5 ms·

This is history repeating itself and it will only get worse. We saw this in 2008 post-GFC where entry-level white collar jobs just completely disappeared. It w

by jmyeet 1y ago

This is history repeating itself and it will only get worse. We saw this in 2008 post-GFC where entry-level white collar jobs just completely disappeared. It was really the start of millenials graduating with a ton of debt, possibly postgrad degrees, and working at Starbucks. Not because their degrees are useless. Their entry-level jobs just disappeared. This has never recovered. So you don't have to search long to find now 40 year olds who are permanent renters, have barely enough in their bank account to pay this month's bills, definitely don't own their own house, still have a ton of student debt they're unlikely to ever be able to repay and realizing they have no hope and they have no choice but to work 3 jobs until they die. Yet those who believe in the myth of meritocracy just write this off as a personal moral failure or getting "philosophy degrees". At the older end, boomers simply have no idea because they bought their $2 million house for $11,000 in 1976. Failure to understand that means being surprised by the groundswell to Trump and Bernie in the 2016 election cycle they each represented change in their own way. Those who have benefitted from the current system simply don't understand that many want to tear down the system. They have nothing left to lose. Gen-Z is now going through this exact same thing. Many don't yet understand they're looking at their future when they see a 40 year old barista or DoorDash driver. All while the ultra-wealthy continue to get even wealthier at an extraordinary rate. We will likely see the first trillionaire in our lifetimes. This cannot and should not continue.

