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Comment by notmonsters | Hacker News Reader

It's actually unreasonable for parents these days to expect that kids will achieve their own level of success, because the distribution of rewards in society now fall so much more disproportionally to the handful at the very top of any field than they did in their parent's generation, and the generation before that.

"Nobel prize or the gutter" is merely a logical conclusion in a world where only the very best at anything are valued.

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I disagree. It's the same. Its just that too many people expect more of the reward, for less of the work and never realized just how much work it actually took to achieve these rewards in the first place.

I see it all the time with people trying to start businesses. They see the success stories and want a rich and profitable company in less than a year.

I believe it's the result of perceived instant gratification on the Internet and from the idea that started in the early 90s that 'everyone needs a trophy', which I saw first-hand.

I’ve met so many college graduates that either want a six-figure income right out of school, a management position within 6 months, or a flex schedule at every job. It's not just a want, they feel entitled to it.

It's why Bernie Sanders is so popular among the youth: he's promising many rewards without any of the work.

That's anecdotal at best. According to a good deal I've read, the "new generation" actually does have quite a few problems previous generations never had to deal with. My father was able to buy his parents house after a few years of work. Anecdotally, I've been working full time and going to school and I can't even put much of a dent in my loans. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/01/09/the_mos...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/19/baby-bo...

My parents are smart people with degrees from public land-grant universities but they are not world-class at anything. They had stable, good-paying jobs with proper pensions, and could easily afford to buy a home big enough for a family. It cost about twice their annual income.

They "won the lottery" with me in that I had an innate interest in technology and got into computers and networks in the mid 1980s. I ended up at a public land-grant college, but even if I hadn't, I happened to have the right skills at the right time to ride the .com boom and acquire experience despite my lack of pedigree (and 20 years on, it no longer matters what school I went to.) I busted ass and continue to do so, but I'm not blind to my fortune. And yet, I do not and have never had a pension, and I have always spent 2-4x the fraction of my income on housing than my parents did, for worse housing. Most of my generation was not so lucky as me, but at least they were about to get jobs and build a resume.

My kids are young and if they're just as smart and hard-working as me, they're fucked. The ladder has been pulled up, and pedigree is a lot more important starting out now than it was when I was younger. (I know, I've been a hiring manager for years - and in technology which is a MUCH more egalitarian field than most due to demand.) To give my kids an advantage I've moved to a small country in Western Europe so they can grow up multilingual and have cultural exposure that might make them attractive to elite schools in the event that we've "won the lottery" with their natural abilities. And if they don't, if nothing else, they have access to less expensive housing, education and health care, and live in a society that's much more egalitarian than the US - one that might give them a shot at "just a living" without exposure to the worst predatory aspects of American poverty.

All this is to say, no, things aren't the same. Yes, one still has to work very hard to be the best (one also must be very lucky to be the very best.) The difference is, there was once "good enough to make a decent living" and now, not so much. This isn't about meritocracy, this is about the distribution of reward (across the spectrum of "merit" if you like.)

I'll be voting for Bernie Sanders, myself.

May I ask what european country and why ?

I dunno how you define "without any of the work" but I see plenty of young people graduating college with poor opportunities. Unemployment for 20-24 year olds is over 9%. The average student graduating with a 4-year degree from a public non-profit school has about $30k in debt. $100k is high, but they do need to cover that debt. They need to make more (adjusted for inflation) than their parents did at that age because their parents weren't saddled with all that debt. Instead they're sitting at 9% unemployment. Some degree programs are more rigorous than others but it seems like the current generation put in 4 years of strong work. Their parents generation didn't do that. And it wasn't the recipe for success they were told it would be.

>Its just that too many people expect more of the reward, for less of the work and never realized just how much work it actually took to achieve these rewards in the first place.

Businesses actively look for more work for less reward. I'm not sure why the other side shouldn't counter that.

Yes they will ask for those things and it's your job as a business to tell them no. They can reduce their demands or go someplace else.

I think wages have been flat anyway, so why wouldn't you expect some sort of push back when people start realizing that?

>> It's actually unreasonable for parents these days to expect that kids will achieve their own level of success, because the distribution of rewards in society now fall so much more disproportionally to the handful at the very top of any field than they did in their parent's generation, and the generation before that.

That's meritocracy.

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