I think this is pretty spot on. I recently visited Poland where i was born and raised for 14 years of my life. I know many people who came to US for work but have left. They earned more but spent more and did not feel good about their shitty low wage jobs.
I think life is relatively good for tech people, and business people in high positions.
There was a point in my life when I used foodstamps and medicaid. I suffered a serious allergic reaction to a medication which caused permanent damage to my neurological system and tendons. I ruined my credit due to the high cost of healthcare. However, I became really passionate about tech, now bought a house and rebuilt my credit. I still suffer from chronic pain but I manage it quite well and you would not be able to tell something is off.
The US healthcare caused massive mental issues and suicidal thoughts. First I lost my job, then I lost my insurance....it was scary. Then, ACA passed and I was covered under medicaid. Seriously, if it wasn't for ACA I dont think I would continue my existence.
I am back in work force making good money and am pretty happy.
This article is really interesting, I feel as US has failed its citizens. Legislation is driven by lobbying. Seems like nobody cares about science and facts anymore in politics. I wonder if some of this is caused by massive data collection and gearing speeches towards things people want.
Same thing happened to many news article, some dude looked at data said "these sensational titles/articles drive traffic", which drives revenue, WE NEED MORE. That's why CNN interviewed a dude that got sued by their parents because he would not move out at 31......
I love US and most people are great. I hope we can turn things around. I think politicians should be educated, smart people that work towards a greater good of a society.
'My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.' That's undoubtedly one of JFK's most famous quotes. It's interesting to think how much things have changed since then. Imagine if a politician, let alone a democratic one, said that. The response would be... less than positive.
So what's changed? One thing that I think is easy to pinpoint is that we've turned sharply against nationalism for various reasons. But then a simple question. If we're to believe that devotion to the American culture and interests is bad, what is supposed to make people in this enormous nation of 325 million care for one another? Right, we can say we -as humans- ought care for one another naturally and unconditionally. And lots of people say they care about e.g. what's happening in places outside of this country (Africa as a typical example). The median energy/income put towards doing anything about those situations, even just among those who claim to care? Absolutely 0.
In the heyday of America when there was a much stronger sense of connection between employer, employee, and generally people at large. Rich or poor, urban or rural, politician or voter, liberal or conservative - you were a fellow American. For instance the last time that a basic income in the US was mentioned actually came from a republican - Richard Nixon. That's not to say that I think it is/was a great idea, but rather that this deterioration of concern in society is a very new phenomena. Now we live in a society when a person goes to a congressional ballgame to try to kill as many congressmen as he can - many people were, shall we say, less than upset about his actions. There's certainly a chicken and egg question there, but the tautology needs to said: when people could not care less about one another (if they don't fit into their ingroup), it should come as no surprise when people could not care less about one another (if they don't fit into their ingroup).
I liked his idea that the common American is stuck at the loser-end of a system of "asymmetric risk." Americans are expected to take on more and more "personal responsibility" (i.e. risk) for healthcare, for securing income, etc. and that means they're subject to all the consequences of any failure.
On the other hand the powerful and wealthy monopolize the rewards of risk, and broadly refuse to share it. However, they have such large cushion (and connections) that they never really took any personal risks at all. If they fail, they'll probably be fine (except maybe with some hurt feelings).
There are other factors. The US is a big sparsely populated country that is relatively far from business partners. Military dominance is required to continue a current foreign relationship and protect global corporations originated in the US.
Even Obama manage to only make a tiny turn to the left. The US is like Titanic, too big to make drastic turns and cannot afford to slow down. Larger geopolitical plays influence US more than social rich vs poor.
Look how China outmaneuver the US with peaceful foreign policy making military complex useless. Free trade that allowed to move/outsource low-value manufacturing now is turned against the US when technology advantage is shrinking.
The rich (and their lobbyists) write the laws. The system is set up this way intentionally. The public subsidize the risks of the wealthy while brainwashing the lower classes to accept these risks as their "lot in life". It's not some crazy accident, the game is rigged. You can see this play out in the bank bailouts, the new tax laws and various other policies.
America is a country for the rich with rules written by the rich.
