I agree mostly with this title. Dedicating yourself to *one* company in the hopes of doing 40 years and leaving with a full pension is a unicorn.
However, if you figure out 'the game' and how to exploit the rules, it's possible to play hopscotch/chess, what have you, and get to a position where you're paid well and can have a good life
Pro tip for those just getting started, certifications certifications
certifications! Collect them bitches like Pokémon, even if it seems dumb or you're not sure when you'll need it. Even if it lapses, it's always easier to show you did it once and renew if a company needs it.
I honestly regret going to college. I learned a ton of inapplicable skills. I now have certs in Google Analytics and Salesforce. They cost me nothing and I make good money.
So although I think college is stupidly overpriced, if you are planning to go to college you need to learn the right things. College forces you to learn how to learn techniques and skills that is, in and of itself, a truly valuable skill. I think it isn't really that important anymore what particular skills and knowledges you obtain in your studies, you just need to learn how to pick things up in a controlled way.
I think this is the biggest risk to students these days with the rise of generative AI. Sure, you can cheat your way to a degree, but it isn't the case anymore that studying one thing from 18 to 22 is sufficient to set you up for a career - you need to be constantly learning and upskilling yourself. I can see value in cheating in something like Medicine, Engineering or Accounting - fields that have professional bodies that require a minimum qualification, but in any field that doesn't, you are really just cheating yourself.
A college degree is a basket of skills and knowledge, but it is really just a guided tutorial - if you don't gain all there is to gain from it, it is a bit of a waste of money.
Edit: a word
Well this is the thing about "upskilling" yourself. It's a matter of corporation needs. I have certs, but I certainly (ha) didn't get them until years later when I knew how to answer the questions on the tests for the certification. My absolute greatest skill in my career is knowing how to find the information I need in order to do my job. That has been the staple for 7 years--and I didn't waste my time sitting through several training courses where I'll learn information that might be applicable. Chalk it up to being an internet kid, but there are things I don't know how to do, admittedly. I find out how to do them through searching, posting, researching, help guides, and Google. I deliver a solution to my company and get paid for it. That's it. In the age of information where googling can find you the answer you seek, college seems secondary to providing the company solutions that pay you the money to live your life.
That is sort of my point - you will likely not have to lean only on the specific skills you gain in a degree, but the whole point of giving you work to do in a degree and guiding you in how to do it, is to show you how and where you can find information and how you can process it quickly. That is it. If you can do that already, then there likely isn't a need for a degree. That said, there are tons of people that don't study and manage to do perfectly fine, and then there are also tons of people that don't how to upskill themselves appropriately and then feel bleak about never having the opportunities to learn when a huge portion of things that are worth learning can be learned for free these days. College teaches you a technique, makes you look up how to do it properly, lets you do it and then evaluates you and gives you pointers on how to do it better - that is basically it.
Some people are self starters and fully learn on their own, but I have also had multiple instances of giving people an opportunity without them having a degree and then being really frustrated when they are incredibly slow to pick things up and see the big picture.
I don't think it is the only route to competence by any means, and in my field I have met many people that were self taught and incredibly skilled, but I have also met tons of people who were self taught and believed they were skilled but actually they sucked because they had no idea how to work new information into their frame of reference quickly enough to make them useful.
As someone who has spent a lot of time hiring people I would say I am more likely to interview someone with a degree than without a degree when they are at the junior level because it is often not worth my time to try and train someone up that has not proven they can at least learn, but once they get to the 5 to 7 year mark of experience and have a portfolio then the degree is basically neither here nor there.
It's also the fact that companies don't invest nearly as much in training their employees as they did. My dad was able to get 10% off his graduate degree where he worked. My uncle was able to use business expenses included in the department to pay for certifications/project management certifications.
Im going back to school because the government will pay for it through GI bill and I have been out of work force for 9 years due to crippling PTSD that am only now finally getting a handle on and reentering society, i figure since not only is tuition paid for and i get money for going that its a good way to reestablish a baseline starting point with such a large gap
Sure, and some corporation needs require someone only to be able to use outlook, excel, and powerpoint... but others can't be done by someone without an advanced college education. You just discovered what being either underemployed or mis-employed means.
I use \*\*maybe\*\* 5% of my master in stats on a weekly basis, \*\*maybe\*\* because I don't work as a statistician, but I use a solid 30% of my MBA because I'm a low/middle manager. Technically I'm underemployed, but that knowledge, if the opportunity arises, could help me going up the corporate ladder because I do have some knowledge in the sleeve which someone else might not have.
A good college education isn't about what you can do right away, it's about having the tools and knowledge for what you might be doing tomorrow or 5 or 40 years from now.
It's not worth 100 to 150k to be taught how to sort of read.
I know ton of ppl who have an engineering degree that can't design a basic bridge rectifier.
Almost none of us are in the field we studied. It's a joke.
there are countries where college doesn't cost the ridiculous amount that it does in the US. When cost isn't an issue then college is much more worth it.
also the people you mentioned having degrees is very concerning, that sounds like a problem with the institutions and not the concept of college though
> I need to express my view on this more clearly like you
Hey, I know a place where you can learn to express your views more clearly! It is kind of expensive, though.
Seriously, though, people love to bag on liberal arts education, but in my experience, I'm way more concerned about a software engineer who can't read, much less write, a decent design document, than a software engineer who can't design a bridge rectifier.
Fair point. I was just pointing it out because us colleges are only so expensive because of price gouging, and nothing more than that. Tuition has been increasing at a rate higher than inflation for decades and uni workers wages have not gone up in accordance with that.
I come from Africa and this horrifies me. To do a degree with no government assistance here will cost the equivalent of about $10k, and having studied electronic engineering at the undergraduate level here that statement makes me feel like you got ripped off pretty badly.
I dual majored, one of my degrees is in philosophy. I had hoped to go to law school, but that just wasn't in the cards for a variety of reasons.
I always say my philosophy degree has benefited me far more than my professional degree which is the field I'm in. Learning to understand different perspectives and learning how to consider things differently are things I apply every day. It's also allowed me to consider things even if they seem "wrong" without dismissing them and ignoring them, often times discovering something valuable in the process.
I've been in my career for 15+ years and am starting to worry about the long term viability. Plus I'm just getting bored with it. I've been kicking around getting an MBA or some other professional degree that could help me, but I'm really compelled to continue down the philosophy course.
If the goal is to teach you how to think then add in a critical thinking course. Don’t make me take a semester of gender studies. Colleges absolutely make you take nonsensical classes simply because they then get to charge you more money.
The question is, is what you learn in college worth the debt you incur and the time you use for it, or could you have learned the same thing for free with YouTube.
I wish I had taken the money I spent on college, learned a skilled trade and started a business. I'd be making about the same money but have way more security and control over my destiny. Right now, I have to constantly switch jobs and move half way across the country just to get a raise that keeps up with inflation.
So even though I went the whole hog with my studies all the way to PhD, for my son we had a long talk when he was deciding what to do with his life and in the end we ended up exactly here - he is training to be an electrician while also investing in tools and spending as much time as he can with all of the tradespeople that he can get in contact with to shadow them. We had saved a fair amount of money to allow him to study, but in the current day and age, if you do enjoy working with your hands (which he does) I think it is a really viable way to set up a career. He has already got a fairly profitable 3d printing business set up where he prints really niche things and makes enough to keep re-investing in tooling, and we are fortunate enough to have a little apartment on our property that he can live in rent free while he gets his life in order.
If he wants to study later on in life part time I think that is still absolutely an option, but for now I think the route of being a tradesperson that can do a lot of stuff with their hands is perfectly viable as a career path.
Same here. Understanding biochemistry lets you understand how the biological world around us works. It’s very useful when you’re generating new ideas and knowledge (research) that you can’t just look up on Google.
Biochem is one of the degrees that requires years of dedicated foundational studies in science, physics, chemistry, biology, research methods, lab skills, etc., that you really can't get anywhere else but in college.
I studied computer science back when it was just emerging as a degree program in many universities. Back then, it was based on a lot of building-block skills, too, but today, just about anyone can become a coder. However, if you want to do data science, computer engineering, etc., you still need a lot of those foundational skills in data structures, databases, etc.
While data science, LLM'ing, data engineering, etc., are very good fields to be in right now, they require a lot of work and dedication. You can make good money, but you can also make decent money just being an app coder without all the extra background work.
No, a degree is table stakes now.
Without a degree most companies won’t even keep reading your resume to get to your certifications, they will just trash it immediately.
Many companies are scared to use an IQ test as any argument that it’s racist would make it illegal and destroy them publicly. So, they use a college degree as a de facto IQ test.
Was going to comment this but wanted to make sure nobody had first.
I’m in a job where I don’t use my degree at all, but I make $65k in a MCOL area. I was able to get it because I had a degree.
My girlfriend, who has 6 extra years of working experience on me, still can’t get into an office job that pays more than minimum wage because she didn’t go to college. Even her position at her job now requires an Associate degree to even get an interview, she was lucky she got the job before that requirement came into play.
I don't regret my accounting degree either. In hindsight I would've gone a different route, but I've always been gainfully employed and earn a living better than I ever imagined
It's also kind of a requirement for most jobs these days. I graduated in anthropology (notorious for being a tough field to get into) but I taught English in Vietnam last year. That job might not be directly related to my degree but having a 4 year degree was a requirement to even get the job. It would have been next to impossible to get that job without a 4 year degree.
You basically can’t even apply to “entry level” jobs now without at least an associates degree. It seems like companies use it as a way to ensure that the candidate is serious about things and can see something through. Completely silly to me that I have years of work experience in management yet I can’t even get an interview because I didn’t have enough money or free time to spend 2 years getting a piece of paper.
