This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/08/this_is_why_the_american_dream.html

by naner • 16 years ago

275 150 16 years ago

Or to put it succinctly: The Greatest Generation has given way to The Laziest Generation.

I assume by greatest generation you mean baby boomers. The article doesn't OP doesn't refer to them as the greatest generation. And by given way, I think you mean enabled, because the OP is making the point that Scotts parents have paid his whole way and still pay for him while he declines job offers.

I have issue with calling the baby boomers the greatest generation. They've saddled this country with an unimaginable debt burdon, creating a situation where their kids may be the first American generation who's quality of life may not exceed that of their parents, yet the baby boomers call their kids lazy for not wanting to pick up the tab and pay for their extravagances.

However, Scott from the OP is still a lazy sack of ...

starkfist3• 16 years ago

"The Greatest Generation" refers to the parents of the baby boomers.

protomyth• 16 years ago

I really have a problem with the label "Greatest Generation". The greatest generation should be the next one. I sometimes wonder if it was a backhanded way to say America's best years were behind it.

marze• 16 years ago

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 simultaneously describing the only long term solution to America's economic problems: more businesses. Jobs programs and stimulus packages are debatably good or bad, but assuredly temporary. Remember "the children are or future?" How about encouraging them a little? Maybe someday they'll pay for your social security."

maukdaddy• 16 years ago

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.

lanaer• 16 years ago

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

thecircusb0y• 16 years ago

This can be summed up to the following "Be proactive, happen to life or life won't happen to you" .

jganetsk• 16 years ago

Gotta love how he's described as having "absolutely no chance of STDs".

yalurker2• 16 years ago

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 applicable skills that landed me a high-paying software engineering job instead of doing the manual labor or trivial office tasks that I was qualified for before college.

If you go to a private school to get a history degree then sure, it was 4 years of expensive partying that doesn't leave you any more employable. Go get a science/engineering/JD/MD heck even an MBA and you damn well better be smarter at the end.

nroach• 16 years ago

I agree. However, another route would be to take a sum equal to your 1st year college tuition, and use that to seed a bootstrapped startup. Take a year, $20-50k, and see what you can build. If you fail, you still have (ostensibly) three years of college funding left to go, and you can probably pay off that 4th year through hard work by the time you graduate. When you graduate, you have the degree and a really interesting line item on your resume.

Of course, this all presupposes that family or savings can fund that $50-200k in the first place. Unfortunately, many students are dependent on loans. Because the government backs student loans, bankers are willing to lend money for school where they won't do so for a startup.

If there was a provision that would allow you to get fully-backed "startup loans" that carry the same terms and guarantees as student loans, I firmly believe our economy would be stronger and default rates probably wouldn't be much higher than they are for student loans.

jtbigwoo2• 16 years ago

As an eighteen- or nineteen- year old, I would have wasted that money almost instantly. Could it work in reverse with the money arriving in your fourth or fifth year of college?

Perhaps a curriculum dedicated to giving students more and more autonomy until they are working almost entirely independently by the fourth year?

elblanco• 16 years ago

My first year of college education was probably about $2000. I'm not sure I could have done much more than pay a couple months rent with that.

cynicalkane3• 16 years ago

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.

fuzzmeister• 16 years ago

As am I. A liberal arts education makes you better able to understand and explain the world around you. The notion that every moment of college must be teaching you a skill that you will directly apply in your future career is positively stifling.

lionhearted2• 16 years ago

> Essentially, a good liberal arts education transforms your world-view of those subjects the same way a good engineering education does.

I think most people agree with that, they just disagree that it's worth paying $50/hour to get. Go into any high end coffee place and you'll find someone you can have a good discussion with about liberal arts-related topics. I was talking about Jeffersonian vs. Hamiltonian democracy with a member of the U.S. Foreign Service at a coffee place a couple months ago. Talked for two hours - cost was $5 for an iced tea. Sure beats paying $150 for a three hour lecture and getting assigned some busywork essay at the end of it.

djb_hackernews2• 16 years ago

Just a reminder but Hard Science degrees also make you take some general education requirements, for instance my Computer Science degree came with courses such as:

* 4 Semesters of Latin

* Chinese Mythology

* History

* Linguistics

* Entomology

* Sociology

* Macro Economics

kkshin• 16 years ago

I would personally find it a sad, sad day if enrollment in liberal arts rapidly declined. People that major in liberal arts bring great joys to our world. Film, music, art, dance, and great books are all things that truly enhance life, and honestly, is also the cultural force that makes the United States so great.