While this is a bit breathless, I think it does call out the fact that American poor are much worse off than those in a typical rich country. Since the 80s the upper middle class has grown quite a bit while the working class and poor have lost ground. Still, the typical poor in America are far, far from the poor in a developing nation. The homeless (~500k out of 325mm) are pretty close though.
The poverty rate has remained quite steady in the US, so despite the "feel" of there being more poor in the country that doesn't square with the facts [0].
The real issue which the article does a great job of calling out is the way that Americans pay a premium for many goods; it just doesn't connect that thought to anything illuminating.
Population growth necessitates a proportional drop in poverty rate just for things to stay the same.
Looking at poverty through a lens which normalizes for population growth paints a completely different picture from what one will see in real life on the streets. When the rate stays constant and the population grows, the situation on the ground is worse, period.
Ah I did misread your comment. That said, I have no idea why that would be inappropriate. Can you go into more detail because I must have missed your point. For instance, how are you judging the situation on the ground? From any objective measure a per capita decrease seems to be a win.
When you're walking through the streets of your city, it's not important to you that the homeless people you see are some specific %age of the population over the last dozen years.
You care that the absolute number is equal to or less than the previous years.
The whole point of a per capita rate is to eliminate the effects of growth. While that is useful for measuring certain things, it's not really appropriate for things like poverty and crime.
The fact of the matter is it's damn near impossible to keep up with exponential growth without substantial effort to prevent bad outcomes for the added people. That starts looking like socialism, and this is USA, so good luck with that.
So instead we'll just look at per capita rates going down slightly, feel good about ourselves, and ignore the mess in the streets.
The good news is fertility rates are declining, if that trend continues maybe we can sort this out over the next 100+ years.
Okay, I understand your argument but that's not at all how that works. Framing poverty in absolute numbers creates an impossible slope to climb. Sure, it would be fantastic if we could reliably shoot for reducing the amount of poverty in absolute terms and that is (sort of) the goal anyway. HOWEVER, absolute terms are meaningless for measuring population effects.
Also exponential growth is keeping poverty down. Growth creates mobility because without growth economics becomes a zero sum game and NOBODY wants to live in that environment. You think the 70s were violent, well. . . .
As for fertility rates, that's also not how that works. Lower fertility rates mean fewer working age people to provide a tax base. That's why countries who have low birthrates are all encouraging immigration. Japan, for instance, with its low birthrate now has more immigrants than it has ever taken on.
In any case I think we have an epistemological disagreement and I don't expect to convince you, just to explain my thinking. Thanks for taking the time to explain your argument, and even though I disagree I appreciate it.
Much of what you point out as benefits of growth aren't necessarily the way it has to be. We have a deeply rooted system built entirely around a growth model, and growth will inevitably have to cease since it's inherently unsustainable. Everything will need to adapt to that situation, and much of your assumptions will necessarily no longer be true for the nation to function. I don't know what that will look like, but we must adapt to a world without growth, the sooner the better, for everyone in the long-term.
I already stated that it's impossible to keep up with the population growth. This is precisely why I feel it's important to clearly state the figures in terms that really reflect what's seen by individuals walking through our city streets. I don't have the impression that the average person actually groks this coupling, and it's articles like those portraying such things in per capita figures which helps reinforce the illusion things are improving while they're actually deteriorating.
I’ve always thought it was odd that we pay $20 for something you can buy direct from China for $3. I mean I understand we’re paying for the convenience of getting the thing now, but it seems we spend a huge percentage of our income on convenience. If we could eliminate that, we’d free up a lot of cash.
I didn't make it past his first "fact" that most American's can't afford to scrape together $500.
His source is a Google search, that search's first result is a CBS article, that article's source is a Bankrate.com survey.
That survey[1] asked how someone would pay for an unexpected emergency, in which that % responded "from savings" The other options on the survey were "use a credit card", "borrow from friends/family" & "reduce spending". So this obviously doesn't mean they don't have the money, it simply shows how they would pay for it. As I would use a credit card to pay for an unexpected expense 100% of the time, but that doesn't mean I don't have the means to pay for the expense.
"Four in 10 adults, if faced with an unexpected
expense of $400, would either not be able to cover
it or would cover it by selling something or borrowing
money. This is an improvement from half
of adults in 2013 being ill-prepared for such an
expense."