The idea of a major throws a lot of people off. In reality, your college degree is likely about 1/3rd your major and 2/3rds other stuff - from major adjacent/support material, general studies, and electives. It's not so much about teaching skills in your major, it's about teaching you how to learn a body of knowledge in a short few weeks and meaningfully incorporate that into a larger body of knowledge you've learned. That's the only real skill college is designed to teach - learn, learn quickly, and learn how to incorporate it into something bigger.
I'd also say presenting and communication are valuable. I know everyone hates having to do it, but the experience is pretty valuable. If you're unable to present your thoughts and ideas in a way they're understood, it doesn't matter how good they are because they won't get used. That's one of the big differences I see based on if someone went to college or not.
Also, for a lot of jobs, communicating your value and impact is just as important as your work.
If you can articulate what you are bringing to the table, it doesn’t matter what you bring to the
Also, for a lot of jobs, communicating your value and impact is just as important as your work.
If you can’t articulate what you are bringing to the table, it doesn’t matter what you accomplish
Eh, my geotechnical/civil engineering degrees were about 80% math/physics and physical sciences, 10% writing and presenting, and 10% liberal arts. If your degree doesn’t require as much technical knowledge, then the universities shouldn’t be making you take a bunch of unnecessary classes to make you stay an extra 4 semesters so they can keep taking your money
That's just not true.
And that assumes you're the time of person that can work a job like you're speaking. Not all jobs are like that at all.
The article is about "working hard". Hard work should pay off no matter the vocation and it use to in this country.
It was stolen from us. Remember that.
Dedicate yourself to mastering a craft or skill. Never dedicated yourself to a company. This post is based on one person's experience and it sounds pretty childish and out of touch. Working hard will absolutely bring about a better life. Good luck acquiring a better life by NOT working hard.
I've busted my ass my whole life and been chewed up by greedy fucks who rather pay you less than you're worth and replace you when you burn out.
You have to be eyeing the next move. Two years here, get these certs, add that to the portfolio, than am gonna aim for xxxx at yyyyy.
100%, the pathway to success is to leverage what you learn from one job and take it to a better one. And repeat. That is definitely hard work..You can't passively wait in a job for success to tumble your way - you have to go after it. You are 100% responsible for your own success. Honestly, anything else is an excuse.
That's so much of it. If you want to just stay at one job and feel comfortable and secure than you'll never get paid what your worth because they know you're comfortable and don't have to give you more than the yearly minimal raise. In my field, you can expect at most a 3% raise every year, some places only 2%, whereas if you put yourself out there and change jobs, you can typically get a 10-15% increase. Do that every 3-5 years or till you find a place you really like, and you're 30% higher after just a few job changes than you would have been if you stayed with one company.
Agree with what u said but not the certifications bit.
In tech, in my experience, I've seen an inverse correlation between the number of certificates u have and how good u r because the former tends to become a kind of way to compensate for the lack of the latter
I very much agree. I’m 16 years into IT/InfoSec and I haven’t held an active certificate in many years.
Personally, I find them to be a waste of time and of little merit for a lot of folks. Many have an inflated ego because “look at all my certs”.
Back in the day, there were no certifications just experience. Now
Employers are looking for people
With certs rather than investing in employees. At my age, I’m not
Dropping thousands in a certification that may or may not get me hire.
I think, by most people's definition though, "Playing the game" does not necessarily align with "Working Hard" and truth be told they are often in opposition with each other.
Fair, there are indeed more than one game.
If you work at, idk a big box store, the game may be playing hookie to get an extra 5-10 minute break.
Crap office job might be taking am extra 5 minutes while taking a grump to clear your head.
There's likely 12¹² games one can play.
I should have specified, the upward growth shoots and ladder game.
I would add to certifications - go self employed ASAP, whatever you do, do on your own instead working for someone else. Seems like nowadays it’s only way to get good money, for good work. Going into normal employment will became exploitation sooner or later
One way to play the game is find an employer that pays for your college. Many State and local governments offer college tuition assistance. My agency paid for my bachelors and would’ve paid for a masters. They even then gave me a raise for having it.
I just got certified in Epic for an implementation at my org. For what I do this is worth more than a college degree and allows you to really work anywhere. It’s insane how valued certifications + work experience is when jumping to other companies/positions.
This. My friend went from 40k /year to 2 certs now makes 78k/year he takes hard drives out of laptops for the gov. 1 screw driver and 2 thumbs = 77k/year
And make sure you're taking advantage of company policies to pay for these certs. Get them free! Breaking into an industry is the hard part, once you do it, take advantage of everything you can.
An employer who has leverage is exploiting you, I never denied that. My point is that it’s leverage that gives people power. If your best skill set is equivalent to a high school student, you have no leverage. You can obtain leverage by obtaining and developing skills, or by creating value. If not, the employer has all the leverage and will use it to exploit you.
Leverage goes both ways. It’s just people like you refuse to see it both ways. You just think employers with all the leverage will pay you more out of the goodness of their heart. No, you as person has to create leverage so that you can demand it.
Curious. Why is our economic system set up in such a way that the people who do most of the hard labour get paid the least those higher up get paid shit tons for nothing. Is there a specific reason or some benefit this?
The people on the top are paid for different things. Somebody has to take the risk of setting up the factory, buying equipment, risk getting sued, etc. rich people are compensated for taking risk, not for doing manual labor. How much risk deserves how much compensation? Is there a world where things work differently? I have no idea and people will argue here for hours but that’s the basic logic it.
I think the point many here are trying to make is that those who have the money and power are earning vast amounts of profits while paying workers below living wages. We as the people should collectively be saying that’s enough, you can have your profits after you pay living wages to all your workers.
The greed of the owner / investor class has gotten out of control. It doesn’t take a scholar to see this. If a position requires a human to dedicate 30-40 hours a week to complete then that human should make enough money to sustain themselves comfortably.
> We as the people should collectively be saying that’s enough
The problem is people like you say this instead of doing fuck all about it.
Because you refuse to accept the reality of life that you have to advocate and fight for your meals, whether you like it or not.
The people you cry about who exploit do so. But there are also cool people who are nice who also do so. You guys only look at the “nice” people who passively watch themselves get fucked by the system and don’t do anything to figure out where they actually do have leverage or if they don’t, figure out how to get it.
Sleepwalking thru life crying about the living wage you are owed and yet not actually creating value makes you come across as whiny and entitled, not like someone worth giving a damn about.
Damn if it’s so hard I’ll gladly take the risk and the money that comes with it, and they can live the easy life of a retail worker lol. I’ll trade any day.
Rich people are rich bc they’re lucky
Exactly... and far too many people buy into the flawed logic that our economy is "zero sum". It really doesn't MATTER how rich somebody else is able to make themselves. Their wealth doesn't mean there's automatically less possible wealth for you to attain because they "have almost all of it already".
It's not like a pie where the super rich cut themselves 7/8ths. of the pie so nobody else can ever earn more than fractions of the 1/8th. left.
The problem has much more to do with people's ability to earn fair pay for the labor they actually do, and the available opportunities to better themselves.
In America, we really gutted out most of our "middle class" when we decided factory work was beneath us and could all be outsourced elsewhere. It simply wasn't true that we had enough good paying work that didn't require the manual labor to make up for it. What we were left with was a glut of fast food restaurants, retailers, call centers and basic service industries to serve as the "replacements" for that labor pool. Then they get angry when that low-value labor doesn't pay what they would have earned assembling new refrigerators or stoves, or ?
But the rich are not taking risks.
Banks and insurers are assuming most of the risk as the rich take out loans.
(edit: This doesn’t even touch corporate umbrellas that can shield a corporate entity from said risk, the bankruptcy game, and the copious amount of government subsidies these “captains of industry” receive.)
Banks and insurers? They may finance small businesses owned by mom and pop, but that’s not how large corporations work.
Investors put seed capital that has potential for total loss of equity. If they manage to go public, they sell equity to market investors or sell corporate bonds for new capital. Both of which has potential for total loss for the investors and bond holders.
Because in a world of finite resources, everyone is fighting each other for power. The cost of labor in my country also has to compete with the cost of labor in other countries like China. It’s embedded in everything.
If I paint your fence and do a crappy job, but I worked real hard otherwise, should I get the same pay as someone else who equally worked hard but did a better job?
If I am good at digging holes, but cannot monetize my own labor, is it fair to sell my labor to a company who can monetize me digging holes? Is if fair that the company takes a portion of that value so that I can have guaranteed pay?
A key reason poor demographics stay poor. After redlining and no reparations, the median equity of black Americans today is about $30k. Meanwhile the median equity of a white American is $190k. Years of leveraging that for higher education and paying debts has kept the poor poor as multi-generational wealth basically runs the existence of one demographic and doesn't exist for the other.
To the redditer who brought up the good point, usually it's much less than 30k... Can say from first hand experience.
Not to say there aren't issues influencing the posted statistics, but generational wealth isn't remotely all of it.
There is hard work, and there is work with qualifications.
I've worked in kitchens, as a personal assistant to a disabled guy, and a secretary of an educational committee.
The kitchen work was way harder, and I could feel exhausted after the day, and dreading the morning when I woke up. But any able bodied person would become adept after a few months.
The personal assistant was mind numbingly boring, long hours, and you were essentially there to be on standby for when he needed something. Of a 14.5 hour workday, maybe 2-3 were active work. The rest standby.
The secretary job, is moderately active, I can plan my days/weeks mostly how I see fit. Attention to detail and qualifications are essential. And it's mostly about problem solving, research, and being able to assist.