One of my biggest regrets of my collegiate education was not making a conscious effort to expand my curriculum by taking courses in the humanities department.

matwood4• 16 years ago

I got CS degree from a liberal arts school. I really considered it the best of both worlds. I enjoyed the art, music, and other arts classes I had to take, and I think they kept me from getting burned out on math/science.

I feel that I received a very good education for the money I paid.

aaronbrethorst• 16 years ago

Getting a Bachelor's degree is more about proving you are educable than proving you are educated.

A history degree is just as applicable to this mindset of educability as a computer science degree. The only difference between the two is that a computer science degree offers its bearer some amount of vocational skills.

eitally• 16 years ago

Agreed 100%. I have a BA in history & religious studies from UVA -- I had intentions of becoming a museum curator -- but decided to follow a career path in technology instead. I parlayed my hobby & part time job into a Manpower temp-to-hire gig and, courtesy of a couple of tremendous bosses, was empowered to further my education on the job (trial by fire style). Now I direct a full stack (analysis, design, dev, ops, support, administration) of ~60 great folks and love my job. And it pays quite a bit better than $40k/yr....

I stopped trying to write code back around 2004. It's not my forté. I excel at dataset analysis & pattern recognition, and communication/soft skills. While it does not apply so much to the startup scene and bleeding edge tech companies, the corporate world has a dearth of competent technical managers, not being technicians are hard to find, but because it tends to be a lot easier for liberal arts majors to acquire a working competency of tech knowledge than it is for hardcore geeks to learn people skills.

redrobot50503• 16 years ago

The point is, there is a shortage of engineers, doctors and lawyers. This is why the market pays them higher starting salaries and higher salaries overall. There will forever be a shortage in my field, as current graduation rates go.

On the other hand, there are a glut of "enhanced worldview" liberal arts majors applying for jobs with little to no experience or day 1 vocational skills. They are not failures or cogs -- but from a hiring perspective there is little to distinguish one from another when sorting through resumes.

A liberal arts degree, from an employment perspective, is ubiquitous and a commodity. Specialization is worth more.

If I told members of my generation they could get a job in Pittsburgh, PA starting at $55,000, requiring 36-hour work weeks in 12 hour shifts, with city benefits and pension, and that it started 15K higher than my first job out of college, most would be interested.

When I told them it was working as a Pittsburgh Waste Disposal job (aka Garbage man), most would tell me to kindly fuck off. Their "degree status" is insulted that a starting garbage man will make 20-25K more than them, despite the fact I could never pay them enough to do the job themselves.

Tamerlin5• 16 years ago

The folks here are knocking liberal arts degrees because they don't believe that there are any worthwhile careers outside of hacking.

That's obviously false -- there are quite a few non-technical professions out there that are perfectly viable for careers beyond teaching.

For this forum, non-IT related degrees don't mean much, but that doesn't mean that they don't have value in one of the legion of other fields out there.

zackattack• 16 years ago

"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.)"

I knew a fellow maroon before I clicked the profile.

thisisnotmyname• 16 years ago

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.

prgmatic3• 16 years ago

Agreed. College has definitely changed my view of the world and expanded my mind. And I'm glad I went to an affordable state school.

I do, however, believe that past generations had more advantages with their degrees than my generation does.

ahoyhere• 16 years ago

TL;DR? The essay doesn't knock college at all.

It knocks the idea that the kid is better-educated at 21 than his father was, and that he has MORE opportunities because of it.

It knocks the sad fact that the kid's father and grandfather were entrepreneurs, but somehow taught the kid that he has to have A Real Job with a Career Ladder and 401k - or nothing at all:

"The parents and grandparents, like so many parents today, are disappointed in their son because he's not taking their advice, but in fact their son is taking their advice to its inevitable conclusion: he's holding out for the perfect corporate job."

