Thomas Friedman on hyper connectivity, the super wealthy and why being average won't get you far.

[HughBeaumont]

28. Why is it always us and ONLY us that has to "compete"?

Why does no one ever tell the wealthy, like they tell the rest of us, "Life is tough. You have to accept and know what it's like to fail; otherwise, you'll become complacent and never get anywhere"?

Why is there no notion of "Cooperation"? Everything has to be about a contest and it's done us zero good in 30 years.

The thing about it is, I don't need to hear "solutions" from a guy who's pretty much never really had to work hard to get where he is in life, never really had to struggle, has networking skills and fell into all the right jobs (and eventually, married the right person). I don't think a person such as that should deem himself such an authority as to what American workers have to do to better themselves. I might as well listen to an Ovarian Lottery winner like Steve Forbes on the subject; it'd make about as much sense.

Friedman always tends to ignore the giant-elephant factors of wage stagnation, astronomical college costs, unrealistic expectations of Corporate America, unrealistic odds of "Horatio Alger" type success and just plain-and-simple bad luck.