Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth | Hacker News Reader

Buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility is largely a myth

buzzfeed.com

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The headline ("Two College Degrees Later, I Was Still Picking Kale For Rich People") is a statement of disappointed entitlement, of outrage over a belief that some implicit social contract has not been fulfilled.

The reality is that just having "a degree" in a generic sense is no longer the magical ticket to a middle class lifestyle that it was in 1960. It's become too common and is no longer much of a differentiator in most job markets.

A related issue is that many, many people have degrees in non-marketable subjects. Whatever one may think of the intrinsic value of studying history, philosophy, English literature, anthropology, art history, etc. there simply is not much demand in our society for specialists in these fields -- and so you wind up picking kale for rich people, with a pile of student loan debt to pay.

We utterly fail to communicate that fact to young students entering college. We do the opposite: follow your dream, follow your passion for anthropology or whatever and it will all somehow work out in the end. Turns out that's not actually true. Telling students that it is true is what leads to indignation and this sense of entitlement. Society just doesn't need more than a tiny number of anthropologists. Whether one thinks that society ought to need more of them is irrelevant.

It's disingenous to keep encouraging kids to get degrees in non-marketable subjects, to keep pretending that economic reality should not be a factor in what you choose to study.

I agree with you with one caveat: there really was a social contract in place that said something along the lines of "Finish third level and you'll walk into a job thats better than flipping burgers".

That contract has been broken. I think it was stupid to begin with but it was a message very clearly sent from generations, society, government that went before. As you say, it still is.

So does the writer have reason to be aggrieved? I think so. However, at some stage in an adults life they need to do some critical thinking and independently decide whats the optimal way to climb the pay ladder (legally).

That critical thinking is something that is simply not taught in schools. Perhaps its not teachable at all.

> there really was a social contract in place that said something along the lines of "Finish third level and you'll walk into a job thats better than flipping burgers"

Was this ever true for a Masters in Creative Writing? My understanding is that this class of degree has always been a social signal for "my family is so wealthy, I will never need to work."

With the advent of government subsidized mass higher education in the US starting in the 1960s, that changed. Many high school teachers and college professors began heavily encouraging their idealistic, young, poor students to "follow their passion" and study creative writing and other non-marketable subjects.

This group feels that it is vulgar and crass to even mention money or economics in the context of art or pure academics, much less integrate it into your life's plans, thus setting almost all of their naive students up for massive disappointment when they graduate with a huge pile of student loan debt and no jobs available except picking kale for rich people for barely above minimum wage.

"This group feels that it is vulgar and crass to even mention money or economics in the context of art or pure academics" - I'm not sure where you're gleaning that from - my point was there was/still is a social contract in place that tells young people that graduating from a third level institution will be a signifier of above average intelligence and/or work ethic thus leading to at least better than working class job.

Perhaps you had the foresight (or your parents did) to see that such qualifications would drastically decrease in social value. Others didn't. Then again, maybe you just happen to work in tech and lack empathy for those who didn't luck out in their chosen industry.

No, actually, I speak from painfully learned experience, as a former poor student who is now the holder of a non-marketable university degree in history and philosophy, and a pile of student loan debt.

But my personal experience is entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Let's keep the personal stereotyping and passive-aggresive insults out of this discussion.

I completely agree. It reminds me of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/2...

I think we need to do a far better job of informing students in high school about how their choice of major in college influences their income. At the very least, we need to discourage them from taking on large amounts of debt for majors where their expected income will be low. Even if we could convince them, many students probably don't know how hard it is to live off of $30-50k per year, and at that point in their lives (17-20 years old) they might argue that they would rather major in Women's Studies or Philosophy.

Unfortunately, I doubt colleges would allow substantial guidance in this area during "Introduction to College" classes that students take their Freshman year for a variety of reasons. Some professors would argue that college is not meant to prepare people for the workforce (it makes you a better citizen and more worldly), but that really hasn't been true for many years.

Yup, there's a lot of people driving beamers who complain about how their parents forced them into law, medicine, or engineering.

After reading that article, I realize how much truth there is to the old adage that, with a good article, you delete more than you save. This article feels like an interesting and thought provoking topic, but if it's there, it's hard to pinpoint while wading through the biography of half the author's family.

Twenty three paragraphs but no message.

Twenty three paragraphs but no message.

The message is "tax the rich".

Which is the wrong message, but that's what happens in constant class warfare society. They screw us we screw them, and on and on it goes.

Many messages could be inferred but the title gave more than enough subtext to give the author's/publisher's intent.

What I gathered from this is that the author is making bad career choices and people in her family are prone to making bad choices.

