On the other hand, it's never been easier to:
1. get educated 2. start a business 3. access the global marketplace 4. invest
1. get educated 2. start a business 3. access the global marketplace 4. invest
Indeed, recent studies on MOOCs have shown that the majority of their users are (surprise, surprise) young, white males with college degrees and a privileged background. One could even make the argument that MOOCs are actually exacerbating inequality, rather than reducing it.
The broader issue of drastic differences in outcome, where some people can't get a job scrubbing toilets while others are getting 250k job offers, is also probably due to the winner-take-all employment environment that an increasingly developed economy creates. Use of technology amplifies productivity, so that differences between different quantiles of worker productivity become larger, and companies have more incentive to hold out for the potential employees at the top of the food chain. And as it becomes a more competitive environment, there's less incentive for the less competitive members to bother participating whatsoever. Since increasingly more of society's functions can be performed by smaller segments of the population it shouldn't even be that much of an issue, except that, especially in the US with its widespread "screw the non-contributing zeroes" and "let them die" attitudes, no one wants to consider restructuring the system to support the huge portion of the population that didn't "make it," despite that being the same population that the same highly productive individuals are being produced by and drawn from.
So my suggestion is it results from productivity differences due to technological advancement, and social welfare programs will not eliminate those differences, they can just help sustain the necessary population that will never be making 250k a year working as a senior engineer for a large tech company.
Why do you think that the cultural capital of a certain social group is completely isolated and detached from their income level or past history of economic affluence or wellbeing?
What I find from my observations and unbiased reading is that rich people or people with a good track of generational prosperity have better chances to instill in their families the values of entrepreneurship and taking initiative while in poor or less fortunate families this becomes paradoxically difficult to achieve despite the seemingly urgent need to act on.
So, poor families especially the ones with a history of poverty and hardships spanning many generations back are hit on so many levels whether economically, socially or culturally and your thinly veiled attack on minorities communities and the insinuation that their culture product is the reason behind their economic hardships are not really helpful.
How the suggestion that some social environments will be more supportive of self-education than others automatically becomes an attack on minorities is baffling. There was no intended suggestion of any such thing, and the entire rest of my post was hypothesizing something completely different: society's increasing net productivity leads to increasing gaps in income.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
The local public library provides free internet access, lends out books for free, and sells their overstock for a buck a book. You can also get tech books from goodwill for very cheap (I've bought many that way).
It really never has been easier to get educated.
The most important things you learn good school gives you are a.) ability to distinguish what makes sense to learn and what is waste of time b.) ability to study alone. And judging from what college profs say, even supposedly good high school that produce college students fail to achieve b. all too often. It does not mean it is impossible for all to learn useful things alone the way you suggest, but that is requires much higher abilities then finishing normal college.
Free online college course are great thing when you are already educated (e.g. like me), but: * they wont give you diploma which is what employers care about, * are much harder to finish from home when you are doing them alone, * some courses still require you to buy expensive books.
After work education programs have higher failure rates then full day students - it is just harder to study after you worked 8 hours or more assuming you did not slacked. Being full time student is easier.
Even paid online courses have have higher failure rates then comparable in person courses (e.g. comparable demographic), that might have to do with psychology (motivation) or simply with in-person communication between students being more effective then discussions on forums. Keeping motivation up when you are in daily contact with other students is non-issue, keeping it while alone is harder. Overcoming struggles when friends can give you advice in person is easier then doing it with forums only.
Everybody in HN makes big deal about how working with smart good people is important for you cause you learn from them, well this is the same thing.
Finishing coursera course from home where you can study whenever it suits you, where you can google anytime you struggle with no transport needed is easier then having to do so in library. Of course it is possible form library too, but it is harder, require more commitment and persistence.
Looking at the data you've cited, two years is a really long time when it comes to the evolution of technology. Now we have even more resources to stay online cheaply with extremely inexpensive smartphones (many homeless people possess them) and even cheaper computers ($35 to even as low as $10); not to mention the advent of cheap or free municipal WiFi and special Internet plan rates for low income people from all the major carriers. Consequently it's a bit strange to me that people who want Internet, don't have it.
This is probably better for data.
http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/smartphone-penetration...
Looking at the data, (correct me if I'm wrong) I feel that the people who don't have internet are both elderly and poor. If you're not elderly, you'll probably have Internet access one way or another. I'm guessing, but I feel that a large portion of the geriatric population just doesn't care about the Internet.
1. It's still extremely expensive to get a degree or post-secondary education of some sort. Student loans are the only realistic option for many people.
Still related to the first point, proper education is more important than just education. Many people are still trying to go after what they "love" instead of the supply and demand of the marketplace.
2. It's never been easier to have an opportunity to start a business. Succeeding is still challenging.
4. Largely inaccessible to the low income class and a group of the middle class. You need excess money to invest, which increasingly people don't have.
While it's true that many of these things are easier to start, there are still significant problems that have to be overcome. Many of these have deeper issues.
On point 2, that depends on the state you're in and what goods/services are in demand. If you're in Louisiana and want to be a florist because there's demand for them, good luck (they have a licensing scheme for florists).
On point 3, this is only true if you have access to the Internet in a reliable manner.
On point 4, this can only work if you have enough money. Having five hundred bucks saved up as part of your yearly savings isn't going to move much even in risky investments (if a brokerage is willing to take such little money for their accounts).
I'll start, that first one regarding education. Is it easy to learn now with the internet? Sure, undoubtedly true. Is that measurably better than before for any person? Probably not. Cost per semester hour at a college I went to 10 years ago, is over four times as high now.
That is just the first bullet point. I tend not to even consider the rest if the first point is so... out of touch might be the best way to phrase it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
0.8% of Americans over 25 are earning minimum wage.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/01/30/almost...
That leaves 70% of American adults do not have college degrees and are earning above minimum wage. Of course, depending on how one defines things those numbers can go up and down, but it's not a stretch to say that most workers do not have college degrees and earn above minimum wage.
One last observation - starting your own business does not require a college degree. (Probably the most famous of those is Microsoft, and Microsoft has hired programmers without degrees.)
The author then has the gall to accuse others of using selective statistics to make their argument, and even throws out the 'class warfare' canard.
Similarly, that link only takes the federal wage into account - of course it's going to be abnormally low, given there are states with higher minimums. For example, Washington state has a minimum wage of $9.47/hour. A minimum wage worker in Washington won't show up in a study claiming $7.25 is the minimum wage.
Also, where do you mention 20%?
Paying off historically unprecedented student debts for recent US graduates also disproves your claim that it's never been easier to invest.
Of course it's possible that you weren't talking about formal education but, like it or not, credentials matter and employers are still more impressed by degrees from recognized institutions than they are by the fact that you've read a few Wikipedia articles.
It's important to understand the concept of dead-end jobs. Some people are stuck doing jobs like stacking shelves at Walmart, they need the money they get so they can't quit or reduce their hours to return to formal education, but they don't have a varied background of work experience or recognised skills to easily move beyond what they currently do.
FWIW, I didn't downvote you.
2. Google "how to start a business with no money".
3. Etsy, Ebay, Amazon - costs nothing or next to nothing to set up your stuff there, access to global marketplace.
4. You can start an investment program with an online brokerage account with as little as $100. Online trades are $10.00.
Are you honestly suggesting that a viable way for people to get out of poverty is to start trading stocks with a starting capital of $100?
That's the dumbest thing I've read on HN by far and no that's not a compliment if case you were wondering.
The point, though, is that it has never been easier to invest.