4 ms·

Yeah, not only do you have to go to college but you need to have money to go out if you want to keep friends. Freshmen don't have much money so you can kind of

Yeah, not only do you have to go to college but you need to have money to go out if you want to keep friends. Freshmen don't have much money so you can kind of skate by going to fast food places but once people turn 21 and start going out to bars and nice things you quickly see whose parents have money to fund their social lives. I couldn't afford to pay $50-100 on a bar tab every weekend.

ido 4y ago
I don’t know where you live where a bar tab would be $50-100. I went to two universities (one in Israel and the other in Austria, neither particularly cheap countries) and cheap student bars had beers for €3-5. Might be a bit more today but not much.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  Beer is notoriously inexpensive in a fair number of european countries. When I first visited from Canada, I was shocked at how much beer I could get in Germany for $5 euro or something
  - ido 4y ago
    Israel is a lot more expensive (alcohol very highly taxed) but we knew the cheap student pub in a basement where you could get good deals on the cheapest beer pitchers to share around the table. Even if the beer was $8 per unit I wouldn't rack a $50-100 tab every weekend as a poor student.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    And to Europeans, the price of our beer (especially in major cities) is also often shocking. They wanted $5 for a pint! ;)
- rayiner 4y ago
  For $5 you could get well drinks in Chicago on a weeknight. (The $50-100 bar tab came from drinking 10 of them...)
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  I live in Norway. A beer costs around 85-90nok (around $9.50USD or 9.02€). It would be really easy to spend $50. That's 5 beers, and I'm not entirely certain that the student houses are really that cheap here. [1] Folks counter this by pre-drinking at home and then going home to continue drinking. It really wouldn't be that difficult in the US either, and some folks would certainly leave you behind if you can't keep up financially. Fun fact: Austria is cheap in comparison, at about 2,50€ to 3,50€ per beer, and it seems like a comparative deal. [2] [1]https://norwaytoday.info/travel/is-beer-in-norway-really-that-expensive/#:~:text=But%20let's%20get%20back%20to,GBP%207.7%2C%20and%20USD%2010.48 https://norwaytoday.info/travel/is-beer-in-norway-really-tha.... [2]https://www.flatio.com/blog/typical-prices-of-goods-in-austria#:~:text=Austria%20prices%20%E2%80%93%20beer&text=500ml%20of%20local%20beer%20in,it's%20around%202%2C50%E2%82%AC https://www.flatio.com/blog/typical-prices-of-goods-in-austr....
  - jokethrowaway 4y ago
    9 euro for a beer is downright criminal - most likely your government is taxing alcohol because they don't trust your personal judgement. The UK also heavily taxes alcohol but you'll find cheap beers (sure, some London pubs will still charge you 5£ or more for some beers).
    - MagnumOpus 4y ago
      It’s a difference in attitude and thus a difference in magnitude. Alcohol tax in Norway is about $100 a litre while in the UK it is about $25 a litre - so $2 per US pint vs $0.50 per pint. Even the latter reduces hard core binge drinking and the former really seems to help with the rampant alcoholism in winter at high latitudes. Paternalistic, but that is the price of living in a society (with free healthcare systems and A&E that get overtaxed by drunks…)
  - ido 4y ago
    It wouldn’t be difficult if you set out to do so but as a broke student you devise strategies to not spend that much money…For example would often also meet at someone’s house and drink beers bought at the supermarket. It all depends on if there’s a culture of spending a lot of money and where I went to school at least, there was definitely a culture of not spending a lot of money (at least not as college students).
Gustomaximus 4y ago
In Australia, maybe I hung out with the peasants but parties and pre-drinks was the normal thing as most of us were budget limited. Pre-drinks being drinks at a friends house. Sit around having cheap drinks bought at the bottle shop. Then head out to the bar/club and either dont drink or nurse a beer or 2 over the rest of the night. Pre-drinks were usually the most fun part of the evening anyway.
- 21723 4y ago
  Australia and America are different in this regard. In the US, social life is optimized around making money. That's not because we're individually more materialistic than anyone else--I don't know if that's true--but because we have to think and operate that way to survive. Long before 21, genuine serendipity and mutual interest fall away and cynical "networking" takes over. I'd say the transition happens, on average, around sophomore year. Once people get their first experiences with the working world, they realize how much social class really matters and will do everything they can not to lose ground in the shuffle. The higher (or lower, since it's the middle class that has the longest period of class naivete) you go in social class, the earlier this transition happens. It's why you don't actually as many connections, if you don't come from wealth, at an elite college as people think you do. The legacy mediocrities (e.g., final club brats) and the middle-class smart kids who actually earned their way in don't mix. If you're going to make connections in the US, you have to do so before class/caste identity really hardens and they learn to see you as an enemy; that's in prep school.
  - robbiep 4y ago
    I mean, it probably helps that we don’t graduate with obscene student debts in Australia either
    - 21723 4y ago
      That too. The debts basically ensure that people have no choice but to "move where the jobs are" (which the reptilians tell us is a virtue) and work 65+ hours per week. Everything that took so long to build gets destroyed in a year or two and it doesn't come back. Eventually, people realize they were cattle being raised for slaughter, and that "the corporate ladder" isn't going to lead anywhere decent for them because they weren't born into the right connections for that, but by this time they've had all their energies wrung out of them and it seems to be too late.
jefftk 4y ago
Cost depends a lot on who you find and want to hang out with. I found a group of friends where we spent most of our social time hanging out at the dorm: playing German board games, making music, or just talking. I'm still friends with most of them fifteen years later.
andrew_ 4y ago
I personally went to way more house parties than I did bars. Perhaps the link you're trying to make is that some social ability, and mobility, is required.