She can't handle a woman laughing at her, so she decides to be a writer like her father. Seems like not growing up and having poor decision-making skills is what's stopping her upward mobility.

Buzzfeed is full of examples of this idea: I should be able to do what I want for a living because I want to do it, and it should make me upwardly mobile.

> author is making bad career choices and people in her family are prone to making bad choices.

It's the standard mantra however it's not true. The reason it's not true is that there is a labor market. The labor market can be generalized as being controlled by a few variables. Those variables are significantly in greater control of those with money than those without money.

Upward mobility is possible if and only if you can provide services that are valued highly, and when some labor is valued highly then those with money who have their hands deep in the political economy try to find ways of reducing the cost by for instance lobbying the government to increase the number of people getting educated in those fields, increasing research and development to try to automate those jobs, buying more technology to reduce the cost, increasing immigration and so on.

So yes you can try to get ahead, but it's a fact that the deck is stacked against you. Those with money want to get richer and they know they do it by exploiting people by paying them as little and making as much money from whatever they produce and keep that it in their pockets rather than paying for them anything higher than the market will bear, and even then we find them colluding with each other as in the case of Apple and Google to not compete with each other lest they drive up the cost of employment.

So yes your advice is common fare, but few people get ahead and that's because the people with money always working to keep it that way... and increase the skew.

Even now they are selling the idiot masses the dreams of automation while anyone with any sense knows automation is horrible for upward mobility and a way for those with money to end class war once and for all in their favor. Yet the masses have been seduced to allow it to happen. If they were thinking logically they would be like Luddites and resist it with all that they have disposal.

But then the counter argument is that something might happen that makes the system work after all, for instance minimum income which will then be determined by continued class warfare after this battle is over, which again is on the side of those with capital, or Capitalists.

No, it's not. The message is "This is my experience."

I think much of the HN community is accustomed to a style of discourse that deals in big ideas with immediate applications: "This is where tech is going." "How I hacked the YC interview process and got in." "Here's what's wrong with the Javascript dependency mess."

Much of the world doesn't think this way, though. For much of the world, their goal is to be heard, and to be understood, and to have their existence as an individual human being validated. When articles speaking from this angle come out, people react with "What's the point?" And the point is precisely that people react with "What's the point?", and they shouldn't.

The author said as much in her last sentence: "It’s the work I want to own." But there's no way to make that connection to readers who are accustomed to thinking of the big picture without trivializing the little picture.

Related video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM-gZintWDc

> When articles speaking from this angle come out, people react with "What's the point?" And the point is precisely that people react with "What's the point?", and they shouldn't.

Oliver Sacks's late writing is of the latter type you describe, and various eulogies type of writing occasionally popped up on HN as well. So I don't think it's just the type of the writing that isn't well received here.

Some'll get it already. The HN community isn't one monolithic hivemind, it's a bunch of people who each have their own perspectives. But I'm trying to connect with the people who don't, who still think in terms of the big picture, and so my comment needs to be phrased in the same terms that it complains about. It's hard to make a perspective shift, because you are trying to see things that, by definition, you did not see before.

I remember wrestling with this when a friend of mine posted her personal experience, as a woman and as a psychologist and as someone who has been discriminated against, a year or so ago, and she said "You're a hero for making the effort. I mean that."

Many of us write to communicate facts. When we read, we expect the writer to be doing that, too. We get frustrated if they take far too long to deliver on too little payload of facts.

But sometimes other people write to communicate feelings, not facts. Sometimes I see this in my marriage. My wife says something, and my reaction is, "So?" But she wanted me to share in the experience, not just to know something. If I listen just for facts, I miss what she's trying to tell me.

Now, for those of us who are fact-oriented, it gets annoying to have people talking to us the "wrong" way (i.e., not our style) all the time. But we need to be able to learn to handle the other style, at least at the level of a somewhat-fluent foreign language. (I say so, who does not do very well at this...)

The author said as much in her last sentence: "It’s the work I want to own." Upward mobility is largely a myth www.buzzfeed.com

To say it's just a story about her experience is subversive, to say the least.

Did anyone else expect at least a tiny blurb about the difficulties of finding other opportunities?

I feel like that is central to the topic.

The message is that it's massively unfair that someone with a college degree cannot find a job that grants a middle class lifestyle.

She entered higher education believing that having "a degree" (in any generic subject) would do that, and it didn't.

The topic itself is worth discussing. However I'm not actually sure why this specific article was the one being picked for a second chance.

It's one long life story (stories?), and there is nothing in it supporting either the title or subtitle. Yes, her upbringing was bad, but I wanted to know what happened personally to her after graduating that she's where she is now. Or even better: what exactly could have helped her (by government or society) getting to where she want to be in life? Those details are no where to be found.