It has, in short, nothing to do with you, your school, or your defensiveness about graduating college.

And if you think college graduates today are actually smarter than they were 30 years ago, I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken. Their facts may be more up-to-date, however, writing skills, reading skills, and whatnot, are down across the board.

yalurker2• 16 years ago

It looks like we interpreted the author differently. I took the "more degrees" coupled with a graduation age of 21 to mean the son had a Bachelor's and the father had only a high school diploma.

I was looking at it as college vs no college, not college today vs college 30 years ago.

The_Igor• 16 years ago

I went to school for one reason and one reason only because I knew I had to. I picked Psychology as my degree because, at that time, this was the only thing I could imagine studding for 4 years.

I worked in IT industry before I started school, while going to school and after graduation. Most of my techy friends discouraged my degree every step of the way.

'Why the hell do you need it? Bill gates never even finished' was the tone of their message.

Well, I got my degree and sure I don't really use it in my job. Sure I had a big lump of dissapoitnment in my throat after I graduated and came home to realize the big pay off is not there. However, as lame as this sounds, I learned how to learn. I learned that as pointless as most of my classes were, ones that weren't will stay with me for ever.

mkr-hn• 16 years ago

This is what I got out of my lottery-funded education. I went in to get a degree in networking (with a specialization in Linux administration), and ended up getting the most out of the liberal arts stuff.

Things I got out of it:

Got comfortable with the command line

Overcame a lifetime of math phobia (I was content with being math-illiterate before I knew its value)

Learned how to write coherent bodies of text

Got a primer in economics that helped me understand the chaos in 2008

---

I think too many people go straight to "you don't need college" rather than considering what kind of college they would get the most out of. Anyone would do well to have a simple AAS from a cheap/free technical college. Not everyone needs a PHD or degree from a top-rated institution.

If nothing else, everyone should get a basic degree even if they don't have any grand aspirations. It gives you tools to live a better life with whatever you do achieve.

api• 16 years ago

It seems to be "beat up on academia year" this year. Yawn.

College might occasionally be over-valued in some areas, but it's not useless. Last I checked towns with strong top-tier universities were much healthier economically than towns without.

AmericanOP• 16 years ago

You might want to think about that last point there.

biggitybones• 16 years ago

Whenever I read these articles debating the value of a college degree (which I think this article isn't about, but that seems to be the way everyone is interpreting it), the argument is always treated as a black and white issue and it's not.

There are a few types of people that go through college in different ways. You have intelligent people that have learned how to "excel" well, who fit the bill of the subject of the NY Times article. They get through with a decent GPA, party hard, and get a corporate job. You have intelligent people that thrive in the learning environment that college affords, and they gain a lot out of it. Their work ethic takes them places, and some develop that work ethic in college. I'm one of the latter, so call me biased towards it. Then there are the hard working, intelligent people who feel caged from the curriculum. These are the people who question the value.

The problem with the people that already have the strong work ethic and intelligence is that they assume that everyone is like those peers in the first group that simply go through the motions, and its not a question of whether they should have went to school but how they approached it. These are the loudest voices against the higher ed system.

It's undoubtedly a broken system, but inherent value exists for some. I think we'll see a revolution in higher education, hopefully sooner than later and ideally these issues are rectified.

feverishaaron• 16 years ago

I don't see him knocking schooling. Rather, he is criticizing seeking schooling for the sake of schooling.

And he has a valid point. There is very little economic benefit, outside of research and some professional fields, to pursue additional degrees.

mcritz• 16 years ago

He did knock Management Degrees… with good reason.

run4yourlives3• 16 years ago

"Sigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless."

Hello, very definition of a straw-man argument. I'm surprised this is rated so high on this site.

To reiterate, his thesis is not about college, it is this:

"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 simultaneously describing the only long term solution to America's economic problems: more businesses."

Now, you can certainly take issue with the thesis he presents, but there is no point arguing about something unrelated to the point of the article.

kingkawn• 16 years ago

my dad went to harvard, i didn't. so no, i was not smarter than him.

redrobot50503• 16 years ago

Counterpoint: The article's point is that these 24 year olds with "respectable degrees" but no opportunities should create their own opportunities.