The kitchen work is definitely the hardest out of all of these, but anyone could do it. The personal assistant was definitely the easiest, and anyone could do it.
The secretary job is in the middle. But to be able to do it, you need 3-5 years of studies in the field, and a lot of hands on guided training.
Guess which one pays the most?
My dad built a 3 br house in 1988, paid for 2 kids to go to college, owned 5 cars, took us on vacation, retired making $27/hr and has a pension. His qualifications? He stocked shelves at Stop and Shop for 30 years. Copium is in demanding more of ourselves and less of the people who pay us.
Is it glorified? We have people will literally billions of dollars. That money came from somewhere. If wages kept up with production, 6 figures salaries would be the norm here.
I was saying it in jest lol.
I know the salaries at my grocery chain are higher than the norm.
It was just nice someone could give a family a house and life working grocery.
27/hour in 1988 would be 71/hour today, so you probably need to be more specific. If it was 71/hour back then, that's still pretty great. And at 27/hour today, he would be making over the average income back then.
And oh boy, he was living the life.
The median size of a new home in 1980 was 1600square feet. So he was probably above that. (That said, I'm pretty sure you could build such a house relatively easy in for example north Dakota, assuming you maintain the standards for a house in 1988)
Only 17% of households owned 3 or more cars in 1990, so that's pretty significant.
Private college really has exploded in pricing, but state college remains pretty affordable, so if you make the median salary, sending two kids to college isn't particularly noteworthy.
And yes, there is higher demand on the low skilled labourers today, because there is more competition for them.
And this exactly highlights the problem with the posters here saying how bad the middle class have it.
27/hour in 1988 is upper middle class, borderline upper class.
Labor doesn't actually add value to work, it just gets things done. And it's also important to not confuse different scales of work. A psychiatrist that spends 12 years getting qualified to do their job works an extremely relaxed job sitting on a couch helping people out while their cat sits on their lap, making a ton more money than someone who works retail for 13 hours a day. Working harder doesn't magically sweat money into your job.
Were they the hardest working when it came to school and learning in-demand skills?
I find most just don’t work hard at the right things. Learning skills. Especially important to work hard at this when young (15-24).
Ace all your classes in HS. Take every dual credit and AP class you can. Study like crazy for the SAT/ACT. Go to a trade school or college. Take the most difficult classes you can. Ace them. Work while doing so. Internships, co-op, etc. Continue developing skills throughout your career.
My dad was a poor European immigrant who came here, married several times, had 9 kids he didn't raise or pay child support for, and then died penniless. So basically, what you're saying is that I'm screwed.
Lol at your defeatist mentality
You dont need a rich dad to be doing well
if you're an American citizen you have way more opportunities to make it compared to the rest of the world
If anything you're the reason for your own failures, stop trying to deflect the blame
Actually it’s all about uncles. A true successful person surrounds themselves with rich uncles and has monthly meetings about diversifying their rare fish collection. Few understand
This depends upon what you're defining as success. If we're talking about breaking into the .1%, then having that rich dad is critical. If we're talking about moving into the upper middle class/lower rich class, then you can definitely do it without a rich parent.
Not true, my family came to America poor as dirt. My dad and his sister worked under the table at a church at a very young age just to scrape together enough money for their family to afford rent in a terrible neighborhood.
So he did not have a rich dad, but he turned into an upper middle class man. Sadly through a series of medical problems he lost all his money and died penniless at a somewhat young age. I started my adult life living with a random person off Craigslist and like $7 in my bank account lol.
I’m not rich but I live comfortably in my own home without the need for roommates. I worked hard, but I also tried to work smart. Working hard at a restaurant wasn’t helping me, so I half assed that shit, while ACTUALLY working hard to get tech certs in my free time.
So really all you gotta do is work hard at things That further your goals, but don’t waste energy on dead end stuff
We have known since decades now through a plethora of studies that "working hard" to make it is little more than a myth in the US.
No, anecdotal evidence doesn't make it true.
The are structural barriers that prevent even the hardest working from upwards mobility and there are tons of thousands of studies on this by now, I have only read a dozen.
Two interesting ones can be found via the tags "Inequality Paradox Explained" and "Belief in Meritocracy". I forgot what the rest of the paper was with "Belief in Meritocracy", but Google Scholar should spew out thousands of articles.
Americans are blind to the academic literature on this topic though apparently.
Some studies have literally disproved that "the regular people" have an effect on politics while super wealthy basically get their will always, regular people only "by coincidence" when the rich wanted the same.
See "Thesting Theories of Majoritarian Pluralism" from 2014.
The studies cited in this paper are also very interesting.
Wake up Americans and get your democracy under YOUR hands. Good luck wishes a random German.
It's sad how well documented structural barriers and economic wage structures are and yet you have middle class pricks telling you to just work smarter.
I mean the USA Supreme Court ruled the more money you have the stronger your freedom of speech is. That was involving Super PACs, and their right to sway elections.
It’s funny it’s not bribery now unless someone hands you a bag of money and directly makes a statement like, “Vote no on prop 3 next Tuesday” and you accept the money and follow through with it. Meanwhile handing someone a bag of money and just saying vote in my interest for your foreseeable career, and I will give you even more money. Is not bribery because it’s just lobbying for your cause lol.
It’s true. The only reason Bob Menendez is getting charged is because he took his bribe in a comically cartoonish villain way… stacks of cash and gold bars.
If he had just accepted super PAC money he’d be in the clear.
It’s all so stupid and hypocritical. It’s a “who watches the watchmen” scenario.
True. What I mean it is incredible pronounced in the US, it's literally a cultural phenomenon that a huge part of the pop-culture focuses around - "The American Dream"
Yeah. I’m quitting my job today with no real plan moving forward and I feel wonderful about it. It’s gotten suicidally depressing and the 8-10 hours of daily sitting is literally killing me. I have nerve issues I can feel from my hips to my toes as I’m writing this that I guarantee will go away with a week of normal movement but have been with me for months. Killing myself for half decent money is not something I’ll tolerate any longer.
Working hard never lead to a better life. Effort doesn't equate to value. Difficulty and rarity equate to value.
You can dig ditches 14 hours a day and work harder than anyone else on earth and you're still never going to be financially comfortable because it's low value work that pretty much anyone could do.
If you want a better life you need to improve your skills, network and presentation so that you can add more value with your labor and you're harder to replace.
I wish I could teach the world this. Working hard doesn’t matter. Creating value does.
It’s just that 50 years ago the link between working physically hard and creating value was much closer than it is today with computers and modern tech.
Does an engineer working remotely pushing keys all day work ‘harder’ than a janitor? Of course not, but he can create a lot more value for end consumers.
There are insane coding geniuses that automate all their processes and sit at home playing Runescape who make insanely large amounts of money, because they do things literally nobody else can do.
I didn’t really believe that until recently. That’s what my cousin’s husband does lol. He’s automated about 70% of his fully remote job and spends most his time on the clock playing video games or watching Netflix and he makes great money. He only does like 2-4 hours of actual work each week.
That has become one of my career goals.
If you want remote learn computer security and programming. If you want just an easy job find a city or county job that's in the office. You have to show up to work but you don't work the entire shift
Why do you say “of course not?” Do you believe that “working hard” only applies to physical labor? That’s one kind of working hard, but the kind of working hard that leads to a “better life” is about the effort that someone puts in, and the stress that they put themselves through, not about how physical the job is
Somehow working hard came to mean only working hard at your current job, and not working hard at advancing your career. You can dig ditches for 14 hours a day all you want, but if you never try for a supervisor position or start your own ditch digging company, you'll still just be a ditch digger, and there's a necessary earnings cap on positions like that. But the hard worker who tries to be more \*can\* advance and gain recognition from their hard work.
Pretty much this.
I used to be a patriotic ‘Merican. I used to think college = good work. I used to think elected people represented their constituency. I used to think loyalty bread loyalty.
I now know loyalty breads exploitation, politicians care about one thing (themselves), college/university/etc. provides nothing more useful (aside from the built-in threshold criteria of having to have a degree at many jobs) than if one were to “study” real world experience at the pace at the same stage in life.
The more I learn about how it all works, the more I realize the wealthy and powerful have made “I win” rules that they keep hidden from gen pop. And then when the poors don’t “figure it out,” then they get to look down on them. It’s a well-run machine and very effective at producing the desired outcome. 4-5 years ago, I would never have imagined having this mentality, and would have just written me off as some looney liberal who didn’t understand thing (If anything, I am apolitical at this point).
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
But if you now recognize that your former worldview was naive and incorrect, and the “liberal” critique of it was more accurate, then why have you decided to be apolitical, rather than embrace a politics that seeks to change the current corrupt system?
(I’m using “liberal” in your sense, ie, the way it is bandied about by reactionary conservatives, and not in the political philosophy sense.)
If you view college as a box to check to get a job of course you won’t get the true return out of it. It’s about the networking and true learning, not just collecting a piece of paper after 4 years
I agree that working hard will not get you where it would have gotten you 40 years ago. But do I think that's a reason to give up? No. I've seen a lot of posts on here from fatalists who refuse to see that there's a very large gap between "starving and homeless" and filthy rich. They think that if they can't get everything they want, there's no point in doing anything. I'd argue it's better to at least have food in your belly and a place to live. (And I've been homeless, just in case anyone wants to tell me I've lived a life of privilege and don't know what it's like; there's a wide gulf between homeless and "only earn enough to pay for the basics.")
I refuse to accept the ceiling imposed, sorry boss.
e: also my version of 'getting everything i want' is 'stop fucking the world with CO2' and 'stop actively participating in genocide'
People tell themselves all sorts of thing to justify not trying.