If you don’t have savings, that is not a solution. I understand it was offered as a multiple choice option on the test, but if not feasible in the person’s actual life, it is not an option for them. And same thing with the credit card idea. Getting credit cards is impossible or already maxed out for most people living in poverty, which is the grounds for the predatory pay day loan industry.
if you didn't make it past (ie didn't read further), then you are missing some salient points. If you unexpectedly end up unemployed for more than a few months, you will find that your options for scraping together $500 will get tighter and tighter as your credit cards max out, and you have no additional income to tap.
The amount of poverty I saw in the States after coming from the UK was shocking to me. So much money in the country but for people at the bottom it was visibly worse with much more homelessness and visible health problems.
I had the same experience, I was mostly in big, rich cities like NY, SF, LA, Seattle. From other travelers I heard when you travel deep into South Central US, you can find full-on third world scenery.
It is shocking how many poor people are begging on the streets, in a country that is, on average, richer than where I live.
> From other travelers I heard when you travel deep into South Central US, you can find full-on third world scenery.
Respectfully, the people who told you this were either vastly exaggerating or had zero sense of perspective. You're not finding houses in "South Central US" (not sure exactly what that refers to anyway) without running water or dirt floors. I actually grew up in the small town South and knew plenty of people who commuted into town from the country. Some were poor, sure, but "full-on third world scenery." Come on...
Hmm, I'm not so sure that's true. From [1] there are about 500,000 people spread over almost 2,300 'colonias' in Texas who live without basic services like running water or sewer. There's by some measure 1.7 million of them over the US [2]. The photos from that article are very much what is described.
There are incredibly poor parts of the US where people really do live in third-world conditions -- though that's definitely the exception. Even within major cities like SF, we battle with the 'encampments' and I routinely walk by planters filled to the brim with heroin needles. Some of my walks home I see people with open wounds, lying on the sidewalk, with obvious mental illnesses muttering to themselves. You definitely won't find this in Europe, and I've certainly not seen something comparable growing up in Canada.
There's huge wealth disparity here and massive distrust of the government, which together mean those most in need are not looked after. I believe in income and wealth inequality but only when coupled with social mobility and only when the worst off can live meaningful, healthy lives.
I definitely have perspective, having lived in Canada, Saudi Arabia, Australia and the US. I've also traveled all over Europe and Asia.
Texas is probably the best example of exactly what this article is talking about. Powerhouse cities with extreme wealth and economic growth (two of the top six American cities in total GRP, and three of the top five American cities in GRP growth are in Texas), while also cutting aid services to these "colonias".
I also definitely have perspective on this issue, having grown up in the political class in Austin...
I have a hard time understanding why Texas as a state should expend taxpayer funds on upgrading the "colonias", the entire budget is built around local taxpayers funding their own services through property tax. They are essentially camps and were far away from services when people moved there.
That's my perspective anyway - I grew up in a rural northwest town with no paved roads or water that's still mostly like that. If you wanted water you had to dig a well, add your own septic, and pay for the electric hook up. In the greater area there are plenty of even smaller ones (commonly called "hippy camps"), with roads that become impassable to vehicles in winter.
I'm not going to expand on the huge issues there are with state and local funding in Texas, but the perennial underfunding of state and local government services in Texas (a hugely powerful state economically) is another clear example of exactly what this article is talking about.
This isn't a discussion about whether the Texas state government should fund basic public services in colonias (or any poor localities that can't pay for them with property taxes), it's about whether there are people living in third world conditions in the United States. Well, there are half a million people living in colonias in Texas (and some, like you it seems, are fine with that)...
Also, as an illustrative anecdote, I grew up in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Austin and in the state. Our neighbors also had to dig a well and put in a septic tank because they couldn't get city water or sewer (they're less than 15 minutes from downtown Austin and the state capital). That's the state of local government in Texas.
I think we just have a difference in core principles - I see the community I grew up in and the "colonias" as inevitable in a free society.
The colonias they described in the article was 22 miles out of El Paso, and was just inexpensive land someone bought and sold off as plots. People chose to buy those plots, build whatever they wanted, and to live out there. They chose that lifestyle instead of scraping by in the cheapest areas of El Paso, one would assume.
