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This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach
- jameskilton 16y agoOr to put it succinctly: The Greatest Generation has given way to The Laziest Generation.
- noelchurchill 16y agoI assume by greatest generation you mean baby boomers. The article doesn't OP doesn't refer to them as the greatest generation. And by given way, I think you mean enabled, because the OP is making the point that Scotts parents have paid his whole way and still pay for him while he declines job offers. I have issue with calling the baby boomers the greatest generation. They've saddled this country with an unimaginable debt burdon, creating a situation where their kids may be the first American generation who's quality of life may not exceed that of their parents, yet the baby boomers call their kids lazy for not wanting to pick up the tab and pay for their extravagances. However, Scott from the OP is still a lazy sack of ...
- starkfist 16y ago"The Greatest Generation" refers to the parents of the baby boomers.
- rdl 16y agoThe open question is if gen-Y will be even worse than the baby boomers. I don't think they can be, if only due to numbers.
- gaius 16y agoThey don't get off Scot free either. Here in England they voted in the Nanny State in '45 and we've been paying for it ever since. Did you know in '48 they claimed the cost of nationalized healthcare would go down in time as the population got healthier...?
- AlisdairO 16y agoCertainly vastly cheaper relative to the alternatives. Britain's health care system does a pretty good job of controlling costs while maintaining decent results.
- yardie 16y agoDo you mean go down in the sense that a bottle of coke is cheaper now than then after accounting for inflation or down as in an operation that costs £100 will be £50 in a decade? Also, you could have the American system that only seems to go up in costs exponentially.
- gaius 16y agoDown as in, a healthier population will require less healthcare. They never foresaw the NHS paying for hymenoplasty...
- narrator 16y agoThe "Greatest Generation" who guaranteed themselves the "Greatest Retirement" package. In the fairy tale, all the goods and services they consume will come from the magic money tree that the government fertilized somewhere with all the money they paid into social security. Back in reality land, a smaller population of heavily taxed and badly paid members of the Gen X and Gen Y cohort will have to change grandma's bed pan and they better be damned productive given how long everyone's living.
- starkfist 16y agoConsidering they were born between 1901 and 1924, the Greatest Generation is mostly dead.
- bitwize 16y agoBut not all dead! Mostly dead means slightly alive. All dead... well, there's only one thing you can do: go through their pockets and look for loose change.
- smallblacksun 16y agoUm, that would be the baby boomers, not their parents.
- lessthanideal 16y agoI have a pet theory that says that they are the first and last generation every to retire wholesale. I'm pretty sure my generation (I'm 31) isn't going to get to retire in the same way that my grandfather did (two sets of government defined benefit package money + teacher's retirement). Don't misunderstand me, I think he worked hard for it and played the system well, but I don't even have the opportunity to play the system the same way he did.
- run4yourlives 16y agoSorry, are you saying the generation that created the baby boomers didn't adequately provide a large enough work base for the social programs they wanted to access? They call the offspring generation the boomers after all. The "greatest" did a perfect job in understanding what they were doing in that respect. Their children, however, are the ones who use their own strength to ensure lucrative benefit programs for themselves on the backs of their offspring in the Gen X/Y bracket.
- philwelch 16y agoSo named because if it wasn't for them we'd all be speaking German or Japanese right now. Or, depending upon your ethnic status, exterminated, or used for bayonet practice. My dad (who personally is as conservative as they come, though with fond memories of FDR) is of the tail end of this generation--he enlisted just in time to go to Okinawa. He always tells me people living today don't fully understand what WWII was really like. It wasn't like Vietnam or Iraq where everyone at home carries on as normal while the troops are on the front lines--everyone was in the war effort, whether it's boys too young to enlist working in shipyards churning out a ship every day or two, or old men in Bend, Oregon meeting at the bar and planning how to defend the town in case the Japanese landed, to the rationing. And that's America--not Britain where they had bombs and rockets raining on their heads, and where the success or failure of the RAF could dictate whether your family survived the night. Total war means the entire population is involved, and WWII was the last total war the English speaking world ever fought. Keeping all of that in mind, I'm willing to forgive a lot from the WWII generation.