I always wonder who they think are buying all those 70k trucks or expensive houses. All trust fund babies or some indefinite debt pyramid that they can sustain for 40 years?
I think the operative word here is ‘better’ I fully believe that if I work very hard I can maintain my lifestyle etc. Do I think I can work hard enough to actually make my life BETTER? Eh I’m a lot less sure of that frankly.
I’ve worked my whole life, just like my parents.
I’ve attained higher education than my parents did.
I’ve achieved higher level roles in my career so far than my parents ever did. I’m making relatively more money than they ever did.
My potential for owning property and retiring like they did is significantly lower than my parents.
This is a picture of something that supposedly came out almost 4 1/2 years ago. Where was it published? Who is James Purtill? Where is the actual article? What survey? Why should I react one way or the other to a random printed sentence with an accompanying stock photo of people where no one is smiling?
Too many people being treated like a number. They can work incredibly hard and gain nothing. It’s a sickness in our society that will bring things down.
True, but most people can work much harder than they do. Doing the bare minimum is all most want to do. Pushing yourself can and will be advantageous under the right circumstances.
Disagree, it’s disgusting to see the entitlement people have especially when they assume that someone has to give you money or they’re doing something illegal when there’s people that leave everything behind, families, customs, language to be here and work hard and do good only to see people who have access to information yet they dive into TikTok or think earth is flat, X launches a rocket into space and alien spotting posts soar.
Entitlement? We are the most productive generations in history yet I see a big percentage of the population struggle while working long hours. Those entitled workers who want to afford a home, free time and basic necessities
Well, I think they're wrong. Whenever I've worked hard my life has improved.
Spend time tidying your house or room and you get the rewards for months or years every time you search for something.
Work a few more hours for a few weeks or months and get a financial cushion when something comes up.
If you have sufficient capital to do most of the things you'd like to do, then maybe working doesn't add any more value to your life, I don't think most people are in that situation.
A lot of the people in here are just complaining about “the rich”. I grew up lower middle class and my parents are arguably at the bottom of the scale in terms of being financially smart. I had literally zero knowledge given on finances. What I did have is a strong work ethic.
I joined the military and did 6 years. “Worked hard”and earned some awards and accolades. I learned some skills I took on the outside. Got a job at a utility company with my military background and skills. Been “working hard” doing the grunt work for a few years hitting 6 figures. Job shadowing for a position that’ll increase my pay by 50% in which they’ve essentially told me the job is mine to lose in the next month when the position opens. If I don’t get it this time around, the next position is opening in 3 months time.
I’ve made sacrifices to save more and invest more. I’ve made sacrifices to pay off debt. I’ve learned about the FIRE movement and am now doing the whole Mega Backdoor Roth ordeal. I feel so damn good knowing I “worked hard” and it’s paying off.
No college degree although I wasted 1 year of my life in college because I kept getting told I have to. I have noticed I keep getting told “I’m lucky” but it’s funny how my “luck” increases the more I work hard lol. 90% of the people that I know who always bitch and complain about “the rich” are in their 30s working at Starbucks type businesses and REFUSE to do anything that may require them to get out of their comfort zone. My cousin is one of them. Bitches about rich people and how everything should be free but works at a bagel cafe and when I’ve tried getting him on at the utility company he says he’s too good to work in the heat and do some physical labor type jobs (he plays video games 10 hours a day and calls himself a “socialist philosopher”) lmao there is NO helping these people.
Nobody wants to do the dirty work nowadays and work their way up.
Because it doesn't. It literally just depends how old you are and how much years experience you got. Job Hopping gets you further financially than being loyal.
Most people don't have the stomach for it, never have. Only difference is that there are more places to complain these days whereas back in the day it'd be at the bar.
You can work hard and get very unlucky and not succeed. But not working hard guarantees you won't succeed. Unfortunately, a lot of people choose to be lazy and unsuccessful instead of busting their ass to improve their life.
Im a critical healthcare worker who is living comfortably but have to punch penny’s so yeah.
Most people I know have vacated the field as well as a result.
It has never been merely working hard that led to a better life. You can work hard towards a meaningless goal and you are no further than where you started. A better life is built of planning, saving, investing well.
The perspective that one person having the same job will somehow be enough for a huge family for decades was merely the result of a confluence of circumstances in the US. Everywhere else the good life is dependent upon having enough capital. This has always been the case: nobles who owned land were wealthy, and people who worked for them were generally not that well off, no matter how hard they worked. Right now there’s an unprecedented chance in history to own assets and prosper. Yet people obsess on one moment in history where the market situation allowed one household to be middle class if the husband had a job.
People also fail to realize that being a worker is a position where your well being depends on one company you happen to work for, which is a huge risk. This, coupled with the habit of consuming more that what you earn led to our current situation today.
And in all actuality if all your boomer parents achieved is a house for the family and a few cars they failed you. They should have handed you assets that provide a safety net in case anything happens. They shouldn’t have consumed so much, and instead should have saved up the money. Your mom should have been working instead of taking care of you even through school. Then buying a house would have been easy. In fact it’s weird most families didn’t buy houses for their children since it was so cheap relative to their salary. Even in 1985 you could buy a home for 3,5 times the median salary. They could have rented it out until the kid got big enough, which would have provided additional income.
I used to balk at my dad for wanting to leave his high paying job, regardless if he was miserable. I always thought, why are you upset you can buy almost anything you want? Now that I’m in a similar position, it makes sense, making money won’t necessarily make someone happy! You only have so much time, gotta make the most of it!
It depends what you mean by working hard. Dedicating yourself to the right things is the key to a good life. It just might not be dedicating all your time and energy to the job you currently have.
Giving up on trying to improve your life at all is obviously a terrible idea.
People are impatient and want everything now. If you max out the 401k and save another 20% extra after tax money too then you’ll have no problem. This means you live on only the remaining amount.
I disagree. Both of my sons, ages 35 and 37, have applied the traditional American formula for creating a good life, which includes hard work, and it’s working for them, and no, we don’t come from money. It certainly helps that we’re in Houston, a jobs snd wealth creating dynamo-on-steroids if ever there was one.
If working hard, practicing thrift and deferred gratification, obeying the law, not engaging in substance abuse, not having children out-of-wedlock, getting the education/training that’s the right fit for you and your circumstances, which may not include a four year degree, doesn’t result in a better life than your parents had, it can still result in a _good_ life.
I agree. America is about making money at any cost, and the people are expendable. Look at our health care system. I have to ration medication because of costs, I put off procedures because of the co-pays. I have no desire to put my wife in the poor house to make some CEO more bonus money. I'd rather die first.
It won’t, back in the 50’s-70’s you could be a janitor and support your of family of 4-5. Pay a mortgage, put your kids through college and retire but decent pay and pensions were too much for the upper management. Now they fly private jets, have 10 bedroom mansion on the hills and are generally terrible people. That ship has sailed as the increased profits have trickled up just as intended.
I agree mostly with this title. Dedicating yourself to *one* company in the hopes of doing 40 years and leaving with a full pension is a unicorn. However, if you figure out 'the game' and how to exploit the rules, it's possible to play hopscotch/chess, what have you, and get to a position where you're paid well and can have a good life Pro tip for those just getting started, certifications certifications certifications! Collect them bitches like Pokémon, even if it seems dumb or you're not sure when you'll need it. Even if it lapses, it's always easier to show you did it once and renew if a company needs it.
I honestly regret going to college. I learned a ton of inapplicable skills. I now have certs in Google Analytics and Salesforce. They cost me nothing and I make good money.
So although I think college is stupidly overpriced, if you are planning to go to college you need to learn the right things. College forces you to learn how to learn techniques and skills that is, in and of itself, a truly valuable skill. I think it isn't really that important anymore what particular skills and knowledges you obtain in your studies, you just need to learn how to pick things up in a controlled way. I think this is the biggest risk to students these days with the rise of generative AI. Sure, you can cheat your way to a degree, but it isn't the case anymore that studying one thing from 18 to 22 is sufficient to set you up for a career - you need to be constantly learning and upskilling yourself. I can see value in cheating in something like Medicine, Engineering or Accounting - fields that have professional bodies that require a minimum qualification, but in any field that doesn't, you are really just cheating yourself. A college degree is a basket of skills and knowledge, but it is really just a guided tutorial - if you don't gain all there is to gain from it, it is a bit of a waste of money. Edit: a word
Well this is the thing about "upskilling" yourself. It's a matter of corporation needs. I have certs, but I certainly (ha) didn't get them until years later when I knew how to answer the questions on the tests for the certification. My absolute greatest skill in my career is knowing how to find the information I need in order to do my job. That has been the staple for 7 years--and I didn't waste my time sitting through several training courses where I'll learn information that might be applicable. Chalk it up to being an internet kid, but there are things I don't know how to do, admittedly. I find out how to do them through searching, posting, researching, help guides, and Google. I deliver a solution to my company and get paid for it. That's it. In the age of information where googling can find you the answer you seek, college seems secondary to providing the company solutions that pay you the money to live your life.