And I'd like to hear others' opinion on this, but I don't consider her writing to be good. Maybe if she want to be a writer, that has something to do with it?

My thoughts exactly. I thought it was going to be another "I got a liberal arts degree and now I'm outraged that I can't find a job; upward mobility isn't real!" article, but it wasn't even that... :/

I'm also curious what 2 degrees she has that prevent her from getting a job in her field.

I did a quick "site:linkedin.com" google search.

Bachelors in English and Masters in writing from not the best colleges.

"from not the best colleges"

You do realise that it's a considerable achievement for someone from a working class background to go to third level at all, right?

According to her linkedin ...

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Creative Writing, from California Institute of the Arts

B.A., English from Temple University

Yeah I agree. It is more difficult to leave poverty if you are born into it, but the choice of the word "myth" was a poor one. I also would have liked to hear more about her degrees. What were they in? Why were they not useful in today's current world? I think this could have gave us much greater insight. Also, the making fun of healthy foods turned me off a little because I always choose healthier options if they are available. "Food" in America is often not really food, so if you can afford better food I wouldn't blame you for it. But it did help visualize the character in her story. Her writing was good. Just would have liked to get more answers to said questions so we can figure out more about how we can fix education to make it not such a struggle for people to move upwardly.

She doesn't mention what her degrees are in, which I'm quite sure is deliberate: she doesn't want a bunch of people writing to say, "well, of course you are picking kale, you studied {creative writing | English literature | etc.}"

Her proposition is that having any degree entitles one to a middle class lifestyle.

This is an archaic notion based on the economic situation in the US before the 1960s, before the government began subsidizing mass higher education. Bachelor's degrees were expensive and rare then, so that actually worked.

Now, we have millions of people with non-marketable bachelor's degrees picking kale for a living, because nobody told them that the economic situation has shifted radically since then and bachelor's degrees don't guarantee you a nice job anymore.

> I don't consider her writing to be good.

Her writing would be fine for long-form fiction. She gives details, images, feelings. It doesn't work as well in an article like this. But if she writes novels, she could turn out to be good. (Or she could not be. Or she could be good and still not make any money. Novels aren't a guaranteed path to riches, even if you're good.)

However I'm not actually sure why this specific article was the one being picked for a second chance.

You must be new to the geekosphere, so let me answer that for you: People like to white knight visible minorities and women while also pretending that everyone can do what they like for a living and that the rich should foot the bill for it.

Or, I dunno, maybe it makes for an enjoyable read.

> I was nonetheless positioned only marginally better off than my grandparents

>listing the indignities she felt working these jobs with a laconic intensity and steady determination: washing the house’s windows inside and out, cleaning the mattresses and box springs, scrubbing the floors on her knees, a lunch of a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk offered by a client that was quickly rejected, getting paid $3 a day.

I'd argue that smartphone in hand, greater than minimum wage rate, flexible work schedule and the option of going to post secondary education constitutes more than a "marginal" improvement. This person is claiming that she's no better off than 2 generations prior, and but in reality is using a peer comparison to try and prove it. Short of absolute equality, someone has to be behind someone else. Someone has to have "less". But if that relative "Less" is consistently more in an absolute sense, with each generation, then clearly things are getting better.

The "poor" of today have more food, more tvs, better technology, greater rights than several generations back. Largely because the rising tide is lifting the vast majority of ships.

I see your point but surely you agree peer comparison is fair?

No doubt the author has things better than generations before (though you do have to factor in things like increased expectations as a cost for this) but if this was the only measure then social equality would be move much slower than it is.

In my opinion only equal actions should demand equal results. I imagine nobody working as a freelance writer, working for instacart, taking loans against a useless asset are doing very well in this society. Therefore the author's peers are likely doing roughly as well, and thus "fair".

Some sources of unfairness might be the disingenuous nature of post secondary education, selling assets (degrees) far beyond their value. Being lied to maybe the biggest claim the author has. But I dont see gender or race being a part of that claim. The lie is unfair irrespective.

I think this article is important and useful, but the title she chose is misleading. The content has absolutely nothing to do with higher education, or either correlative or causative connection to her employment with Instacart. Social mobility is an interesting research area, and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or worked menial jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...

Press coverage: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-...

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the_myth_destroying_america_...

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2...

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...

Original research / scholarly articles:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115...

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc262g.pdf

Authors at media publications usually don't get to choose titles, so let's not assume she chose it. We'll use the subtitle for now (shortened to fit the limit). If anyone has a better idea, we can change it again.