- protomyth 16y agoI really have a problem with the label "Greatest Generation". The greatest generation should be the next one. I sometimes wonder if it was a backhanded way to say America's best years were behind it.
- marze 16y agoGreat story. Parents encourage son to beat head against the closed doors of corporate america instead of encouraging him to becoming an entrepreneur. The author's conclusion: "I'm not here offering a solution for the 45 year old guy with three kids. I am offering encouragement to a crop of college kids infantilized by terrible advice from parents and TV who have the freedom and opportunity to try something; while simultaneously describing the only long term solution to America's economic problems: more businesses. Jobs programs and stimulus packages are debatably good or bad, but assuredly temporary. Remember "the children are or future?" How about encouraging them a little? Maybe someday they'll pay for your social security."
- maukdaddy 16y agoum not quite so black & white. Scott isn't trying to become an entrepreneur right now...he's not doing shit. He either needs to get a job (40k whatever, it pays the bills) or start a damn company. edit: Or as one commenter said, get a corp job to save some $$$ while you work on something else on the side.
- lanaer 16y agoRight. The author is saying he should become an entrepreneur, and that his family should be advising him to do so.
- thecircusb0y 16y agoThis can be summed up to the following "Be proactive, happen to life or life won't happen to you" .
- jganetsk 16y agoGotta love how he's described as having "absolutely no chance of STDs".
- yalurker 16y agoSigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless. From the article: "Were you smarter at 21 post college than your Dad was at 21? And whatever the difference, was it worth the $50k-$200k he paid to get you it?" Yes. Yes I was smarter. And I didn't pay 200k because I went to a state school. I graduated a wholly different person with a completely different world-view and a ton of applicable skills that landed me a high-paying software engineering job instead of doing the manual labor or trivial office tasks that I was qualified for before college. If you go to a private school to get a history degree then sure, it was 4 years of expensive partying that doesn't leave you any more employable. Go get a science/engineering/JD/MD heck even an MBA and you damn well better be smarter at the end.
- nroach 16y agoI agree. However, another route would be to take a sum equal to your 1st year college tuition, and use that to seed a bootstrapped startup. Take a year, $20-50k, and see what you can build. If you fail, you still have (ostensibly) three years of college funding left to go, and you can probably pay off that 4th year through hard work by the time you graduate. When you graduate, you have the degree and a really interesting line item on your resume. Of course, this all presupposes that family or savings can fund that $50-200k in the first place. Unfortunately, many students are dependent on loans. Because the government backs student loans, bankers are willing to lend money for school where they won't do so for a startup. If there was a provision that would allow you to get fully-backed "startup loans" that carry the same terms and guarantees as student loans, I firmly believe our economy would be stronger and default rates probably wouldn't be much higher than they are for student loans.
- jtbigwoo 16y agoAs an eighteen- or nineteen- year old, I would have wasted that money almost instantly. Could it work in reverse with the money arriving in your fourth or fifth year of college? Perhaps a curriculum dedicated to giving students more and more autonomy until they are working almost entirely independently by the fourth year?
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- SMrF 16y agoI find myself agreeing whole heartedly with the sentiment of the article. So much so in fact, that I am a bit nervous to share the link with my social network -- mainly because I know my dad will read it!
- sliverstorm 16y agoJust out of curiosity, the article derides the fact that his job search begins and ends in the morning- when I read that, I thought "well, you could certainly use the rest of the day for self-improvement- fitness, projects relevant to the job you want, volunteer work..." Is that a bad strategy, or when job hunting should you be pounding the pavement 24/7?
- jtbigwoo 16y agoThat was my thought, too. No matter how I feel about rejecting the insurance job, I can't deny that he's showing sufficient dedication to job hunting. The trouble is he doesn't seem to be showing any dedication to anything else. Why is he not tutoring or coaching little league? Why is he not learning something or building something?
- gaius 16y agoThose things are indistinguishable from making himself more hireable.
- silvestrov 16y agoYes, but he can't see it. He thinks only the degree makes him hireable.
