11 ms·

One thing that I think doesn't get enough attention in these types of discussions -- not just this article about ROI, but also earnings disparities between (e.g

by timmg 2y ago

One thing that I think doesn't get enough attention in these types of discussions -- not just this article about ROI, but also earnings disparities between (e.g.) genders and other groups -- is that income isn't the only measure of happiness. Many people would take less money to do a job they enjoyed more. My older sister "gave up" a sales "career" to become a fiction writer. It's enough to pay the bills, but pays less than she could have had at a corporate job. She got an English degree and couldn't be happier with her choice. My younger sister got a Theater degree and is a "struggling actress". Same deal: she's happy with her choice. ROI is important for some aspects of the discussion. But it is not the whole story.

AlecSchueler 2y ago
> earnings disparities between (e.g.) genders and other groups When people talk about the gender wage gap they're not usually talking about the overall average, but rather doing like for like comparisons. It feels like you're suggesting your sister chose to give up sales for fiction because there were other factors at play such as quality of life, that that is a decision men would be less likely to make, save therefore her actions have tipped the scale towards "women earn less." But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title. So the comparison would be made between your sister and other men in sales, or between her and other men who left that career to go into fiction writing. In most cases the woman still earns less despite doing the same work and having the same work life balance (in theory; in effect she'll almost certainly be doing more additional domestic and other unpaid labour).
- IdiocyInAction 2y ago
  At least the version I hear most often about is a gross disparity between the genders without taking anything into account. IIRC if you look into it it's mostly a maternity penalty anyway.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Which is also why a lot of the latest policies are to provide equal maternity and paternity leave. Which is pretty good anyways, why shouldn’t fathers be able to take as much time off?
    - rlue 2y ago
      I strongly support (m/p)aternity leave equality, but I can think of lots of reasons new mothers should be able to take more time off.
      - atmavatar 2y ago
        If your goal is gender equality, though, it needs to be equal, and we should encourage fathers to take the full time off as well. Otherwise, from an employer's perspective, women are ultimately lower-value employees, because they have an additional pool of time off they can utilize, while men do not. Balancing that out gives one less reason to favor one gender over the other when it comes to hiring and assigning a salary.
        bombcar 2y ago
        One thing is the leave shouldn’t be “all at once or lose it” but a bucket that can be drained over time. The mother can use it very early and the father later which provides the best experience for everyone.
        apantel 2y ago
        What if women are higher-value stay-at-home parents than men? Then maybe the optimal equilibrium is reached by more maternity leave taken on average by women than paternity leave taken by men… which produces an inverse result in the workplace.
        AlecSchueler 2y ago
        This is contrary to the goal of equality.
- redeux 2y ago
  It’s both actually, and you can’t be sure which measure someone is talking about unless you ask them. It’s quite common to hear people suggest that the gender pay gap is due to the fields women enter, rather than a disparity between pay within the same field. As with anything, there are different ways to measure societal issues, both macro and micro. I would argue that both are valuable for understanding the context and scope of the issue.
- jeltz 2y ago
  No, that depends on the speaker. Some talk within a job but from my anecdotal experience most do not.
- exe34 2y ago
  > But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title And they have to remember to avoid comparing the per hour earning at all cost.
- giantg2 2y ago
  "But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title." I'm my experience, people usually confuse the two. There's rarely anyone pulling up BLS data for a specific job. We've even had presidents use the aggregate numbers misapplied to the specific level.
- dudul 2y ago
  I've never heard of the gender pay gap meant as this very granular, targeted comparison. On the contrary, I find that most data shared about this gap are just a lazy average of all men and all women earnings without controlling for stay-at-home parents, experience, diplomas, fields, etc.
ThouYS 2y ago
