisy. There are going to be many many people who point to this girl and use it as justification for their opinion that the homeless are there because they just don't work hard enough and aren't worthy.
This girl pulled herself by her bootstraps, after all; therefore all the poor just need to do with this little girl did.
You sir are an idiot. Romney is a RINO candidate running on the republican platform. Not a libertarian. Also, most libertarians will tell you that big government and laziness are two of our big problems, but not our only problems.
And to make sure this post actually has something to do with the topic at hand, and isn't just two anonymous assclowns talking politics; I like to believe that regardless of party no one likes the idea of families, or children having to live on the street. Any good person wants to find a solution to homelessness, we just disagree on route to take.
I seriously doubt that crabs change the thickness of their shells in the presence of predators. Rather, I bet the predators change the kind of shell that is dominant in the population of crabs.
It is likely the case that the predators are more easily able to eat the crabs with thinner shells, thereby increasing the percentage of crabs with thicker shells in the remaining population, and those remaining crabs with thicker shells produce offspring that also have the same kind of shells (or perhaps even thicker shells in a few cases).
Evolution, folks. Variation. Selection.
"American spirit?" It's every person's desire to change their station in life regardless of nationality. You're branding it with a blindly patriotic mindset.
One word: leverage.
Because we use debt financing for home ownership, the whole economy depends on rising home prices.
The country was quite prosperous when newly stolen lands were given to settlers, and when anybody could use their own wits to build houses on cheap land without permit or inspection. Many of those "sloppy, unprofessional" homes still stand today. I doubt we will be able to say the same of our debt financed, permitted, inspected crackerboxes.
But, I digress. Until we make the housing business more like the PC business (cheaper and better every year and yet the companies still prosper) we will continue to have this problem.
I'm no Ron Paul fan, and those who call for monetary revolution frankly make me sick (ammor hoarders, blah, blah) but at the same time we really may need a hard reset to pull this off.
Unfortunately, the idea that you have to buy the house all at once and go into debt for it is so deeply entrenched in people's minds that they can't grasp the obvious solution. I'm talking about non-leveraged REITs. It really is that simple. Banking as we know it would be radicly diffferent. REIT shares could float freely as a complementary currency. You'd simply save in shares and earn rent instead of interest. A drop in housing prices against some other complementary currency would be welcomed since it would allow you to accumulate shares more quickly and/or compound your rents more quickly. In fact, if most contracts and prices were in REIT shares it would be like regular inflation or deflation; constrained by the fact that you can't print houses or easily render land valueless.
. Unlike contemporary REITs, leverage would be barred so bankruptcy of the REIT could only come through absolute disaster such as the burning of an entire city. Diversifying to a nationwide system solves that problem.
As several others have pointed out, the family is back in a home today. Hopefully they can stay in this one. In and out of shelters seems to be a trend for the family. http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/intel-semifinalist-samantha-garvey-gets-bay-shore-home-1.3449717?obref=obinsite
WHY is her family homeless? You're telling me that New York State... one of the bluest in the country, with high taxes and lots of money going to social services... doesn't have public housing and rent assistance? This seems to be an ongoing situation with her family, not something just happened suddenly. We're not getting the whole story here.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Thanks for reinforcing the stereotype that Americans don't think about facts before they start screaming "We're #1!"
In this case, we are 33rd out of 36.
Remember that providing a safety net for people doesn't mean that they get to have everything they did prior to needing it, or anything like that. Shelters -are- a safety net. They are a place you can go when you have no place else. That doesn't mean they are wonderful, but they are a place to stay for no charge.
While that's horribly sexist and a generally cynical and unpleasant way of looking at the world, I have to admit you have a point. Yes, what you have described is a legitimate career path to becoming a rich and influential woman. I'd imagine that most of us (trolls aside) would prefer to live in a world where all women find a fulfilling and challenging career in, say, science or the arts rather than thinly veiled prostitution, but the fact that the career path you describe even exists is a pretty damning view of western society.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Let's hear your great idea on how to fix homelessness. The GP made a very valid point: It is everywhere, including countries that are far more socialist than the US. It seems that humans haven't figured out a way to fix it. So maybe we shouldn't whine so much about needing to fix it because maybe we can't. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have safety nets (like, say, shelters) but this crap of "Oh how come America hasn't fixed homelessness?" is stupid.
If you've got some magic fix for it, then let's hear it. If not then quit with the "America should be able to fix it!"
It is one of those things that you can work on, we should work on, and we do work on. It isn't something you can solve. So bitching that it hasn't been is stupid.
Of course, one also has to deal with the violence, theft, abuse, disease, and filth that often goes along with them.
