7 ms·

I broke out of poverty. Why can't they do it too? It was a simple thing for me, a combination of studying hard, focusing on my future and the death of my father

I broke out of poverty. Why can't they do it too? It was a simple thing for me, a combination of studying hard, focusing on my future and the death of my father. You see, my parents were both fishermen. It's a grueling, painful job that can destroy your body as you age leaving you with back problems and forcing you to retire early. It also paid poorly and had a lot of risks. Which unfortunately for us, resulted in the loss of his life. His boat had capsized after a routine trip. Turns out there were some issues with the way the boat was built, stuff that should've been caught by the owner. My father and three others died that day. It was because of his death that my mother filed a wrongful death suit with a lawyer that was luckily working pro-bono, winning a small sum of money that she put in an account to be released on my 18th birthday, money that ended up being the only reason why I was able to go to college and become a software engineer. So why do I bring this up? It's not for sympathy, but rather to illustrate that my parents were some of the hardest workers I've ever known. They were rewarded for their efforts with little savings, broken bodies and a life of poverty. For a lot of people it doesn't mean a single goddamn thing how hard you work or how hard you try. I bring up personal stories like this because I've talked with coworkers and friends who think that grit and hard work is all you need to make it. That jobs will elevate people out of poverty by virtue of existing.

xivzgrev 8y ago
I'm sorry to hear about your parents. However I don't know what your point is. On one hand you say your hard work and focus on future got you out of poverty. Then you say your parents are an example of where hard work and grit are NOT all you need. Honestly it sounds like you were born with a certain amount of intelligence, got some money to go to college, and you made the most of it. But where would you be if you had neither, I wonder?
- allendoerfer 8y ago
  I think that is exactly what he is saying.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mrpopo 8y ago
  > On one hand you say your hard work and focus on future got you out of poverty. I think that was just to add to the shock factor. The point was that his hard work would not have taken him anywhere, were it not for the money brought by his father's accident lawsuit.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Yes, this. My parents had very little to no ability to save money due to dealing with basic survival plus raising me. Had my father not passed away, they likely would not have saved any sort of money to support a college fund. A fair amount of that money went to support my family because by that time my mother and my step father (also a fisherman) were disabled as a result of their job and practically unable to work. It was through that money plus the aid I got from FAFSA that allowed me to get through college and support my parents, though I had to make many other health sacrifices along the way.
    - fingerlocks 8y ago
      So the money only supplemented your education? I too was born into poverty and FAFSA paid my way through college.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  Play his role without the death of his father and incidental lawyer willing to work pro-bono (or, I suspect, on commission): would his hard work have gotten him anywhere besides an early grave? Having been to sea, I can personally say that I seriously doubt he would have gotten much further than his father. Born as grist for the mill.
  - darawk 8y ago
    ...except that that's what we have student loans for. If you want to go to college and study CS, you can do that. Even if you don't have money from one of your parents dying.
- dnautics 8y ago
  There's always oil rigging work, which can start at 80k and pretty quickly get into the six figures with no college education
  - falcor84 8y ago
    I really don't think that oil rigging work will "always" be there. I imagine that unskilled work in the field would mostly disappear in the next few decades.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
alextheparrot 8y ago
Your story resonates so much with me - thank you for sharing. Similarily, it wasn’t applying for oodles of financial aid/loans, working throughout college, and applying for scores of scholarships that let me study software engineering - it was the fact that my great-aunt, who I have exactly one memory of, left a fund to cover rent and books each semester. That arbitrary, fortunate fact gave me the substrate with which to form my education. Hard work will only get you so far when you show up to the pottery wheel without clay.
marnett 8y ago
i can't tell if you actually think it is simple or not. you and your mother are fortunate for that professional class lawyer who worked pro-bono for no material gain whatsoever.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  My point was that none of it was simple. There are many other poor Americans that have had issues pop up like this but are unable to afford or find lawyers to represent them in court. You're absolutely correct that we're lucky that not only did we win the suit but that the lawyer took on the case. Other people aren't as lucky.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Is there a reason you couldn't simply have taken out a student loan?
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      I absolutely could've. My college offered student loans to me as a means of paying for my education but if I had $0 to my name upon hitting 18, my life would've been radically different. As I mentioned in another comment a lot of that money went towards helping my family with FAFSA supplementing my school costs. I was effectively responsible for supporting my entire family and given my other health/mental issues at the time I don't know if I would've survived a full time job as well. Suffice to say dealing with a lot of these issues as a kid leaves your outlook fairly bleak without ways of helping yourself. If you consider my situation to be the norm for a lot of poorer students, then you also start to see where the student debt crisis comes from and how it ties into the economic well-being for many people my age. There's a lot of people where they would have no choice but to dive straight into a lot of these predatory loans without prior education or finance knowledge and graduate knee deep in debt. In another way, I was lucky that I graduated college with only $0 to my name. I could've graduated with -$40,000-80,000.
      - 8y ago
forkerenok 8y ago
I think your story illustrates that it all depends on: * Hard work * Smart decisions (your mother deciding to go after the other and putting the money off) * Luck (pro-bono lawyer, and your father's death in some sense)
jlawson 8y ago
Your story seems to indicate that studying hard and focusing on the future are necessary but not sufficient conditions to enter the middle class. I think the formula is that you need all three: -Relatively consistent work ethic -Decent decision-making -Some minimal opportunity Often the argument seems to swing between these absurd positions that it's all about just one of these and the others don't matter. Of course they're all necessary, and different people lack different components. There's no shortage people poor hard-working people. There's also no shortage of people who blew a lot of money or opportunity due to laziness and terrible choices. There's terrible luck events and great luck events. It all matters. Some smart person said: People are usually correct in what they assert, and incorrect in what they deny. (I think maybe it was Hume).
- leaveyou 8y ago
