The American Dream, RIP?
economist.com
economist.com
Second Person, living in some Silicon Valley or other bubble, only meeting similar people (the worser-off of which are some "ramen enterpreneurs" with upper-middle class parents and university education), ignoring tons of homeless people, millions of minimum wage workers, immigrants, who almost never ventures outside his urban comfort zone, etc: Is there a source supporting this claim?
For some reason, for other claims, which the same people have a first person experience with, like sexism and racism, they don't feel the need for a "source" that much. But when there's something they haven't cared about ever, don't see in their circles, and doesn't affect their middle/upper-middle class lives, then suddenly they need citations, which they will then scrutinize.
http://norfolk.legalexaminer.com/medical-malpractice/investi...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2013/05/other-sho...
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/06/dr_christ...
I don't consider it a high quality of life when you can't have a reasonable expectation that a surgeon isn't going to kill you on the operating table and has been killing patients for years with complaints about him while the state board does nothing.
Texas sucks. Hard.
Corruption or ineffective government are not exclusive to Texas. You're just spouting more ignorance and from your lower comment are clearly bigoted against Texans.
My original point stands that the use of exurbs as a pejorative in the OP is easily refuted by the experience of anyone who lives there. I used to live in Frisco, TX, an exurb of Dallas and the mere suggestion that it offered anything inferior is absurd and quite frankly just completely oblivious.
And really, I disagree. The American Dream to me is the simple idea that if you work hard, you can climb the social ladder. This is as true now as it ever has been.
There are no castes in America, only people born into classes of varying privilege. For some people, therefore, the American Dream is attainable more easily than others — but that doesn't mean it's a myth.
Whilst it is true that one can climb the social ladder, it is much harder now than it was. To simply say it is true/false is to ignore that it's significantly harder now than it was. It has always been true that the strongest indicator of success is how rich one's parents are; it's more true now.
Not true anymore. The astronomical rise in income inequality has also resulted in a sharp result in social mobility (what you call "climbing the social ladder).
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/latest-conferen...
It is not true now, and it has never been true. Circumstance and privilege, here as elsewhere, has always been a major factor in one's success.
If you think otherwise, you haven't been paying attention to the distribution of wealth in America.
A lot of comparisons are being drawn, for example, between the 1920s and today. While the income distribution curves look startlingly similar, the concentration of wealth is very different. Most of today's 1%+ are "working rich," i.e., they receive the bulk of their income from salaries and bonuses -- not from ownership or direction of capital.
Most of the turn-of-the-20th-century rich were actual capitalists/industrialists -- "robber barons" who secured monopolies on commodities, trade routes, new technologies, and so forth. These robber barons built generational fortunes whose relative scale and unshakable concentration are unmatched by anything since, including today. Their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren enjoyed lavish fortunes not of their own merit or creation.
Today's income gap appears troubling, and I don't want to downplay it. But the frequent comparisons to the Gilded Age are superficial at best, and they veer us off topic. This is true whether one is looking at the comparison from either side of the politico-economic spectrum: the pro-capitalist side (because the majority of today's elites are not capitalists, per se, but wage earners in highly paid fields like finance), or the egalitarian side (because what, exactly, are we proposing to redistribute? Opportunity? Wealth? Salary? Market demand? And how will we do this?).
And that's not even touching on globalization, which seems inevitable, and which has had a major effect on the disappearance of working-class and middle-class jobs. The article touches on the effects of new technologies, access to them, and ability to master them -- but this seems pretty meritocratic unless access is restricted to the children of privileged families. That's where we need to turn our lens. That's where things start to look less meritocratic and more aristocratic.
It's time we took a more nuanced view of this issue. For one thing, we should look beyond the present income inequality and toward the future implications. Is social mobility going to suffer for the next generation? Is wealth concentrating in generational amounts? Is the current power-law distribution crystalizing into a caste system? By some indications it is, and by other indications it's not. Let's go there. Let's dissect this. We need less hand-wringing and more investigation.
I'd be much more troubled by an uneven playing field than by uneven scores at the end of the game. By many accounts, today's playing field is fairly uneven -- and that's where we should be focusing our attention and effort. At the same time, we need to be comfortable with the probability than a perfectly even playing field will still produce uneven outcomes. It might produce more uneven outcomes, depending upon one's choice of modeling. Nevertheless, we're looking too much at the symptoms and not enough at the underlying sickness in the system.
There's no need for nuance here. Nuance is what you apply when something has merit. The direction the US economy is headed in has no merit. The ship needs a course correction.
None whatsoever, when the economy continues to grow, and most personal lifestyle indicators continue to improve? The net immigration trends strongly suggest you are mistaken. You say we don't need nuance here, but discussions on Hacker News proceed best with evidence, so please provide evidence for your broad conclusion.
Things being worse elsewhere doesn't make things good here. That's like saying the back of the Titanic was ok because so many people wanted to go there.
However, it just might suggest a reason to doubt the statement "The direction the US economy is headed in has no merit," with which I was disagreeing. If smart immigrants come here on a net basis (and they do), then maybe people who have a choice are voting with their feet to say that the direction of the United States economy is not as bad as it could be.
I note the lack of follow-up from the kind person with whom I was disagreeing, perhaps because he is busy with his real life responsibilities, just as I was for the last three hours.
Do you have a source for this?