That's true. I feel like the important bit is covering the essentials. 2x more is not 2x better, but you need to get above a certain threshold. Incidentally this also holds for some engineering metrics. Some error metrics stop making sense after a certain threshold. E.g. if a certain error becomes disqualifying, doubling the error changes nothing.
- galangalalgol 2y ago
  Some study released years ago gave a USD value for the salary that was the happiness asymptote. Recent inflation has likely demolished that number, and I think it is an important one to know. It did not speak to the case of not needing a salary at all. The ability to be idle, or seelf direct however you want is very enticing, but I could see it going badly in a number of ways.
  - PartiallyTyped 2y ago
    I think I have read that, IIRC it was around 150k?
    - galangalalgol 2y ago
      When I read it it was 75, so maybe they did do the study again.
glimshe 2y ago
I don't know your sister so I won't comment on her particular case. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of these "quality of life" career choices often involve a partner - men, more often than not - swallowing the trash in a corporate job.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  yup. currently paying those bills now, or rather, every month. don't love IT, but one of us needs to get enough cash to live.
- sshine 2y ago
  > swallowing the trash in a corporate job My wife is an artist with a marketing degree. I love programming. Swallowing trash at work just feels less painful to me.
  - throwawaysleep 2y ago
    I doubt he disputes that men can love their work. It is just they have fewer options if they do not.
    - superb_dev 2y ago
      What options are closed to men?
      - dudul 2y ago
        Looking pretty and finding a sugar-mommy?
        thaumasiotes 2y ago
        It is an option; I remember an article on HEMA that mentioned a participant who was idle and supported by his wife. But it's a much more competitive option for men than it is for women. (That is, a man attempting to fill this role will face much tougher competition than a woman trying to do the same thing. It's not that the option is competitive with other options.)
endisneigh 2y ago
I’m very curious - is your sister single? I ask because often low wage earners are being subsidized by their partner.
- bombcar 2y ago
  It could be looked at that way, or as a single-income house where the other partner is doing some supplementary income. Even if technically true a single income household is rarely discussed as “one partner subsidizing the other” but once the other partner is earning something it’s a subsidy.
127 2y ago
Yes, indeed. There seems to be a gender disparity in those choices. ;)
xattt 2y ago
Sensemaking is at play here too. Resilient individuals will (consciously and subconsciously) adjust and retell their narrative in a positive way. This is done in order to mitigate the distress of making choices that were less-ideal, in hindsight, but were made with the best information they had at the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking
- kibwen 2y ago
  That doesn't make a difference here, because it cuts both ways. Someone who gave up on a lucrative career in order to pursue their dream job might retroactively rationalize their decision as the best one, but also, someone who gave up on their dream job in order to make more money might also retroactively rationalize their decision as the best one. In the meantime, there's nothing inherently wrong about choosing to make less money in order to have a job that doesn't make you miserable. Or to put it a different way: there's nothing inherently virtuous about minimizing your happiness in order to maximize your wealth.
fastball 2y ago
This could go the other way though. It's not just that you spent $Y on the degree, you also spent X years on the degree, which are years you could've spent finding that enjoyable career.
bachmeier 2y ago
Or on this same point but from another angle, consider the ways you get into the higher end of the income distribution without a college degree. You either have family connections that let you take over a business, or you do something that comes with a big premium (walk on roofs, go up on ladders, move furniture, work construction). If you didn't win the birth lottery that allows you to open door #1, you're stuck with the second option. Moving furniture or going up on a ladder aren't terrible when you're fresh out of high school. They are when you're 50, and you're going to be one of those that takes Social Security at 62, possibly after multiple spells of unemployment as you approached retirement.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I didn't win the birth lottery on #2 either; I've got some physical disability, though I have still done a bit of that type of work and if you think it comes with a "big premium" then your experience is very different from mine. Roofing is an incredibly simple job to learn for instance, and it pays little better than minimum wage. From my actual experience (admittedly limited to the South Texas market), blue collar jobs still pay like crap. The toll taken on the body actually seems to be pretty individualized; I know some men who seem to have no problem working into their 60's and I think that keeping active within reasonable bounds actually contributed to that.