  What I find amazing is that so few people here notice the consequences of working hard in a field that is not worth it anymore. His entire family should have slowly "pivoted" away from fishing long long time ago (the first/second year with a low ROI for the risk). The same applies to IT or any other sector. When the prospective ROI turns negative (subtract the total costs of your job(time/health/opportunity) from the total salary) you are basically as rich as someone selling their kidneys but you only find it later.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Let's say for example Software as a whole suddenly crashed. It's now one of the worst paying jobs you can possibly get, while being a coal miner jumps up as one of the most profitable jobs. Would you immediately sign up and start working in the mines? Would you be physically fit enough for it? There are large amounts of cultural and career inertia that you have to overcome to 'pivot' your career towards something wildly different. Not everyone can pivot towards something better especially as times change, education changes and people change. My father never graduated highschool and for him, fishing paid better than other opportunities. It was the same for my step-father. It was also all that they knew how to do. There were few retraining programs (that they couldn't afford even if they could) and to them, their career was their life. Their friends did it, their parents did it. It was their entire identity. What I'm doing is effectively the pivot away from the family career. It doesn't change the fact that it left a generation in the dust.
WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
Breaking out of poverty requires a mindset that not everyone can acquire. Given the opportunities that the U.S. has you would think that there would be NO poverty. Yet there is. At a very simple level, you would think that working hard and saving your money would get you to a higher economic plane. But to get to that point you need to be able to learn how it's done and not lock yourself into situations that that will make it so much harder to scape out of the bottom such as teen pregnancy, gangs, drugs, alcohol, and even bad role models. The biggest problem is role models. If your family or friends live a certain way then you tend to copy them unless you're able to think differently or have someone to advise you thru your early years. Not only that, getting out of poverty is a long-term process that requires hard work in the right areas. But even hard work is not enough. I can do very hard work all my life at a minimum wage job and never get ahead. At a very basic level getting out seems very simple. All people need to do is to study to get a good job and work hard. But in reality, that's not enough. You need the support system and the right mindset to get you out. Many people can do it but as we see over and over many people can't. I think the throwing jobs and money at the problem is not enough. I think what would work is to consult young families and young kids that are at risk on what they need to do to get ahead. This needs to be done not once but for years and on a regular basis. It would be similar to a regular check up the way we visit the doctor or dentist.
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  I agree. If you look around at the role models presented today to young people you'll notice a lot of poor role models, many of them not even grounded in reality.
WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
Breaking out of poverty requires a mindset that not everyone can acquire. Given the opportunities that the U.S. has you would think that there would be NO poverty. Yet there is. At a very simple level, you would think that working hard and saving your money would get you to a higher economic plane. But to get to that point you need to be able to learn how it's done and not lock yourself into situations that will make it so much harder to scape out of the bottom such as teen pregnancy, gangs, drugs, alcohol, and even bad role models. The biggest problem is role models. If your family or friends live a certain way then you tend to copy them unless you're able to think differently or have someone to advise you thru your early years. Not only that, getting out of poverty is a long-term process that requires hard work in the right areas. But even hard work is not enough. I can do very hard work all my life at a minimum wage job and never get ahead. At a very basic level getting out seems very simple. All people need to do is to study to get a good job and work hard. But in reality, that's not enough. You need the support system and the right mindset to get you out. Many people can do it but as we see over and over many people can't. I think that throwing jobs and money at the problem is not the solution. What will work is to consult young families and young kids that are at risk on what they need to do to get ahead plus the support system that will help. This needs to be done not once but for years and on a regular basis. It would be similar to a regular check up the way we visit the doctor or dentist and get advice on what to do.
wastedhours 8y ago
Glad you got out of poverty, anecdata only gets us so far. Hard work counts, but so does the opportunity you mentioned, and access to being able to put in hard work. The lack of social mobility is well documented, and it's a travesty that's affecting large parts of the developed world still (and shamefully, the UK pretty much leads on it): https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers/17-21.pdf https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers/17-2... https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/disturbing-finding-lse-study-social-mobility-britain-lower-advanced-countries-declining/ https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/disturbing-finding-l... https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662744/State_of_the_Nation_2017_-_Social_Mobility_in_Great_Britain.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobility-in-richest-countries-has-stalled-since-1990s https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobil... Unfortunately I'm not as well versed in reliable US sources, but there are references through here that the US doesn't exactly beat us hands down on social mobility either. I do implore everyone to read more on this topic, there's a lot on HN about "meritocracy" and "well, just work harder", but that's just simply not the world we live in. It's a shit-show out there, and people's ability to break through the "class-ceiling" is being stunted, not improved.
- apatters 8y ago
  There's a somewhat confusing summary of the degree of mobility in the US on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#United_State... I think a roughly accurate statement is that over half of Americans end up within one income quintile of their parents. That doesn't seem like much mobility to me and many European countries apparently rank better. The American Dream might be mostly marketing at this point.
richpimp 8y ago
> For a lot of people it doesn't mean a single goddamn thing how hard you work or how hard you try. From my viewpoint, breaking out of poverty comes down to these factors, in order of greatest to least importance: 1. Starting off on the right foot at an early age with regards to academic performance. Circumstances can make this tough. Lack of access to good schools, parents too tired to engage their children (e.g. reading to them and instilling academic curiosity) due to working long shifts at strenuous jobs, lack of attention span on the part of the kids, etc. But coming out of school with good academic performance opens so many more doors than not. 2. Choosing a career path that has good job availability and pay (software development, healthcare industry, etc.). You can be a master of your field or trade, but if there aren't enough positions to fill, or if competition is fierce, or if the industry pays poorly, then what's the point unless you have a deep love of it? 3. Luck. Being in the right place at the right time. Not having a major medical issue. I'd almost consider placing this first. 4. Working hard. Working hard has its place, but it's last on my list. I've known many people who did the first three and don't work hard, and still remain employed since the job market is so good for what they do. We had a developer who was absolutely terrible, but he'd regularly job hop every 1 to 2 years and get more money in the process. To be fair, the software development industry has some serious flaws in its screening processes, but nevertheless, it seems you can't ever hire enough developers. I'm not condoning being a poor worker, but the reality is that, though hard work has its place, there are more important criteria in raising oneself out of poverty.
stressbone 8y ago
I believe it's called the hindsight bias.