> If you are born in the bottom fifth, your odds of making it out of there are roughly fifty/fifty.
Are you sure? In a longitudinal study of US income earners during a 20 year period [1], a majority of people who started in the poorest quintile cracked the richest quintile at some point. The degree of opportunity this points to is really quite astonishing if you think about it.
This study is a little dated now (1990s). I can't imagine it's changed dramatically, but I'd love to see a new longitudinal study that went up to the present.
[1] Google Books, "Basic Economics" by Sowell: http://bit.ly/grnsDF
> Do you have a source for this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to...
This one doesn't talk very explicitly about the time trend, but it mentions studies conducted in different decades finding progressively higher levels of correlation between parents' and children's incomes; unclear if that's due to random chance or an actual trend.
Consider an farmer living in a village where incomes for everyone range from 200rs/day to 250rs/day depending solely on random chance (weather, locusts, etc). Relative mobility is high - depending on your crop yield, you could go anywhere from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. And you have no chance to go anywhere besides your farm.
This is something that I don't know if so many people completely understand. For instance, my wife and I combined put us well in the top 1%[1] of the US based on our salaries, but there is no way we are "rich". And b/c we are trying to be smart with our money, we don't live like most would expect from our combined salaries. The issue, as I see it, is that our salaries are obviously not guaranteed.
Now, I fully recognize I'm in a privilege situation regardless, but we're not living a jetset lifestyle by any means. Sure, we are technically in the top 1%, but it isn't the lifestyle most people would envision when they think "top 1%". Though don't get me wrong, as I said, I DO recognize we are privileged and am not complaining, just saying we aren't living like those robber barons of old.
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States
I'm going to guess like most wealthy people, you simply have adjusted to the standards you can afford on that kind of income, and see it as "normal", and assume that most people have similar access to wealth.
I experience that quite often with people who are in the top 1%: "despite these vacations we take, the expensive things we eat and buy, and these other things you couldn't afford if you saved all year for it, which are regular course for us, we're not /that/ wealthy, because the 0.1% has so much more!"
So go ahead, knowing that I can barely afford to stay alive while working full time, and tell me that you're not that much more wealthy than I am.
The reality is that you'll make more this year than I'm likely to make in a decade.
(As a less aggressive side note: a better measure is worth than income, because as you point out, income is transitory.)
Is it education? Lack of jobs in your area? A disability?
I'm not trying to be condescending, just genuinely curious about your situation.
Working a job, realistically, is only going to get me so far, though, without one of those two factors. For what would be a modest investment on the part of most people I'd consider "wealthy", I could open a start-up where I'd make a reasonable wage AND have an ownership interest in the value of my ideas.
Similarly, connection to people in higher status positions would let me get a better-than-entry position.
I'm in the 5% according to this[1] based on my salary (not properties or anything like that, just salary).
Based on the tone of the thread so far to this point, people aren't going to want to hear this, but I also lack access to capital and ability to network with the wealthiest in my area. I'm literally an employee. I very high paid employee, yes, but an employee.
I too am only working a job and similar to you, it is only going to get me so far.
I started working at McDonald's at 16 in high school. I worked my way through school (RA, Dorm tech, other odd jobs), worked my way into an internship (skipped junior year to do internship), finished school and was lucky to get a job (2000). That job started at $40k, which was amazing for a kid out of school, I guess. From there it was extremely hard work, lucky breaks, taking some chances before wife and kids came along, getting a master's degree, having a few setbacks (financially) and starting over.
I'm making the money now, but I know this job won't last forever. I'm highly paid in this moment in time (and for the time I have this job), but when it ends, I can't expect another to just come along. So I'm saving. And preparing. And making sure this time doesn't go to waste.
The truly wealthy don't think like this; they don't have to. There is not "what if" future. The OP and I seem like we are in the same boat and, frankly, I get what he/she is saying. Salaried employees that happen to find themselves in the top X% are likely not living large or without worry like the truly wealthy[2].
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
[2] - We are not "living large", we are comfortable. As an example. Wife drives a 2006 prius. I drive a 2007 minivan. Bought both used. We rent our home b/c rent-mortgage ratios in our area don't make sense to buy. Our kids go to public school. We worry about saving for the kids future like most anyone. We worry about retirement (neither of us have a pension) and we worry about health. A single high-cost health event could wipe us out. It almost did years back when wife got very sick and was in hosp/ICU for a week. Wiped out saving and had to sell car we had at the time and use CC to fully pay.
And, yes, I Know that we were able to recover in part b/c of the higher than normal salary. The point is, we aren't living like the silicon valley millionaires/billionaires people would expect us to be. We also worry about money.
The wealthy do not worry about money.
I make a very healthy income in the US, but live in a very expensive area as well. However, I consider myself very fortunate to have the life that I do, even though I have to settle for things like: public school for my kids and not driving a new car every few years (shudder!).
If a self organizing phenomena doesn't happen at a small scale in almost all examples, you need a theoretical reason why it doesn't downscale if your claim is some time in the future it'll self organize at a larger scale.
The future of the whole country probably resembles WV or Detroit much more than SV. This has certain startup implications; for example, creating a luxury electric car startup in a permanently down-trending country seems unwise, in comparison sharing photos sounds like something poorer people can continue to cheaply do as they gradually become permanently poorer and poorer because even the 3rd world has mobile phones.
