> [...] better off of they "re-tooled" as you called it. But they literally cannot afford the risk [...] Or to even afford the re-tool. I have a friend who's s

> [...] better off of they "re-tooled" as you called it. But they literally cannot afford the risk [...] Or to even afford the re-tool. I have a friend who's struggled to find a job for the last few years in the greater LA region; their background is in acting and they don't have a lot of experience in anything to meet the barrier for entry for most decent-if-low-paying white collar work, and they're already underwater in a bunch of ways so they literally can't afford the cost of any training that would open up other opportunities. I've thought a lot recently about how crap the US is in providing "second tries" in general, and it honestly really scares me. My wife and I are fortunate in that our "first choice" of what to specialize in when we were 18 were things in relatively high demand with decent compensation. (My wife would scoff at this; I work in tech, she's in the veterinary field, and our pay disparity is staggering.) But suppose someone (like my friend) didn't do that, and they made the maybe-reasonable assumption they'd be able to scrape by doing crap work until something better came along? Then comes a pandemic, then comes an insane labor market, then comes spiking inflation and CoL--now they've exhausted their reserves (which, statistically, most Americans have effectively no reserves [1]), their outlook remains bleak, but their back is to the wall. Yet, the "bootstrap" mentality is what so many people seem to reference when confronted with situations like this; the single parent who went to night classes for months to become an RN, or the janitor that worked their way up to being a department head. These stories abound in the American zeitgeist, but I think it's just an extension of the "just world" fallacy. [1]: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/personal-finance/articles/47-of-americans-cant-handle-a-500-emergency-without-worry/ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/personal-finance/articles/47...