xivzgrev 8y ago

I'm sorry to hear about your parents. However I don't know what your point is. On one hand you say your hard work and focus on future got you out of poverty. Then you say your parents are an example of where hard work and grit are NOT all you need. Honestly it sounds like you were born with a certain amount of intelligence, got some money to go to college, and you made the most of it. But where would you be if you had neither, I wonder?

allendoerfer 8y ago
I think that is exactly what he is saying.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mrpopo 8y ago
> On one hand you say your hard work and focus on future got you out of poverty. I think that was just to add to the shock factor. The point was that his hard work would not have taken him anywhere, were it not for the money brought by his father's accident lawsuit.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Yes, this. My parents had very little to no ability to save money due to dealing with basic survival plus raising me. Had my father not passed away, they likely would not have saved any sort of money to support a college fund. A fair amount of that money went to support my family because by that time my mother and my step father (also a fisherman) were disabled as a result of their job and practically unable to work. It was through that money plus the aid I got from FAFSA that allowed me to get through college and support my parents, though I had to make many other health sacrifices along the way.
  - fingerlocks 8y ago
    So the money only supplemented your education? I too was born into poverty and FAFSA paid my way through college.
killjoywashere 8y ago
Play his role without the death of his father and incidental lawyer willing to work pro-bono (or, I suspect, on commission): would his hard work have gotten him anywhere besides an early grave? Having been to sea, I can personally say that I seriously doubt he would have gotten much further than his father. Born as grist for the mill.
- darawk 8y ago
  ...except that that's what we have student loans for. If you want to go to college and study CS, you can do that. Even if you don't have money from one of your parents dying.
dnautics 8y ago
There's always oil rigging work, which can start at 80k and pretty quickly get into the six figures with no college education
- falcor84 8y ago
  I really don't think that oil rigging work will "always" be there. I imagine that unskilled work in the field would mostly disappear in the next few decades.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

alextheparrot 8y ago

Your story resonates so much with me - thank you for sharing. Similarily, it wasn’t applying for oodles of financial aid/loans, working throughout college, and applying for scores of scholarships that let me study software engineering - it was the fact that my great-aunt, who I have exactly one memory of, left a fund to cover rent and books each semester. That arbitrary, fortunate fact gave me the substrate with which to form my education. Hard work will only get you so far when you show up to the pottery wheel without clay.