The only thing that works is some sort of self-organizing nature that similar to the way biological organisms form, which then end up creating neuron/brain like structures which form higher intelligence. Take a look at the universe, there is an interesting talk on how the Internet is starting to show that phenomenon, it's appearing more and more like a brain and may be starting to show some signs intelligence.
Take a look at this post from LinuxCon2013(it's not about Linux).
The death of the middle class in the United States has been predicted for a long time, but middle-class Americans still look like rich people in most other countries. The whole economy has been transformed over the last century (my uncle farms land that was first developed into a farm by my grandfather a century ago, when a large percentage of the United States population were farmers), but people are still mostly employed, and living in larger, more comfortable houses, eating better, and living longer[1] than ever. What is called decline in the United States looks a lot like progress anywhere else in the world. People are still very eager to immigrate to the United States,[2] so what exactly is the problem?
[1] An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why."
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...
Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/232...
http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-drea...
AFTER EDIT: I've still got time to edit this comment, so I'll respond to the people who think I am ignoring important trend lines. I respectfully disagree. (Note that I am well known here on Hacker News for saying that United States K-12 education needs improvement, so I am by no means saying that there is nothing left to improve, or nothing to worry about, here.) A funny comment posted on Hacker News about Japan's "lost decade" (posted before I opened my user account here)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=329218
shows how difficult it is for a developed country to lose ground:
It was terrible. People were forced to eat raw fish for sustenance. They couldn't get full-sized electronics, so they were forced to make tiny ones. Unable to afford proper entertainment, folks would make do by taking turns to get up and sing songs.
I've grown up in the United States, and I've been hearing predictions of doom here throughout my life. Doom here still looks like heaven to most people in most parts of the world.
Out of curiosity, what kinds of things? I was born and raised in the U.S. (have lived in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, and Atlanta), and now live in Copenhagen, and don't feel like I am missing a lot so far, apart from the general experience of foreignness occasionally being strange (might be ameliorated if I were better at learning Danish). If anything the opportunities for personal advancement feel somewhat stronger, due to the social safety net meaning you can start companies or nonprofits or whatever without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare.
I'll probably move back at some point, but mostly just because it's where I'm from, not out of any particular dissatisfaction with Denmark. And I'll probably only move back if I have a good job with a salary and benefits lined up first...
I definitely felt like there was more opportunity in Denmark than here. Gotta say, I'm a bit jealous.
I ask because, for instance, it is harder to run a company in Denmark than in the US. Danish employment law requires months of notice before terminating an employee, and allows termination only with cause. It also appears to be somewhat expensive to incorporate there.
The "Ease of Doing Business Index" actually removed "how easy is it to fire people" from its indicators because of the controversy.
Do you think everybody in the USA would agree that being able to fire people at will is a good thing for the US economy?
In a 3-person company, particularly in knowledge work where headcount costs dominate all other operating expenses, a bad 4th hire is a catastrophic problem: it means 1/4 of your staff is dysfunctional, maybe 1/5th of your operating expenses are being wasted, and as many as 1/2 your existing employees are (a) unhappy and (b) steadily becoming harder to retain. Now imagine not being able to terminate that employee.
The Ease Of Doing Business index includes no metrics on employment law at all, not just termination; for instance, employee minimum wage, mandatory holidays, prohibition on contracted employees, prohibition of night work, and maximum work week are also not considered. That they aren't says more about the World Bank index than it does about the importance of these issues.
A few examples that have come out of the program here: http://conquistadorthegame.com/ http://machineers.tumblr.com/ http://www.knapnokgames.com/ http://gutefabrik.com/ http://duckandcovergames.com/ http://www.seriousgames.net/
Most of the small tech companies I know are pretty low-key, though. Besides the game company route, another common one is a small team of 1-3 people making a living doing iPhone app development, that kind of thing. Some congregate around hackerspaces like: https://labitat.dk/
Not as much of the typical 'startup' route per se, although there have been a few (Unity3d and Bitbucket come to mind). There's also Copenhagen Suborbitals, which isn't for-profit, but is probably the most widely recognized organization to come out of the Copenhagen hacker/maker scene.
Definitely a small tech company but larger than what was mentioned.
Those laws become a problem only when you start growing bigger. The real problems when you start are red tape, high labor taxes, and VERY high pension contributions - to pay the VERY generous pensions that generations up to baby boomers afforded themselves.
Whether or not they would agree, being able to fire people at will is critical for job creation. In countries where you can't fire people expanding your operation is a much bigger risk. So you avoid hiring people - automation, outsourcing, whatever it takes.
To remove this metric from any "Ease of Doing Business Index" is crazy, quite frankly.
And who said it should be risk free?
Better it being more risky for the employer than the employees.
More risk for me as an employer means I don't hire anyone until I've exhausted every other possibility. When every employer does that there's high unemployment, so if you do lose your job you can't replace it. How is this a benefit to employees?
Doesn't matter, there would be someone else who does hire. Or you thing jobs would dissapear if people dont have a cushy road to business success?
But not as many as there would have been otherwise. It doesn't take a big change in labor surplus to lower wages for everyone.
>Or you thing jobs would dissapear if people dont have a cushy road to business success?