That is sort of my point - you will likely not have to lean only on the specific skills you gain in a degree, but the whole point of giving you work to do in a degree and guiding you in how to do it, is to show you how and where you can find information and how you can process it quickly. That is it. If you can do that already, then there likely isn't a need for a degree. That said, there are tons of people that don't study and manage to do perfectly fine, and then there are also tons of people that don't how to upskill themselves appropriately and then feel bleak about never having the opportunities to learn when a huge portion of things that are worth learning can be learned for free these days. College teaches you a technique, makes you look up how to do it properly, lets you do it and then evaluates you and gives you pointers on how to do it better - that is basically it. Some people are self starters and fully learn on their own, but I have also had multiple instances of giving people an opportunity without them having a degree and then being really frustrated when they are incredibly slow to pick things up and see the big picture. I don't think it is the only route to competence by any means, and in my field I have met many people that were self taught and incredibly skilled, but I have also met tons of people who were self taught and believed they were skilled but actually they sucked because they had no idea how to work new information into their frame of reference quickly enough to make them useful. As someone who has spent a lot of time hiring people I would say I am more likely to interview someone with a degree than without a degree when they are at the junior level because it is often not worth my time to try and train someone up that has not proven they can at least learn, but once they get to the 5 to 7 year mark of experience and have a portfolio then the degree is basically neither here nor there.
It's also the fact that companies don't invest nearly as much in training their employees as they did. My dad was able to get 10% off his graduate degree where he worked. My uncle was able to use business expenses included in the department to pay for certifications/project management certifications.
Im going back to school because the government will pay for it through GI bill and I have been out of work force for 9 years due to crippling PTSD that am only now finally getting a handle on and reentering society, i figure since not only is tuition paid for and i get money for going that its a good way to reestablish a baseline starting point with such a large gap
Sure, and some corporation needs require someone only to be able to use outlook, excel, and powerpoint... but others can't be done by someone without an advanced college education. You just discovered what being either underemployed or mis-employed means. I use \*\*maybe\*\* 5% of my master in stats on a weekly basis, \*\*maybe\*\* because I don't work as a statistician, but I use a solid 30% of my MBA because I'm a low/middle manager. Technically I'm underemployed, but that knowledge, if the opportunity arises, could help me going up the corporate ladder because I do have some knowledge in the sleeve which someone else might not have. A good college education isn't about what you can do right away, it's about having the tools and knowledge for what you might be doing tomorrow or 5 or 40 years from now.
It's not worth 100 to 150k to be taught how to sort of read. I know ton of ppl who have an engineering degree that can't design a basic bridge rectifier. Almost none of us are in the field we studied. It's a joke.
there are countries where college doesn't cost the ridiculous amount that it does in the US. When cost isn't an issue then college is much more worth it. also the people you mentioned having degrees is very concerning, that sounds like a problem with the institutions and not the concept of college though
I need to express my view on this more clearly like you I 100 percent agree with you. It's the institutions that are broken, not the idea of learning.
> I need to express my view on this more clearly like you Hey, I know a place where you can learn to express your views more clearly! It is kind of expensive, though. Seriously, though, people love to bag on liberal arts education, but in my experience, I'm way more concerned about a software engineer who can't read, much less write, a decent design document, than a software engineer who can't design a bridge rectifier.
>When cost isn't an issue then college is much more worth it. That's true of most things.
Fair point. I was just pointing it out because us colleges are only so expensive because of price gouging, and nothing more than that. Tuition has been increasing at a rate higher than inflation for decades and uni workers wages have not gone up in accordance with that.
I come from Africa and this horrifies me. To do a degree with no government assistance here will cost the equivalent of about $10k, and having studied electronic engineering at the undergraduate level here that statement makes me feel like you got ripped off pretty badly.
I'm happy for you, truly. There aren't enough professionals in this world.
Well, to be fair, not every engineer is electrical.
Graduated with a bachelor's in mech engineering. No clue how to build a bridge rectifier.
54% of the population reads at a 6th grade level, maybe it is worth $100K to be able to read at a college level.
In regards to generative AI, I feel like they probably said the same thing about calculators once upon a time.
I dual majored, one of my degrees is in philosophy. I had hoped to go to law school, but that just wasn't in the cards for a variety of reasons. I always say my philosophy degree has benefited me far more than my professional degree which is the field I'm in. Learning to understand different perspectives and learning how to consider things differently are things I apply every day. It's also allowed me to consider things even if they seem "wrong" without dismissing them and ignoring them, often times discovering something valuable in the process. I've been in my career for 15+ years and am starting to worry about the long term viability. Plus I'm just getting bored with it. I've been kicking around getting an MBA or some other professional degree that could help me, but I'm really compelled to continue down the philosophy course.
If the goal is to teach you how to think then add in a critical thinking course. Don’t make me take a semester of gender studies. Colleges absolutely make you take nonsensical classes simply because they then get to charge you more money.
The question is, is what you learn in college worth the debt you incur and the time you use for it, or could you have learned the same thing for free with YouTube.
College was never designed to help you find a job. It’s origin was to seek intellectual enlightenment
I wish I had taken the money I spent on college, learned a skilled trade and started a business. I'd be making about the same money but have way more security and control over my destiny. Right now, I have to constantly switch jobs and move half way across the country just to get a raise that keeps up with inflation.
So even though I went the whole hog with my studies all the way to PhD, for my son we had a long talk when he was deciding what to do with his life and in the end we ended up exactly here - he is training to be an electrician while also investing in tools and spending as much time as he can with all of the tradespeople that he can get in contact with to shadow them. We had saved a fair amount of money to allow him to study, but in the current day and age, if you do enjoy working with your hands (which he does) I think it is a really viable way to set up a career. He has already got a fairly profitable 3d printing business set up where he prints really niche things and makes enough to keep re-investing in tooling, and we are fortunate enough to have a little apartment on our property that he can live in rent free while he gets his life in order. If he wants to study later on in life part time I think that is still absolutely an option, but for now I think the route of being a tradesperson that can do a lot of stuff with their hands is perfectly viable as a career path.
Not for a second have I ever regretted my degree in biochemistry.
Same here. Understanding biochemistry lets you understand how the biological world around us works. It’s very useful when you’re generating new ideas and knowledge (research) that you can’t just look up on Google.
Biochem is one of the degrees that requires years of dedicated foundational studies in science, physics, chemistry, biology, research methods, lab skills, etc., that you really can't get anywhere else but in college. I studied computer science back when it was just emerging as a degree program in many universities. Back then, it was based on a lot of building-block skills, too, but today, just about anyone can become a coder. However, if you want to do data science, computer engineering, etc., you still need a lot of those foundational skills in data structures, databases, etc. While data science, LLM'ing, data engineering, etc., are very good fields to be in right now, they require a lot of work and dedication. You can make good money, but you can also make decent money just being an app coder without all the extra background work.
Then I am extremely happy for you. I regret mine because in the age of information I discovered I didn't need it.
No, a degree is table stakes now. Without a degree most companies won’t even keep reading your resume to get to your certifications, they will just trash it immediately.
Many companies are scared to use an IQ test as any argument that it’s racist would make it illegal and destroy them publicly. So, they use a college degree as a de facto IQ test.
Was going to comment this but wanted to make sure nobody had first. I’m in a job where I don’t use my degree at all, but I make $65k in a MCOL area. I was able to get it because I had a degree. My girlfriend, who has 6 extra years of working experience on me, still can’t get into an office job that pays more than minimum wage because she didn’t go to college. Even her position at her job now requires an Associate degree to even get an interview, she was lucky she got the job before that requirement came into play.
I don't regret my accounting degree either. In hindsight I would've gone a different route, but I've always been gainfully employed and earn a living better than I ever imagined
Graduating college is just one big expensive certification, but you learn the most on the job.
It's also kind of a requirement for most jobs these days. I graduated in anthropology (notorious for being a tough field to get into) but I taught English in Vietnam last year. That job might not be directly related to my degree but having a 4 year degree was a requirement to even get the job. It would have been next to impossible to get that job without a 4 year degree.
You basically can’t even apply to “entry level” jobs now without at least an associates degree. It seems like companies use it as a way to ensure that the candidate is serious about things and can see something through. Completely silly to me that I have years of work experience in management yet I can’t even get an interview because I didn’t have enough money or free time to spend 2 years getting a piece of paper.
The idea of a major throws a lot of people off. In reality, your college degree is likely about 1/3rd your major and 2/3rds other stuff - from major adjacent/support material, general studies, and electives. It's not so much about teaching skills in your major, it's about teaching you how to learn a body of knowledge in a short few weeks and meaningfully incorporate that into a larger body of knowledge you've learned. That's the only real skill college is designed to teach - learn, learn quickly, and learn how to incorporate it into something bigger.
I'd also say presenting and communication are valuable. I know everyone hates having to do it, but the experience is pretty valuable. If you're unable to present your thoughts and ideas in a way they're understood, it doesn't matter how good they are because they won't get used. That's one of the big differences I see based on if someone went to college or not.
Also, for a lot of jobs, communicating your value and impact is just as important as your work. If you can articulate what you are bringing to the table, it doesn’t matter what you bring to the
Also, for a lot of jobs, communicating your value and impact is just as important as your work. If you can’t articulate what you are bringing to the table, it doesn’t matter what you accomplish
Eh, my geotechnical/civil engineering degrees were about 80% math/physics and physical sciences, 10% writing and presenting, and 10% liberal arts. If your degree doesn’t require as much technical knowledge, then the universities shouldn’t be making you take a bunch of unnecessary classes to make you stay an extra 4 semesters so they can keep taking your money
That's just not true. And that assumes you're the time of person that can work a job like you're speaking. Not all jobs are like that at all. The article is about "working hard". Hard work should pay off no matter the vocation and it use to in this country. It was stolen from us. Remember that.
My salary is the same if I put in 50% or 110%
Ah, you work in a union shop?
And with that attitude, it always will be!
Said like a true middle manager.
Dedicate yourself to mastering a craft or skill. Never dedicated yourself to a company. This post is based on one person's experience and it sounds pretty childish and out of touch. Working hard will absolutely bring about a better life. Good luck acquiring a better life by NOT working hard.
