[munk-a]

On whose shoulders does the lack of a good education about labour rights lie on? The individual or the society that values bootstrap-pull-up-ness above all else?

People should be allowed to make mistakes in life, that's how we get innovation and economic growth - experiments are sometimes good and sometimes bad. In a lot of cases these new labour market entrants don't have any comprehension of what working actually means.

Allowing big powerful corporations to beat up young individuals doesn't benefit society, it entrenches power which tends to lead to corruption.

The example you're offering is working for a year at Amazon and tightening your belt a little - a large portion of Americans make just enough money so that they can fall deeper into debt each year while slowly. I, unlike you, worked for a bit at a video game company and also had to tighten my belt... and I managed to save maybe 13k while not drinking or partying or indulging in any luxuries.

Your experience was extremely lucky.

[EarlKing]

> On whose shoulders does the lack of a good education about labour rights lie on?

Doesn't matter. You only have control over one person: You.

> Allowing big powerful corporations to beat up young individuals doesn't benefit society, it entrenches power which tends to lead to corruption.

No, it really doesn't, but do you have any control over that?

> The example you're offering is working for a year at Amazon and tightening your belt a little - a large portion of Americans make just enough money so that they can fall deeper into debt each year while slowly.

That occurs precisely because "a large portion of Americans" buy McMansions they cannot afford, have families they cannot afford, and otherwise spend well beyond their means. They're trying to have the life their parents and grandparents had and they're trying to have it immediately even though economic conditions do not support that. In short: They made bad decisions.

> I, unlike you, worked for a bit at a video game company and also had to tighten my belt... and I managed to save maybe 13k while not drinking or partying or indulging in any luxuries.

Only? Did you live on your own or with your parents or roommates? Did you have a car or did you use public transportation? And how long is "a bit"?

> Your experience was extremely lucky.

Luck had nothing to do with it. I don't have a wife and kids. I don't own my own home. I sacrificed having that immediately in order to get ahead. Now that things are beginning to work out for me I can explore the possibility of having a family. That wasn't luck... that was planning.

[shadowgovt]

> Doesn't matter. You only have control over one person: You.

That's a good self-reliant attitude, but in practice we are social creatures and we have influence beyond our own bodies. One can consider what one can do alone without interacting with others and what society should do about a deficiency in its constitution (little c) at the same time.

In the middle of the 20th century, two school systems in Virginia shut down their public education for overtly racist reasons. One entire class of high school students just missed public high school. A lot of them pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and got a GED. They deserve everything that their hard work brought them. And they also deserved The reparations the state government eventually paid them as a compromise around the fact that it violated their civil right to a public education because they had the "wrong" skin color.

> That occurs precisely because "a large portion of Americans" buy McMansions they cannot afford...

You may not have heard because the news is not widespread, but this upcoming generation (and the one currently in their twenties) will statistically on average have a worse life than the generation you're thinking of that bought houses with the money they made working. Everything is a McMansion now. Housing prices are insane for the same houses relative to the average American paycheck. There is no amount of bootstrapping and rugged individualism that will make life better off for the average American unless something changes drastically. And those young people have an absolute right to be pissed that the social structures that their parents' generation took advantage of were looted and gutted or allowed to rot by the time they came of age, and that the people with authority who should be solving new problems as they came along have proven utterly inept at dealing with modern challenges.

> That wasn't luck... that was planning.

Well, planning and luck. You didn't get in a car accident and end up stuck with debilitating medical bills when you were working a job that wouldn't offer insurance (And if every job you've worked came with health insurance, statistically that's an extraordinary stroke of luck). You have the luxury of living somewhere where public transportation was possible, either you were born there or at some point you had the means to get there.

And even with all that luck, you have sacrificed things that the previous generation could have assumed were a given by your age. Things you would have had access to if salaries had kept pace with the GDP. A pace that is set by policy that can be changed by law.

So by all means, in the context you find yourself, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and have pride in your accomplishments. You have earned them. But living in complacency that things just are the way they are when they were simply not that way for the previous generation or pretending you have no control over that and representative democracy is a cop-out. It's abdicating your fraction of citizen responsibility to build a better democracy for the next generation.

(... Primary elections are this month, and on average only a quarter of voters show up. If you vote, your vote is proportionally speaking four times as valuable ;) ).