  - bachmeier 2y ago
    My point is not that you can make a good income doing blue collar work (you generally can't) but rather that some people do make a reasonable income doing that type of work, and in those cases there's a good explanation. > Roofing is an incredibly simple job to learn for instance, and it pays little better than minimum wage. I can't speak to your area, but doing roofing on tall houses/buildings with a steep slope here pays much better than working on relatively flat roofs or one-story houses.
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      Yes, my experience is generally residential, but it also tends to be that risk is just one of the costs that blue-collar workers are expected to take; there is little pay premium for it. Skill does tend to get some reward; I think I'd be inclined to go electrician if I had to. I think if one wanted to get paid the most, I'd look at plumbing because it both takes some skill (despite the "3 rules" joke) and is literally shitty. Personally I enjoy a bit of carpentry work now and again, but my skill is nothing compared to my brother, and he was never really able to put together a comfortable living despite his ability. Fortunately, he was able to get an engineering job (not the software kind) fairly recently and was amazed at the idea of getting paid for a day off once in awhile and having health insurance.
imtringued 2y ago
I don't get your point. Negative ROI means you will have to earn extra money to cover the shortfall through some other method. In other words, it is a rich people's game. You either have to be rich already, or become rich afterwards.
- timmg 2y ago
  Going on vacation has a “negative roi” if you only look at it from a financial perspective. That doesn’t mean that choosing to travel is always a bad idea.
firesteelrain 2y ago
Your anecdote actually makes sense because she is pursuing a career in her degree. She didn’t get a degree in Sales.
Tom3849 2y ago
There is a easy way to measure happiness. Record level of women are on antidepressants. And there is significant correlation with education level. And please do not argue "she is happy with her choice" and on antidepressant at the same time!
- nick__m 2y ago
  There are many reasons why one takes antidepressant, I do yet I love my job and I am happy with my choice. I take them to manage anxiety caused by my wife metastatic breast cancer (at least it's was only oligometastasis and she had a complete response to treatment that she has to continue as long as the disease doesn't come back) and parkison disease.
  - Tom3849 2y ago
    I hope your wife recovers well. But my argument is about broad statistics, single case does not prove anything.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Your premise assumes people on antidepressants are not like the GP's wife. We have no reason to assume people are less happy only on antidepressant subscriptions. It could be awareness boosts in mental health, it could be higher stressors because they have more responsibility.
    - cristiancavalli 2y ago
      [flagged]
- cristiancavalli 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Tom3849 2y ago
    [flagged]
resource_waste 2y ago
> It's enough to pay the bills, but pays less than she could have had at a corporate job. She got an English degree and couldn't be happier with her choice. My sister says something like this. She is horribly depressed and 'loves her job' and doesnt want to be like her dad who had a great paying job and retired in his 50s. Humans are adaptable. Sales are a bit immoral, there are plenty of jobs that arent immoral.
ren_engineer 2y ago
and I know a ton of people miserable and stressed because they are buried in college debt. The fact the government has created a system where 18 year old kids can rack up massive debts that can't be removed via bankruptcy is insane. Changing that would instantly fix the system, colleges would have to prove ROI or it would go back to how it used to be for non-practical degrees(only rich kids wasted their time and money on them)
- achenet 2y ago
  reading this makes me very happy to have done by university in France. My tuition was 400 euros per year for undergrad and master's.
nashashmi 2y ago
The other part of the story is a Master's degree is a good segway to a career change. So what if the cost is too high. I need a career change.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  I imagine that falls into the chunk that did have a positive ROI. My wife never completed undergrad. Worked her was to director level in the insurance industry. Hated it, got a masters, pivoted to something g she likes without any real pay cut (maybe for a year or two, but she’s now earning more than she ever would have in her first career).