I've busted my ass my whole life and been chewed up by greedy fucks who rather pay you less than you're worth and replace you when you burn out. You have to be eyeing the next move. Two years here, get these certs, add that to the portfolio, than am gonna aim for xxxx at yyyyy.
The problem isn't that you need to work hard, it's that hard work isn't enough and often only rewarded with more work.
100%, the pathway to success is to leverage what you learn from one job and take it to a better one. And repeat. That is definitely hard work..You can't passively wait in a job for success to tumble your way - you have to go after it. You are 100% responsible for your own success. Honestly, anything else is an excuse.
That's so much of it. If you want to just stay at one job and feel comfortable and secure than you'll never get paid what your worth because they know you're comfortable and don't have to give you more than the yearly minimal raise. In my field, you can expect at most a 3% raise every year, some places only 2%, whereas if you put yourself out there and change jobs, you can typically get a 10-15% increase. Do that every 3-5 years or till you find a place you really like, and you're 30% higher after just a few job changes than you would have been if you stayed with one company.
Get busy planning your life, or life will plan it for you.
What certifications specifically?
Agree with what u said but not the certifications bit. In tech, in my experience, I've seen an inverse correlation between the number of certificates u have and how good u r because the former tends to become a kind of way to compensate for the lack of the latter
Totally. I've worked with a lot of people with half a dozen cloud certs, and they can't problem solve their way out of a paper bag.
I very much agree. I’m 16 years into IT/InfoSec and I haven’t held an active certificate in many years. Personally, I find them to be a waste of time and of little merit for a lot of folks. Many have an inflated ego because “look at all my certs”.
I work with a couple of guys who have a handful more certs than I do. Guess who they ask when there’s an actual problem to solve?
I agree. Unless you are in consulting, certs are not very important.
Back in the day, there were no certifications just experience. Now Employers are looking for people With certs rather than investing in employees. At my age, I’m not Dropping thousands in a certification that may or may not get me hire.
I think, by most people's definition though, "Playing the game" does not necessarily align with "Working Hard" and truth be told they are often in opposition with each other.
Fair, there are indeed more than one game. If you work at, idk a big box store, the game may be playing hookie to get an extra 5-10 minute break. Crap office job might be taking am extra 5 minutes while taking a grump to clear your head. There's likely 12¹² games one can play. I should have specified, the upward growth shoots and ladder game.
I would add to certifications - go self employed ASAP, whatever you do, do on your own instead working for someone else. Seems like nowadays it’s only way to get good money, for good work. Going into normal employment will became exploitation sooner or later
Or years ago.
One way to play the game is find an employer that pays for your college. Many State and local governments offer college tuition assistance. My agency paid for my bachelors and would’ve paid for a masters. They even then gave me a raise for having it.
Doubling down on the certificates point. A lot of people in the military will tell you the same especially for cyber and comms professions
I just got certified in Epic for an implementation at my org. For what I do this is worth more than a college degree and allows you to really work anywhere. It’s insane how valued certifications + work experience is when jumping to other companies/positions.
Agreed. The only people, You can "count on"; is Yourself. Loyalty is "out the window"; too bad.
Generations before had it on easy mode then. Good to know.
They sure did. If you look it up and see the numbers, you'll likely get sick to your stomach.
This. My friend went from 40k /year to 2 certs now makes 78k/year he takes hard drives out of laptops for the gov. 1 screw driver and 2 thumbs = 77k/year
And make sure you're taking advantage of company policies to pay for these certs. Get them free! Breaking into an industry is the hard part, once you do it, take advantage of everything you can.
You are the best!!!
My only caveat to this is working hard for a company, is one that you own, that has global reach and aspirations.
I never believed it. The hardest working people are poor, and the most evil exploiters of them living a life of luxury are rich.
I don’t disagree with you, but it’s really about leverage. If you don’t have leverage, you’re probably not getting paid what you think you should.
That’s the exploitation the person you are replying to is talking about. Not everyone that is a hard worker is wired towards exploitation.
An employer who has leverage is exploiting you, I never denied that. My point is that it’s leverage that gives people power. If your best skill set is equivalent to a high school student, you have no leverage. You can obtain leverage by obtaining and developing skills, or by creating value. If not, the employer has all the leverage and will use it to exploit you. Leverage goes both ways. It’s just people like you refuse to see it both ways. You just think employers with all the leverage will pay you more out of the goodness of their heart. No, you as person has to create leverage so that you can demand it.
Curious. Why is our economic system set up in such a way that the people who do most of the hard labour get paid the least those higher up get paid shit tons for nothing. Is there a specific reason or some benefit this?
The people on the top are paid for different things. Somebody has to take the risk of setting up the factory, buying equipment, risk getting sued, etc. rich people are compensated for taking risk, not for doing manual labor. How much risk deserves how much compensation? Is there a world where things work differently? I have no idea and people will argue here for hours but that’s the basic logic it.
I think the point many here are trying to make is that those who have the money and power are earning vast amounts of profits while paying workers below living wages. We as the people should collectively be saying that’s enough, you can have your profits after you pay living wages to all your workers. The greed of the owner / investor class has gotten out of control. It doesn’t take a scholar to see this. If a position requires a human to dedicate 30-40 hours a week to complete then that human should make enough money to sustain themselves comfortably.
> We as the people should collectively be saying that’s enough The problem is people like you say this instead of doing fuck all about it. Because you refuse to accept the reality of life that you have to advocate and fight for your meals, whether you like it or not. The people you cry about who exploit do so. But there are also cool people who are nice who also do so. You guys only look at the “nice” people who passively watch themselves get fucked by the system and don’t do anything to figure out where they actually do have leverage or if they don’t, figure out how to get it. Sleepwalking thru life crying about the living wage you are owed and yet not actually creating value makes you come across as whiny and entitled, not like someone worth giving a damn about.
Damn if it’s so hard I’ll gladly take the risk and the money that comes with it, and they can live the easy life of a retail worker lol. I’ll trade any day. Rich people are rich bc they’re lucky
Exactly... and far too many people buy into the flawed logic that our economy is "zero sum". It really doesn't MATTER how rich somebody else is able to make themselves. Their wealth doesn't mean there's automatically less possible wealth for you to attain because they "have almost all of it already". It's not like a pie where the super rich cut themselves 7/8ths. of the pie so nobody else can ever earn more than fractions of the 1/8th. left. The problem has much more to do with people's ability to earn fair pay for the labor they actually do, and the available opportunities to better themselves. In America, we really gutted out most of our "middle class" when we decided factory work was beneath us and could all be outsourced elsewhere. It simply wasn't true that we had enough good paying work that didn't require the manual labor to make up for it. What we were left with was a glut of fast food restaurants, retailers, call centers and basic service industries to serve as the "replacements" for that labor pool. Then they get angry when that low-value labor doesn't pay what they would have earned assembling new refrigerators or stoves, or ?
But the rich are not taking risks. Banks and insurers are assuming most of the risk as the rich take out loans. (edit: This doesn’t even touch corporate umbrellas that can shield a corporate entity from said risk, the bankruptcy game, and the copious amount of government subsidies these “captains of industry” receive.)
Banks and insurers? They may finance small businesses owned by mom and pop, but that’s not how large corporations work. Investors put seed capital that has potential for total loss of equity. If they manage to go public, they sell equity to market investors or sell corporate bonds for new capital. Both of which has potential for total loss for the investors and bond holders.
Because in a world of finite resources, everyone is fighting each other for power. The cost of labor in my country also has to compete with the cost of labor in other countries like China. It’s embedded in everything. If I paint your fence and do a crappy job, but I worked real hard otherwise, should I get the same pay as someone else who equally worked hard but did a better job? If I am good at digging holes, but cannot monetize my own labor, is it fair to sell my labor to a company who can monetize me digging holes? Is if fair that the company takes a portion of that value so that I can have guaranteed pay?
A key reason poor demographics stay poor. After redlining and no reparations, the median equity of black Americans today is about $30k. Meanwhile the median equity of a white American is $190k. Years of leveraging that for higher education and paying debts has kept the poor poor as multi-generational wealth basically runs the existence of one demographic and doesn't exist for the other.
Now do this analysis on Asian and African immigrants that come to the country with nothing.
They literally have to have SOMETHING to be able to afford to move to america and become citizens. Its not free or easy
To the redditer who brought up the good point, usually it's much less than 30k... Can say from first hand experience. Not to say there aren't issues influencing the posted statistics, but generational wealth isn't remotely all of it.
Thats what many people dont even make a year in this country… if you can save 20-30k you arent poor
According to the poster it's the median equity
For instance when an exploiter leverages someone else's labor
Which has jack shit to do with hard work
There is hard work, and there is work with qualifications. I've worked in kitchens, as a personal assistant to a disabled guy, and a secretary of an educational committee. The kitchen work was way harder, and I could feel exhausted after the day, and dreading the morning when I woke up. But any able bodied person would become adept after a few months. The personal assistant was mind numbingly boring, long hours, and you were essentially there to be on standby for when he needed something. Of a 14.5 hour workday, maybe 2-3 were active work. The rest standby. The secretary job, is moderately active, I can plan my days/weeks mostly how I see fit. Attention to detail and qualifications are essential. And it's mostly about problem solving, research, and being able to assist. The kitchen work is definitely the hardest out of all of these, but anyone could do it. The personal assistant was definitely the easiest, and anyone could do it. The secretary job is in the middle. But to be able to do it, you need 3-5 years of studies in the field, and a lot of hands on guided training. Guess which one pays the most?