Jcampuzano2 1y ago
There are parts I agree with when it comes to older people being out of touch - but I'm going to go a bit against the grain here even if some don't like it. I have rarely met someone with a STEM degree who was entirely unable to get a decent paying job. It is not unreasonable to say that some degrees are not as valuable as others and will be more likely to struggle financially. Its a game of statistics. You are more likely to struggle financially with a degree in philosophy than a degree in engineering. Because even companies themselves when hiring for completely unrelated positions to a persons degree will take into account the fact that the engineering graduate probably worked a lot harder than the philosophy graduate. But I do agree that the average non-degree or "less valuable" degree holder from the past had a much larger chance of making it out okay than nowadays.
- theplatman 1y ago
  philosophy is probably a bad example to use because i think it's actually one of the "liberal arts" majors that's actually very applicable to skills you need in the corporate world. the skillset you get from philosphy make it a common degree for folks who want to study law. a big part of studying philosophy is learning how to construct and analyze ideas and arguments so you would be well suited for consulting, politics, marketing, etc.
- ipdashc 1y ago
  > I have rarely met someone with a STEM degree who was entirely unable to get a decent paying job. I mean. Have you met anyone who's graduated in the past year or two? I'm exaggerating, but seriously, I know multiple people who graduated with CS or IT degrees from reputable institutions, some with decent prior experience, and they've gotten nothing back for months if not years. Plenty of similar stories in this thread. It's pretty bad out there. Agreed that it's still probably better than the proverbial philosophy or art degree, but still.
  - pokerface_86 1y ago
    [dead]
exe34 1y ago
> the groundswell to Trump Thankfully that went so well!
techpineapple 1y ago
"Failure to understand that means being surprised by the groundswell to Trump and Bernie in the 2016 election cycle they each represented change in their own way. Those who have benefitted from the current system simply don't understand that many want to tear down the system. They have nothing left to lose." Sure, a few more poor people voted for trump and a few more rich people voted for Harris, but it basically rounded to 50-50. Rich people want to tear down the system too. In fact, I think I'd want to see a breakdown by belief system. My gut is that generally speaking working class people believe in meritocracy more than rich people, and that is in fact why they voted for Trump. To not be lumped in with the 'DEI hires'(their perspective, not mine). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12930#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20respondents%20with%20annual,considered%20the%20most%20likely%20places. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12930#... The above research suggests that poor people living with high inequality are more likely to believe in meritocracy.
- jmyeet 1y ago
  The myth of meritocracy has successfully propagandized to an incredible degree. No argument there. Think about the implications of that. There are people barely able to survive who will defend tax cuts for Jeff Bezos. These are modern day serfs. The believe the current economic order is good actually despite their bad personal circumstances. In fact, any bad personal cricumstances are the fault of [insert bogeyman group here] (eg migrants, trans people, black people, women). And nobody seems to think about the period of history they fetishize (the 1950s) had the highest marginal tax rate of 91%. The Democratic Party in the US is absolutely complicit in all of this. They've intentionally chosen to quash any worker momentum and absolutely refuse to address any of the legitimate material concerns of working people.
  - readthenotes1 1y ago
    "And nobody seems to think about the period of history they fetishize (the 1950s) had the highest marginal tax rate of 91%." Don't forget that it also had the highest level of tax dodging available through various mechanisms. If you think the lengths people go to now are extreme to avoid taxes-- think about what they did were willing to do then.
deadbabe 1y ago
[flagged]
- techpineapple 1y ago
  When I was 18 I got a tech job with a top ten tech company (no FAANG at the time) right out of high school having only completed half a tech trade school. Home price to median income ratio was under 3.
- saulpw 1y ago
  > Even if you had a meager income of $50-$55k a year this whole time, you would have produced nearly $1 million dollars worth of income before taxes by now. And how much was rent, and food, and car insurance? It's easy to multiply a salary by 20 and conclude that they fucked up. It's a lot harder to actually live on $50k/year when the system, owned and run by extraordinarily rich people, is trying to extract money from you with every dark pattern at its disposal. Car broke down? Credit card debt, 18% APR. Delay in paycheck deposit? Overdraft fees. Kindly old landlord decides to sell? Rent +20%.
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  You do realize there are parts of this country with a labor market beyond your comprehension, right?
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  I've thankfully avoided the worst of the GFC graduate syndrome myself but 50-55k in 2008 dollars is a very generous estimation of earnings for someone with no job experience trying to get a first job during a recession. 20-30k is more realistic if you could find work at all. The best I could do was about 20k substitute teaching, and that was very uneven income. If I hadn't been able to live with my parents for three years before scoring a Linux admin job halfway across the country (in a much higher CoL area) for ~48k (and crucially including health insurance so I could get off my parents' plan), I would have been on the street. It's almost impossible to get off the street once you're there. In short, have some empathy. Bad things do happen to good people, and even bad people deserve some dignity in life.
- 1y ago
zaptheimpaler 1y ago
Democracy and equality is crumbling in front of our eyes. Epstein's client list has disappeared in full public view, his footage is doctored in full public view and no one can do anything besides write angry comments or shuffle around legal paper that won't amount to anything. Everything just looks like a meaningless TV show, whatever new horrific thing happens it'll be on the news for a while and disappear - no one will face any consequences, all of us will just click the next article. We are serfs and no one wants to admit it, and we love individuality and isolation too much to have the kind of class-consciousness it would take to actually create change. Propaganda is everywhere but so many people believe their countries are free of propaganda.
- BirAdam 1y ago
  At what point did equality and democracy ever exist? The only things that substantially changed were who the lords were, the method of gaining power, and what shape the power structure took. At no point was there ever meaningful equality, not even before the law.
  - thesagan 1y ago
    I agree with your point. I'll just add that in my country, at least, the facade of democracy seemed to provide society with infectious glimmers of hope. The hope is fading quickly, and the general mood is both sour and bitter, straining interpersonal relationships. Anyway, I'm not sure how democracy can really work in huge super-complex societies. This is why we have the "iron law of oligarchy".
    - BirAdam 1y ago
      Democracy in the sense of representative majoritarianism cannot work as the representatives will be bought, coerced, or murdered. In an absolute democracy, when the majority cease to be useful the powerful will launch propaganda campaigns and/or manipulate the vote outcome.
  - zaptheimpaler 1y ago
    I think that's an overly simplified view of 2000 years of history. We've never had a utopia, but its safe to say we have more democracy now than in the feudal ages. There have been periods of greater concentration of unchecked power and lesser in history, some periods where government was stronger and wasn't captured as much by private interests.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
AI_beffr 1y ago
gen z is not going to college like millennials did. and i do think it was a moral failure for everyone to jump on an unsustainable bandwagon... they paid too much for a degree in the humanities and when asked about it they would say "well... its just what everyone does." mindless behavior hurts people and the economy so how is this not a moral failing? people should have stuck up for what they knew was right. everybody knew that the ultimate destination of this bandwagon was a world where everyone has a degree regardless of merit (thereby making degrees pointless and worthless) and the degrees cost half a million dollars for no apparent reason. people were intellectually lazy and they got scraped. big fucking deal.
- jackvalentine 1y ago
  > people should have stuck up for what they knew was right. > everybody knew that the ultimate destination of this bandwagon was a world where everyone has a degree regardless of merit (thereby making degrees pointless and worthless) > and the degrees cost half a million dollars for no apparent reason These are harsh words to describe the actions of 17 year olds who were told basically their whole schooling lives that university was important.
  - AI_beffr 1y ago
    its harsh times

