Quote Originally Posted by The Doctor View Post
What is the American Dream?

My father was a bricklayer and I went on the payroll of the company he worked for at the age of 11. I started my own masonry company at the age of twenty because I wanted to be more than a bricklayer. In so doing, my company supported a large number of other breadwinners and I felt a sense of responsibility to them. I later went into land sales because I wanted to raise my children myself and the masonry business afforded little time to be with them.

I have always wanted to have and be more than my predecessors, financially speaking, because I was taught there was a lot more room at the top than fighting it out in the blue collar workplace. If that's greed - then so be it.
As anyone at the top will tell you, it's never "enough" (Bill Gates just went to the top again yesterday, according to Forbes) and success, as the world calls it, is almost always shared with employees and service providers who directly benefit from these efforts. I'll call it free enterprise - epitomized. Call it greed if you want.
11? wow. I was just talking to someone yesterday about starting work when I was 13. Been working ever since. But 11? holy cow