Yes, jobs disappear as it gets harder to fire people. That's what I've been trying to explain to you. That's why you don't want to make it hard to fire people - it's bad for everyone, but it's especially bad for employees.
Well, that's a laissez faire doctrine for the benefit employers. In my experience (and it's a European perspective) it's not true in practice.
When employers can fire more easily they just take advantage of that to create a climate where they threaten employees to work more (unpaid overtime, lower wages etc) -- so that they have to employ less people to do the same jobs. It's a give an inch, they will take a mile situation.
I don't think that's true. For most countries in Europe unemployment is high in the best of times.
As far as hiring/firing employees, it's not quite that bad. The standard notice is six weeks (on both sides, so employees can't just walk out tomorrow either). Termination does have to be with cause, but changing business conditions or revenues suffices as cause, so it doesn't require proving actual fault on the part of the employee or anything of that sort.
The official policy aim is "flexicurity" [1], though it's implemented to varying extents. The goal is to have a flexible labor market where companies can hire and fire as needs dictate (contrary to, say, the French model), and also, but separately, to have a safety net providing income security for workers (through systems like the a-kasse funds [2]). I don't think it's 100% as rosy as the goal, but it's much easier to run a business than in some European countries. It ends up basically tied with the U.S. in the ease-of-doing-business indices I know of. The World Bank's index places it just behind the US (#5 vs. #4) [3], while the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom puts it just ahead (#9 vs. #10) [4].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity
[2] Example: http://www.ca.dk/bliv_medlem/dimittend/466.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index#Ra...
I agree that the health care situation in the US is a real problem.
QED
Reframing in your preferred terms, framing always being a function of preferences and selection, just so happens here to speak to an instability in the US worksphere that has affected The American Dream (were that it ever existed).
For starters, I should make clear that I was communicating two separate ideas in my comment: 1) that most people I know want to leave the US on an extended-permanent basis. 2) that Copenhagen is a desirable place to live for us.
I know only one person who has actually relocated to Copenhagen. Most have actually ended up in Asia, actually. Singapore, Thailand and Japan. Of the European countries that people I know have relocated to, it has mostly been the UK and Germany with a few going to Italy (family reasons).
Anyway, as far as "why Denmark", I actually have a handful of Danish friends who work in software. All of them are well paid and have a good quality of life. All of them live within city limits with a ~15-20 minute commute time. All of them either own an apartment or are in a rent-to-own situation and at reasonable rates. They all have _great_ financial situations. I'm from NYC where really none of what I mentioned is possible.
I understand that running a business may be more inflexible, but not impossible. I know it's really flexible to start business here in the US, but to do so in a good location in a fantastic city to live in is much harder.
I've done a ton of traveling around the US and other than New York, New Orleans is the only other city I've been to where I've said "I would really enjoy living here."
That statement comes much easier to me traveling around Europe with Copenhagen standing out the most to me. Quality of life seems to be really good there. Despite the generally pessimistic attitude towards the future that most Danes seem to have, prospects for the future seem really good there. I don't have a similar feeling about the US.
Something to consider about your evaluation of Copenhagen vis a vis the US: you're a software developer with enough career mobility to opt into working in Copenhagen; ergo, you are probably very much situated in the 10% of Americans that Tyler Cowan believes will be the US "elite". So: of course you find Copenhagen congenial: you get to pick where you live based on aesthetics and luxuries. (More power to you!)
But then: would most of the US middle class be well served by considering a move to Copenhagen? I suggest that they probably would not.
I am firmly lower-middle class, if such a thing even exists anymore. I don't have any relocation options, so you're correct that I would not be well served with a move to Copenhagen. It sure is a dream and a goal to work towards though. I don't see an optimistic future here.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that if I did make it into that 10% "elite", I see a better opportunity by leaving than staying.
So, even as someone who is kinda upper-middle class, economically speaking, from what I can tell, other countries are more focused on class markers like degrees;
As a 10%'er[1] without a degree, well the USA seems to have much more opportunity for the 'I have experience, but no degree' type than the rest of the world does.
(Now, I did a whole bunch of research on this a few years back, but I didn't actually try, so I could be wrong. From what I saw, it would be hard, but not impossible without a degree, and once I moved, well, I wouldn't be getting paid more than I can get here, and in most cases, I'd be getting paid rather less.)
So, uh, yeah. From what I've seen, yeah, you are way better off as a poor person in Europe, once you are in; This does alleviate some of the worries that come with entreprenuership. but getting in? yeah, they are going to make it difficult for you if you don't have the traditional markers of the upper middle class. And generally, you are getting the most cash on the barrelhead for your time here in silicon valley; If you want to finance your venture through your own labor (and are willing to live on the cheap) this is the place to do it.
[1]typical overpaid bay-area sysadmin/programmer contractor. Top 10%, in terms of income, if you mean the whole US of A; not so much if you only count silicon valley.
As an aside, I find it interesting that Americans tend to count income more than assets. Perhaps because it's easier? I am struggling to own some means of production, but... what I do own is difficult to value. Actually, at the moment, my income is way more complicated than that, too, as I'm dumping everything into that aforementioned means of production. But, eh, when I looked into this in 2006, I was making six figures working full time, so everything I said was true as of that time.
The problem though was something that you mention yourself - the difficulty of obtaining assets. Real estate prices in the Valley right now are through the flippin' roof. Arguably the definition of a middle class is the ability to obtain your own assets.
