There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory… Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
— Elizabeth Warren, candidate for US Senate, as quoted by The New Republic
And to the litany of help that the so-called ‘self-made’ person received, we could add the fortune of being born in a beneficial place, in a beneficial era, of a thousand small practicalities that shape us or encourage us or teach us or allow us to do something extraordinary, and the good health to ‘make’ ourselves.