2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
this and also some people study simply out of curiosity about something.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sotix 2y ago
> income isn't the only measure of happiness. I recently asked my Greek teacher about if 2008 was as bad in Greece as American media portrayed. She said things were definitely not good from an economic perspective but life kept going on. Even though people had no jobs, you couldn’t find an empty seat in a taverna on the weekend. She pointed out the biggest difference she notices living in the US is that people prioritize money above all else. In Greece they prioritize having a good time. It really changed how I viewed the crisis and reminded me that cultural differences bias our judgements.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > She pointed out the biggest difference she notices living in the US is that people prioritize money above all else. Something Jerry Seinfeld (yes, the comedian) recently observed: > SEINFELD: In the seventies, this is the tragic turn of American culture. And this was explained to me by Mario Joiner who cracked this puzzle that I could not figure out what the hell happened. That money became everything. What happened because it was not like that in the seventies. In the seventies, it’s how cool is your job? How cool is what you’re doing? If your job’s cooler than my job, you beat me. > BRENNAN: And no one said, how much are you making? > SEINFELD: Oh, you’re doing okay. You’re making this? Yeah. Who cares? And Mario Joiner explained this to me. He said the eighties was the first time that young guys could make a lot of money fast. > Never existed before. Rich guys were Aristotle Onassis, Andrew Carnegie, shipping, iron. You couldn’t make a lot of money fast in those days. > And it has poisoned our culture to this day. It’s poison. * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/05/seinfeld-on-when-money-became-everything/ https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/05/seinfeld-on-when-mo...
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I figured it was the exact opposite. It was the very slow start of when life started to get really expensive. by the 00's there was no time to just go out and pursue your passions, you needed to pay rent the next month. I imagine a part of this is (among many factors) impacted the US very strongly due to the "out of the nest" mentality. If you were 18 and still in your parent's house, you were doing something wrong. And that mentality has only very recently started changing as university costs skyrockted (and thus commuting has risen) and rent became untenable for someone making minimum wage.
throw0101c 2y ago
> […] is that income isn't the only measure of happiness. It may not be the only measure, but it is a very important part: > One could draw a snap judgment from this analysis and conclude that money, in fact, simply buys happiness. I think that would be the wrong conclusion. Clever sociologists will always find new ways of “calculating” that marriage matters most, or social fitness explains all, or income is paramount. But the subtler truth seems to be that finances, family, and social fitness are three prongs in a happiness trinity. They rise together and fall together. Low-income Americans have seen the largest declines in marriage and experience the most loneliness. High-income Americans marry more and have not only richer investment accounts but also richer social lives. In this light, the philosophical question of what contributes most to happiness is just the beginning. The deeper question is why the trinity of happiness is so stratified by income—and whether well-being in America is in danger of becoming a luxury good. * https://archive.ph/4ofJ6 https://archive.ph/4ofJ6 / https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/happiness-marriage-money-satisfaction/678185/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/happiness-...
chengiz 2y ago
Irrelevant. The article is about ROI, not about happiness. Income isn't the only measure of, I don't know, longevity, calorie intake, hair color, number of children, etc., either, but we're not talking of any of those things.
chung8123 2y ago
Happiness is greatly impacted by the burden of large debts that hold you down. If you are not making enough to cover your expenses you will likely not be happy, even if your job is amazing. The ROI explores that to some extent. You are right though, as long as you are happy that is what matter in life. Setting yourself up for long term happiness sometimes means forgoing some up front happiness though.

