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Comment by imaginenore | Hacker News Reader

As a really poor immigrant to the US who succeeded financially, I can tell you with absolute certainty, poverty in the US (barring mental illness cases or health issues) is the result of poor choices. Most of it stems from society's lack of planning for the future of the young people. Young people are consistently being told lies like "you can be anything you want", forgetting to tell them that most of the fun choices lead to very low pay in the future. Young people regularly send $50-250k on financially useless degrees. They like, say, art, so they spend 4 years studying something they could learn in a library or on YouTube, only to find out that the market for painters is crowded and tiny.

We need much better guidance for the young.

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>As a really poor immigrant to the US who succeeded financially, I can tell you with absolute certainty, poverty in the US (barring mental illness cases or health issues) is the result of poor choices.

I'm an immigrant too, and I used to think I was in a bad situation. However, I think you don't understand how bad it could get for some American people. Being a poor immigrant won't give you a free pass when you talk about being in a shitty situation.

The other day, I talked to an white male American student worked with me in the same lab for an REU program. He was attending college in computer science, not a "fun choice" like you said. He had to deal with and provide food for a drunk dad, an ill mom, and a sister. The whole family depended on him and at the time had no social security. He complained to me about his sister's boyfriend stealing food from his fridge. Now, how the fuck do you blame him for being poor because of making poor choices? What choices could he make?

>Young people are consistently being told lies like "you can be anything you want"

They have been told that way since forever. Why should that all the sudden make a difference?

>They like, say, art, so they spend 4 years studying something they could learn in a library or on YouTube, only to find out that the market for painters is crowded and tiny.

You're ignorant in thinking that people can learn art by watching Youtube and go to the library. That's what all the people who did MOOC thought, and guess what happened to the MOOC hype? The reality is way more nuanced than that. People learn to draw by taking long lessons and looking for hours at real scenes, real people, real sculptures in the studio, not watching 10 minutes youtube video and looking at the 2D Instagram picture on the 25 inches screen. We're very far from that "learn shit from Youtube" pipe dream.

>We need much better guidance for the young.

We need it but we also need people to understand not to blame people for being poor. You were poor due to no fault of your own, so why do you think others are poor because of their fault? You were given your chance to success, so the best you can do is to think that way about other people.

> The whole family depended on him and at the time had no social security. He complained to me about his sister's boyfriend stealing food from his fridge. Now, how the fuck do you blame him for being poor because of making poor choices? What choices could he make?

I respect what he's trying to do to support his family, but at some point, you have to put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others.

IMO, he can choose to support his family to the extent that he's doing (and many people would), but recognize that that's a choice.

I agree. That's a choice, but regardless of whether he decides to put on an oxygen mask or not, he has a huge emotional baggage he has to carry.

That example is only used illustrate the difference with an immigrant who has no money but doesn't have to carry the emotional baggage. The immigrant in the same situation who chooses to support the family back home financially might very well be better off compared to the American one. That is because the cost of living in the home country was so low, so he can both support the family, be OK financially, feel good about it emotionally, and doesn't have to deal with the annoyance every day.

It should also be noted that other actors in the situation are also making choices. The sister is staying with the bad boyfriend. The bad boyfriend is stealing food. Neither of these two is sustaining themselves. And that's ignoring the father.

What really jumps out of the story is that even just if one out of four people in the situation makes good choices, he can uphold all three others plus the ill mom. Its remarkable how little it takes.

I have friends who grew up in situations like that. Nowadays, they are doing ok. Solidly lower-middle-class, but considering where they came from, that's a huge deal.

But even with these success stories, I think, nobody should have been in the situation they were in to begin with. No 16 year old should have to pick up a second job so they can pay their parents rent. Nobody should have to deal with a drug addicted parent that has no clinical route to sobriety. Nobody should have to take on their parents massive debt because their single mother got breast cancer in her early 40's.

If you want to blame people who make bad choices, fine. But at least try and remember the people in their orbit who are solid people who could really use some help dealing with a situation they are in by absolutely no fault of their own.

