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This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

thelastpsychiatrist.com

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Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#21

Post by bitwize »

starkfist wrote: post #18
narrator wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Greatest Generation" who guaranteed themselves the "Greatest Retirement" package. In the fairy tale, all the goods and services they consume will come from the magic money tree that the government fertilized somewhere with all the money they paid into social security. Back in reality land, a smaller population of heavily taxed and badly paid members of the Gen X and Gen Y cohort will have to change grandma's bed…

Considering they were born between 1901 and 1924, the Greatest Generation is mostly dead.

But not all dead! Mostly dead means slightly alive. All dead... well, there's only one thing you can do: go through their pockets and look for loose change.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#22

Post by jtbigwoo »

sliverstorm wrote: post #17

Just out of curiosity, the article derides the fact that his job search begins and ends in the morning- when I read that, I thought "well, you could certainly use the rest of the day for self-improvement- fitness, projects relevant to the job you want, volunteer work..." Is that a bad strategy, or when job hunting should you be pounding the pavement 24/7?

That was my thought, too. No matter how I feel about rejecting the insurance job, I can't deny that he's showing sufficient dedication to job hunting. The trouble is he doesn't seem to be showing any dedication to anything else. Why is he not tutoring or coaching little league? Why is he not learning something or building something?

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#23

Post by lanaer »

maukdaddy wrote: post #6
marze wrote: post #5

Great story. Parents encourage son to beat head against the closed doors of corporate america instead of encouraging him to becoming an entrepreneur. The author's conclusion: "I'm not here offering a solution for the 45 year old guy with three kids. I am offering encouragement to a crop of college kids infantilized by terrible advice from parents and TV who have the freedom and opportunity to try something; while sim…

um not quite so black & white. Scott isn't trying to become an entrepreneur right now...he's not doing shit. He either needs to get a job (40k whatever, it pays the bills) or start a damn company. edit: Or as one commenter said, get a corp job to save some $$$ while you work on something else on the side.

Right. The author is saying he should become an entrepreneur, and that his family should be advising him to do so.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#24

Post by cynicalkane »

yalurker wrote: post #13

Sigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless. From the article: "Were you smarter at 21 post college than your Dad was at 21? And whatever the difference, was it worth the $50k-$200k he paid to get you it?" Yes. Yes I was smarter. And I didn't pay 200k because I went to a state school. I graduated a wholly different person with a completely different world-view and a ton of appli…

I'm rather bothered by all the people knocking liberal arts degrees, in this and other threads. I did go to a school with a reputation for having a hard liberal arts core education, and it turned out to be a great decision. (In retrospect, I now wish I had gone to a different school, but the one I chose wasn't bad at all.)

It's hard to explain why it's good to be able to think about these things, but it's hard to explain why it's valuable to be able to think about math and programming (especially to a math class full of skeptical kids). Essentially, a good liberal arts education transforms your world-view of those subjects the same way a good engineering education does. Just like you shouldn't condemn yourself to reinventing Quicksort when you can be capable of more advanced algorithms, nor should you find yourself reinventing Locke when thinking about politics. It is much better to build on the history of thought instead of being doomed to repeat it (and you'll only repeat it satisfactorily if you're a genius anyway).

OK, there are worthless liberal arts educations. But there are also worthless computer science educations, as anyone who's worked with other programmers has discovered.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#25

Post by gaius »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #22
sliverstorm wrote: post #17

Just out of curiosity, the article derides the fact that his job search begins and ends in the morning- when I read that, I thought "well, you could certainly use the rest of the day for self-improvement- fitness, projects relevant to the job you want, volunteer work..." Is that a bad strategy, or when job hunting should you be pounding the pavement 24/7?

That was my thought, too. No matter how I feel about rejecting the insurance job, I can't deny that he's showing sufficient dedication to job hunting. The trouble is he doesn't seem to be showing any dedication to anything else. Why is he not tutoring or coaching little league? Why is he not learning something or building something?

Those things are indistinguishable from making himself more hireable.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#26

Post by thisisnotmyname »

yalurker wrote: post #13

Sigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless. From the article: "Were you smarter at 21 post college than your Dad was at 21? And whatever the difference, was it worth the $50k-$200k he paid to get you it?" Yes. Yes I was smarter. And I didn't pay 200k because I went to a state school. I graduated a wholly different person with a completely different world-view and a ton of appli…

What you say is true, but not the main point of the article. Its a kick-in-the-pants for young smart people to go and actually attempt to create something, instead of waiting for a job to come to them.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#29

Post by Alex3917 »

"I get that [having a good network gives] you an advantage, of course, but does not having them mean a career in holes?"

Yes, obviously. If you aren't even well-networked enough to get a job then how the hell are you supposed to be an entrepreneur? Being well-networked is probably the single best predictor of entrepreneurial success, so criticizing the grandfather's advice while telling him to start a company makes no sense.

The one thing the kid is probably right about though is not taking the job. When I was a kid we used to talk about McJobs, i.e. jobs with no chances of any upward mobility. These days pretty much every job at a big company is a McJob, so you have to be really careful about working for someone else.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#30

Post by sorbus »

samt wrote: post #27
rufius wrote: post #20

So the writing in this is atrocious. There's no clear line of thought. I got 5 paragraphs in and could not figure out just what the hell the author was trying to tell me. LEARN TO WRITE.

Is that the kind of thing they might teach in college?

They're supposed to teach it in high school.
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