by timmg 2y ago

AlecSchueler 2y ago

> earnings disparities between (e.g.) genders and other groups When people talk about the gender wage gap they're not usually talking about the overall average, but rather doing like for like comparisons. It feels like you're suggesting your sister chose to give up sales for fiction because there were other factors at play such as quality of life, that that is a decision men would be less likely to make, save therefore her actions have tipped the scale towards "women earn less." But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title. So the comparison would be made between your sister and other men in sales, or between her and other men who left that career to go into fiction writing. In most cases the woman still earns less despite doing the same work and having the same work life balance (in theory; in effect she'll almost certainly be doing more additional domestic and other unpaid labour).

IdiocyInAction 2y ago
At least the version I hear most often about is a gross disparity between the genders without taking anything into account. IIRC if you look into it it's mostly a maternity penalty anyway.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Which is also why a lot of the latest policies are to provide equal maternity and paternity leave. Which is pretty good anyways, why shouldn’t fathers be able to take as much time off?
  - rlue 2y ago
    I strongly support (m/p)aternity leave equality, but I can think of lots of reasons new mothers should be able to take more time off.
    - atmavatar 2y ago
      If your goal is gender equality, though, it needs to be equal, and we should encourage fathers to take the full time off as well. Otherwise, from an employer's perspective, women are ultimately lower-value employees, because they have an additional pool of time off they can utilize, while men do not. Balancing that out gives one less reason to favor one gender over the other when it comes to hiring and assigning a salary.
      - bombcar 2y ago
        One thing is the leave shouldn’t be “all at once or lose it” but a bucket that can be drained over time. The mother can use it very early and the father later which provides the best experience for everyone.
      - apantel 2y ago
        What if women are higher-value stay-at-home parents than men? Then maybe the optimal equilibrium is reached by more maternity leave taken on average by women than paternity leave taken by men… which produces an inverse result in the workplace.
        AlecSchueler 2y ago
        This is contrary to the goal of equality.
redeux 2y ago
It’s both actually, and you can’t be sure which measure someone is talking about unless you ask them. It’s quite common to hear people suggest that the gender pay gap is due to the fields women enter, rather than a disparity between pay within the same field. As with anything, there are different ways to measure societal issues, both macro and micro. I would argue that both are valuable for understanding the context and scope of the issue.
jeltz 2y ago
No, that depends on the speaker. Some talk within a job but from my anecdotal experience most do not.
exe34 2y ago
> But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title And they have to remember to avoid comparing the per hour earning at all cost.
giantg2 2y ago
"But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title." I'm my experience, people usually confuse the two. There's rarely anyone pulling up BLS data for a specific job. We've even had presidents use the aggregate numbers misapplied to the specific level.
dudul 2y ago
I've never heard of the gender pay gap meant as this very granular, targeted comparison. On the contrary, I find that most data shared about this gap are just a lazy average of all men and all women earnings without controlling for stay-at-home parents, experience, diplomas, fields, etc.

ThouYS 2y ago

That's true. I feel like the important bit is covering the essentials. 2x more is not 2x better, but you need to get above a certain threshold. Incidentally this also holds for some engineering metrics. Some error metrics stop making sense after a certain threshold. E.g. if a certain error becomes disqualifying, doubling the error changes nothing.

galangalalgol 2y ago
Some study released years ago gave a USD value for the salary that was the happiness asymptote. Recent inflation has likely demolished that number, and I think it is an important one to know. It did not speak to the case of not needing a salary at all. The ability to be idle, or seelf direct however you want is very enticing, but I could see it going badly in a number of ways.
- PartiallyTyped 2y ago
  I think I have read that, IIRC it was around 150k?
  - galangalalgol 2y ago
    When I read it it was 75, so maybe they did do the study again.

glimshe 2y ago

I don't know your sister so I won't comment on her particular case. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of these "quality of life" career choices often involve a partner - men, more often than not - swallowing the trash in a corporate job.

red-iron-pine 2y ago
yup. currently paying those bills now, or rather, every month. don't love IT, but one of us needs to get enough cash to live.
sshine 2y ago
> swallowing the trash in a corporate job My wife is an artist with a marketing degree. I love programming. Swallowing trash at work just feels less painful to me.
- throwawaysleep 2y ago
  I doubt he disputes that men can love their work. It is just they have fewer options if they do not.
  - superb_dev 2y ago
    What options are closed to men?
    - dudul 2y ago
      Looking pretty and finding a sugar-mommy?
      - thaumasiotes 2y ago
        It is an option; I remember an article on HEMA that mentioned a participant who was idle and supported by his wife. But it's a much more competitive option for men than it is for women. (That is, a man attempting to fill this role will face much tougher competition than a woman trying to do the same thing. It's not that the option is competitive with other options.)

endisneigh 2y ago

I’m very curious - is your sister single? I ask because often low wage earners are being subsidized by their partner.

bombcar 2y ago
It could be looked at that way, or as a single-income house where the other partner is doing some supplementary income. Even if technically true a single income household is rarely discussed as “one partner subsidizing the other” but once the other partner is earning something it’s a subsidy.

127 2y ago

Yes, indeed. There seems to be a gender disparity in those choices. ;)

xattt 2y ago

Sensemaking is at play here too. Resilient individuals will (consciously and subconsciously) adjust and retell their narrative in a positive way. This is done in order to mitigate the distress of making choices that were less-ideal, in hindsight, but were made with the best information they had at the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking

kibwen 2y ago
That doesn't make a difference here, because it cuts both ways. Someone who gave up on a lucrative career in order to pursue their dream job might retroactively rationalize their decision as the best one, but also, someone who gave up on their dream job in order to make more money might also retroactively rationalize their decision as the best one. In the meantime, there's nothing inherently wrong about choosing to make less money in order to have a job that doesn't make you miserable. Or to put it a different way: there's nothing inherently virtuous about minimizing your happiness in order to maximize your wealth.