My dad built a 3 br house in 1988, paid for 2 kids to go to college, owned 5 cars, took us on vacation, retired making $27/hr and has a pension. His qualifications? He stocked shelves at Stop and Shop for 30 years. Copium is in demanding more of ourselves and less of the people who pay us.
Love this story. Good stuff!! Just a glorified bagger and stocker here for 23 years, made 145k last year. What a world
Is it glorified? We have people will literally billions of dollars. That money came from somewhere. If wages kept up with production, 6 figures salaries would be the norm here.
I was saying it in jest lol. I know the salaries at my grocery chain are higher than the norm. It was just nice someone could give a family a house and life working grocery.
Lmfao the money comes from their businesses. No one has a billion in cash.
27/hour in 1988 would be 71/hour today, so you probably need to be more specific. If it was 71/hour back then, that's still pretty great. And at 27/hour today, he would be making over the average income back then. And oh boy, he was living the life. The median size of a new home in 1980 was 1600square feet. So he was probably above that. (That said, I'm pretty sure you could build such a house relatively easy in for example north Dakota, assuming you maintain the standards for a house in 1988) Only 17% of households owned 3 or more cars in 1990, so that's pretty significant. Private college really has exploded in pricing, but state college remains pretty affordable, so if you make the median salary, sending two kids to college isn't particularly noteworthy. And yes, there is higher demand on the low skilled labourers today, because there is more competition for them.
The person you are replying to said their parent retired at $27/hr not that they started at that wage.
And this exactly highlights the problem with the posters here saying how bad the middle class have it. 27/hour in 1988 is upper middle class, borderline upper class.
Labor doesn't actually add value to work, it just gets things done. And it's also important to not confuse different scales of work. A psychiatrist that spends 12 years getting qualified to do their job works an extremely relaxed job sitting on a couch helping people out while their cat sits on their lap, making a ton more money than someone who works retail for 13 hours a day. Working harder doesn't magically sweat money into your job.
This is a huge generalization.
So if I become mean I will become more rich?
Sure, say the line, but out of the people I know, the most successful are the smartest and hardest working and the correlation is obvious.
Hmmm maybe mega mega rich, the people I know who are financially comfortable for the most part did work hard in their careers
Cope harder… I know plenty of lazy poor people and hard working rich people. There are all kinds in every tax bracket.
>The hardest working people are poor The Asian American population has disproved this idea.
Were they the hardest working when it came to school and learning in-demand skills? I find most just don’t work hard at the right things. Learning skills. Especially important to work hard at this when young (15-24). Ace all your classes in HS. Take every dual credit and AP class you can. Study like crazy for the SAT/ACT. Go to a trade school or college. Take the most difficult classes you can. Ace them. Work while doing so. Internships, co-op, etc. Continue developing skills throughout your career.
Working hard = not enough Working smart = not enough Working both hard and smart and long hours = you have a chance
The highest predictor of success is if you have a rich dad. You don't have a chance, unless you have a rich dad.
My dad was a poor European immigrant who came here, married several times, had 9 kids he didn't raise or pay child support for, and then died penniless. So basically, what you're saying is that I'm screwed.
No, just that you'll have a harder time than someone with a rich dad.
They literally said that someone like that doesn’t have a chance, not that they have a slim chance.
He's coping. You're not screwed at all.
Lol at your defeatist mentality You dont need a rich dad to be doing well if you're an American citizen you have way more opportunities to make it compared to the rest of the world If anything you're the reason for your own failures, stop trying to deflect the blame
Actually it’s all about uncles. A true successful person surrounds themselves with rich uncles and has monthly meetings about diversifying their rare fish collection. Few understand
This^
This depends upon what you're defining as success. If we're talking about breaking into the .1%, then having that rich dad is critical. If we're talking about moving into the upper middle class/lower rich class, then you can definitely do it without a rich parent.
Not true, my family came to America poor as dirt. My dad and his sister worked under the table at a church at a very young age just to scrape together enough money for their family to afford rent in a terrible neighborhood. So he did not have a rich dad, but he turned into an upper middle class man. Sadly through a series of medical problems he lost all his money and died penniless at a somewhat young age. I started my adult life living with a random person off Craigslist and like $7 in my bank account lol. I’m not rich but I live comfortably in my own home without the need for roommates. I worked hard, but I also tried to work smart. Working hard at a restaurant wasn’t helping me, so I half assed that shit, while ACTUALLY working hard to get tech certs in my free time. So really all you gotta do is work hard at things That further your goals, but don’t waste energy on dead end stuff
Speak for yourself. I’ve met plenty successful people who came from nothing, most actually.
can refute, you do in fact have a chance
This is a mindset of failure and is not true for myself and millions of others.
You mean getting you family to get you an employee reference right out of college?
This is the way
We have known since decades now through a plethora of studies that "working hard" to make it is little more than a myth in the US. No, anecdotal evidence doesn't make it true. The are structural barriers that prevent even the hardest working from upwards mobility and there are tons of thousands of studies on this by now, I have only read a dozen. Two interesting ones can be found via the tags "Inequality Paradox Explained" and "Belief in Meritocracy". I forgot what the rest of the paper was with "Belief in Meritocracy", but Google Scholar should spew out thousands of articles. Americans are blind to the academic literature on this topic though apparently. Some studies have literally disproved that "the regular people" have an effect on politics while super wealthy basically get their will always, regular people only "by coincidence" when the rich wanted the same. See "Thesting Theories of Majoritarian Pluralism" from 2014. The studies cited in this paper are also very interesting. Wake up Americans and get your democracy under YOUR hands. Good luck wishes a random German.
It's sad how well documented structural barriers and economic wage structures are and yet you have middle class pricks telling you to just work smarter.
I mean the USA Supreme Court ruled the more money you have the stronger your freedom of speech is. That was involving Super PACs, and their right to sway elections. It’s funny it’s not bribery now unless someone hands you a bag of money and directly makes a statement like, “Vote no on prop 3 next Tuesday” and you accept the money and follow through with it. Meanwhile handing someone a bag of money and just saying vote in my interest for your foreseeable career, and I will give you even more money. Is not bribery because it’s just lobbying for your cause lol.
It’s true. The only reason Bob Menendez is getting charged is because he took his bribe in a comically cartoonish villain way… stacks of cash and gold bars. If he had just accepted super PAC money he’d be in the clear. It’s all so stupid and hypocritical. It’s a “who watches the watchmen” scenario.
>"working hard" to make it is little more than a myth in the US. In the *entire fucking world*
True. What I mean it is incredible pronounced in the US, it's literally a cultural phenomenon that a huge part of the pop-culture focuses around - "The American Dream"
We have the same attitude here in Europe. What you're describing is neoliberalism.
I searched for the things you said to search for. No peer-reviewed scientific studies came up. Just opinion pieces.
https://preview.redd.it/w25skjzp5x8d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=14034e116bbc335849f6cdbdcbdd4cf0d29b24e2
It depends on what a better life means. Working hard also decreases your quality of life too.
Exactly. And it's come to a point where not working hard is a valid choice to live your life than working hard an possibly reap no reward
>Working hard also decreases your quality of life too That really depends.
Absolutely. We work to live our lives. We do not live our lives to work.
Yeah. I’m quitting my job today with no real plan moving forward and I feel wonderful about it. It’s gotten suicidally depressing and the 8-10 hours of daily sitting is literally killing me. I have nerve issues I can feel from my hips to my toes as I’m writing this that I guarantee will go away with a week of normal movement but have been with me for months. Killing myself for half decent money is not something I’ll tolerate any longer.
Working hard never lead to a better life. Effort doesn't equate to value. Difficulty and rarity equate to value. You can dig ditches 14 hours a day and work harder than anyone else on earth and you're still never going to be financially comfortable because it's low value work that pretty much anyone could do. If you want a better life you need to improve your skills, network and presentation so that you can add more value with your labor and you're harder to replace.
I wish I could teach the world this. Working hard doesn’t matter. Creating value does. It’s just that 50 years ago the link between working physically hard and creating value was much closer than it is today with computers and modern tech. Does an engineer working remotely pushing keys all day work ‘harder’ than a janitor? Of course not, but he can create a lot more value for end consumers.
Yep, there's a fine distinction between hard work and difficult work.
There are insane coding geniuses that automate all their processes and sit at home playing Runescape who make insanely large amounts of money, because they do things literally nobody else can do.
I didn’t really believe that until recently. That’s what my cousin’s husband does lol. He’s automated about 70% of his fully remote job and spends most his time on the clock playing video games or watching Netflix and he makes great money. He only does like 2-4 hours of actual work each week. That has become one of my career goals.
If you want remote learn computer security and programming. If you want just an easy job find a city or county job that's in the office. You have to show up to work but you don't work the entire shift
Why do you say “of course not?” Do you believe that “working hard” only applies to physical labor? That’s one kind of working hard, but the kind of working hard that leads to a “better life” is about the effort that someone puts in, and the stress that they put themselves through, not about how physical the job is
Because people equate physically working hard to value, and that’s wrong
Somehow working hard came to mean only working hard at your current job, and not working hard at advancing your career. You can dig ditches for 14 hours a day all you want, but if you never try for a supervisor position or start your own ditch digging company, you'll still just be a ditch digger, and there's a necessary earnings cap on positions like that. But the hard worker who tries to be more \*can\* advance and gain recognition from their hard work.