When there's space available.
Check your premises.
Actually it's not that surprising. It would be more surprising if this person was middle class.
Why?
The Middle class are complacent. They've got just enough to keep them happy. Not enough to make them really want to rule the world, and not so little that they really had to work hard for it.
Despite being poor, they do have the advantage of learning to work hard and appreciate everything. I know it's not a horribly PC thing to say, but it is the reality.
You take your average poor kid and your average middle class kid and you'll probably find that the poor kid will work a little harder. Try a little more
Now they may have less opportunity and less resources, but when they get them, they're much less likely to waste them.
On the flip side you'd expect rich people to be really lazy, but that's not the case. Upper class/rich people have power and status dreams which drive them that middle class people don't have. Middle class people would like those things, but they often see them as fantasies, not really attainable.
Rich people got it, and they don't want to lose it.
wow, Samantha Garvey lives about 30 minutes from my house
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/absolute-poverty/
In terms of absolute poverty, we're one of the highest in the West, and all of the other nations on the list provide universal health care.
In either case, it's safe to stay that Americans have some of the worst income inequality out of any country, and among similar Western nations, are in the bottom 10% when it comes to relative poverty rates, absolute poverty rates, child poverty rates, health care, and education. If you'd like to be proud of that, you're welcome to, but I'm certainly not.
Patriotism is doing meaningful things to improve the lives of your fellow citizens, not pretending a problem doesn't exist to make yourself feel better about your country.
So do you turn away anyone with a criminal record, disease or unclean from a shelter? Look at hotel rooms - for some amount of money, you can have a nice room, multiple more modest rooms or multiple rooms serviced less often. The tradeoffs for shelters generally skew toward accommodating as many as possible and it is hard to argue with that.
They may not like it but they don't care enough to do anything constructive about it - so fuck you. And no, I'm not the AC you replied to. Incidentally, he never said Romney was a libertarian, so, sir, you can't fucking read properly. Douche. Assclown.
That there are 299 semifinalists likely from wealthy families, likely did their work in a gov't or university research lab or likely from a corporate internship, likely had a mentor, some expert, friends...or.... daddy helped them.
Folks it's sad that 1 of them did the work all by themselves. OK, the homeless thing shows how exceptional she is, that she can do the work AND overcome her lacking environment, but there is always one exceptional person in these situations. It's because we judge them against "our own environment" and likely look back and say things like 'we take our situation for granted', or 'we are so fortunate'.
There are some realities in life, that there are homeless-poor people or nurtured-wealthy people in this society. All I see in the article is "X' man burden syndrome" and Intel's PR exploitation. I hope she doesn't get sucked into the "corporate poster child" club as I see most winners of any science competition fall into... I know, I studied with Meyerhoff scholars, as well as work with a few BellLabs winners (from the 80's) and all I can say is 'where's the innovation?' (crickets). The article helps Intel far more than her.
Congrats to her, she just made it into the club the hard way, not like the rest of us I'm sure. Will it help Intel, of course. Will it change her life? I hope so for the better. Will it change the fact people are homeless for a reason? No.
as we allow more families to become homeless then will learn that they have to go that extra mile to achieve.
It's important to not provide help of any sort to anybody at anytime or they'll just turn into degenerate slackers.
America ! Fuck yeah !
Absolute statements are never true
Huh?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Not sure whether I should mod you down troll or redundant...
You are probably the kind of person that bemoans any kind of societal assistance for people claiming that people's destiny are in their own hands and then turns around and speculates that anyone who lifts themselves up can only did so because of special consideration. Way to be part of the problem on both ends.
Really?
The homeless rate amoungst school kids is about 2.2%:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/1213/Homeless-children-at-record-high-in-US.-Can-the-trend-be-reversed
There were 300 semifinalists. This means that all other things considered equal, there should be 7 homeless semifinalists.
Of course, given the situations that homeless kids are in, I wouldn't at all expect that other things should be considered equal, and that it would be extremely surprising to find the same distribution for such achievers between homeless and non-homeless kids.
With that said, though, one semifinalist is not at all surprising.
Especially with what's being done to the middle and working classes in this nation.
Check your premises.
I'd imagine that most of us (trolls aside) would prefer to live in a world where all women find a fulfilling and challenging career in, say, science or the arts rather than thinly veiled prostitution, but the fact that the career path you describe even exists is a pretty damning view of western society.
Er, no, it's a natural part of humanity. There has never been a society without prostitution. There will never be a society without prostitution. If you're appalled by the facts of life,it generally means there's something wrong with you, rather than the species. Women have been guided into their role/behavior through millions of years of natural selection (as have men, for that matter) - the moralistic musings of a handful of half-civilized primates isn't going to change that.