fastball 2y ago

This could go the other way though. It's not just that you spent $Y on the degree, you also spent X years on the degree, which are years you could've spent finding that enjoyable career.

bachmeier 2y ago

Or on this same point but from another angle, consider the ways you get into the higher end of the income distribution without a college degree. You either have family connections that let you take over a business, or you do something that comes with a big premium (walk on roofs, go up on ladders, move furniture, work construction). If you didn't win the birth lottery that allows you to open door #1, you're stuck with the second option. Moving furniture or going up on a ladder aren't terrible when you're fresh out of high school. They are when you're 50, and you're going to be one of those that takes Social Security at 62, possibly after multiple spells of unemployment as you approached retirement.

silverquiet 2y ago
I didn't win the birth lottery on #2 either; I've got some physical disability, though I have still done a bit of that type of work and if you think it comes with a "big premium" then your experience is very different from mine. Roofing is an incredibly simple job to learn for instance, and it pays little better than minimum wage. From my actual experience (admittedly limited to the South Texas market), blue collar jobs still pay like crap. The toll taken on the body actually seems to be pretty individualized; I know some men who seem to have no problem working into their 60's and I think that keeping active within reasonable bounds actually contributed to that.
- bachmeier 2y ago
  My point is not that you can make a good income doing blue collar work (you generally can't) but rather that some people do make a reasonable income doing that type of work, and in those cases there's a good explanation. > Roofing is an incredibly simple job to learn for instance, and it pays little better than minimum wage. I can't speak to your area, but doing roofing on tall houses/buildings with a steep slope here pays much better than working on relatively flat roofs or one-story houses.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    Yes, my experience is generally residential, but it also tends to be that risk is just one of the costs that blue-collar workers are expected to take; there is little pay premium for it. Skill does tend to get some reward; I think I'd be inclined to go electrician if I had to. I think if one wanted to get paid the most, I'd look at plumbing because it both takes some skill (despite the "3 rules" joke) and is literally shitty. Personally I enjoy a bit of carpentry work now and again, but my skill is nothing compared to my brother, and he was never really able to put together a comfortable living despite his ability. Fortunately, he was able to get an engineering job (not the software kind) fairly recently and was amazed at the idea of getting paid for a day off once in awhile and having health insurance.

imtringued 2y ago

I don't get your point. Negative ROI means you will have to earn extra money to cover the shortfall through some other method. In other words, it is a rich people's game. You either have to be rich already, or become rich afterwards.

timmg 2y ago
Going on vacation has a “negative roi” if you only look at it from a financial perspective. That doesn’t mean that choosing to travel is always a bad idea.

firesteelrain 2y ago

Your anecdote actually makes sense because she is pursuing a career in her degree. She didn’t get a degree in Sales.

Tom3849 2y ago

There is a easy way to measure happiness. Record level of women are on antidepressants. And there is significant correlation with education level. And please do not argue "she is happy with her choice" and on antidepressant at the same time!

nick__m 2y ago
There are many reasons why one takes antidepressant, I do yet I love my job and I am happy with my choice. I take them to manage anxiety caused by my wife metastatic breast cancer (at least it's was only oligometastasis and she had a complete response to treatment that she has to continue as long as the disease doesn't come back) and parkison disease.
- Tom3849 2y ago
  I hope your wife recovers well. But my argument is about broad statistics, single case does not prove anything.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Your premise assumes people on antidepressants are not like the GP's wife. We have no reason to assume people are less happy only on antidepressant subscriptions. It could be awareness boosts in mental health, it could be higher stressors because they have more responsibility.
  - cristiancavalli 2y ago
    [flagged]
cristiancavalli 2y ago
[flagged]
- Tom3849 2y ago
  [flagged]

resource_waste 2y ago

> It's enough to pay the bills, but pays less than she could have had at a corporate job. She got an English degree and couldn't be happier with her choice. My sister says something like this. She is horribly depressed and 'loves her job' and doesnt want to be like her dad who had a great paying job and retired in his 50s. Humans are adaptable. Sales are a bit immoral, there are plenty of jobs that arent immoral.

