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Comment by maratd | Hacker News Reader

> Were things different in the United States at some point?

No, but there is a political movement in the United States toward a universal income upon which anyone can live comfortably and this is a symptom of that. Jobs that were previously considered in the realm of "teenager jobs" are now perceived as actual career tracks and a means toward a living. I'm not sure how flipping burgers is a career, but to each his own. On the other side, those same jobs are also being heavily assaulted by automation.

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It's not a matter of perception. Since the recession, most of the new jobs created have been of the low/minimum and part time variety.

> Jobs that were previously considered in the realm of "teenager jobs" are now perceived as actual career tracks and a means toward a living.

This is a funny way of writing "previously lucrative careers available to blue-collar workers have largely evaporated".

> "previously lucrative careers available to blue-collar workers have largely evaporated".

This is a funny way of writing "citizens should just accept any scraps they get"

Trades are as strong as ever. Only manufacturing jobs evaporated, but this is not about automation, this is because of a certain country starting with “C” (not Canada).

I don't think they stopped being teenager jobs, I think the education system across America failed to keep up with the world. Some schools can't even do 5 day school weeks anymore, and the switch to standardized testing may have been in good faith but it just led to less time for practical skills to be taught.

Imagine if every high school had the budget to run a modern, staffed programming lab, garage, chemistry lab, hell astronomy lab? If kids could get hands on, across America, at age 13? I desperately wish I had Musk levels of wealth if nothing else so I could just start plopping labs across middle America, where as a child my own craving for a hands on education was never delivered by my public schools.

> Imagine if every high school had the budget to run a modern, staffed programming lab

I don't need to imagine. If you work that minimum wage job for ONE DAY, you'll have 100 bucks in your pocket. You know what you can do with that money? You can buy a ten year old enterprise grade server that's been decommissioned and is for sale on eBay, with free shipping. Now you go on /r/homelab and get free help to get it up and running. All the software is free.

There are always excuses, but let's not sit here and pretend like things are more difficult now than they were before. They've never been easier and we've never had as much opportunity.

When I was growing up, any capable computer, used or new, was $3k and there was no internet, no help, and no free software.

This is really getting delusional as far as the average person's abilities. It's also clear that you have been poor. Besides, if you are working minimum wage jobs, you don't have $100 bucks in your pocket because you need that money to pay rent and repair your shitty car so you can keep your job.

As a kid, if you’re working a minimum wage job, it’s not to pay rent or to repair a shitty car you don’t have.

We're talking about adults, not kids.

Interesting, do you have more resources I can share with people?

Generally, I think you're right that a lot of the information is available. I think maybe there's a misunderstanding with just how little "money availability" there is for someone in rural America working a minimum wage job, hence why my dream is to target people while they're still in school.

A few decades ago, you could support a family and buy a house on one income, with only a high school education. That is not remotely true anymore.

Not true. You can go into the trades and make a very good living with just high school as formal education. There are plenty of software devs that never went to college. Plenty of people across the country do just fine on one income without college. The difference now is that somehow people started considering “fast-food cashier” as an actual “career.” Somehow every single job in America is supposed to support a family. That ridiculous. Some jobs are and should be “teenager jobs” or “extra money” jobs — not “support a family of four and rent an apartment” job. Minimum wage makes up such a small percentage of workers that it seems strange to expect those jobs to be able to support families and housing.

But, when your union contracts use minimum wage as the base for their calculations, it's far easier to advocate for raising the minimum wage than it is to negotiate a higher multiple, etc.

The contract for the cleaners in my office[1], for example, starts its base wage calculations by adding $0.50 to the minimum wage. All the increases and adjustments begin at that number.

[1] http://www.seiu32bj.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2015-CAD-...

There's nowhere near the number of highly-paid manufacturing jobs anymore. You can make an argument that it's possible for someone to make a good living with a HS education if they play their cards right, but it certainly isn't as probable.

There just is nowhere near the amount of well-paid blue collar jobs, so there are not as many people getting those jobs. Simple as that. This is a big part of why income inequality has become bad. You seem to think that people have suddenly become much more lazy and shiftless than in the past, which is

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