I've known many people who've taken that same choice, living up in the mountains accessible only by logging roads, or sitting right up against the Canadian border an hour from the nearest small town.
The only way to "solve" the colonias problem is to legally prevent people from making that decision, and I don't believe in making that choice for them. If people want to throw up off-grid tiny homes an hour from town, what would our justification for stopping them be?
I said this in my last comment, this is only a discussion about whether people in the United States live in third world conditions. They do.
Addressing what you consider equivalent examples, there is a fundamental difference between choosing to live "off the grid", and having no choice economically. The development of colonias is deeply tied to the industrialization of the border, predatory developer practices, and physical isolation, which makes escaping the economic bubble of colonias even harder (something that public services are specially meant to address). When you grow up in what is essentially a third world country, with a third world public education, can you not see how escaping that environment would be incredibly difficult?
The idea that everyone in a "free society" is inherently equally free is, to be perfectly honest, absurd. It takes a lot of work from society to make this true.
To expand a bit on my anecdote, having to dig a well and put in a septic tank didn't affect my neighbors that much... Because their home is a multimillion dollar custom built home. They chose to build their house where they did, but that took certain financial freedoms that not everyone in the United States has, which is exactly the point.
Also, just to expand on your last paragraph, we as a society already enforce many requirements on land developers. Colonias developed in areas specifically where enforcement of a lot of these regulations was weak (or at a time prior to regulation), in many cases the was done purposefully by developers and not by the people that went on to live there.
To be clear, I'm not proposing a clear alternative here. I am however asking that you acknowledge the fact that your libertarian approach is equivalent to accepting millions of people living in slums in the United States, and living in economic conditions that severely limits their ability to escape. This is exactly the state that many in third world countries find themselves in.
Excellent comment. The real travesty to me personally as a person who grew up in India is: Governments in the US actually work. Sure there is corruption, super inflated infrastructure costs and waste, but for whatever reasons, shit gets done. If Texas were to have only slightly less libertarian policies, I believe a lot more services could be provided to a lot more people that need them.
>Respectfully, the people who told you this were either vastly exaggerating or had zero sense of perspective.
Respectfully, you're wrong. I've been to parts of California where there isn't even safe drinking water... this was in a farming area too. There are plenty of shacks with dirt floors in desert/rural areas of California. You might be in a bubble if you haven't seen it. It's definitely out there.
First world was non-communist NATO aligned countries. Communist countries were 2nd world, non-aligned with either were 3rd world. That said, American having protectorates where citizens don't have power, drinkable running water or cities where there is no drinkable running water are poor examples for a nation with such resources as the US.
What's amazing to me is how many people are so quick to dismiss the kind of poverty we have in the U.S., just because people in the poorest developing nations have it worse off.
Why this status quo is one anyone would want to defend is so beyond me, I feel like we're on different planets.
The difference between urban and rural America is that in urban America you have the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty and in rural America you just have poverty.
Took the Amtrak across it stoping in a lot of places over 2 months. Most shocking was Memphis. It seemed incredibly poor. A lot of closed businesses and many people on the streets.
I live in the Bay Area now and SF Civic Center is still incredible given all the money in the area.
Port Talbot can't have improved with they closed the steelworks down, but it can't possibly compete with Philly, the level of decay is unimaginable to a person from Western Europe.
Years ago, I saw/read a presentation from a prominent economist arguing that, more than financial resources, people should look at the changing distribution of risk in the U.S.
So, I started doing so. And so far, it has corresponded pretty well with other circumstances I've been observing.
There's been an enormous shift of risk from institutions to individuals. This economist argued for it accelerating in the 1970's and continuing since.
Sometimes, simplistic phrases are nonetheless useful -- sometimes even defining, if devoid of the details.
Divide and conquer. I think of that often, with regard to present circumstances in the U.S.
Just lately, I ran across a "random" article on social media. About a relatively little known Nobel laureate who has apparently significantly informed -- or, provided cover for -- the very self-centered and transactional philosophy and behavior of oligarchs and monopolists like the Koch brothers.
I had to leave off reading it about halfway through, with the intention to return. And, it mentions an apparently well-received book on the topic.