- SHOwnsYou 16y agoI have to disagree that he is showing sufficient dedication to job hunting. I recently moved away from a secure job that paid well to live closer to family. All my old friends asked me what I was going to do. I assured them I would have a job after my first day of looking. I did. I worked serving fast food for three weeks before I found a job more in line with my previous employment. During those three weeks I worked serving food, I was emailing my resume out, making calls, and dropping to on local places. I worked my network and heard about an opportunity. Having a college degree and working for 4 hours a day to find a job while mom and dad pay for your rent, food, and entertainment is a sign of utter failure. I have been independent since I was 19, after my freshman year of school. I've said it before and will always say it. If I have to move back home after what I've accomplished thus far, I have failed.
- rufius 16y agoSo the writing in this is atrocious. There's no clear line of thought. I got 5 paragraphs in and could not figure out just what the hell the author was trying to tell me. LEARN TO WRITE.
- samt 16y agoIs that the kind of thing they might teach in college?
- prgmatic 16y agoWell, it WAS written by a psychiatrist.
- mquander 16y agoWhat a shame that nobody has posted a pithy one-line summary for you. My big condolences. I spent three minutes skimming this article and it's perfectly clear what the author's thesis is; that the millennial generation has been raised to expect a breed of safe, corporate job in their favorite fields which just don't exist in the quantity that young adults wish they did. He suggests that they had better relax their standards and take some risks if they want to get work. The author may not be Hemingway, but it's hardly difficult to understand. Learn to fucking read.
- jquery 16y ago> Learn to fucking read. Is that necessary?
- dman 16y agoContextual advertising fail - The ad showing up for me on that site is for Columbia college MBA.
- Alex3917 16y ago"I get that [having a good network gives] you an advantage, of course, but does not having them mean a career in holes?" Yes, obviously. If you aren't even well-networked enough to get a job then how the hell are you supposed to be an entrepreneur? Being well-networked is probably the single best predictor of entrepreneurial success, so criticizing the grandfather's advice while telling him to start a company makes no sense. The one thing the kid is probably right about though is not taking the job. When I was a kid we used to talk about McJobs, i.e. jobs with no chances of any upward mobility. These days pretty much every job at a big company is a McJob, so you have to be really careful about working for someone else.
- hnal943 16y agoAre you arguing that it's easier to become "well-networked" by sitting at home? How do you think you would impress more people? By working or by being too arrogant to work?
- prgmatic 16y agoI think the fact that we're seeing a lot of articles, stories, and publications revolving around the thoughts of college becoming useless and the importance of starting businesses says something about the way our culture is changing, and perhaps waking up.
- rick888 16y ago"I think the fact that we're seeing a lot of articles, stories, and publications revolving around the thoughts of college becoming useless and the importance of starting businesses says something about the way our culture is changing, and perhaps waking up." When I was 19, 20, and 21, I didn't see the importance of college. Now that I'm 29 (with a bachelor's degree), I do. I suspect that many of these articles are written by students or people that don't have a lot of life experience.
- jwhitlark 16y agoI certainly think that education is important. I think the problem lately is people have been valuing formal education over life experience. College is not the only life experience, nor in my opinion, is it the most important one. Life is not a checklist!
- rick888 16y ago"I certainly think that education is important. I think the problem lately is people have been valuing formal education over life experience. College is not the only life experience, nor in my opinion, is it the most important one." College can't replace life experience. But, many of the articles I have seen go in the opposite direction and say that college is useless. To some it may be useless, but you will only get something out of it if you put in the effort.
- jwhitlark 16y agoEffort is always important, and not the issue here. I think one of the things we need to get out of this discussion is a distinction between college as a single concept, vs various courses of study that have greater or lesser benefits for the student. I'm not going to argue that some courses of study are worthless, but I do believe that many do not provide benefits beyond their costs, (in all senses, not just financially.)
- makeramen 16y agoI propose an alternate question: Even if he got the "package" job he was looking for. Should he take it? I'm currently in an argument with my parents about attempting a startup after I graduate vs getting a job and trying to start something on the side. Obviously the parents think it's too much risk, I think I've tried to "follow the rules" for too long and have nothing to lose. Anyone else been in a similar situation?