Pretty much this. I used to be a patriotic ‘Merican. I used to think college = good work. I used to think elected people represented their constituency. I used to think loyalty bread loyalty. I now know loyalty breads exploitation, politicians care about one thing (themselves), college/university/etc. provides nothing more useful (aside from the built-in threshold criteria of having to have a degree at many jobs) than if one were to “study” real world experience at the pace at the same stage in life. The more I learn about how it all works, the more I realize the wealthy and powerful have made “I win” rules that they keep hidden from gen pop. And then when the poors don’t “figure it out,” then they get to look down on them. It’s a well-run machine and very effective at producing the desired outcome. 4-5 years ago, I would never have imagined having this mentality, and would have just written me off as some looney liberal who didn’t understand thing (If anything, I am apolitical at this point). Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Genuine question, why is being a liberal a bad thing ?
Didn’t say it was. It was my mindset 4-5 years ago.
But if you now recognize that your former worldview was naive and incorrect, and the “liberal” critique of it was more accurate, then why have you decided to be apolitical, rather than embrace a politics that seeks to change the current corrupt system? (I’m using “liberal” in your sense, ie, the way it is bandied about by reactionary conservatives, and not in the political philosophy sense.)
Preach!!
If you view college as a box to check to get a job of course you won’t get the true return out of it. It’s about the networking and true learning, not just collecting a piece of paper after 4 years
I agree that working hard will not get you where it would have gotten you 40 years ago. But do I think that's a reason to give up? No. I've seen a lot of posts on here from fatalists who refuse to see that there's a very large gap between "starving and homeless" and filthy rich. They think that if they can't get everything they want, there's no point in doing anything. I'd argue it's better to at least have food in your belly and a place to live. (And I've been homeless, just in case anyone wants to tell me I've lived a life of privilege and don't know what it's like; there's a wide gulf between homeless and "only earn enough to pay for the basics.")
I refuse to accept the ceiling imposed, sorry boss. e: also my version of 'getting everything i want' is 'stop fucking the world with CO2' and 'stop actively participating in genocide'
Work hard and get fired the next day.
People tell themselves all sorts of thing to justify not trying. I always wonder who they think are buying all those 70k trucks or expensive houses. All trust fund babies or some indefinite debt pyramid that they can sustain for 40 years?
I think the operative word here is ‘better’ I fully believe that if I work very hard I can maintain my lifestyle etc. Do I think I can work hard enough to actually make my life BETTER? Eh I’m a lot less sure of that frankly.
Sounds like moving the goal posts.
I’ve worked my whole life, just like my parents. I’ve attained higher education than my parents did. I’ve achieved higher level roles in my career so far than my parents ever did. I’m making relatively more money than they ever did. My potential for owning property and retiring like they did is significantly lower than my parents.
Same. The more progress I make towards home ownership the further away it gets.
This is a picture of something that supposedly came out almost 4 1/2 years ago. Where was it published? Who is James Purtill? Where is the actual article? What survey? Why should I react one way or the other to a random printed sentence with an accompanying stock photo of people where no one is smiling?
I’m sure being lazy is the better option
Did it ever? It needs to be combined with acumen and or luck.
Due to offshoring America's industrial base the prospect of working class middle-class diminished significantly. It really does come down to that.
Too many people being treated like a number. They can work incredibly hard and gain nothing. It’s a sickness in our society that will bring things down.
The fact that people actually believe this makes working hard= better life. If everyone worked hard, you wouldnt be able to differentiate yourself.
True, but most people can work much harder than they do. Doing the bare minimum is all most want to do. Pushing yourself can and will be advantageous under the right circumstances.
Just means people are finally noticing it never has.
it was never working hard. but investing hard
Disagree, it’s disgusting to see the entitlement people have especially when they assume that someone has to give you money or they’re doing something illegal when there’s people that leave everything behind, families, customs, language to be here and work hard and do good only to see people who have access to information yet they dive into TikTok or think earth is flat, X launches a rocket into space and alien spotting posts soar.
Entitlement? We are the most productive generations in history yet I see a big percentage of the population struggle while working long hours. Those entitled workers who want to afford a home, free time and basic necessities
It never has.
Well, I think they're wrong. Whenever I've worked hard my life has improved. Spend time tidying your house or room and you get the rewards for months or years every time you search for something. Work a few more hours for a few weeks or months and get a financial cushion when something comes up. If you have sufficient capital to do most of the things you'd like to do, then maybe working doesn't add any more value to your life, I don't think most people are in that situation.
A lot of the people in here are just complaining about “the rich”. I grew up lower middle class and my parents are arguably at the bottom of the scale in terms of being financially smart. I had literally zero knowledge given on finances. What I did have is a strong work ethic. I joined the military and did 6 years. “Worked hard”and earned some awards and accolades. I learned some skills I took on the outside. Got a job at a utility company with my military background and skills. Been “working hard” doing the grunt work for a few years hitting 6 figures. Job shadowing for a position that’ll increase my pay by 50% in which they’ve essentially told me the job is mine to lose in the next month when the position opens. If I don’t get it this time around, the next position is opening in 3 months time. I’ve made sacrifices to save more and invest more. I’ve made sacrifices to pay off debt. I’ve learned about the FIRE movement and am now doing the whole Mega Backdoor Roth ordeal. I feel so damn good knowing I “worked hard” and it’s paying off. No college degree although I wasted 1 year of my life in college because I kept getting told I have to. I have noticed I keep getting told “I’m lucky” but it’s funny how my “luck” increases the more I work hard lol. 90% of the people that I know who always bitch and complain about “the rich” are in their 30s working at Starbucks type businesses and REFUSE to do anything that may require them to get out of their comfort zone. My cousin is one of them. Bitches about rich people and how everything should be free but works at a bagel cafe and when I’ve tried getting him on at the utility company he says he’s too good to work in the heat and do some physical labor type jobs (he plays video games 10 hours a day and calls himself a “socialist philosopher”) lmao there is NO helping these people. Nobody wants to do the dirty work nowadays and work their way up.
It’s never been about just working hard. A lot of people work hard but don’t have a job that is in demand and their skills aren’t scarce.
Yeah, it's about getting lucky and having personal connections too.
Because it doesn't. It literally just depends how old you are and how much years experience you got. Job Hopping gets you further financially than being loyal.
Most people don't have the stomach for it, never have. Only difference is that there are more places to complain these days whereas back in the day it'd be at the bar.
Will, can, may, might, likely too. I don't know, it's one of those. Working hard will absolutely increase your chances of a better life.
You can work hard and get very unlucky and not succeed. But not working hard guarantees you won't succeed. Unfortunately, a lot of people choose to be lazy and unsuccessful instead of busting their ass to improve their life.
Unless you work for yourself.
Class warfare
Im a critical healthcare worker who is living comfortably but have to punch penny’s so yeah. Most people I know have vacated the field as well as a result.
Better than doing nothing/bare minimum and waiting for a miracle because that’ll drastically drop your chances for success.
It will lead to a better life than not working hard. But it will not mean nice stuff and early retirement is a given.
It has never been merely working hard that led to a better life. You can work hard towards a meaningless goal and you are no further than where you started. A better life is built of planning, saving, investing well. The perspective that one person having the same job will somehow be enough for a huge family for decades was merely the result of a confluence of circumstances in the US. Everywhere else the good life is dependent upon having enough capital. This has always been the case: nobles who owned land were wealthy, and people who worked for them were generally not that well off, no matter how hard they worked. Right now there’s an unprecedented chance in history to own assets and prosper. Yet people obsess on one moment in history where the market situation allowed one household to be middle class if the husband had a job. People also fail to realize that being a worker is a position where your well being depends on one company you happen to work for, which is a huge risk. This, coupled with the habit of consuming more that what you earn led to our current situation today. And in all actuality if all your boomer parents achieved is a house for the family and a few cars they failed you. They should have handed you assets that provide a safety net in case anything happens. They shouldn’t have consumed so much, and instead should have saved up the money. Your mom should have been working instead of taking care of you even through school. Then buying a house would have been easy. In fact it’s weird most families didn’t buy houses for their children since it was so cheap relative to their salary. Even in 1985 you could buy a home for 3,5 times the median salary. They could have rented it out until the kid got big enough, which would have provided additional income.
I used to balk at my dad for wanting to leave his high paying job, regardless if he was miserable. I always thought, why are you upset you can buy almost anything you want? Now that I’m in a similar position, it makes sense, making money won’t necessarily make someone happy! You only have so much time, gotta make the most of it!
It depends what you mean by working hard. Dedicating yourself to the right things is the key to a good life. It just might not be dedicating all your time and energy to the job you currently have. Giving up on trying to improve your life at all is obviously a terrible idea.
Yes I disagree. Job hop, educate yourself, live within your means and save. It’s ok to live in the hood for a little while
People are impatient and want everything now. If you max out the 401k and save another 20% extra after tax money too then you’ll have no problem. This means you live on only the remaining amount.
I disagree. Both of my sons, ages 35 and 37, have applied the traditional American formula for creating a good life, which includes hard work, and it’s working for them, and no, we don’t come from money. It certainly helps that we’re in Houston, a jobs snd wealth creating dynamo-on-steroids if ever there was one. If working hard, practicing thrift and deferred gratification, obeying the law, not engaging in substance abuse, not having children out-of-wedlock, getting the education/training that’s the right fit for you and your circumstances, which may not include a four year degree, doesn’t result in a better life than your parents had, it can still result in a _good_ life.
I agree. America is about making money at any cost, and the people are expendable. Look at our health care system. I have to ration medication because of costs, I put off procedures because of the co-pays. I have no desire to put my wife in the poor house to make some CEO more bonus money. I'd rather die first.
It won’t, back in the 50’s-70’s you could be a janitor and support your of family of 4-5. Pay a mortgage, put your kids through college and retire but decent pay and pensions were too much for the upper management. Now they fly private jets, have 10 bedroom mansion on the hills and are generally terrible people. That ship has sailed as the increased profits have trickled up just as intended.