I'm not familiar with this web site, but here's that article's URL:
Quality of life is not just about amount of money you earn. It's about your status in society.
You can make a ton of money feel low status (ex. oppressed minorities) and your life wouldn't be very good
You can make very little money and feel very high status (ex. a village elder) and your life would be amazing.
In America, the upper class have a ton of money and medium status - the poor hates them and it's generally considered impolite to show off your wealth.
Take this piece with a huge grain of salt because it misquotes to exaggerate.
The second statement - "A third of Americans can’t afford food, shelter, and healthcare" - is based on a CFPB survey [1] that scores "how people in the U.S. feel about their financial well-being". The survey finds that a third of Americans, experience "running out, or worrying about running out, of food, not being able to afford medical treatment or a place to live, or having utilities turned off". It's not hard to find enough people who are worrying about not being to afford medical treatment.
The third statement - "Healthcare for a family now costs $28k " - is a misquote. The original report [2] states that "the cost of healthcare for a typical American family of four covered by an average employer-sponsored preferred provider organization (PPO) plan is $28,166". The same report lists that employee contribution is $7,674, and employee out-of-pocket is $4,704. If you want to include the full premium as "cost", then you also need to adjust the median household income to include employee contribution and all sorts of non-wage benefits.
1. Have you actually read the survey you referenced? It is not just finding random people on the street, it's using "GfK Knowledge Panel® (GfK panel), a recruited internet panel designed to be nationally representative of U.S. households.". You need better argument or evidence to dismiss the survey.
2. The point of the quote is to prove high cost of healthcare overall to the society, not just the employee. In employer's perspective, insurance premium is considered cost of the employee, which has impacts on the employees' wages. So although the statement may not be precise, the point is not wrong.
1. I have. My main point is that the survey is about how people feel about their finance, not actual financial reality as in "one-third cannot afford food, shelter, and healthcare". The survey itself actually says
> roughly one-third of individuals have difficulty making ends meet and approximately one out of five sometimes have difficulty paying for basic needs like food, housing, and medical care.
So even taking it at face value, the ratio is 1/5 instead of 1/3? And also
> while financial circumstances are highly correlated with financial well-being scores, individuals with quite different experiences can arrive at the same score
This further indicates the survey is about people's perception about personal finance, not objective financial reality.
2. IMHO, the author's point is not really "US spends a lot on healthcare as a country", but that US is a "rich" country but people are "poor" because they have little dispensable income after paying for healthcare etc. Comparing total insurance premium against household income is a faulty way to support that point. I agree US spends a lot on healthcare, but it's not bad enough to justify labeling US people as "poor".
Besides for a few facts thrown around in the beginning, this is entirely an opinion piece. Even the facts in the beginning are presented in a misleading manner IMHO:
> The average American can’t scrape together $500 for an emergency. A third of Americans can’t afford food, shelter, and healthcare. Healthcare for a family now costs $28k — about half of median income, which is $60k.
The "source" in the first statement links to a google search for "american 500 emergency". Not a compelling source IMHO.
The source for the second statement seems to be legitimate, but the author claims that 'a third of Americans can't afford food, shelter, and healthcare', when in fact the source only claims that a third of americans may struggle to afford those things. There is a difference.
The final statement is conflating employer-paid healthcare costs with median income, as if that $28k is coming out of the $60k - when it is not - most of it is being paid by an employer.
And then the rest of the article is an opinion piece full of assertions and little evidence. Pretty low quality article for HN in my opinion.
I agree. My point is that it is a misleading juxtaposition. I think most people who read that sentence would parse it as something like Americans income is 60k, and then after they pay for healthcare they have 32k or less left
It's really hard to make a direct comparison as in countries with socialized medicine, you don't really have co-pays, deductibles, caps, out-of-pocket maximums, etc. The implicit assumption you make is also that the average American gets their insurance through their employer -- they do, but that's not the whole picture.
55.7% of Americans get cover from employers, 16.2% from individual markets, 19.4% from Medicaid and 16.7% from Medicare. [1]
After all, if people can't come up with $500 for emergencies, what's the chance they can come up with co-pays? This is measured in [2] and they conclude 41,000,000 Americans are underinsured.