ido 4y ago

I don’t know where you live where a bar tab would be $50-100. I went to two universities (one in Israel and the other in Austria, neither particularly cheap countries) and cheap student bars had beers for €3-5. Might be a bit more today but not much.

brailsafe 4y ago
Beer is notoriously inexpensive in a fair number of european countries. When I first visited from Canada, I was shocked at how much beer I could get in Germany for $5 euro or something
- ido 4y ago
  Israel is a lot more expensive (alcohol very highly taxed) but we knew the cheap student pub in a basement where you could get good deals on the cheapest beer pitchers to share around the table. Even if the beer was $8 per unit I wouldn't rack a $50-100 tab every weekend as a poor student.
- OJFord 4y ago
  And to Europeans, the price of our beer (especially in major cities) is also often shocking. They wanted $5 for a pint! ;)
rayiner 4y ago
For $5 you could get well drinks in Chicago on a weeknight. (The $50-100 bar tab came from drinking 10 of them...)
Broken_Hippo 4y ago
I live in Norway. A beer costs around 85-90nok (around $9.50USD or 9.02€). It would be really easy to spend $50. That's 5 beers, and I'm not entirely certain that the student houses are really that cheap here. [1] Folks counter this by pre-drinking at home and then going home to continue drinking. It really wouldn't be that difficult in the US either, and some folks would certainly leave you behind if you can't keep up financially. Fun fact: Austria is cheap in comparison, at about 2,50€ to 3,50€ per beer, and it seems like a comparative deal. [2] [1]https://norwaytoday.info/travel/is-beer-in-norway-really-that-expensive/#:~:text=But%20let's%20get%20back%20to,GBP%207.7%2C%20and%20USD%2010.48 https://norwaytoday.info/travel/is-beer-in-norway-really-tha.... [2]https://www.flatio.com/blog/typical-prices-of-goods-in-austria#:~:text=Austria%20prices%20%E2%80%93%20beer&text=500ml%20of%20local%20beer%20in,it's%20around%202%2C50%E2%82%AC https://www.flatio.com/blog/typical-prices-of-goods-in-austr....
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  9 euro for a beer is downright criminal - most likely your government is taxing alcohol because they don't trust your personal judgement. The UK also heavily taxes alcohol but you'll find cheap beers (sure, some London pubs will still charge you 5£ or more for some beers).
  - MagnumOpus 4y ago
    It’s a difference in attitude and thus a difference in magnitude. Alcohol tax in Norway is about $100 a litre while in the UK it is about $25 a litre - so $2 per US pint vs $0.50 per pint. Even the latter reduces hard core binge drinking and the former really seems to help with the rampant alcoholism in winter at high latitudes. Paternalistic, but that is the price of living in a society (with free healthcare systems and A&E that get overtaxed by drunks…)
- ido 4y ago
  It wouldn’t be difficult if you set out to do so but as a broke student you devise strategies to not spend that much money…For example would often also meet at someone’s house and drink beers bought at the supermarket. It all depends on if there’s a culture of spending a lot of money and where I went to school at least, there was definitely a culture of not spending a lot of money (at least not as college students).

Gustomaximus 4y ago

In Australia, maybe I hung out with the peasants but parties and pre-drinks was the normal thing as most of us were budget limited. Pre-drinks being drinks at a friends house. Sit around having cheap drinks bought at the bottle shop. Then head out to the bar/club and either dont drink or nurse a beer or 2 over the rest of the night. Pre-drinks were usually the most fun part of the evening anyway.

21723 4y ago
Australia and America are different in this regard. In the US, social life is optimized around making money. That's not because we're individually more materialistic than anyone else--I don't know if that's true--but because we have to think and operate that way to survive. Long before 21, genuine serendipity and mutual interest fall away and cynical "networking" takes over. I'd say the transition happens, on average, around sophomore year. Once people get their first experiences with the working world, they realize how much social class really matters and will do everything they can not to lose ground in the shuffle. The higher (or lower, since it's the middle class that has the longest period of class naivete) you go in social class, the earlier this transition happens. It's why you don't actually as many connections, if you don't come from wealth, at an elite college as people think you do. The legacy mediocrities (e.g., final club brats) and the middle-class smart kids who actually earned their way in don't mix. If you're going to make connections in the US, you have to do so before class/caste identity really hardens and they learn to see you as an enemy; that's in prep school.
- robbiep 4y ago
  I mean, it probably helps that we don’t graduate with obscene student debts in Australia either
  - 21723 4y ago
    That too. The debts basically ensure that people have no choice but to "move where the jobs are" (which the reptilians tell us is a virtue) and work 65+ hours per week. Everything that took so long to build gets destroyed in a year or two and it doesn't come back. Eventually, people realize they were cattle being raised for slaughter, and that "the corporate ladder" isn't going to lead anywhere decent for them because they weren't born into the right connections for that, but by this time they've had all their energies wrung out of them and it seems to be too late.

jefftk 4y ago

Cost depends a lot on who you find and want to hang out with. I found a group of friends where we spent most of our social time hanging out at the dorm: playing German board games, making music, or just talking. I'm still friends with most of them fifteen years later.

andrew_ 4y ago

I personally went to way more house parties than I did bars. Perhaps the link you're trying to make is that some social ability, and mobility, is required.