ren_engineer 2y ago

and I know a ton of people miserable and stressed because they are buried in college debt. The fact the government has created a system where 18 year old kids can rack up massive debts that can't be removed via bankruptcy is insane. Changing that would instantly fix the system, colleges would have to prove ROI or it would go back to how it used to be for non-practical degrees(only rich kids wasted their time and money on them)

achenet 2y ago
reading this makes me very happy to have done by university in France. My tuition was 400 euros per year for undergrad and master's.

nashashmi 2y ago

The other part of the story is a Master's degree is a good segway to a career change. So what if the cost is too high. I need a career change.

alistairSH 2y ago
I imagine that falls into the chunk that did have a positive ROI. My wife never completed undergrad. Worked her was to director level in the insurance industry. Hated it, got a masters, pivoted to something g she likes without any real pay cut (maybe for a year or two, but she’s now earning more than she ever would have in her first career).

2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago

this and also some people study simply out of curiosity about something.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sotix 2y ago

> income isn't the only measure of happiness. I recently asked my Greek teacher about if 2008 was as bad in Greece as American media portrayed. She said things were definitely not good from an economic perspective but life kept going on. Even though people had no jobs, you couldn’t find an empty seat in a taverna on the weekend. She pointed out the biggest difference she notices living in the US is that people prioritize money above all else. In Greece they prioritize having a good time. It really changed how I viewed the crisis and reminded me that cultural differences bias our judgements.

throw0101c 2y ago
> She pointed out the biggest difference she notices living in the US is that people prioritize money above all else. Something Jerry Seinfeld (yes, the comedian) recently observed: > SEINFELD: In the seventies, this is the tragic turn of American culture. And this was explained to me by Mario Joiner who cracked this puzzle that I could not figure out what the hell happened. That money became everything. What happened because it was not like that in the seventies. In the seventies, it’s how cool is your job? How cool is what you’re doing? If your job’s cooler than my job, you beat me. > BRENNAN: And no one said, how much are you making? > SEINFELD: Oh, you’re doing okay. You’re making this? Yeah. Who cares? And Mario Joiner explained this to me. He said the eighties was the first time that young guys could make a lot of money fast. > Never existed before. Rich guys were Aristotle Onassis, Andrew Carnegie, shipping, iron. You couldn’t make a lot of money fast in those days. > And it has poisoned our culture to this day. It’s poison. * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/05/seinfeld-on-when-money-became-everything/ https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/05/seinfeld-on-when-mo...
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I figured it was the exact opposite. It was the very slow start of when life started to get really expensive. by the 00's there was no time to just go out and pursue your passions, you needed to pay rent the next month. I imagine a part of this is (among many factors) impacted the US very strongly due to the "out of the nest" mentality. If you were 18 and still in your parent's house, you were doing something wrong. And that mentality has only very recently started changing as university costs skyrockted (and thus commuting has risen) and rent became untenable for someone making minimum wage.

throw0101c 2y ago

> […] is that income isn't the only measure of happiness. It may not be the only measure, but it is a very important part: > One could draw a snap judgment from this analysis and conclude that money, in fact, simply buys happiness. I think that would be the wrong conclusion. Clever sociologists will always find new ways of “calculating” that marriage matters most, or social fitness explains all, or income is paramount. But the subtler truth seems to be that finances, family, and social fitness are three prongs in a happiness trinity. They rise together and fall together. Low-income Americans have seen the largest declines in marriage and experience the most loneliness. High-income Americans marry more and have not only richer investment accounts but also richer social lives. In this light, the philosophical question of what contributes most to happiness is just the beginning. The deeper question is why the trinity of happiness is so stratified by income—and whether well-being in America is in danger of becoming a luxury good. * https://archive.ph/4ofJ6 https://archive.ph/4ofJ6 / https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/happiness-marriage-money-satisfaction/678185/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/happiness-...

chengiz 2y ago

Irrelevant. The article is about ROI, not about happiness. Income isn't the only measure of, I don't know, longevity, calorie intake, hair color, number of children, etc., either, but we're not talking of any of those things.

chung8123 2y ago

Happiness is greatly impacted by the burden of large debts that hold you down. If you are not making enough to cover your expenses you will likely not be happy, even if your job is amazing. The ROI explores that to some extent. You are right though, as long as you are happy that is what matter in life. Setting yourself up for long term happiness sometimes means forgoing some up front happiness though.