marnett 8y ago

i can't tell if you actually think it is simple or not. you and your mother are fortunate for that professional class lawyer who worked pro-bono for no material gain whatsoever.

fzeroracer 8y ago
My point was that none of it was simple. There are many other poor Americans that have had issues pop up like this but are unable to afford or find lawyers to represent them in court. You're absolutely correct that we're lucky that not only did we win the suit but that the lawyer took on the case. Other people aren't as lucky.
- darawk 8y ago
  Is there a reason you couldn't simply have taken out a student loan?
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    I absolutely could've. My college offered student loans to me as a means of paying for my education but if I had $0 to my name upon hitting 18, my life would've been radically different. As I mentioned in another comment a lot of that money went towards helping my family with FAFSA supplementing my school costs. I was effectively responsible for supporting my entire family and given my other health/mental issues at the time I don't know if I would've survived a full time job as well. Suffice to say dealing with a lot of these issues as a kid leaves your outlook fairly bleak without ways of helping yourself. If you consider my situation to be the norm for a lot of poorer students, then you also start to see where the student debt crisis comes from and how it ties into the economic well-being for many people my age. There's a lot of people where they would have no choice but to dive straight into a lot of these predatory loans without prior education or finance knowledge and graduate knee deep in debt. In another way, I was lucky that I graduated college with only $0 to my name. I could've graduated with -$40,000-80,000.
    - 8y ago

forkerenok 8y ago

I think your story illustrates that it all depends on: * Hard work * Smart decisions (your mother deciding to go after the other and putting the money off) * Luck (pro-bono lawyer, and your father's death in some sense)

jlawson 8y ago

Your story seems to indicate that studying hard and focusing on the future are necessary but not sufficient conditions to enter the middle class. I think the formula is that you need all three: -Relatively consistent work ethic -Decent decision-making -Some minimal opportunity Often the argument seems to swing between these absurd positions that it's all about just one of these and the others don't matter. Of course they're all necessary, and different people lack different components. There's no shortage people poor hard-working people. There's also no shortage of people who blew a lot of money or opportunity due to laziness and terrible choices. There's terrible luck events and great luck events. It all matters. Some smart person said: People are usually correct in what they assert, and incorrect in what they deny. (I think maybe it was Hume).

leaveyou 8y ago
What I find amazing is that so few people here notice the consequences of working hard in a field that is not worth it anymore. His entire family should have slowly "pivoted" away from fishing long long time ago (the first/second year with a low ROI for the risk). The same applies to IT or any other sector. When the prospective ROI turns negative (subtract the total costs of your job(time/health/opportunity) from the total salary) you are basically as rich as someone selling their kidneys but you only find it later.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Let's say for example Software as a whole suddenly crashed. It's now one of the worst paying jobs you can possibly get, while being a coal miner jumps up as one of the most profitable jobs. Would you immediately sign up and start working in the mines? Would you be physically fit enough for it? There are large amounts of cultural and career inertia that you have to overcome to 'pivot' your career towards something wildly different. Not everyone can pivot towards something better especially as times change, education changes and people change. My father never graduated highschool and for him, fishing paid better than other opportunities. It was the same for my step-father. It was also all that they knew how to do. There were few retraining programs (that they couldn't afford even if they could) and to them, their career was their life. Their friends did it, their parents did it. It was their entire identity. What I'm doing is effectively the pivot away from the family career. It doesn't change the fact that it left a generation in the dust.