Maybe your son will be the next Curtis Jackson!
Who?
Required reading for internet skeptics
Did being homeless cause her to grow a thicker skin?
You are probably the kind of person who has never heard of a troll.
Because it's a stupid question. It's necessary to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps unless you get lucky, work hard, or had a relative who did the same.
See, this life isn't easy. Shit doesn't get handed to you. You're seriously pretending there's a "question" as to why someone should have to work hard to advance in life?
Thank got our forefathers down through history didn't ask this asinine fucking question, or they would have been all "Meh, we're fine. Let's just all take care of eachother, don't work too hard out there developing new and better ways to do things!".
Homeless at Brentwood High School.
Kinda like unemployed on a 10,000 a month retirement.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I find it pretty disgusting that a student and her family have to rely on homeless shelters for survival in a first world country. They should have social services available that allow families with children to have a consistent place to live.
Few and far between are people who are really cut out for critical thinking, and fewer still are those who have any interest in using the skill.
Just as some people consider jogging and/or weight lifting to be laborious unpleasant activities better avoided, most people consider evidence-gathering, attention-paying, and big-picture-seeing to be undesirable uses of time. They bob along through life avoiding thought and reflection as much as they possibly can.
Some of them go to school, memorize a bunch of facts, learn a trade, and consider themselves educated. Some of them become successful engineers or what-have-you. They do not, however, seek to have their comfort-bringing beliefs challenged, and they engage in all kinds of irrational defense when someone attempts to do it for them.
They don't want to know the truth. They have no interest. And they outnumber us overwhelmingly.
They are easy to manipulate, and so they are manipulated right into the same social hierarchies again and again (as the briefest review of history will demonstrate).
Thoughtlessness is what brought us here...the thoughtlessness of the many which renders moot the actions of the thoughtful few.
All of this has happened before and it will all happen again.
You seem to have brought some baggage in with you. In what way is a mentally ill person to blame for their mental illness? Perhaps if we would treat the illness, they would in return become productive citizens. Perhaps if there was a better safety net with opportunities to get going again they wouldn't be jaded. They may be damaged beyond repair, but they almost certainly had help getting that way.
I never suggested that you could, should or that you even have anything to give to anyone. I merely suggested that you consider not looking down on them. Is that such an awful lot?
Has anyone thought about what the person referred in the article would feel if she were to read some of the comments here?
You're SO missing the poster's point.
He's not saying people shouldn't have to work.
He's making a comment about the psychopathic leveraging of the system so that the playing field is so uneven as to ensure a steady supply of slaves at the bottom for the shitheads at that top to use and abuse.
And taking care of each other doesn't prevent people from doing new and better things. Not by a long shot.
Have you never experienced moments of creative inspiration?
The greatest inventors and innovators in the world worked because they loved it first. The business strategy came second.
It should come as no surprise that people who don't understand this also fail in the compassion department.
You need a soul to experience such things.
This post reflects a severe misunderstanding of what happens when alcohol addiction takes hold.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
...a better title might be "Intel Talent Search Semifinalist Student Is Homeless"
She's a semifinalist. I hope Intel's judgement of her research isn't affect by the press coverage. It would suck for someone else's superior research to get shafted because he wasn't lucky enough to be appealing as a human-interest story.
Not coincidentally, that line gets spoken by people whose research really, truly does suck. Even if it doesn't, semifinalists don't exactly drop off the planet. The kid can grow his heart a few sizes that day.
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
You could have made the same arguments for slavery a couple hundred years ago.
She probably writes better English than that too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
name a CAPITALIST country that does not have homeless people. that ill does not exist in socialist countries.
Read radical news here
Yes, let's try to explain it again to you... And Norway is the perfect example. You see, the people who are homeless in Norway are either; people who don't want a home (serious drug addicts, crazy people, etc) or people who are 'tourists' (gypsies, etc, that come to beg and/or steal). Anyone who wants a home gets one. Every. Single. One. Might not be the best of residences, and often you spend time in temporary dormitories and such until they find something more permanent. Even the worst of heroin addicts can get a place to live, only thing is many don't want the help. The other group, those who are here on tourist visa, they have their own country to seek help from.
THE ONLY PLACE AFFLICTED WITH 'PEOPLE WONT WORK' ILL IS AMERICA. there is NO such problem in other parts of the world. and in america, that is your excuse to dodge social responsibility.
that family is homeless because of fucktards like you. why dont you go back to 1950s to fornicate with mccarthy, or, maybe just die out ?