> No 16 year old should have to pick up a second job so they can pay their parents rent.

I helped pay the bills as a teenager. It wasn't the worst thing in the world. It's not preferable, but it's not cancer.

> Nobody should have to take on their parents massive debt because their single mother got breast cancer in her early 40's.

Agreed on this, but at some point we're angry at nature, not society. I'm not sure at what point I'm supposed to be mad at society or individuals or whatever about natural disasters, disease, and death.

The average student loan debt in 2016 was $37,172. And while there are those that do take on significant amounts of debt, they typically are those seeking professional degrees, eg: M.D. or J.D. There are of course those who both take on large amounts of debt AND don't get a professional degree, and those people certainly made a mistake in their lives, but they are not your average graduating college student.

Additionally, those with even an associates degree can, on average, expect to make more than the typical high school graduate. An Associates will net you about $400M over your lifetime, a Bachelors about $1MM, and a doctoral or professional degree will be about $2MM more. Now of course these are averages, and there are certainly overlaps where a high school graduate will out earn someone with a professional degree, but that is not the common case and should be considered an outlier.

Taken even a step beyond that, if you fall into one of the top 10 occupations for a bachelor's degree, even in the worst case scenario, on average you will still make $400M more than your typical high school graduate.

https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/colleg...

"The average student loan debt in 2016 was $37,172"

To be clear, the opportunity costs of unearned and non-debt payments generally would be in north of 150k range. Assume 30k/year income 4x years is 120k, plus the 37k debt, plus non-debt spending.

" An Associates will net you about $400M over your lifetime, a Bachelors about $1MM,"

And the same monetary investment in a fund earning 7% interest will be worth more than three times that over the same time frame.

It is not a good financial investment, on average. Some degrees have positive ROI. Many - most - do not.

> To be clear, the opportunity costs of unearned and non-debt payments generally would be in north of 150k range. Assume 30k/year income 4x years is 120k, plus the 37k debt, plus non-debt spending.

Do people no longer work while in college?

They necessarily do not work as much as they might otherwise. Even if we lower the wage opportunity loss to a mere $15k/yr, a 4 year degree falls short by a factor of two -- or a cool million dollars over one's lifetime.

And that's without factoring in the non-debt costs. Realistically, the gap is much greater.

Did you just claim a 20x return on investment wasn't good? A 7% investment adjust for inflation will return about 4x over the same time period (40 years). I have no clue what the hell you are talking about.

Saying "20x" return is meaningless without considering time. 1% growth will have a "20x return" if you're willing to wait 300 years. So no, a "20x return" is not necessarily good.

What I've said is that the return from a degree program is less than half of a moderate investment return in the stock market. It's a very simple point I'm making here.

You don't need to get confused with inflation - it applies similarly to both scenarios and drops out of the equation.

Turning $150k into $3m over 45 years could be described as "average market performance." Turning $150k into $1m over 45 years using a degree could be accurately described as "a below average performing investment."

Good luck finding a bank that will let an 18 year old with no assets make a leveraged investment in stocks.

> Most of it stems from society's lack of planning for the future of the young people.

Doesn't this mean that it's actually NOT the result of poor choices, or at least the type of choices people generally accuse people of like being lazy or spending beyond their means? This seems more like a societal problem.

I suppose it's true that it's the result of someone's choices but it seems unfair to pin it on the people who don't know better. Then again, I studied CS because it was practical and work at a great company but I always find myself wanting to do something else.

Maybe the problem is that everyone keeps listening to the people who say follow your passion when the reality is that not everyone's passion will lead to something that can pay the bills. Frankly, it should totally be okay to not be in love with your job and do it because you need to.

Majority of students go for practical degrees - business and such. They follow market. Non practical students (gender studies, history of art) tend to be clustered in top schools and students tend to be from wealthy families.

Blaming population of young students for economy is worst then red herring.

By what metric is the US economy bad? I didn't win a lottery, I just finished the state college, then went on to work. I'm making great money. Anybody willing to do that can do it.

My home country doesn't have that option, the salaries are 1/20th of what the US has to offer.

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