Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

This article is insulting, this is not the American dream. The American dream has never been about the pampered children of the elite working their way through subsidized higher education and finding exactly the right job just out of college with no experience.

The American dream is about working your ass off and scrambling your way up the ladder. It's about entrepreneurism and opportunity. It's about hard work and determination paying off over time. Andrew Carnegie's first job earned lower wages than working at McDonald's would today, he became wealthy not because he sat around like a sad sack waiting for his pre-conceived dream job to come to him while he was sitting around in his parent's house, he became wealthy because he sought out opportunities and took advantage of what he could. Like many highly successful people he worked his way through several careers.

The American dream isn't about the guy in this article, it's about the guy down the street starting a lawn care business with a rented lawnmower who uses hard work and sound judgment to build it into a landscaping company with its own office and several employees. It's about the other guy who builds an online business in his free time and works days, evenings, and weekends in order to make his dream reality. It's about the opportunity to work your way from nothing up to a comfortable living if you're willing to put in the elbow grease. That dream is as alive as ever, and with the low-overhead of internet based businesses if anything it's seeing a rebirth.

> That dream is as alive as ever

While I agree that the article chose the wrong focus, I think you're wrong. Look at the American Dream on a societal level: while there will continue to be outliers, the fact is that today's younger generations are doing worse than their parents by many measures.

How on earth is that "as alive as ever"?

(More abstractly: I think the whole American Dream thing is a destructive myth, due specifically to its fixation on "elbow grease" at the expense of the many, many, other factors that play into success.)

I think that the degree to which younger generations are "doing worse" is due to upbringing and work-ethic far more than it is due to opportunity. Today's younger generations start working later, work less, stay at home longer, spend a lot more time pursuing vanity educations with no economic value, have out of control spending habits, and are generally bad with money management.

And even then most "younger generations" live much easier and more wealthy lives than previous generations. They still have cable TV, the internet, cell phones, cars, prepared food, etc, etc, etc.

Every single person I've seen with drive, a good work-ethic, and sound financial sense has gotten ahead quickly in America, even if they never achieved any education beyond a high school diploma. That doesn't mean they all become millionaires, it just means they achieved financial stability and have significant control over their career path.

> And even then most "younger generations" live much easier and more wealthy lives than previous generations. They still have cable TV, the internet, cell phones, cars, prepared food, etc, etc, etc.

Don't conflate access to luxuries with wealth. Very few will pay off their mortgages as quickly as their parents, retire as early, raise a family of their own as easily, or weather more difficult times as smoothly.

It remains true even if this is due to (to paraphrase your words) a generational gumption shortage; regardless of cause, it looks like the American Dream is fading away.

> Don't conflate access to luxuries with wealth. Very few will pay off their mortgages as quickly as their parents, retire as early, raise a family of their own as easily, or weather more difficult times as smoothly.

They're trading luxuries for wealth. In other words, they're trading luxury consumption now for house payments later.

It's unclear why that choice is somehow unfortunate. More to the point - the ones who don't make it are in the same position as their parents.

If I could trade an iPhone for a house, I would. You're blatantly misrepresenting the scale of these things in order to equate them.

iPhone: $200 + $70/mo + apps & accessories, call it roughly $1k/year

internet/cable: $50-100/mo, call it roughly $1k/year too

gaming: $250 xbox 360 or ps3 every 4ish years, plus maybe a $60 game every 3 months, call it $300/year

entertainment: 10 DVDs a year at $15 each, a movie in the theater every month at $10 a pop, call it $300/year

eating out: $20 including tax and tip every week, call it $1k/year

car payment: a cheap car, only $150/mo, call it $1800/year.

These are just SWAGs, but they are relatively conservative SWAGs compared to the way most 20-somethings live today. Nevertheless, add it all up and you get $4-5k of money spent a year on relative luxuries. Save that up and in 4 years you have a down payment. Then roll it in with what you'd be paying for rent and you have a mortgage payment. Keep your credit clean and you can start paying on a 200k condo even in a big city in no time. Once you build up equity and once your career has advanced and you're making more income you can trade up to an even more expensive house.

This isn't rocket science, but it does take discipline and sacrifice.

There's sort of two directions to respond in here. First, you're rather fudging the conclusion that cutting expenses to the bone has bought you a house -- better save for double the time or end up putting 10% or less down, which has been manifestly demonstrated in recent years to be a stupid idea.

More generally, this whole conversation has become one of minutia.

The fact is that moving ahead financially has become more difficult. Impossible, of course not -- but the sacrifice, shrewdness, and plain dumb luck required continue to grow.

You will have a hard time convincing me, or anyone else paying attention, that this trend is due to some sort of society-wide age-related motivational shortcoming, which seems to be your argument.

> More generally, this whole conversation has become one of minutia.

Getting ahead is often minutia.

> First, you're rather fudging the conclusion that cutting expenses to the bone has bought you a house

Actually, he didn't cut anyway near "the bone". Write down everything that you spend money on for a month. (Yes, including vending machines.) You'll be amazed, and you'll save a lot of money because you'll find that the benefit of many purchases is less than the cost of writing them down.

> You will have a hard time convincing me, or anyone else paying attention, that this trend is due to some sort of society-wide age-related motivational shortcoming, which seems to be your argument.

We're not claiming that you're lacking motivation. We're claiming that you're spending lots of money that you could spend on something else.

If you're anywhere near "hacker news typical", you're spending 2-3x as some of your neighbors.

Your post reminds of this article I read now and again - http://www.conversiondoctor.com/conversion-blog/jobs-are-fil...

"Somewhere along the line the “American Dream” became having a “good job” that pays enough to be able to afford to “buy your own home”.

...

Historically the REAL “American Dream” used to be to owning your own business and becoming financially independent, while working for yourself, controlling your own destiny."

I agree, seriously, how many successful startups have we seen spring to life during this recession? The American Dream is still alive and well if you have the right skill set. And that's the way it's always been.

The true meaning of American Dream is that you're "free" to pursue your dreams without government interference. You could argue that in that sense the Dream has diminished, but this author is way off the mark.

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