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The rules: - finish high school - get a full-time job - wait until age 21 to get married and have children. "Our research shows that of American adults who fo
by docdeek 6y ago
The rules:
- finish high school
- get a full-time job
- wait until age 21 to get married and have children.
"Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year). There are surely influences other than these principles at play, but following them guides a young adult away from poverty and toward the middle class."
- pianoben 6y agoIronic, then, that poverty greatly hampers the ability to follow nos. 1 and 2. Full-time employment increasingly requires a college education, which not only requires high school, but is increasingly expensive as well. I've known several promising people who, rather than undertake loans, simply dropped out and took a few part-time jobs to help their families with immediate needs. Not to say that the rules can't be followed or don't help, but poverty is a trap and it's not correct to invert these rules - that is, to say "you're struggling so clearly you didn't do the right things" is wrong.
- dionidium 6y agoIt seems fairly obvious that this is circular reasoning, which is to say that doing these three things alone won't make you successful, but the kind of person who is likely to be successful is also likely to do these three things. Once you realize that, this advice reduces to, "In order to be successful, be the kind of person who is successful."
- norswap 6y agoHere's a basic failure to even contemplate the motto that "correlation is not causation".