The real reason young people are the poorest generation in 25 years • Hacker News Board

Re: The real reason young people are the poorest generation in 25 years

#11

Post by gibsonje » Thu, May 07, 2015, 8:49 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #9

gibsonje wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely easy to criticize other degree/career choices when you're sitting comfy in a VERY desired field. Just because I rolled the dice and liked computers and went down an already well paved path doesn't mean I made "better" choices than someone else. I chose the path of least resistance, to be honest, and at the end of it there happened to be a party waiting.

I guess you were lucky. I didn't go to college in the US. From what I understand, in America people see college as a place to "experiment, open your mind, find yourself" and all these things. My experience in Europe was "go to college because you want to become something - nurse, scientist, comedian, etc - and a college degree is the best way to get it". You don't go to college to find out what you want to do, you go…

The same thing applies to us here... I went to college to become a software engineer/computer scientist. I didn't go to find out what I want to do. I knew what I wanted to do.

Re: The real reason young people are the poorest generation in 25 years

#12

Post by quadrangle » Fri, May 08, 2015, 8:39 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #10

quadrangle wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average is useless for talking about farm households. As far as I know, a small portion of farm households have enormous farms and make quite significant income and most farmers are not that. We need median figures to talk about this. The idea that teachers don't provide much value is a complex one to tease apart. Teachers are often lousy because the shit teachers take for modest income turns a lot of people off of t…

I don't disagree that a lot is fucked up today, and I agree with the article when it mentions that the boomers are responsible. The boomers are worse than the millennials. The thing is, college is the typical excuse today to explain failure and debt, and the article mentions it a lot. If the post was focusing on housing prices or un-refrained globalization I would be totally on board, but no, we have the typical mill…

Ok, perfectly fair critique of the article. And I agree with your other points here. I guess it was about whether we talk about the article or about the real problems.

Regarding the article, the "I got a degree, why am I not wealthy?" nonsense is indeed the wrong thing to complain about if someone wants to talk about what's wrong with the system. College, especially the humanities, is a multilevel marketing scheme. And as with other such things, I still don't like victim-blaming. Someone getting into a pyramid scheme hoping to make it big is a nincompoop, but the real evil is the people pushing the scheme from the top more than than the suckers who cycle through the bottom rungs to keep the pyramid going.

Re: The real reason young people are the poorest generation in 25 years

#13

Post by quadrangle » Sat, May 09, 2015, 2:59 AM UTC

_random_ wrote: post #7

quadrangle wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nonsense. Those who go about questioning everything and figuring shit out for themselves do figure out the situation: Random humanities degrees don't pay but neither is there even good prospects in valuable careers like teaching. The level of social mobility in this society is as low as it has ever been, everything is winner-take-all economics, there's tons of corruption and monopolies and oligopolies, and we're…

Teachers are subsidised by state so it's not a "real" tax-generating sort of job.

This is non-sequitur. None of this discussion was about what generates taxes. The discussion is about what generates value and wealth for society overall.

Re: The real reason young people are the poorest generation in 25 years

#14

Post by quadrangle » Sat, May 09, 2015, 3:02 AM UTC

dudul wrote: post #9

gibsonje wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely easy to criticize other degree/career choices when you're sitting comfy in a VERY desired field. Just because I rolled the dice and liked computers and went down an already well paved path doesn't mean I made "better" choices than someone else. I chose the path of least resistance, to be honest, and at the end of it there happened to be a party waiting.

I guess you were lucky. I didn't go to college in the US. From what I understand, in America people see college as a place to "experiment, open your mind, find yourself" and all these things. My experience in Europe was "go to college because you want to become something - nurse, scientist, comedian, etc - and a college degree is the best way to get it". You don't go to college to find out what you want to do, you go…

To be fair, you admit here that you inherited certain social values about college that others did not. That in and of itself is a big factor here. In that sense, it's also fair to say things like "college advisers and counselors failed to serve most students because they get paid to counsel students on productive and fulfilling career directions and are giving students bad advice."