So they may not have 32K left, but they probably do have less than 60K left. In fact I'd imagine that the 55.7% who have employer-paid coverage probably make way more than the 44.3% who do not.
I find the article quite a bit hyperbolic, but it still rings true. Technology is a double-edged sword, and America's obsession with it is wreaking havoc. The more you use it, the more you depend on it. and the more people spend time tapping virtual buttons on touch screens, the more they become removed from the "basics of life", separated from physical existence by more and more layers of "abstraction" - in more than one sense.
It does seem like lots of people today don't know how to care of themselves in the most basic way - cook healthy food, grow some vegetables, do laundry or wash dishes by hand, prepare a grandma medicine for one's children when they have a fever... Instead they automatically reach for their credit card and make a purchase.
No wonder everything is so expensive when you depend on "services" for every little necessity of life.
In other countries, the government (and the wealthy) subsidize services used by all to a much greater extent and are considered "public industries". In America, everyone is much more on their own and industries like healthcare are expected to turn a profit.
Should people like Martin Shkreli have control over medicines? Most in the world would say no, in America it's yes.
That's the difference. The American people are treated as a cash cow and industries that they use are businesses without any expectation of contributing to the public good. So while we are rich, we are nickle and dimed for everything from healthcare to education.
That was definitely worth reading. I feel the crunch as a software engineer. I am still able to max my 401k, but after taxes, insurance premiums, mortgage, and a few nights out with the wife, I have little, if any, to invest.
I feel like I should be saving more, but somehow the cost of living is rising while our incomes are staying flat.
Nothing in this article should be a surprise to anyone who has been following what's been happening in America lately or to anyone who understands its history. America has throughout its history developed extreme systems of oppression, subjugation, and poverty to control its people and in attempts to control other nations. The main difference between the current implementation described in the article and previous implementations is that it's less focused on race. In the true spirit of progressiveness, the current implementation tries to fuck over everyone, not just minorities, in an effort to update the systems of old. It is a new type of poverty to exist, but not a novel one. It's one that was available to all other developed countries, one that every single one of those countries explicitly rejected. I think analyzing why all other developed, rich countries of the world blatantly rejected this system while the US supported and supports it to the extreme would be a fascinating study.
"It’s extreme capitalism meets Social Darwinism by way of rugged self-reliance crossed with puritanical cruelty."
I don't know if this is true. There seems to be something else emerging in America.A failed attempt at socialising thing one making the situation worse. Yes medical costs have sky rocketed due in part to an attempt to give universal health care.
They are accused of extreme capitalism but bail out large corporations and subsidise the growing of corn.
Things seem pretty bad over there but I don't think think they have a well regulated free market, they have something else.
The article accurately pointed out the asymmetric risk. A society cannot function with everyone living on the knife edge like that. The only insulation seems to be extreme wealth. But I don't know that socialism will fix this.
This article is completely ignorant of history. Massive numbers of people have lived in dismal conditions since the beginning of humanity, in regions that would be considered rich in their time.
>This article is completely ignorant of history. . .
It doesn't sound like you actually read the article. Whether people have lived like that in former eras is irrelevant. The article talks about the U.S. in comparison with other rich democracies, and argues that the U.S. is "poor" (a "poor rich country") in a way we haven't seen before.
The article also argues that the poverty in the U.S. is likely to give rise to authoritarianism and extremism, which are less likely to occur in a better balanced society.
It is filled with factual errors, unsupported assertions, and appeals to emotion. The rest of the site appears to be of similarly poor journalistic quality. Looking at the author's Amazon author description page, I judge that he is attempting to make a career of telling a certain segment of the population what they want to hear, and leveraging that echo-chamber passion to sell books, get speaking gigs, and the like.
I was asked for my thoughts, not an argument intended to convince anyone, so that’s what I gave. :)
There are several other comments on this page that go into some of the factual errors.
I reviewed the titles and posting frequency of recent articles on the site, and it strongly pattern-matched in my brain as “content farm”, which would be negatively corrated with article quality. I predict the author’s intention is to post one article a day, and I predict that having such a posting frequency as a primary motivation is negatively correlated with quality.