By the way, we put this article in the second-chance pool (described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10705926 and the other links there) and removed the penalty normally applied to buzzfeed.com. We did that because on first glance, at least, it's far better than the median article in this category: it speaks substantively from first-hand experience.

This is also a category that tends to set off flamewars. Hopefully commenters will respond to the substance of the piece and that won't happen this time.

Did people stop hiring plumbers? It's difficult in North America to become a millionaire, but it's pretty trivial to escape poverty. What I often find is people would rather be poor than sell their skills to the highest bidder, eg. I know welders who refuse $60/hr jobs because they dislike the oil industry.

Or train for jobs that actually pay, like plumbing.

I don't know what it's like the US, but in the UK becoming a plumber is a long way from "pretty trivial."

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/may/15/fast-track-plum...

Here it's not difficult, unless you want a union plumbing job. The reason why becomming a union plumber is difficult, say for San Francisco local ?, is getting every question on an easy test right. Plus there's a lot of people applying to take the test. Those Union plumbers are paid I believe over $100/HR.

The easy way is just call yourself a Plumber, and put an ad on CL. Something like what that very conservative guy did--what's his name--"Joe the Plumber". In all honestly, these guys get the job done. I wouldn't want them installing hydronic heating though.

The other way is get a licence through the state. You can get a general contractor's licence, or a Plumber's licence. It's easy. There's schools that will walk you through the paperwork, and an easy test. You don't need the school. They are a ripoff.

If your young, and have kids, a union plumbing job is great. Non-union plumbing is a horrid job. The only one making a real living us the owner.

I was in the San Franciso electrical union and it was a good deal. I didn't stick around. Just found construction very boring, but it paid well.

If anyone reads this who's thinking about going into a union trade, I'll pass this along. Construction is construction. Stay away from non-union construction. If you are going to be a construction worker go union, and try to get into these unions in this order. The order I'm picking us quality of work, and pay.

Elevator mechanics union(might have changed name?) Electrical union local 6 if in San Francisco. Plumbers union, or HVAC union(forget the name)

Stay away from carpenters union, unless you get into the finish carpenters uinion(if still around?) Stay away from roofing, concrete, insulation, and painting--if you can? If you really want to go into one of those trades make sure to get into the union.

Non-union construction is right above not working. "Oh, but I see Tom, and Horhe, and they seem happy?". I don't know how these guys are happy. I've worked non-union, and it paid retail. The conditions were horrid.

To anyone against union, do a non-union construction job just one day. Just one day. Look at what you are paid. Then look at the house that the owner of the non-union lives in. He usually has houses, and he bought each of his kids their first house.

Hands down worst job I ever had was at Bradley Electric. My father went through a union apprenticeship program with this guy--if he's still around. He opened a very successful non-union shop, and would hire desperate guys, at horrid wages.

I don't think "trivial" is quite the word you're looking for. This article doesn't really address that point, but "escaping poverty" isn't trivial. If poverty simply meant lack of money but all else were held equal, your claim would be more accurate, but would mean very little (e.g., was Elon Musk "poor" during the time when all of his net worth was wrapped up in trying to get Tesla and SpaceX off the ground?).

Poverty is pretty complicated. Escaping it is too.

Please explain how you believe its pretty trivial to escape poverty? A grossly ignorant statement that.

Step 1. Get a job. Step 2. Rent the cheapest place Step 3. Take a flagging course Step 4. Become a flagger. Step 5. Take a trades course. Step 6. Work for whoever pays the most.

Alternatively, Step 1. Go to public library Step 2. Use computer to learn web Dev/ something in tech. Step 3. sign up for freelance site. Step 4. Use the freelance work to acquire tech job

Alternatively, Step 1. Post cleaner ad on Craigslist that says you'll do laundry. Step 2. Make $15-$20 an hour.

and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or worked menial jobs

I don't know about easy, but I know from personal experience that it's possible, at least in some cases. I did it. And I saw other people do it.

And while it's not politically correct to say this, I firmly believe that a significant factor in whether (some) people escape their circumstances or not is simply desire and work ethic. Just to share an interesting anecdote... when I was in college, I had a friend who went to my same school. He didn't have a car, and the campus was about 12-15 miles from his home. Did he let that deter him? F%!# no... dude walked to school the days he couldn't get a ride. This guy had a burning passion to improve his life and he wasn't going to let something as trivial as lack of transportation stop him. Now, how many people are willing to commit to that level of effort to raise themselves up? I don't know, but my experience suggests that it's a pretty small percentage.

In my experience, writing (or any other art) is maybe the most downwardly-mobile profession there is. The supply of artists far outstrips the demand for art, and getting your first job often depends on proximity to industry gatekeepers. I can't speak specifically for the publishing industry, but in film and television people tend to get writing jobs through personal connections.

