Welcome to the Kwik-E-Mart of life

My mother recently came home from a trip to San Francisco with her Indian boyfriend. They went north to attend an Indian wedding, where apparently everyone was very rich.

Now I'd love to write a post about her boyfriend Chandra. Chandra's a great guy. I've always hoped my eventual step father would be able to hypnotize people on command and have several books on NLP. Actually, the only major complaint I have about him is that he is unable to charm snakes. But that's not the point of today.

The interesting thing was that my mother came home from San Francisco completely convinced that the American dream is possible. She's about this close to purchasing a 7-11 franchise, which she plans on using to earn her countless millions.

Now it should be pointed out that this is not a good plan for my mother, who couldn't sell turkey sandwiches to starving millionaires. But, it does provide an interesting insight into a social trend in the United States.

First, the "American Dream" is now being carried on by people who look nothing like the typical "American." The people dragging themselves up from the bottom by their bootstraps are cursing their bad luck not in English, but in Hindi, Farsi, Punjab and Korean.

Every time I hear someone talk about the number of foreigners in high-end positions in the business world, I'm reminded of a story my dad told me about a lecture given while he was at the Anderson School at UCLA.

A professor was explaining to the class about the impending competition between America and Japan. The gist of the story was, the Japanese will outwork any American business person. For the same pay, they'll work twice as hard.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in classes at school. The foreign exchange students from the asian "developing" countries such as China and India just outwork us. While Rick and Randy are planning which party they're drinking at Thursday, Rahim and Ravi are planning which exam they're studying for.

While people complain that the American education system is failing, they should look at the students rather than the system. No system can correct for failing inputs. If you put bad data into a computer, it will give you flawed results. The same is true for students who don't want to work hard. And why should they?

If a middle-class student barely skates through college, there's a good reason to believe that he or she will still achieve a middle class lifestyle. People rarely backslide economically. There's always mom and dad to live with for a while, and there's always the probability that some wealthy uncle will swoop in with a job offer.

But for the family that is just getting off the boat? There's motivation to work hard. They have to improve, because if they don't, there is a palpable consequence for poor performance.

Chandra's take on it all was as follows: "Americans look at a business opportunity and get out their calculator. Oh, I can make this much money and it's going to cost this much. Indians, we don't care. We say give me the business and we WILL make this much money."

If people are worried, they shouldn't be. It will always be like this. People at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder will always strive much harder to climb the ladder than someone who's at the middle.

It's a simple application of the law of diminishing returns. For someone whose family already pulls 6 figures a year, getting straight A's at a state school is unlikely to change that (and getting straight Bs will likely do nothing to harm that). For someone whose family lives 6 people in one bedroom, getting straight As at a state school is likely to push them into the middle class world they fantasize about.

This is why the class of people who make the world-class athletes for sports such as boxing continually changes. In the early part of the century, it was Irish, Italian and Jewish athletes. Now it's mostly non-european ethnic minorities, such as Blacks and Hispanics.

Put quite simply, you get out of something what you put into that something.