For the past several years, I've been really interested in understanding economic freedom, opportunity, mobility, and inequality. I tend to usually put the "why" together later on these things, and I had a moment yesterday that began to tie everything together in a single narrative for me. It was like a rush of mental clarity that came all of a sudden, but was really a culmination of searching for quite some time. Why was I so naturally gravitated towards this problem and why had my curiosity not faded out like it usually does with other topics?
Allow me to give you a personal story, a "100 years of Solitude" moment in my own life that has led me to pursue the path I am on.
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My family origins are from a small village, Gaggar Kalan, in the State of Punjab in Pakistan where my ancestors have resided for 100s of years. Gaggar, as we mostly refer to it, has a few hundred citizens mostly living in concrete homes in a tightly packed orientation. There are multiple mosques, where local committees meet to discuss various topics that pertain to the daily challenges of the village. The village is surrounded by arable land and used to be the bedrock of the economy of surrounding communities for generations.
But, there is only so much opportunity in a small agrarian village to support an ever-growing family, and rising standards of living. It is not uncommon for men to reach a certain age and emigrate to a nearby city like Rawalpindi, Lahore, or even as far as Delhi to find opportunities for income to support the family; that is precisely what my grandfather did. He was able to land a job as a chauffeur for a parliamentary figure in pre-partition India; that money was used to raise 7 children, the youngest of them being my father.
Continuing the trend of emigration, my father immigrated to the United States in the late 70s for precisely the same reason as his father had...in search of better opportunities that weren't available to him in his local area. There wasn't much family here, but he found a home in Jackson Heights, New York and frankly, if you ask him those were the best years of his life! He did odd jobs in NY like bussing tables at a restaurant, working at a VHS store, and ultimately ended up in the taxi business, the holy grail of immigrant NYC jobs, for over a decade. This allowed him to find stable income, marry my mother back home, have children, and immigrate his family to the United States over a course of almost 14 years.
This series of events allowed for my sister and I to grow up in the United States, and get a quality education without the burden of having to support the family financially at a young age, which is all too common in developing nations. That quality education led to both my sister and I to pursue careers we are both passionate about, but most importantly explore life outside of productive labor. We had higher social freedoms than my parents did.
What brought it all together for me yesterday, and may seem like a really simple thing to many who may not have been in these circumstances. I went skiing for the first time ever at the age of 28 last weekend, and yesterday, my niece went skiing for the first time ever at the age of 4. Skiing wasn't a possibility in my life at the age of 4, I'm not claiming that my family was dirt poor and we couldn't afford basic necessities, but honestly, it was most of what we could afford. My parents worked extremely hard to be able to put my sister and I in the position we are in today, but we didn't always have excess money to take expensive holidays or pick up expensive hobbies. Heck, I don't even know how to swim for this exact same reason! But, this is NOT true for my niece who because of the efforts and sacrifices of those before her, she is able to experience certain things that were unimaginable to me at a young age. She has certain social freedoms that I never did, and that is truly a beautiful multi-generational story.
My grandfather and father recognized the value of economic opportunities and how it would provide a better life for the successive generations. And I have personally been a beneficiary of their sacrifice. Though this story isn't just limited to me! I have over 60 family members who have gone or are going through this exact same scenario today. Starting from a simple position but, working hard in an environment that most of the time provides just compensation for those working to improve their conditions. But, more importantly, have opportunities of upwards mobility, if they so choose. I've witnessed my family also struggled to shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset because the financial conditions changed so rapidly. For immigrant children this seems like a commonplace story, but we are in the minority here.
This same situation that my family was able to leverage is not true for everyone in the world. Not everyone has the means or the luck to immigrate to a nation that provides opportunity. My life would be very different if my father remained in Pakistan. And I don't want to take away from those that work hard in developing nations to provide for their family, but the opportunity gap between the two nations is very large. Economic Freedom is not only about higher wages, better jobs, but it is also about being able to maximize your personal capabilities, for a writer to be able to write and not be stuck laying bricks because of lack of economic choices.
This recognition that I am a product of luck, hard work, and geographic circumstance led me to explore why opportunities are available to some and not to others. I won't go into depth today on why this happens, or what we can do about it, that will likely come in the future. Though, I'm strongly convinced that there is an incredible shift happening where opportunities will be a lot more globalized and more but, not completely independent of one's location.
Want to learn more about Economic Freedom and why it is so important to understand and improve, learn more here.