If you're making a high wage but can't convert that to assets where you live, are you really middle class? If you're making a high salary but spending most (or nearly all) of it on rent and upkeep on debt, I'd argue that you're still working poor; you may be comfortable but you're dependent on a paycheck coming in.
Well, a family of two folks making valley sysadmin/programmer wages is making like $200K/year. Even single-earners in that tax bracket can buy real estate. (during the crash, I know a lot of single people who bought condos.) Real-estate here is not unaffordable for employed Engineers.
I would certainly have a fairly nice place (or several shitty rentals) if I wasn't spending all my money on servers.
But yeah, I agree that if you only have income from labour and don't have any assets, well, you aren't really middle class in a meaningful sense of the word. I'm just saying that it's pretty reasonable for people in my industry to buy real-estate around here. And that's not the only 'means of production' you can buy; that's just the easiest means of production to get loans on. All my money goes to servers (well, I buy servers... I actually spend more money on labour, electricity, and data-center space, but I rent those things, which is a rather different thing.)
Edit: most of my developer friends aren't big spenders; if they don't own a house, they have a thick 401k, and often a stock portfolio outside of that 401K. Most of them have substantial savings. I think it's fair to call them upper-middle class, even if they don't own the house they live in.
(Note, I'm mostly speaking of the previous generation here; the 30+ folks who came of age during the first dot-com.)
Are you referring to formal immigration requirements, or the job market? I definitely agree on formal immigration requirements. But if you're an EU citizen (and therefore have freedom of movement), experience without a degree becomes pretty sellable again, at least in tech (less so in traditional industry, but that's also true in the US).
In the current market here, anyone who can program an iPhone app can get a job, or start a freelance business. Degrees are good, but not critical. They're seen as good in part because there's no tuition, and in fact you get paid a stipend while you attend school to cover living expenses. So there's kind of a view that there's no excuse for not having one: unlike in the U.S., it couldn't be that you couldn't afford to go to school, so there must be some other reason, and employers want to probe if it's a reason they should be worried about.
This was my perception as someone (without a degree) looking for a job that would have required going through the immigration rigmarole. A potential employer would have to want me enough to help me (or at least wait for me) to get through the government stuff, so... both.
Come to think of it, the closest I came was some startup in Israel who wanted me; Their interest level dropped a lot after they found out I didn't have any Jewish relatives (and thus would not have an automatic 'in' during immigration; I don't think this was racism on the part of the company; it was just the extra work they'd have to do.) I mean, I might have been able to get the job anyhow if I tried hard? but turns out wages in Israel are less than half what you expect in silicon valley, and I had this idea that I could make /more/ elsewhere, (which I now think is... pretty unrealistic.)
>Degrees are good, but not critical. They're seen as good in part because there's no tuition, and in fact you get paid a stipend while you attend school to cover living expenses.
Really? There are no good private schools?
Is there a time limit on the stipend?
Yeah, I wouldn't leave the Valley if you want to make a higher salary, unless it's a jump to some kind of high-level management position. The Valley has pretty much the highest tech salaries afaik. Switzerland might come close.
You might come out ahead in some places in lifestyle after cost of living, but it depends on your lifestyle. A nice thing about Copenhagen is that, while it's expensive to live in the city, it's not NYC/SF levels of expensive (or Paris/London, for that matter). It's maybe $1500-$2000/mo for a nice centrally located 2bd... rather than the $3000+ my friends in SF pay. And you can buy a condo for maybe $300k, which last I checked was completely impossible in SF.
As far as private universities, there aren't any: only state schools are accredited. There are some private professional institutes, like an animation school and a film school, but they aren't allowed to give degrees (instead they give their own certificates), and are seen as a different kind of thing.
The time limit for the student stipend is the regular length of the degree, with possibility in some circumstances to get another 6 months. So, 3 years for the bachelor's, plus 2 years for the master's. A hard max (after both degrees and extensions on both) of 6 years.
Typically students will do the two together as one five-year program; you can stop after the bachelor's, but the traditional Danish first degree was a 5-year degree (called a candidature), which is still sort of expected. The 3-year bachelor's/2-year master's split was introduced in 1993 to harmonize with other EU countries' systems, but a bachelor's on its own is still seen as not quite complete education (may change as memories of the old 5-year candidature fade).
Oh yeah; from what I understand, it's even more true here than anywhere else. But I was born here, so it's not a problem I deal with directly.
Your university system sounds like some kind of socialist paradise. Jesus. Do you know how good a 3 year vacation sounds to an American? (And yes, if I went to school, I'd likely study history, and that can't be rationally counted as anything but a vacation.) Even the top 10% jobs only give you 4 weeks a year of vacation time. (we get another 9 days or so of holidays, usually, which are on fixed days, and, of course, weekends.)
That affects company founders (and mostly of non serious startups, that don't bring much to the job table in the first place).
The reverse, which affects employees (which are more numerous than employers by definition) is that it's easier to be an employee in Denmark than it is in the US.
I see you say that people in Denmark, including expatriates like you, can "can start companies or nonprofits or whatever without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare." Is that what you are doing, running your own business in Denmark? I recall that there are a couple of other HN participants who are Americans living in Denmark. Is the labor market for American expatriates that flexible everywhere in Europe? I have read of other countries in Europe where it is certainly possible to start a business, but then very complicated to hire workers as the business begins to grow. I'm curious about how that issue plays out in Europe.