Sure, it may not come with the creature comforts of a management job at a large corporation, but you're also your own boss. I know a lot of people who can't or won't put a price on only answering themselves.

To recap: Yes, a degree makes you more employable, but there's more to prospering than being a good employee. Especially as the corporate structure is figuring out that there are too many cogs in the machine.

redrobot50503• 16 years ago

I wanted to chime in something here: I went to school at a state school "down the street" from CMU in Computer Engineering. It was "what my family could afford" since my father was between jobs.

Myself and a CMU grad might have the same degree (B.S. in ECE)but our starting salaries are vastly different. I started out around 40K (w/no bennies) whereas CMU students would probably start closer to 55-60K + bennies.

Was this because CMU was also #1 in the world in ECE at the time? Yes, of course. But the point I'm getting at is private school's higher prices often imply that you will receive a better starting offer. Assuming our job markets are equally flexible, it could be 5 years before someone like myself "catches up".

Kids like the one from the NYTimes article have been raised to work smarter, not harder. Why spend 5 years paying your dues when name recognition or knowing someone will get you to same place without brow sweat?

It's not necessarily a college's fault. They're catering to wealthy entitled people and trying to take as much as they dishonestly can. Likewise, entitled children don't really understand a world that isn't catering to them.

teyc• 16 years ago

Even Engineering degrees aren't necessarily the solution. It really depends on the times and severity of a recession. I lived in Malaysia through a time when the term "walking engineers" (unemployed engineers) was commonplace.

Lots of stories on the net about rocket scientists losing their jobs, and conducting tour buses.

What about the name of that guy who's preliminary work on bio-luminescence won someone else a Nobel prize, but he himself is now unemployed?

It's human nature to think that we can avoid somebody's misfortune by simply following some known heuristics. It is true only some of the time.

Tamerlin5• 16 years ago

"Go get a science/engineering/JD/MD heck even an MBA and you damn well better be smarter at the end."

Are you sure about that?

SMrF• 16 years ago

I find myself agreeing whole heartedly with the sentiment of the article. So much so in fact, that I am a bit nervous to share the link with my social network -- mainly because I know my dad will read it!

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

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?

jtbigwoo2• 16 years ago

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?

gaius4• 16 years ago

Those things are indistinguishable from making himself more hireable.

SHOwnsYou8• 16 years ago

I have to disagree that he is showing sufficient dedication to job hunting.

I recently moved away from a secure job that paid well to live closer to family. All my old friends asked me what I was going to do. I assured them I would have a job after my first day of looking.

I did. I worked serving fast food for three weeks before I found a job more in line with my previous employment. During those three weeks I worked serving food, I was emailing my resume out, making calls, and dropping to on local places. I worked my network and heard about an opportunity.

Having a college degree and working for 4 hours a day to find a job while mom and dad pay for your rent, food, and entertainment is a sign of utter failure.

I have been independent since I was 19, after my freshman year of school. I've said it before and will always say it. If I have to move back home after what I've accomplished thus far, I have failed.

potatolicious3• 16 years ago

SHOwnsYou is right - he is not showing sufficient dedication to job hunting.

Firstly, why are his feet in a house and not on the pavement? The jobs available in a listing on a website are a vanishingly small portion of the total available jobs out there.

I have a friend who once needed a job (he was a qualified electrician a self-taught and fairly talented IT guy, in industrial settings not a terrible combination) but had no degree or shiny paper to back him up. What'd he do?

He hit the road. He drove down highway 401 in Ontario (the industrial heartland of Canada), hit up a number of factories and shops along the way. He would walk in, demand to speak to someone senior, introduce himself, talk about their need for someone of his qualifications, leave his resume, and move on.

He had a job within a week, after multiple callbacks. None of the places that called him back had the position externally open, much less on a website.

The vast majority of the world's jobs are unadvertised - if your only source for jobs is a website, you are failing yourself.

[edit] My friend is also the highest-paid high school dropout I know. Hell, he makes more than I do.

run4yourlives3• 16 years ago

It's a side point to help illustrate the fact that Scott clearly expects the job to be "given" to him. If you want something, you work for it - jobs included.