- dwiel 16y agoI was in a similar situation a year ago. Had the same "follow the rules" arguments with my parents. For the first few months after school I found contract jobs, which payed well enough, and left me plenty of time for my own thing and reflection. I highly recommend this path if you can stand living on the cheap and not knowing when your next job will surface. After a few contracts I wound up joining a cool startup as lead developer since I wanted to pay off student debt fast and get some experience before starting my own. In a year or two, I'll likely be finishing up with this startup I'm at now and will have saved enough money to pursue my own thing full time for a while. Who knows what will happen then ... This all from someone who had some student loans to pay off and not much money saved. Both contract jobs and longer term employment with a startup have been hugely valuable experiences that I am grateful to have had before starting my own. There is a huge continuum between working for a fortune 500 company and as an entrepreneur.
- SHOwnsYou 16y agoI'm not sure Scott wasn't to be an entrepreneur though. When I first started looking for a job back in high school, my parents (both entrepreneurs) told me to accept the first job I got and then keep applying to the ones I was looking for. Having a job currently shows that you are at least likable enough and capable enough to have someone else want to hire you at the present time.
- philwelch 16y agoParents are wired to protect their offspring from risk. It's not so much that they don't have your best interests in mind, but they will prefer a more low-risk strategy for their children than perhaps is optimal.
- AlisdairO 16y agoOverall I found this article disappointingly full of worthless generalisations. There is absolutely no way that anyone who reads The Economist can have concluded that Europe has surpassed America in anything not involving riots, in the way that no one who reads Maxim can conclude that acne is in vogue. I find this attitude deeply aggravating. Europe has simply chosen a different path to the US, and to pretend that the US is superior in every way is ridiculous. Europe, on the whole, balances lower individual buying power and higher unemployment against taking substantially better care of its citizens, and much better class mobility. It's certainly arguable that the average citizen experiences a higher overall quality of life in (western) Europe than in the US. I can absolutely see how that style of life is not for everyone, so it's great that countries like the US exist, but personally, I prefer to live in a european model. As for the value of a degree, when I went into my programme I was a decent enough (for my age) coder, with a serious weight problem and very limited social skills, and when I left I was a better coder with some good fundamental background knowledge, fit, and socially confident. My degree program did me the world of good - it's fine that it's not the route for everyone, but pretending that all degrees are worthless makes you look silly. edit: It appears that my infrequent reading of The Economist has resulted in an unnecessary rant on my part. My apologies to the author!
- notauser 16y agoI think it's actually meant to be a comment on the editorial slant of The Economist, which is generally not in favor of the choices that are made by European states. (They give reasons though, which makes it an interesting read even though I frequently disagree with them.)
- moultano 16y ago>I find this attitude deeply aggravating. Europe has simply chosen a different path to the US, and to pretend that the US is superior in every way is ridiculous. I think you're misreading him. He's making fun of the reporting in the Economist which is alternately, "is Europe going to collapse?" "Is America going to become Europe and then collapse?" and "OMG scary Chinese." The Economist has a fairly particular world view, and he was skeptical that someone who reads it regularly can come out with a different one.
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- jamesseda 16y agoMy understanding of the American Dream is that everyone has the opportunity to build themselves up from humble beginnings. This kid in the article thinks he is entitled to make more than 40k, instead of accepting reality and working hard to change his earning potential
- invisible 16y agoWhile there are people like Scott, I think that there are also many people that don't obey their parents advice to find a high-paying job. There are many people that go out and take loans that they might default on to peruse a dream. (I started my first business at 19 and had no guidance either way.) I think, however, that there is a problem in school (even high school) that pushes students towards wanting to start off making decent money with no input as if they are entitled right off the bat. Scott says he expects his political science degree to entitle him to $75,000/year (more or less). I bet all of his teachers nursed him along with, "These are skills to get a high-paying job..." They did that crap through most of my normal HS and college. So the question to ask yourself is what encouraged you to start a business? What made you take a risk on yourself? For me, it was oddly enough teachers at a college vocational school during HS that didn't express "finding a dream job" but rather learning for the betterment of oneself. We were encouraged to do good work and show off that work rather than grind our way through busywork and exams into a high paying job.