And, to answer your question, I think that's what my family likes about America. On the one hand, the labor market is very flexible here, so we can trade off time with our children by adjusting our employment--my wife and I are both self-employed, in different occupations--to maximize our family life and personal schedule flexibility. My late dad had a catastrophic accidental injury just more than a decade ago--it would be catastrophic in any country, with any health-care system, because he was paralyzed from the chin down after the accident--and that hammered our family's time and thus our income for the last six years of his life, but I observed that the United States safety net was adequate enough to keep both him and us from becoming homeless. Taiwan (where my wife is from) has a single-payer national health insurance program that covered us the last time we lived there (until just before my dad's accident) but even though that is a vibrant, thriving country that I enjoy living in (and I can speak Chinese), we still prosper better here in the United States.
All of Europe is different.
American healthcare seems viciously regressive to someone with the NHS.
[1] I believe it's 2 now, labour reduced it to 1 a decade or so ago, think the Tories increased it again to 2 recently
[2] think it's usually verbal warning, written warning, some sort of meeting, then fire. Not sure if it's mandated or you just have to have a process
NB check this stuff for yourself, I'm merely reciting this from memory
I agree that the NHS is preferable to the 2013 US health care system. I'm optimistic that the 2014 system will, when its kinks are worked out, be comparable to the (superior) Swiss system.
What I didn't know at the time was how difficult the US government would make it for me to first get a job and then to become a permanent resident. Every dealing I do with the government I feel the undercurrent of not being wanted here - as if they are looking for an excuse to reject me, as opposed to actually wanting my skills and intelligence to contribute to the economy and doing everything they can to make me stay.
If I return home now, with my degrees and five years of experience in a software company, I can easily start my own firm. I'm telling myself that if the US government throws one more obstacle my way, I'm going to say fuck it and do just that. (When I go back for vacations and talk to younger people who are considering coming here, I tell them don't do it - it's just not worth the hassle.)
I don't know what to say about immigration being inhospitable to you. Obviously, I think we'd be better off with more skilled CS grads, and shipping them back to economic competitors does not seem like a great long-term strategy.
Imagine living here since you were 7, 8, 9 years old and spending your whole life here not knowing anyone in your home country and not knowing if you could stay here either. Some of them had to leave. One of my friends took until he was 31 to get his green card and the first thing he did when he got it was get a job overseas. Most of them spent a number of years here in some sort of legal limbo, with some living here outright illegally. The Brazilians among them especially had to arrange marriages to be able to stay.
These are all the hardest-working people that I know, because they had to be to stay. It's really shameful how we treat you all here.
What is the mechanism by which highly skilled professionals who have not yet emigrated are exerting pressure in Washington?
There is also a huge desire among highly skilled professionals to immigrate to the US, so much so that there's pressure in Washington...
You ascribe pressure in Washington to those prospective unemployed and unemigrated employees. That doesn't sound a little inverted from the state of affairs described from the perspective of the employers?
The problem with comparing today with conditions a century ago is the peak in the USA was about 40 years ago by most metrics.
It would be easy to sell, say, 1970s Poland to 970s Polish, or even 1870s Polish. However not so easy to sell a future of 1970s Poland to, say, Americans who were alive in the 1970s. 1970s Poland is probably on the optimistic side of where we're headed. On the other hand the pessimists insisting we're headed toward 1970s China, 1870s Ireland, or 1970s Cambodia are probably equally unrealistic.
I'm not sure which US metrics the peaked in 1970 either?
The metrics request is a good one, having seen the graphs I'm certain of peak conventional domestic oil production, peak median inflation adjusted real world income, and peak housing affordability. I'm pretty sure of local minimum of parasitic services (FIRE sector etc) and a local maxima of educational affordability and a couple I suspect but have no proof of at this time like a peak in the metric of quantity/quality of health care divided by its cost and also social class mobility has statistically ended other than in a downward direction where it has expanded a lot.
For now.
That is why your mindset is very dangerous. You are looking at how things are today, rather than following the trajectory of events twenty or fifty years into the future.
"The Asian Tigers or Asian Dragons is a term used in reference to the highly free and developed economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. These nations and areas were notable for maintaining exceptionally high growth rates (in excess of 7 percent a year) and rapid industrialization between the early 1960s and 1990s. By the 21st century, all four have developed into advanced and high-income economies, specializing in areas of competitive advantage. For example, Hong Kong and Singapore have become world-leading international financial centers, whereas South Korea and Taiwan are world leaders in manufacturing information technology."
[1] http://www.globalpost.com/globalpost-blogs/southeast-asia/si...
That's why I was wondering which specific countries/locales 'enraged_camel was talking about, because you can look at that company and make factual comparisons.
Do you call that "free press":
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
The image of middle-class Americans looking like rich people abroad is in rapid decline. If you are a middle-class American, get over there quick so you can experience what it's like before it's gone.
Let's start with Japan. There was a point, after WWII, where an American businessman could walk into a Japanese conglomerate and receive instant respect at the door. You could tell the level of admiration as Japanese women used to be instantly attracted to foreign men. Japanese looked to New York as a model city, although they had never visited. They only knew of the massive might of Western civilization from their WWII defeat.