Read radical news here
just stop making up fucking excuses will you. when will be the time in which you will finally realize that this is a problem that is created by your system's artificial scarcity amidst all that wealth, and not something related to any excuse.
Read radical news here
Huh huh. Heh heh. Bone.
i skimmed the comments, and over 50% of the comments are americans finding excuses or rationalizing homelessness.
tells a lot about why that country is in that knee deep shit as it is.
there is a hole in the roof of the house, half of household is getting wet, but the other half is making excuses and rationalizations about how hole will be magically self-fixed, or how there are holes in other roofs too, or how getting wet incentivizes people to 'work', or how the people getting wet in a fucking house with a hole in its roof are 'lazy'. its your fucking house.
let me tell you : this is stupid. escapist. lazy. self-centered. and will eventually bite YOU in your ass, which deserves it soo much.
Read radical news here
The OCED members Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland all say hello and laugh at your nonsense...
Your Mom must want someone to mentor.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
well up until very recently, the homeless were the lazy, entitlement seeking, dirty, smelly, socialist, parasitic trash.
That's what this is about, teaching us that "but for the grace of God, there would I be". Nobody learns that if only the lazy are unemployed.
well the math isn't necessarily bad, only the assumption that if all those people had degrees that the government would be making more money.
You only need 50 people or so to run a company that can design and release a super-hi-tech cellphone. Educating more to do the same isn't going to increase your tax revenue. If anything it could decrease your revenue because the new graduates will be hired in place of the existing 50 workers, at a lower cost to employ.
Having some familiarity with Intel and it's workalikes as an employer, I think I can say the selection process, while more competitive than your local best buy, probably is not as exclusive as a professional sports team. One could dedicate herself to studying math and science, rather than falling into prostitution, and have a very strong chance of being employed by Intel, or a tech company. Certainly offshoring and the devaluing of STEM trained individuals has had a negative impact on the industry, but many of us have managed to voluntarily leave our jobs, and get new jobs in this industry even during the deepest depths of recession.
I won't deny that prostitution is a perhaps more noble career choice than working the welfare system over for handouts, but I think you swung well past considered realism and are deep into pessimism.
Having been in shelters for roughly six months, I can tell you that probably two-thirds of the occupants are there because of themselves, or because of some mental condition. I've met a few that have had genuinely bad luck and have had little say in the matter, but they generally don't 'stay down' long, because they actually have the motivation to get out of the hole. The parents with kids that are there are usually the ones that assumed they'd be just fine starting a family, even though they were barely scraping by already.
The stereotype of panhandling-by-the-corner-all-day-so-I-can-buy-booze-and-smokes isn't *always* true, clearly not in TFA anyway, but if you look at the majority of shelter residents that have been there 3+ years, it's usually the case.
Once Samantha is able to get out on her own I'm sure she'll be able to climb the ladder fairly quickly, but if you're still underage then you can't really do anything about the situation you're in, because that responsibility is supposed to be with your parents.
On an unrelated note,
I find it funny that being homeless was the first time in my life I had internet access faster than 56k.
And as such, she probably became a semifinalist because of her STATUS, not her level of competency or her intellect. I know I'll be downvoted for this, but honestly, has anyone else EVER encountered someone that was promoted or rewarded with something they didn't deserve JUST because they were a minority?
This is a perfect case of an inferior human being getting a reward that it just doesn't deserve. Next thing you know, homeless people will be asking us for the rights to drive, vote, eat in the same restaurants as housed people, and marry housed people. Don't let this happen. We can stop this now.
I recommend we either bury her up to her head in sand and stone her to death, or we find 20-30 housed men and have them gang-rape her. That'll teach her to try and associate with our kind.
Are you comparing prostitution to slavery? Prostitution is not slavery.
In Soviet Russia... NOBODY was homeless.
You're already my Friend; I would Friend you again for that post. It is critically important to view the world as it is, not as one wishes it to be.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
You could have made the same arguments for slavery a couple hundred years ago.
We still have slavery, so you can leave out the "couple hundred years ago" part.
Criminalizing slavery allows people the freedom to chose who they wanted to work for, and what kind of work they wanted to do; criminalizing prostitution takes away that same right. I think your comparison is completely spurious. Slavery is the imposition of the will of a person or a group of people on another person or group. We didn't evolve to have subsets of the species which want to be slaves. If we had, I wouldn't object to slavery, either. I certainly wouldn't pass moral judgment on those who chose to work as slaves, nor would I express disgust with a society which gives them that option.
You're math doesn't take into account the inherent difficulty of those 2.2% being able to effectively do enough to make the final 300. There's no equal opportunity here because being homeless makes it harder for kids to focus and be successful. So that 2.2% doesn't quite fit, but nice try.