The four paths I've seen for people who make it in film/tv:

* Have a family member who gets you your first job.

* Have rich parents who completely subsidize your work for a few years and provide anonymous funding for your first feature film.

* Have upper-middle class parents who partially subsidize your work for a few years, and get ready to be an assistant for 3-25 years while you build connections with the business bros that determine your future.

* Have lower-middle class parents. Be extraordinarily driven and ignore all material needs while you win festivals and get noticed.

The lower you are on the list, the more effort it takes to maximize your probability of success. Realistically, almost no one makes it from the bottom category.

Serious question: Do you feel that society should be re-adjusted/obligated in some way to make more upwardly-mobile paths for writers?

I don't know; do you feel like the world doesn't have enough writers?

It already has. The internet has made distributing and selling text content thousands of times easier.

> The woman who laughed at me was one of these customers with very discerning tastes currently causing me a lot of anxiety... With “all my education,” as my family would say, two degrees and the student loans to show for it, I was nonetheless positioned only marginally better off than my grandparents, who ran errands and did other grunt work two generations removed from where I now stood.

I can't tell who the more entitled person is. The wealthy woman who believes she is entitled to have her discerning tastes met, or the author who believes she is entitled to work as an author regardless of her commercial success.

No excuse to treat people who work for you poorly, but I think the entitlement runs both ways.

I find it amusing that one of Instacart's competitors, TaskRabbit, is currently blanketing the NYC subway system with ads that say "We do chores. You live life." The implication being, at least the way I read it, that they consider their workforce to be perhaps slightly less than human.

I'm struggling to understand how you can possibly jump from "we do chores; you live life" to "our workers are subhuman".

Are you saying that only subhumans do chores?

It was either: 1) A brainfart on OP's part or 2) You're watching someone who doesn't do chores pontificate on how bad "the poor people" have it.

If the people you hire to do your chores are doing something other than "living life", to me that implies they aren't really human. (Since living life is sort of part of the whole human thing.)

Cold logic. The advertisement defines life as something that is not doing chores. Therefore people who do chores are not living. Whether that makes them "subhuman" does involve some interpretation, but if you call someone "not alive" you aren't exactly complementing them.

Yes, they are all over the financial district in SF. They are odious, especially in contrast to the squalor and desperation of the surroundings (Bus stops full of the homeless and the working poor). Very American Psycho.

"We do chores. You live life." The implication being that they consider their workforce to be less than human.

That doesn't follow at all. Just because people do chores it doesn't mean they aren't able to live or that they are less than human.

I think it's interesting that we're 44 comments in and nobody has commented on how race fits into this.

She sees herself as someone working her way up into a freelance writing career. Her customers, her bosses and her family view her as the kind of person unlikely to do anything more than what her parents and grandparents did: bounce around through low-wage, low-prestige jobs like Instacart their entire working life.

When everyone around you assumes you won't make it higher, it's hard not to wonder if they're right. And society assumes African-Americans are much less likely to achieve career success. [1]

[1] See http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html for instance: "Race, the authors add, also affects the reward to having a better resume. Whites with higher quality resumes received 30 percent more callbacks than whites with lower quality resumes. But the positive impact of a better resume for those with African-American names was much smaller."

Nobody has commented on how race fits into this because race is entirely irrelevant to the theme of the article.

Her skin color is not relevant to her picking kale for a living. She's picking kale because she got two college degrees in non-marketable subjects, not because she's black.

Not every topic contains a hidden narrative of latent racist oppression just waiting for an overeducated postmodernist to come along and deconstruct it, even if it does involve people of a visibly different ethnic background than their employer.

Race is the theme of the article:

"Our national history is rife with examples of black Americans facing exclusion from labor movements, as well as general workforce discrimination. It’s not hard to see how the effects of these policies have trickled down. I see my family’s work history, rendered briefly here, as a particular kind of ingenuity necessary for black Americans."

It's not at all, though she seems to think it is. It's about how indignant she is that she got two college degrees and still can't get a middle class job.

The headline is: "Two College Degrees Later, I Was Still Picking Kale For Rich People."

That happened because she studied creative writing, a largely non-marketable subject. Her being black is not relevant. If she had studied chemical engineering or dentistry or any of a large number of other in-demand subjects instead of creative writing, she'd easily have obtained a middle class job despite being black.

It took her that long to recognize her own under-employment??

TL;DR Why is it a myth?

many studies: http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/02/americans-think-upward-m...

Find one example of a poor person working hard and becoming rich! You can't! Ergo, myth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin

Because people would rather complain than do something about their situation.

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