Gradually, as the country became rich and successful, the image faded. Japanese now enjoy a GDP per capita that beats the European Union average, albeit still only 70% of the United States. Seeing expats around Tokyo became the norm. But foreigners from the West were no longer welcome at the fanciest members clubs, and Japanese adopted a more realistic view of the world from their extensive travel abroad. Businessmen struggled to negotiate deals as conglomerates like Sony bought prime New York real estate and the tables were turned.
Other countries in Asia aren't as far along with this process, but it's changing quickly. Let's take (mainland) China for example. Ten years ago being a foreigner meant hiring taxi drivers to personally wait on you all day - even on a student budget - and excellent chances in nightclubs of any first-tier city. For native Chinese, studying abroad and returning home meant an instant offer from a top-tier company, rock-star status, a fast path to owning an apartment and all the trimmings that entails like excellent marriage prospects.
These days, as the Western world stagnates, many of the Western oligarchs have chosen to send their money to Asia to invest, whether by choice or necessity to find assembly-line workers cheap enough to allow them to compete. The result is that enormous sums of money are flowing into China, and enormous sums are staying in China. Businessmen wire in what looks like small amounts of "real money" but thanks to the leveraged Western financial system they end up wiring in a significant portion of the American economy in real terms.
This means many of the Chinese are becoming rich very quickly. The government ensure this happens by strict rules such as under-50% foreign ownership of local companies. Women in first-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing are known to be very demanding - their men must purchase several hundred thousand dollar apartments to entertain love, or even multi-million dollar apartments at the top end - and this is beginning to apply to foreigners too. Can't afford an apartment? Forget it. As for foreign-educated Chinese, they return home from a place that caused the global financial crisis to a place where the local way is a global success story, entering the job race with a much smaller advantage.
This will eventually lead to the Japan situation, assuming the current level of growth. There are a lot of poor Chinese, so it will take some time. But it's only a matter of time.
Other regional countries like Thailand and Malaysia and the Philippines aren't at this stage yet, but if they don't hurry up the Chinese will make them vassal states and the local people will lose their respect for the West in that way instead.
Really, worry about mass unwarranted wiretaps. Worry about ever increasing rigging of democracy. Worry about useless wars started by corrupt crooks. Don't worry about income distribution. It was artificially low in second half of 20th century due to the fear of communism. With communist system collapsing and nobody wanting a red revolution anymore, there is no need to redistribute income in favor of the potential revolutionary class.
Now the economy is much more open to merit - the problem with meritocracy (as the article points out) is that once you open it to everyone whole swathes of people lose out. See the trends of successful women marrying successful men thus creating a more closed top tier of society.
The article listed several reasons why little social turmoil was expected... I suspect the old "divide and conqueror" will be applied to the above historical facts. "Sure we're all getting poorer, but the white guys are getting poorer at a faster rate than we are, so its OK".
I suspect this will be a popular "calming" strategy.
Of course it doesn't. Because the majority of income earned in top 15% and even top 1% is not derived from capital (at least not financial/material capital, to be precise). It is salaries and bonuses. Ability to get these is derived mostly from education (and also social skills which are evenly distributed among income brackets), and education is going free or cheap online. So no reason to worry.
The future is already here, just not smoothly distributed.
You are making his point for him.
That's the good news. The bad news is there used to be tens of millions of that class of job, and with a smaller population to staff.
BTW, George was a comedian, that is, entertainer. He was saying stuff that would sell more tickets.
While he was very funny, and he was riotously funny, he was basically the high priest of pull your head out of your ass and think for yourself.
R.I.P. George Carlin
It is utter nonsense.
The real world does not work this way.
The United States is still a place where anyone can reach nearly any goal he or she desires. The pre-conditions are simple: You have to be willing to make the effort to reach your goal.
It's that simple.
Do you want to be somebody? Then be somebody. Don't waste your time playing games and watching TV. Optimize for future success rather than for current comfort and self-satisfaction. Be uncomfortable. Be hungry. Understand that ignorance is not a platform for success and learn something. Learn lots of things. Take risks. Fail. Take more risks. Fail again. Don't give up. You will succeed. And, when you do, you'll get to read an article by someone pointing to the great unfairness and inequality of our society. And the first thought that will pass through your mind is likely to be "clueless".
This is my problem with folks who have never touched the real world. If you look at his CV [0] it shows he has lived in academia his entire adult life. This is like the idea of sex without having the experience of sex. It's like watching a bird fly, learning and researching the physics of bird flight and not really understanding what it is to be a bird and fly. There's a huge disconnect between people who operate in these sterilized environments and those who actually touch the real world.
I've had mind-blowing conversations with experienced business owners who barely got a high-school diploma. The insight and understanding of the real world some of these people develop is absolutely amazing. And, in most cases, the results parallel their understanding. They are successful, build great businesses and enjoy a fantastic quality of life.
I realize I am shooting the messenger. This approach perfectly valid and logical when justified. People who come from a purely academic world view have, through no fault of their own, a view of reality that is utterly distorted. There's a huge difference between talking about the statistics of business and wealth and the act of actually getting out there and devoting ten or twenty years of your life putting it all on the line to create businesses and wealth. That's the perspective their writings lack. And that's why, despite credentials, these messengers are not to be trusted to understand reality. It's like a teenager thinking they understand sex by watching lots of porn. Not the same thing.
