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Comment by tibbar | Hacker News Reader

I grew up fairly poor in a large family. One of the constants was that something important was always broken but we couldn’t afford to fix it just then - a car, the washing machine, the computer; a couple times, the electricity. We went on DIY camping vacations. There was always a vague notion that we were on the brink of insolvency. (But through some supreme act of will my parents always found money for music lessons.) As kids we learned that if we wanted something, we had to find the money. The clever siblings would win contests with cash prizes, $100, $250. The rest of us had various side hustles like neighborhood snow shoveling and leaf blowing…

This process was short-circuited immediately for those of us who went into tech. It’s the new gold rush; you really can go west and seek your fortune. Remarkable times.

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Agree completely. It’s absolutely insane how much I earn today, and this is in Europe which falls behind US in a tremendous way.

My mum raised me on £50 a week at most, I spend more than that on food a week, let alone any of the other essentials.

Sometimes I get this kind of impotent rage, that I should boil in my gut and write out exactly how life was like and how it’s completely unfair to those still trapped in that life who weren’t lucky enough to adore computers.

In some ways it’s worse for them now than it was for my mum… that’s unimaginable honestly, there were times we chose between electricity and food…

But all my baying on a personal blog is going to do nothing. Another sob story in a sea of thousands, and deafening silence from the “haves” of our society- unwilling or unable to relate to another human being in torrid inescapable misery.

And they wonder why poverty and alcohol abuse are linked.

You need a sea to have a tsunami. Whatever it takes to make people realize there a issues that need to be fixed. Write down your experiences, even if it's only a record for yourself.

Alcohol abuse is rampant in the well to do classes as well, they just buy better stuff that won't kill you as quickly. See Boris Johnson.

You should consider writing. Some people only begin to care about something when they find out that someone they care about or respect has experienced it.

> This process was short-circuited immediately for those of us who went into tech. It’s the new gold rush; you really can go west and seek your fortune. Remarkable times.

> it’s completely unfair to those still trapped in that life who weren’t lucky enough to adore computers.

I must confess that after being picked on throughout middle school and high school for being a nerd, I totally reveled in this observation well into my young adulthood. Revenge of the nerds, baby... the gentle computer geeks are the ones getting rich and living well in fabulous places, while the mean, popular kids never left the hometown and are worse off than their parents' generation.

Eventually I realized that this was still thinking like a kid.

It’s funny how wildly off base my assessments of important life skills were as a kid (a fellow nerd, to be sure!) A world of ‘alphas’ where soccer skills and strategic bullying defined the social order. If you had told me that spending hundreds of hours dinking around on TI calculators was the real secret to future success, it would have just sounded so random. It’s like finding out that your collection of bottle caps you hoarded as a kid is now immensely valuable and assured you a life of wealth and access. So as much as I share the sense of catharsis, it does feel tremendously random and would have confused the heck out of teenaged me. :)

You can help. Donate to your local food bank, rescue shelter, night shelter and other immediate forms of aid. These places make an immense difference in the lives of those who live near you.

I used to be quite poor. It sucked, hard. I wrecked a car so I found a bike, I wrecked the bike so I walked. I spent my life looking for the next better paying job and tried to figure what skills I needed in order to get it. This led me from fast food, to warehouses, to assembly lines, to construction, to a computer repair shop, to tech support, to lab support, to IT helper, to IT admin, to Devops, to cloud support, to leadership. It was a series of tiny steps with a very focused goal. I'm sure that some would say it's because I'm a reasonably intelligent white male but I feel that my path could be taken by just about anyone. I worked with all types at all levels. Even if they stopped at construction they still wouldn't be poor.

I think that there are a lot of opportunities out there for people who want things badly enough. The question is, as a society what value do we place in the collective body of people who don't strive to better themselves? Is it something we want to prop up and freeze them in place or do we keep making the better future appealing like a carrot dangling for human growth?

> with all types at all levels. Eve

Yes. I think there are but being an intelligent white male will get you farther than a minority assuming the same effort is applied.

Perhaps your parents were never really poor but just wanted you to be self reliant. Maybe they were gaslighting you with all the broken electronics.

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