by jmyeet 1y ago

Jcampuzano2 1y ago

There are parts I agree with when it comes to older people being out of touch - but I'm going to go a bit against the grain here even if some don't like it. I have rarely met someone with a STEM degree who was entirely unable to get a decent paying job. It is not unreasonable to say that some degrees are not as valuable as others and will be more likely to struggle financially. Its a game of statistics. You are more likely to struggle financially with a degree in philosophy than a degree in engineering. Because even companies themselves when hiring for completely unrelated positions to a persons degree will take into account the fact that the engineering graduate probably worked a lot harder than the philosophy graduate. But I do agree that the average non-degree or "less valuable" degree holder from the past had a much larger chance of making it out okay than nowadays.

theplatman 1y ago
philosophy is probably a bad example to use because i think it's actually one of the "liberal arts" majors that's actually very applicable to skills you need in the corporate world. the skillset you get from philosphy make it a common degree for folks who want to study law. a big part of studying philosophy is learning how to construct and analyze ideas and arguments so you would be well suited for consulting, politics, marketing, etc.
ipdashc 1y ago
> I have rarely met someone with a STEM degree who was entirely unable to get a decent paying job. I mean. Have you met anyone who's graduated in the past year or two? I'm exaggerating, but seriously, I know multiple people who graduated with CS or IT degrees from reputable institutions, some with decent prior experience, and they've gotten nothing back for months if not years. Plenty of similar stories in this thread. It's pretty bad out there. Agreed that it's still probably better than the proverbial philosophy or art degree, but still.
- pokerface_86 1y ago
  [dead]

exe34 1y ago

> the groundswell to Trump Thankfully that went so well!

techpineapple 1y ago

"Failure to understand that means being surprised by the groundswell to Trump and Bernie in the 2016 election cycle they each represented change in their own way. Those who have benefitted from the current system simply don't understand that many want to tear down the system. They have nothing left to lose." Sure, a few more poor people voted for trump and a few more rich people voted for Harris, but it basically rounded to 50-50. Rich people want to tear down the system too. In fact, I think I'd want to see a breakdown by belief system. My gut is that generally speaking working class people believe in meritocracy more than rich people, and that is in fact why they voted for Trump. To not be lumped in with the 'DEI hires'(their perspective, not mine). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12930#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20respondents%20with%20annual,considered%20the%20most%20likely%20places. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12930#... The above research suggests that poor people living with high inequality are more likely to believe in meritocracy.

jmyeet 1y ago
The myth of meritocracy has successfully propagandized to an incredible degree. No argument there. Think about the implications of that. There are people barely able to survive who will defend tax cuts for Jeff Bezos. These are modern day serfs. The believe the current economic order is good actually despite their bad personal circumstances. In fact, any bad personal cricumstances are the fault of [insert bogeyman group here] (eg migrants, trans people, black people, women). And nobody seems to think about the period of history they fetishize (the 1950s) had the highest marginal tax rate of 91%. The Democratic Party in the US is absolutely complicit in all of this. They've intentionally chosen to quash any worker momentum and absolutely refuse to address any of the legitimate material concerns of working people.
- readthenotes1 1y ago
  "And nobody seems to think about the period of history they fetishize (the 1950s) had the highest marginal tax rate of 91%." Don't forget that it also had the highest level of tax dodging available through various mechanisms. If you think the lengths people go to now are extreme to avoid taxes-- think about what they did were willing to do then.