How many economists warned us of the economic implosion of 2008/9? Not many. The folks who did were actually living in the trenches and neck-deep in the muck of reality.
[0] http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%20pages/Tyle...
So you are suggesting that a single mother who works three jobs to support her children is just not working hard enough to get to where she wants, huh?
I fail to see where I said anything even remotely close to that.
You seem to be equating success with physically working hard or working like a slave long hours. Working hard or hard enough is no guarantee of success. Most brick layers work a hundred times harder than a programmer yet don't produce proportionally higher results.
Scenarios such as a single mother working 12.5 jobs to survive are often brought out to refute the sort of thing I am saying. Nonsense. You could tear those counter-arguments apart a million different ways. Yes, sometimes there's bad luck. Any civilized society ought to have assistance for those who truly need it. The "single mother with three jobs" scenario could very well be a candidate for such help.
You could also say that a lot of people are the result of a whole sequence of bad decisions. If your argument, then, is that all people are equal, well, you are wrong. At a popular vacation spot I've seen people jump off a bridge into the river below. Every year a few get killed or come out of their adventure paralyzed from the neck down when they hit the rocks below. They are morons, not victims. Yet they want me to support them in one way or another for the rest of their lives. People have to be responsible for their actions and the choices they make in life. I don't jump off that bridge because it is incredibly dangerous. I have also taugt my kids the same.
I can't answer the single mother scenario without details. Did she get knocked-up as a teenager, not a rape but just being irresponsible? Well, she is living with the results of having made that decision. Her family and community failed to teach her responsible behavior.
Was she raped? Did her husband of many years die? Let's help her. Forever? Nope. Get her an education so she can earn a decent wage through one job and attend to her kids properly.
You seem to want equal opportunity and equal outcomes for everyone in society. That's a nice Start Trek utopia society idea. The truth is that there are people who will never amount to anything due to a range of factors, from lack of education to addiction or something as simple as being really good at making bad decisions (and all of the above). As a comedian says: You can't fix stupid.
Those who got caught by unfortunate events and have fallen on hard times as a result deserve and ought to receive our collective help. The only requirement should be that they truly dedicate themselves to utilize the help to elevate their station and not burden society forever.
Those at the extremes (really old people with nowhere to go and other such examples) must also receive our support. However, we ougt to do everything possible to address the genesis of these problems whenever possible. How did they get there? How can we prevent that going forward?
And then there's the whole income inequality argument these articles want to bring about. I am sorry, but a single mother of two kids working three jobs just to stay afloat will not become a Donald Trump if she does not make changes. And yes, it would be horribly difficult to advance from that frame of reference. Horribly difficult. That still does nothing to justify the idea that everyone ought to be equal. I've had the experience of being down in my luck. Homeless. Not a dime to my name. No job. Lost everything in the span of about a year. It took me over ten years to get back to the point where I was able to buy a house. Yes, it was hard work, but it was also smart work.
Then there are the stories of immigrants who landed on our shores without a dime to their names and without even knowing the language. Lots of them end up doing very well, they raise wonderful families, send all their kids to college and end-up living far better than a lot of people born in the US.
The difference between success, failure or mediocrity is often measured in grit, determination, focus, a bit of luck and having the presence of mind to make use of it. My critique in the previous comment was primarily aimed at young people who waste their youth away with bullshit and are then convinced that the 1% or the 10% are there to oppress and keep them down.
We live in a fairly nice part of Los Angeles and I see these choices being made by some of my kid's friends and their families. We push our kids to pursue activities that will enrich their lives and provide them with intellectual advantages. My weekends are nearly 100% dedicated to this. I see other parents who spend nearly no time with their kids. Instead they plug the kids into their TV's, the Internet, playstations or xbox's and watch days, weeks and years go by. So, while my kids are doing two to three hours of homework every day to get ready to make something of themselves later in life other kids are becoming Call of Duty experts or other such bullshit. Now, if one of those girls ends-up knocked-up in high school and a single mother having to hold down three menial jobs to make ends meet, who's fault was it and why am I responsible for her? What right does she have to speak ill of those who, through having made sacrifices, achieved success in life?
How do you achieve these things? Well, should these things be handed to you by a government? Well, that's not going to happen anywhere in the world. You have to work for these things. That doesn't mean hard labor. That means that you have to focus on what it is you want and lay out a course through which you can reach those goals. No matter where you put your finger on the globe this requires determination, lots of work and focus. It might mean going to a vocational school, college or university to learn something in preparation. It could mean saving money for years in order to open a small business. It could mean learning how to find people who will invest in your vision. It could mean dedicating every free moment you have to slowly inch towards your goals. It could mean a million different things. None of which are unique to Americans or the United States.
A lot of Americans have this myopic ego-centric view of the universe. I don't know of anyone who's been exposed to a variety of cultures and ideas who things this way. There are brilliant and exceptional individuals all over the world. Not one of them succeeds without a solid dedication to a vision. Not one of them succeeds because the State drives them to succeed. Not one of them advances in life because they waste their lives away watching TV, playing video games and hanging out on Facebook all day. Those who do succeed work hard. With "hard" not necessarily being defined as "hard physical work" but rather an intense and sustained focus and dedication to what it is they want out of life despite their current circumstances and station in life.