That doesn't mean that he should want it, just that he doesn't seem in 23 odd years to have grasped the concept of earning something.

rufius• 16 years ago

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.

samt• 16 years ago

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

sorbus• 16 years ago

They're supposed to teach it in high school.

prgmatic3• 16 years ago

Well, it WAS written by a psychiatrist.

mquander2• 16 years ago

What a shame that nobody has posted a pithy one-line summary for you. My big condolences.

I spent three minutes skimming this article and it's perfectly clear what the author's thesis is; that the millennial generation has been raised to expect a breed of safe, corporate job in their favorite fields which just don't exist in the quantity that young adults wish they did. He suggests that they had better relax their standards and take some risks if they want to get work.

The author may not be Hemingway, but it's hardly difficult to understand. Learn to fucking read.

jquery• 16 years ago

> Learn to fucking read.

Is that necessary?

dman• 16 years ago

Contextual advertising fail - The ad showing up for me on that site is for Columbia college MBA.

Alex3917• 16 years ago

"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.

hnal9432• 16 years ago

Are you arguing that it's easier to become "well-networked" by sitting at home? How do you think you would impress more people? By working or by being too arrogant to work?

prgmatic3• 16 years ago

I think the fact that we're seeing a lot of articles, stories, and publications revolving around the thoughts of college becoming useless and the importance of starting businesses says something about the way our culture is changing, and perhaps waking up.

rick8884• 16 years ago

"I think the fact that we're seeing a lot of articles, stories, and publications revolving around the thoughts of college becoming useless and the importance of starting businesses says something about the way our culture is changing, and perhaps waking up."

When I was 19, 20, and 21, I didn't see the importance of college. Now that I'm 29 (with a bachelor's degree), I do. I suspect that many of these articles are written by students or people that don't have a lot of life experience.

jwhitlark4• 16 years ago

I certainly think that education is important. I think the problem lately is people have been valuing formal education over life experience. College is not the only life experience, nor in my opinion, is it the most important one.

Life is not a checklist!

makeramen• 16 years ago

I propose an alternate question: Even if he got the "package" job he was looking for. Should he take it?

I'm currently in an argument with my parents about attempting a startup after I graduate vs getting a job and trying to start something on the side. Obviously the parents think it's too much risk, I think I've tried to "follow the rules" for too long and have nothing to lose.

Anyone else been in a similar situation?

dwiel• 16 years ago

I was in a similar situation a year ago. Had the same "follow the rules" arguments with my parents. For the first few months after school I found contract jobs, which payed well enough, and left me plenty of time for my own thing and reflection. I highly recommend this path if you can stand living on the cheap and not knowing when your next job will surface.

After a few contracts I wound up joining a cool startup as lead developer since I wanted to pay off student debt fast and get some experience before starting my own. In a year or two, I'll likely be finishing up with this startup I'm at now and will have saved enough money to pursue my own thing full time for a while. Who knows what will happen then ...

This all from someone who had some student loans to pay off and not much money saved.

Both contract jobs and longer term employment with a startup have been hugely valuable experiences that I am grateful to have had before starting my own. There is a huge continuum between working for a fortune 500 company and as an entrepreneur.

SHOwnsYou8• 16 years ago

I'm not sure Scott wasn't to be an entrepreneur though.

When I first started looking for a job back in high school, my parents (both entrepreneurs) told me to accept the first job I got and then keep applying to the ones I was looking for.

Having a job currently shows that you are at least likable enough and capable enough to have someone else want to hire you at the present time.

philwelch2• 16 years ago

Parents are wired to protect their offspring from risk. It's not so much that they don't have your best interests in mind, but they will prefer a more low-risk strategy for their children than perhaps is optimal.

AlisdairO4• 16 years ago

Overall I found this article disappointingly full of worthless generalisations.

There is absolutely no way that anyone who reads The Economist can have concluded that Europe has surpassed America in anything not involving riots, in the way that no one who reads Maxim can conclude that acne is in vogue.

I find this attitude deeply aggravating. Europe has simply chosen a different path to the US, and to pretend that the US is superior in every way is ridiculous.