deadbabe 1y ago

[flagged]

techpineapple 1y ago
When I was 18 I got a tech job with a top ten tech company (no FAANG at the time) right out of high school having only completed half a tech trade school. Home price to median income ratio was under 3.
saulpw 1y ago
> Even if you had a meager income of $50-$55k a year this whole time, you would have produced nearly $1 million dollars worth of income before taxes by now. And how much was rent, and food, and car insurance? It's easy to multiply a salary by 20 and conclude that they fucked up. It's a lot harder to actually live on $50k/year when the system, owned and run by extraordinarily rich people, is trying to extract money from you with every dark pattern at its disposal. Car broke down? Credit card debt, 18% APR. Delay in paycheck deposit? Overdraft fees. Kindly old landlord decides to sell? Rent +20%.
selimthegrim 1y ago
You do realize there are parts of this country with a labor market beyond your comprehension, right?
ElevenLathe 1y ago
I've thankfully avoided the worst of the GFC graduate syndrome myself but 50-55k in 2008 dollars is a very generous estimation of earnings for someone with no job experience trying to get a first job during a recession. 20-30k is more realistic if you could find work at all. The best I could do was about 20k substitute teaching, and that was very uneven income. If I hadn't been able to live with my parents for three years before scoring a Linux admin job halfway across the country (in a much higher CoL area) for ~48k (and crucially including health insurance so I could get off my parents' plan), I would have been on the street. It's almost impossible to get off the street once you're there. In short, have some empathy. Bad things do happen to good people, and even bad people deserve some dignity in life.
1y ago

zaptheimpaler 1y ago

Democracy and equality is crumbling in front of our eyes. Epstein's client list has disappeared in full public view, his footage is doctored in full public view and no one can do anything besides write angry comments or shuffle around legal paper that won't amount to anything. Everything just looks like a meaningless TV show, whatever new horrific thing happens it'll be on the news for a while and disappear - no one will face any consequences, all of us will just click the next article. We are serfs and no one wants to admit it, and we love individuality and isolation too much to have the kind of class-consciousness it would take to actually create change. Propaganda is everywhere but so many people believe their countries are free of propaganda.

BirAdam 1y ago
At what point did equality and democracy ever exist? The only things that substantially changed were who the lords were, the method of gaining power, and what shape the power structure took. At no point was there ever meaningful equality, not even before the law.
- thesagan 1y ago
  I agree with your point. I'll just add that in my country, at least, the facade of democracy seemed to provide society with infectious glimmers of hope. The hope is fading quickly, and the general mood is both sour and bitter, straining interpersonal relationships. Anyway, I'm not sure how democracy can really work in huge super-complex societies. This is why we have the "iron law of oligarchy".
  - BirAdam 1y ago
    Democracy in the sense of representative majoritarianism cannot work as the representatives will be bought, coerced, or murdered. In an absolute democracy, when the majority cease to be useful the powerful will launch propaganda campaigns and/or manipulate the vote outcome.
- zaptheimpaler 1y ago
  I think that's an overly simplified view of 2000 years of history. We've never had a utopia, but its safe to say we have more democracy now than in the feudal ages. There have been periods of greater concentration of unchecked power and lesser in history, some periods where government was stronger and wasn't captured as much by private interests.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

AI_beffr 1y ago

gen z is not going to college like millennials did. and i do think it was a moral failure for everyone to jump on an unsustainable bandwagon... they paid too much for a degree in the humanities and when asked about it they would say "well... its just what everyone does." mindless behavior hurts people and the economy so how is this not a moral failing? people should have stuck up for what they knew was right. everybody knew that the ultimate destination of this bandwagon was a world where everyone has a degree regardless of merit (thereby making degrees pointless and worthless) and the degrees cost half a million dollars for no apparent reason. people were intellectually lazy and they got scraped. big fucking deal.

jackvalentine 1y ago
> people should have stuck up for what they knew was right. > everybody knew that the ultimate destination of this bandwagon was a world where everyone has a degree regardless of merit (thereby making degrees pointless and worthless) > and the degrees cost half a million dollars for no apparent reason These are harsh words to describe the actions of 17 year olds who were told basically their whole schooling lives that university was important.
- AI_beffr 1y ago
  its harsh times