WheelsAtLarge 8y ago

Breaking out of poverty requires a mindset that not everyone can acquire. Given the opportunities that the U.S. has you would think that there would be NO poverty. Yet there is. At a very simple level, you would think that working hard and saving your money would get you to a higher economic plane. But to get to that point you need to be able to learn how it's done and not lock yourself into situations that that will make it so much harder to scape out of the bottom such as teen pregnancy, gangs, drugs, alcohol, and even bad role models. The biggest problem is role models. If your family or friends live a certain way then you tend to copy them unless you're able to think differently or have someone to advise you thru your early years. Not only that, getting out of poverty is a long-term process that requires hard work in the right areas. But even hard work is not enough. I can do very hard work all my life at a minimum wage job and never get ahead. At a very basic level getting out seems very simple. All people need to do is to study to get a good job and work hard. But in reality, that's not enough. You need the support system and the right mindset to get you out. Many people can do it but as we see over and over many people can't. I think the throwing jobs and money at the problem is not enough. I think what would work is to consult young families and young kids that are at risk on what they need to do to get ahead. This needs to be done not once but for years and on a regular basis. It would be similar to a regular check up the way we visit the doctor or dentist.

onemoresoop 8y ago
I agree. If you look around at the role models presented today to young people you'll notice a lot of poor role models, many of them not even grounded in reality.

WheelsAtLarge 8y ago

Breaking out of poverty requires a mindset that not everyone can acquire. Given the opportunities that the U.S. has you would think that there would be NO poverty. Yet there is. At a very simple level, you would think that working hard and saving your money would get you to a higher economic plane. But to get to that point you need to be able to learn how it's done and not lock yourself into situations that will make it so much harder to scape out of the bottom such as teen pregnancy, gangs, drugs, alcohol, and even bad role models. The biggest problem is role models. If your family or friends live a certain way then you tend to copy them unless you're able to think differently or have someone to advise you thru your early years. Not only that, getting out of poverty is a long-term process that requires hard work in the right areas. But even hard work is not enough. I can do very hard work all my life at a minimum wage job and never get ahead. At a very basic level getting out seems very simple. All people need to do is to study to get a good job and work hard. But in reality, that's not enough. You need the support system and the right mindset to get you out. Many people can do it but as we see over and over many people can't. I think that throwing jobs and money at the problem is not the solution. What will work is to consult young families and young kids that are at risk on what they need to do to get ahead plus the support system that will help. This needs to be done not once but for years and on a regular basis. It would be similar to a regular check up the way we visit the doctor or dentist and get advice on what to do.

wastedhours 8y ago

Glad you got out of poverty, anecdata only gets us so far. Hard work counts, but so does the opportunity you mentioned, and access to being able to put in hard work. The lack of social mobility is well documented, and it's a travesty that's affecting large parts of the developed world still (and shamefully, the UK pretty much leads on it): https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers/17-21.pdf https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers/17-2... https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/disturbing-finding-lse-study-social-mobility-britain-lower-advanced-countries-declining/ https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/disturbing-finding-l... https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662744/State_of_the_Nation_2017_-_Social_Mobility_in_Great_Britain.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobility-in-richest-countries-has-stalled-since-1990s https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobil... Unfortunately I'm not as well versed in reliable US sources, but there are references through here that the US doesn't exactly beat us hands down on social mobility either. I do implore everyone to read more on this topic, there's a lot on HN about "meritocracy" and "well, just work harder", but that's just simply not the world we live in. It's a shit-show out there, and people's ability to break through the "class-ceiling" is being stunted, not improved.

apatters 8y ago
There's a somewhat confusing summary of the degree of mobility in the US on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#United_State... I think a roughly accurate statement is that over half of Americans end up within one income quintile of their parents. That doesn't seem like much mobility to me and many European countries apparently rank better. The American Dream might be mostly marketing at this point.

richpimp 8y ago

> For a lot of people it doesn't mean a single goddamn thing how hard you work or how hard you try. From my viewpoint, breaking out of poverty comes down to these factors, in order of greatest to least importance: 1. Starting off on the right foot at an early age with regards to academic performance. Circumstances can make this tough. Lack of access to good schools, parents too tired to engage their children (e.g. reading to them and instilling academic curiosity) due to working long shifts at strenuous jobs, lack of attention span on the part of the kids, etc. But coming out of school with good academic performance opens so many more doors than not. 2. Choosing a career path that has good job availability and pay (software development, healthcare industry, etc.). You can be a master of your field or trade, but if there aren't enough positions to fill, or if competition is fierce, or if the industry pays poorly, then what's the point unless you have a deep love of it? 3. Luck. Being in the right place at the right time. Not having a major medical issue. I'd almost consider placing this first. 4. Working hard. Working hard has its place, but it's last on my list. I've known many people who did the first three and don't work hard, and still remain employed since the job market is so good for what they do. We had a developer who was absolutely terrible, but he'd regularly job hop every 1 to 2 years and get more money in the process. To be fair, the software development industry has some serious flaws in its screening processes, but nevertheless, it seems you can't ever hire enough developers. I'm not condoning being a poor worker, but the reality is that, though hard work has its place, there are more important criteria in raising oneself out of poverty.

stressbone 8y ago

I believe it's called the hindsight bias.