Europe, on the whole, balances lower individual buying power and higher unemployment against taking substantially better care of its citizens, and much better class mobility. It's certainly arguable that the average citizen experiences a higher overall quality of life in (western) Europe than in the US. I can absolutely see how that style of life is not for everyone, so it's great that countries like the US exist, but personally, I prefer to live in a european model.

As for the value of a degree, when I went into my programme I was a decent enough (for my age) coder, with a serious weight problem and very limited social skills, and when I left I was a better coder with some good fundamental background knowledge, fit, and socially confident. My degree program did me the world of good - it's fine that it's not the route for everyone, but pretending that all degrees are worthless makes you look silly.

edit: It appears that my infrequent reading of The Economist has resulted in an unnecessary rant on my part. My apologies to the author!

notauser• 16 years ago

I think it's actually meant to be a comment on the editorial slant of The Economist, which is generally not in favor of the choices that are made by European states.

(They give reasons though, which makes it an interesting read even though I frequently disagree with them.)

moultano• 16 years ago

>I find this attitude deeply aggravating. Europe has simply chosen a different path to the US, and to pretend that the US is superior in every way is ridiculous.

I think you're misreading him. He's making fun of the reporting in the Economist which is alternately, "is Europe going to collapse?" "Is America going to become Europe and then collapse?" and "OMG scary Chinese." The Economist has a fairly particular world view, and he was skeptical that someone who reads it regularly can come out with a different one.

AlisdairO4• 16 years ago

Ahh, I see. Thank you for the correction :-)

rick8884• 16 years ago

"Europe, on the whole, balances lower individual buying power and higher unemployment against taking substantially better care of its citizens,"

"lower individual buying power" means much higher taxes and less freedom with your money.

Right now, the unemployment rate in most European countries is almost the same as it is in the US:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&...

cma• 16 years ago

>>"lower individual buying power" means much higher taxes and less freedom with your money.

Higher taxes don't necessarily mean less freedom with your money; a collective good that a group largely (or even unanimously) in favor of purchasing might go unpurchased due to the free rider problem.

See Mancur Olson's "The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups"

AlisdairO4• 16 years ago

"lower individual buying power" means much higher taxes and less freedom with your money

Yes, I know. I prefer to lose some of that freedom, because I believe the society I live in is better for it. I'm not someone who believes in individual freedom above all - I just think a high level of individual freedom is important.

Good data on the unemployment figures, although I believe (I may be wrong) that in the past Europe's unemployment has been worse than the US.

jamesseda• 16 years ago

My understanding of the American Dream is that everyone has the opportunity to build themselves up from humble beginnings. This kid in the article thinks he is entitled to make more than 40k, instead of accepting reality and working hard to change his earning potential

invisible• 16 years ago

While there are people like Scott, I think that there are also many people that don't obey their parents advice to find a high-paying job. There are many people that go out and take loans that they might default on to peruse a dream. (I started my first business at 19 and had no guidance either way.)

I think, however, that there is a problem in school (even high school) that pushes students towards wanting to start off making decent money with no input as if they are entitled right off the bat. Scott says he expects his political science degree to entitle him to $75,000/year (more or less). I bet all of his teachers nursed him along with, "These are skills to get a high-paying job..." They did that crap through most of my normal HS and college.

So the question to ask yourself is what encouraged you to start a business? What made you take a risk on yourself? For me, it was oddly enough teachers at a college vocational school during HS that didn't express "finding a dream job" but rather learning for the betterment of oneself. We were encouraged to do good work and show off that work rather than grind our way through busywork and exams into a high paying job.

watmough• 16 years ago

Can anyone point me to the related post from a few weeks back, that concerned the change in the workforce from 'safe' corporate jobs to a more 'free-agent' based workforce?

Concerning the article, my wife pointed out that when she graduated with a Liberal Arts degree and started working as a tech-writer back in 2000, her starting salary was $42,000. A considerable more useful sum than $40k would be today.

The guy in the article seems pretty stupid not to have taken the $40k, seeing as he seems to have no other plan whatsoever. One revealing thing is his comment about his cell bill. You can be sure his parents are also paying for the house, for food, supplying a vehicle, paying insurance, buying him clothes, medical insurance.