I might add especially the 1%ers who inherited their wealth.
The 1% who inherited their wealth are probably quickly spending their way into the bottom of the 99%, improving the lot of everyone along their way down.
If, on the other hand, they inherited a blind trust, then they aren't doing that, but then again, there isn't a lot of dynasty building going on these days. Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet aren't leaving the lion's share of their wealth to their children. They've already transferred large amounts over to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Andrew Carnegie didn't either: instead he spent the last 20 years of his life on philanthropic work, and endowed the Carnegie Corporation in order to continue that work. His only child, Margaret, inherited a tiny portion as a trust fund, and was on the board of the foundation.
You may remember Carnegie's establishment of free lending libraries in every county of the U.S., the endowment of Carnegie Mellon University, and about 1/4 of all the educational shows you've ever seen on PBS, among other works.
Just because someone accumulates a lot of wealth doesn't mean that the government would, or could, spend it more wisely, and it doesn't mean that if that wealth were divided among the masses that they would do so either.
The Carnegie free libraries have probably done more to advance knowledge, literacy, and education than anything the U.S. Government has ever done (aside from them not confiscating that money, enabling the libraries to be established without interference).
Some big works require uncommon foresight and vision, but that is usually not enough, unless they are accompanied by unusual resources, as well.
-- Terry
Take your pick:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Jackson_(American_football)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Jackson_(cricketer)
Let's turn your question around.
What meritous work do the 1% do to deserve the rapidly increasing and disproportionate chunk of the wealth that they get?
If we started from scratch with ten couples, each with 1,000 sqaure miles of land, wealth inequality would start immediately for the next generation. Assuming (without loss of generality) that inheritence is passed with equal weight to all children born of a given couple, next generation sole children will be twice as wealthy as those children with a sibling, and these will in turn be wealthier than children who number one of three, and so on. The deterioration of wealth is natural. Eventually we arrive at a time when most land owners get so poor in land, that disasters force them to sell off parcels of their land. Thus we eventually get a landless class of worker bees. Disasters such as the plague temporarily reversed this natural trending by creating labor shortages, and thus temporarily increasing the power of the working classes. Today we live in the age Power Laws, and lifetimes far exceed the time for major paradigm shifts. The network connectivity to planetary assets by the top percentiles far exceeds the tiers down below, and Moore's-like laws lead to increasingly disproportionate growth. All roads once led to Rome, but everyone still had to walk or ride horses at best. Today technology is in runaway self-criticality. Who will first be able to afford creating improved offspring and buy life extension technology as it takes off in the near future? The race will become more disproportionate. Barring some great Mad Max catastrophe, which I don't buy into (we're more likely to vanish entirely in a modern disaster, say jetting a killer virus across the globe at the speed of airlines, than pull off some Hollywood survival fantasy) it is likely already too late I suspect. The bulk of us have been run off the cliff. We just haven't struck the ground yet. Of course I hope I'm wrong.
She's also really hot. I mean REALLY hot in an incredibly cute sort of way.
It's crude, it's stereotyping, it's tasteless.
It's not funny at all !
I would like to apologize to Samantha.
The unfortunate circumstances of your family's current difficulties combined with your remarkable talent, hard work, and scientific mien means that the spotlight of the Internet and the mass media are going to put all of your hard work and effort in the shadow of your problems.
I apologize for the hundreds of people who will humiliate you in a well-meaning manner by heaping unasked for bags of canned goods or unwanted care packages, for the jealous asshole classmates who will use your family's problems to try and push you down and hurt you, for the thousands on thousands of pitying looks and inquiries about your family in the middle of every single serious presentation you give for the rest of your academic career.
We did that to you. We did it because we wanted a Cinderella story and you happened to be a bright enough diamond in the rough for us to exploit for a headline. I truly wish you could have been honored in a respectful manner that did not single you and your family out for being in difficult financial times. I am so very sorry that we make your beginnings more important than the new world you are trying to build. I'm sorry that we will drag your tragedy into the spotlight, crowding your triumph.
If it is any consolation, you will probably be a finalist if you don't win the whole thing. I wish that we had not made things so difficult for you for the next year or so while we forget about you. Maybe some other come-from-behind story will come along and let you step out of that terrible spotlight.
In the meantime, enjoy the scholarship you will undoubtedly get and remember that the awful glare of the public eye won't last forever - if you can learn to ignore the humiliation and the condescension you may be able to turn this momentum into something productive for your life and career. And at the very least, in a few years we will leave you alone and let you get back to your life and what you choose to make of it.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien