Lloyd Blankfein

My dad worked in the post office as a mail store.

Actually, he had been, I remember in earliest memories, bouts of unemployment with my dad, unhappiness around the table.

He got a job at the post office, civil service.

He took the night shift because it paid an extra 10% night differential.

And so unfortunately growing up, my dad worked nights.

I think he had also for part of the time, a part-time job during the day.

So I really wish I had remembered more conversations with him than I do.

But we grew up in that circumstance.

But by the way, so did everybody around us.

And so part of the genius of America is that probably that 85% of the country thinks they're in the middle class, believes they're in the middle class, for all practical purposes, given the minimum standard of living that we have, are in a kind of a middle class.

So

I didn't know what there was necessary to strive for, but I did know that I didn't like growing up in the projects, going to the high school that I went to in the neighborhood I lived in and the neighborhood I traveled to.

So I was very, very anxious to, from a very early age, leave and go to an out-of-town school.

That was my big objective as a kid growing up.

You know, I hadn't gotten around much.

Again, I went to... Again, I went... I didn't travel much.

I didn't get out much.

I was, you know, basically living, you know, in the projects with a lot of kids that were like me.

And guess what?

I think... I've never seen the sociological study.