My verdict: he's a sheltered little corporate would-be drone, with zero actual knowledge of the world.

mkramlich2• 16 years ago

Discussing whether college education is worth it is an inherently controversial topic here on HN, I think, and here's why.

First, because most would agree that getting degrees in a technical field are more justified and warranted than non-technical fields. So you're going to get two totally opposite conclusions from the folks dissing $100k history degrees versus the folks praising $70k electrical engineering degrees.

Secondly, software and business degrees are probably among the two fields where you can arguably gain the exact same knowledge and skills outside of college, free or very close to it, and at your own pace, and be just as qualified to work in industry. Unlike say medicine or chemistry or physics, etc. But here on HN software and business are probably two of our top most interested fields among readers. So we know a lot about these fields in particular. And the readers here should be very aware how easy it is to access and use free and independent resources and techniques to teach themselves in the areas of software and business. But with software and business in particular we have two camps, each further split into sub-factions, and they are all essentially right when it comes to their positions. Yes, having college education is better than not. Yes, college is too expensive. Yes, you can learn most things on your own. Yes, having that piece of paper WILL help you in the long term. No, of course you don't actually need it (with exceptions like doctors, etc.) All of these positions seem in conflict, but they're not, and that's where the controversy comes from. Because everybody is right.

tjmc• 16 years ago

Your post should be in the HN submission guidelines. With the banishment of politics, religion and the other usual suspects, "formal education" has become HN's flame war topic.

It would be an interesting experiment for pg to list flame war topics when they emerge, link to a few insightful summaries (like yours) in the posting guidelines and then ask people to write about something else.

mkramlich2• 16 years ago

thank you for the compliment. agreed the site would possibly be improved if certain topics were banned or at least better moderated. it's hard to get rid of all the bathwater without getting rid of little painful parts of the baby though. :)

krschultz• 16 years ago

And the readers here should be very aware how easy it is to access and use free and independent resources and techniques to teach themselves in the areas of software and business

This element can not be understated. When I want to learn something about Ruby on Rails or Java I have a pile of resources: open source code, free online tutorials, books, forums, StackOverflow, HN, etc.

For a lot of other disciplines, this is not the case. You are lucky if there is a book on Amazon that gets close. Forget websites, forget forums, forget open source, there is just no equivalent to all of that. It makes it a lot more difficult to survive without a college degree becuase a lot of times you are rederiving things.

bryanh• 16 years ago

As with everything else in life, college is a perfect example of "you get out of it what you put into it" or garbage in/garbage out.

tsmith• 16 years ago

""Scott has got to find somebody who knows someone," the grandfather said, "someone who can get him to the head of the line."

Is this Russia?"

Hah. Best quote from the article. Between the baby boom, rising life expectancies, and the 30-60% drop in boomers' retirement funds, people of Scott's age are facing a completely different scenario than the two generations before his. No shame in slacking by while society sorts itself out.

hnal9432• 16 years ago

I think there is shame in slacking. It's not like Scott is forgoing a job to work on something he views as more important. He's doing nothing but consuming resources because of his own selfishness and arrogance.

WingForward2• 16 years ago

Following on a recent magazine meme...what is the difference between an entrepreneur and a small business person?

Give each one $50K, what happens?

lefstathiou• 16 years ago

I am still a bit skeptical of the "american dream is fake" skeptics.

We cant hold higher education responsible for people making poor decisions. It isnt the college's fault that his lack of humility kept him unemployed. That is his own issue. I could be wrong, but I believe this is the only time in history that a typical 21 year old (presumably from any background) can come out of college and immediately enter the top 1% of wage earners (in finance and some engineering). Even looking beyond finance, look at what kids fresh out of law school and med school (even not top tier med schools) are making. Even teachers, who we typically view as underpaid, make considerably more now than they did in our parents generation if you take into account the 200 day work year and benefits.

known• 16 years ago

I think within the context of globalization and internet, America should review, refine and rewrite its laws and destination.

pramit• 16 years ago

One can also get a good education by reading the greatest books of all time. For example, The Success Manual, which contains summaries of 100+ greatest business and self-help books. http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com

This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

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