[Clubber]

Real life is somewhere in between. Some people are lazy and expect $150k/yr jobs for doing nothing, but many people work their ass off to barely get by because low wages, or cutting hours deliberately to pad the bottom line, and many other nefarious reasons. It's the latter most people are concerned about.

If you don't go through high school and into college in a specific degree, chances are, you're hosed. There are of course outliers, but most people with just a high school degree, or even a college degree in something that isn't in high demand are hosed for life. That wasn't always the case.

[merpnderp]

Those latter people have avenues to growth they likely just don't know about or don't understand are near sure fire ways to advance. A local fast food chain pains its store managers 1.5x the median household income in my state. Anyone who can run a construction crew can earn real money. In my city you can't find anyone to put up fencing for any price.

And your comment points out the real villain in our economy. Institutions that happily accept 20 year loans from students in exchange for a degree that will never earn them a dime. How evil to sell a degree program as a pathway to a successful career, knowing the opportunities to actually make use of that degree are statistically zero.

[Clubber]

>A local fast food chain pains its store managers 1.5x the median household income in my state. Anyone who can run a construction crew can earn real money. In my city you can't find anyone to put up fencing for any price.

What you said is true, but for every manager, there are 20 people under him that don't make a good living and that's just the nature of the pyramid structure. All of those 20 people can't be managers or foreman, so 19 out of 20 are stuck every cycle, until the manager quits or moves or whatever.

It's like the lottery, anyone can win the lottery and be rich, but it doesn't mean everyone will.

It wasn't always like this, but business practices moved to squeeze every dollar out of every resource in the name of efficiency regardless of the human cost in most cases. That's certainly a cause.

[rubicon33]

Absolutely.

I agree completely that the current economy only serves a smaller and smaller subset of the population. Each decade that passes seems to squeeze the middle class tighter and tighter. It’s emblematic of a totally derailed system.

That said, I don’t think we should be downvoting into oblivion everyone who calls for some notion of personal responsibility and growth. You need to believe that life isn’t stacked against you to have any chance of succeeding in this word. We shouldn’t be ostracizing someone because they propose that another’s position is due to their own lack of work ethic. The truth may be somewhere in the middle between character and circumstance.

[Clubber]

>That said, I don’t think we should be downvoting into oblivion everyone who calls for some notion of personal responsibility and growth.

Agree. People downvoted mine to oblivion as well. All it does is devalue the voting system, stifle rational discussion, and push groupthink. It's the internet and HN isn't immune to that sort of thing, so it is what it is.

It's not like I get to turn in karma for an eraser or anything, so to hell with the down voters.