[city_guy_1]

Another dimension is access to money and financial knowledge, which I find strangely missing from the context.

Assuming you have to pay for schooling, that along with the disproportionately increasing cost of rent and property factors into people being less ambitious due to the necessity of settling for a job that pays enough to support oneself. I'm curious how Paul Graham did it, given that he has multiple higher education degrees in philosophy, attended art school in Italy, and what capital he could rely on from his parents.

It would be disappointing if they both come from money yet miss this point, given the emphasis of progressive politics on socioeconomic or cultural privilege. Of course one doesn't have to agree with it, but shouldn't it at least be discussed?

[thimkerbell]

You have seen his essay addressing that? "What I Worked On", http://paulgraham.com/worked.html

[city_guy_1]

Thanks for linking that; seems like it's a bit of both:

on one hand he notes that "computers were expensive in those days and it took me years of nagging before I convinced my father to buy one, a TRS-80, in about 1980", but later during his adult years "wanted to go back to RISD, but I was now broke and RISD was very expensive, so I decided to get a job for a year and then return to RISD the next fall."