I examined the author’s previous work in an attempt to understand his motivation behind writing and posting such an article; I’ve noticed that articles written out of a personal desire to communicate an idea tend to be better constructed or have a different “voice” than this article, so I wanted to understand where the author was coming from in the larger context. I only “attacked” because of the strength of the pattern-match I found.
I think you could be clearer in what precisely you are disagreeing with in the article. From my reading, the author is trying to describe the state of the US today and struggling to find parallels in history because, while the US is productive and has lots of resources, the people have a surprisingly poor quality of life.
There is another way to look at this. In the current economy, anyone who wants to can get IT and programming skills and get a pretty good job. In fact, IT in general is a pathway to wealth, which is open to anyone, and leads to more wealth than many other career paths. You can be a 17 year old Javascript expert a get a $200k job without going to college. All the training materials you need to do this are online, for free. You need a $200 Chromebook, a Wifi connection, and some kind of ambition or drive.
A 17 year old JavaScript "expert" with a $200k job is such an outlier that it, quite frankly, is not worth mentioning.
Those "experts" are generally (statistically) not born, they are created. From strong education systems and strong social safety nets. If those are public and available to everyone, those "experts" obviously become more prevalent than if they are only available privately to a few.
Yeah, not any more. Maybe in 1999 you could come in as a high school dropout and make an easy six figures since you truly were better at this "internet stuff" than the vast majority of the older IT folks.
I doubt we're in for another massive technology shift like that though in our lifetimes where toys turn into business tools exceedingly rapidly. AI is about the only one I could think of, and the barrier of entry there is far higher than the $150k/yr 17 year old webdev job of olde.
They were outliers, but they certainly existed within my friends group. Those that built independent websites/marketing/etc. did even better, and built rather good careers out of them over time. Many are now retired or semi-retired in their 30's.
Those doors have since been firmly slammed shut though by those who came afterwards, now you are gated by the HR dragons from most jobs.
It was a unique point in tech history I doubt will be re-created, but it's easy for those who lived it to think things are still like that. I got lucky to experience that and "come up" at the right time being interested in the right things. Today I'd have zero chances being unable to afford college. The competition is much more fierce as well.
I have CS degree, I interviewed recently in Chicago burbs. Junior income is around $60k to $80k......where do I sign up for these $200k Javascripts jobs?
You're not getting hired if you don't have a minimum acceptable grasp of writing and communication skills, which are sorely lacking in most of the US unless you were raised by parents who taught that to you.
It's not really open to anyone. You have to be pretty smart to do well in IT. Not a genius by any means, but definitely in the top half of the IQ distribution.
And it applies to other fields in the so called 'knowledge economy' as well. How many people in a given developed country really can actively participate because they have the required aptitude, geographical luck and resources for education? 30- 40%?
The Atlantic addressed this in an article a while ago. Just waving away the disenfranchisement of large parts of the population because they're unable to work mentally tasking jobs erodes human worth.
au contrair -- people who control financial contracts get paid to pay others less.. people who monitor and exert management on others, get paid to monitor them more.. and, there is always someone in this Big Big World that is willing to work for less money.. people get paid to find those people
I think life is relatively good for tech people, and business people in high positions.
There was a point in my life when I used foodstamps and medicaid. I suffered a serious allergic reaction to a medication which caused permanent damage to my neurological system and tendons. I ruined my credit due to the high cost of healthcare. However, I became really passionate about tech, now bought a house and rebuilt my credit. I still suffer from chronic pain but I manage it quite well and you would not be able to tell something is off.
The US healthcare caused massive mental issues and suicidal thoughts. First I lost my job, then I lost my insurance....it was scary. Then, ACA passed and I was covered under medicaid. Seriously, if it wasn't for ACA I dont think I would continue my existence.
I am back in work force making good money and am pretty happy.
This article is really interesting, I feel as US has failed its citizens. Legislation is driven by lobbying. Seems like nobody cares about science and facts anymore in politics. I wonder if some of this is caused by massive data collection and gearing speeches towards things people want.
Same thing happened to many news article, some dude looked at data said "these sensational titles/articles drive traffic", which drives revenue, WE NEED MORE. That's why CNN interviewed a dude that got sued by their parents because he would not move out at 31......
I love US and most people are great. I hope we can turn things around. I think politicians should be educated, smart people that work towards a greater good of a society.