- watmough 16y agoCan anyone point me to the related post from a few weeks back, that concerned the change in the workforce from 'safe' corporate jobs to a more 'free-agent' based workforce? Concerning the article, my wife pointed out that when she graduated with a Liberal Arts degree and started working as a tech-writer back in 2000, her starting salary was $42,000. A considerable more useful sum than $40k would be today. The guy in the article seems pretty stupid not to have taken the $40k, seeing as he seems to have no other plan whatsoever. One revealing thing is his comment about his cell bill. You can be sure his parents are also paying for the house, for food, supplying a vehicle, paying insurance, buying him clothes, medical insurance. My verdict: he's a sheltered little corporate would-be drone, with zero actual knowledge of the world.
- mkramlich 16y agoDiscussing whether college education is worth it is an inherently controversial topic here on HN, I think, and here's why. First, because most would agree that getting degrees in a technical field are more justified and warranted than non-technical fields. So you're going to get two totally opposite conclusions from the folks dissing $100k history degrees versus the folks praising $70k electrical engineering degrees. Secondly, software and business degrees are probably among the two fields where you can arguably gain the exact same knowledge and skills outside of college, free or very close to it, and at your own pace, and be just as qualified to work in industry. Unlike say medicine or chemistry or physics, etc. But here on HN software and business are probably two of our top most interested fields among readers. So we know a lot about these fields in particular. And the readers here should be very aware how easy it is to access and use free and independent resources and techniques to teach themselves in the areas of software and business. But with software and business in particular we have two camps, each further split into sub-factions, and they are all essentially right when it comes to their positions. Yes, having college education is better than not. Yes, college is too expensive. Yes, you can learn most things on your own. Yes, having that piece of paper WILL help you in the long term. No, of course you don't actually need it (with exceptions like doctors, etc.) All of these positions seem in conflict, but they're not, and that's where the controversy comes from. Because everybody is right.
- tjmc 16y agoYour post should be in the HN submission guidelines. With the banishment of politics, religion and the other usual suspects, "formal education" has become HN's flame war topic. It would be an interesting experiment for pg to list flame war topics when they emerge, link to a few insightful summaries (like yours) in the posting guidelines and then ask people to write about something else.
- mkramlich 16y agothank you for the compliment. agreed the site would possibly be improved if certain topics were banned or at least better moderated. it's hard to get rid of all the bathwater without getting rid of little painful parts of the baby though. :)
- bryanh 16y agoAs with everything else in life, college is a perfect example of "you get out of it what you put into it" or garbage in/garbage out.
- tsmith 16y ago""Scott has got to find somebody who knows someone," the grandfather said, "someone who can get him to the head of the line." Is this Russia?" Hah. Best quote from the article. Between the baby boom, rising life expectancies, and the 30-60% drop in boomers' retirement funds, people of Scott's age are facing a completely different scenario than the two generations before his. No shame in slacking by while society sorts itself out.
- hnal943 16y agoI think there is shame in slacking. It's not like Scott is forgoing a job to work on something he views as more important. He's doing nothing but consuming resources because of his own selfishness and arrogance.
- WingForward 16y agoFollowing on a recent magazine meme...what is the difference between an entrepreneur and a small business person? Give each one $50K, what happens?
- lefstathiou 16y agoI am still a bit skeptical of the "american dream is fake" skeptics. We cant hold higher education responsible for people making poor decisions. It isnt the college's fault that his lack of humility kept him unemployed. That is his own issue. I could be wrong, but I believe this is the only time in history that a typical 21 year old (presumably from any background) can come out of college and immediately enter the top 1% of wage earners (in finance and some engineering). Even looking beyond finance, look at what kids fresh out of law school and med school (even not top tier med schools) are making. Even teachers, who we typically view as underpaid, make considerably more now than they did in our parents generation if you take into account the 200 day work year and benefits.
- known 16y agoI think within the context of globalization and internet, America should review, refine and rewrite its laws and destination.
- pramit 16y agoOne can also get a good education by reading the greatest books of all time. For example, The Success Manual, which contains summaries of 100+ greatest business and self-help books. http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com