<story><title>Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life</title><url>https://insidermag.net/survey-shows-people-no-longer-believe-working-hard-will-lead-to-a-better-life/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fullstop</author><text>On the flip side there are plenty of examples of kids being pushed into higher education who would have been much better off going to a trade school.&lt;p&gt;Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative, and they are certainly things that society needs.&lt;p&gt;Being pushed into higher ed is so much different than having an internal drive to do it.  I&amp;#x27;m glad that she&amp;#x27;s doing well and hopefully they can resolve their differences.&lt;p&gt;I have a number of friends who are teachers, and part of their job is to call the parents if the student is failing, falling behind, or not doing their work.  The vast majority of the time the response on the other end of the line is &amp;quot;that&amp;#x27;s their problem, not mine.&amp;quot;  If the parents don&amp;#x27;t care, the students don&amp;#x27;t care, and life goes on as it always has for them.</text></item><item><author>jasonkester</author><text>Indeed.  I have a friend whos whole extended family kept telling her that she should stop with this fancy expensive state college education and go to a trade school or something that would get her a job.  Even when she was working at an engineering firm and starting to see the payoff, her family kept trying to drag her down.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, she had a particularly strong will, so she spent just as much time telling them where they could stuff their trade school, and ended up doing quite well for herself.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure I would have done so well had I come from a family that was that opposed to education on principal.    I don&amp;#x27;t have any trouble believing this sort of thing keeps lots of people exactly where they started in life. (Lucky for me, my dad spent several years working at a paper mill out of highschool before going back to get his degree, so I got to hear first hand about what a good idea that was.)</text></item><item><author>fullstop</author><text>Starting conditions help tremendously, and I&amp;#x27;m not doubting that in the least.  One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education.  Most of the people I know who grew up very poor but now have money had parents that valued education, and pushed their kids to learn.  They didn&amp;#x27;t have shelves of books at home, but they did visit the library weekly.&lt;p&gt;It has to be extremely difficult to focus on school and education when you don&amp;#x27;t know when your next meal is going to be.  It&amp;#x27;s why I find news articles about lunch aids being fired for giving a kid lunch when they have no money so infuriating, and food insecurity is an enormous problem that is likely happening in your neighborhood today, and it&amp;#x27;s often overlooked.  It&amp;#x27;s not easy to move upward especially when your choice is between &amp;quot;Do I improve myself by working hard or do I eat?&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>wishigotitfree</author><text>Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one&amp;#x27;s parents&amp;#x27; education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual&amp;#x27;s future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn&amp;#x27;t BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success stories, but it seems more and more people are seeing through the illusion. In my opinion, that&amp;#x27;s a good thing, as recognizing the true state of things is the first step to improving them, and this combination of consciousness and lived experience can prove to be potent immunization against bad faith actors who want to maintain the illusion of widespread social mobility.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dahart</author><text>&amp;gt; Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative&lt;p&gt;This narrative about wealthy trades people like plumbers and welders is not well supported by any data. The ones who do well are the ones who start businesses and hire people, so they become business owners, but most trades people don’t end up there and they obviously can’t all do it.&lt;p&gt;You should know that the U.S. Fed (St. Louis) published stats on higher education which shows that on &lt;i&gt;average&lt;/i&gt; a 4 year degree doubles your income vs anything less. A graduate degree triples it. When I read that, I was blown away that the difference is that high on average. I would have thought maybe 10%, but double the earnings on average for all degree earners is so huge it’s something you can’t ignore.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.stlouisfed.org&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;page1-econ&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;get-an-education-even-if-it-means-borrowing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.stlouisfed.org&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;page1-econ&amp;#x2F;2018...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;welding-doesnt-pay-as-well-as-republicans-think&amp;#x2F;597733&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;weldin...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life</title><url>https://insidermag.net/survey-shows-people-no-longer-believe-working-hard-will-lead-to-a-better-life/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fullstop</author><text>On the flip side there are plenty of examples of kids being pushed into higher education who would have been much better off going to a trade school.&lt;p&gt;Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative, and they are certainly things that society needs.&lt;p&gt;Being pushed into higher ed is so much different than having an internal drive to do it.  I&amp;#x27;m glad that she&amp;#x27;s doing well and hopefully they can resolve their differences.&lt;p&gt;I have a number of friends who are teachers, and part of their job is to call the parents if the student is failing, falling behind, or not doing their work.  The vast majority of the time the response on the other end of the line is &amp;quot;that&amp;#x27;s their problem, not mine.&amp;quot;  If the parents don&amp;#x27;t care, the students don&amp;#x27;t care, and life goes on as it always has for them.</text></item><item><author>jasonkester</author><text>Indeed.  I have a friend whos whole extended family kept telling her that she should stop with this fancy expensive state college education and go to a trade school or something that would get her a job.  Even when she was working at an engineering firm and starting to see the payoff, her family kept trying to drag her down.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, she had a particularly strong will, so she spent just as much time telling them where they could stuff their trade school, and ended up doing quite well for herself.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure I would have done so well had I come from a family that was that opposed to education on principal.    I don&amp;#x27;t have any trouble believing this sort of thing keeps lots of people exactly where they started in life. (Lucky for me, my dad spent several years working at a paper mill out of highschool before going back to get his degree, so I got to hear first hand about what a good idea that was.)</text></item><item><author>fullstop</author><text>Starting conditions help tremendously, and I&amp;#x27;m not doubting that in the least.  One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education.  Most of the people I know who grew up very poor but now have money had parents that valued education, and pushed their kids to learn.  They didn&amp;#x27;t have shelves of books at home, but they did visit the library weekly.&lt;p&gt;It has to be extremely difficult to focus on school and education when you don&amp;#x27;t know when your next meal is going to be.  It&amp;#x27;s why I find news articles about lunch aids being fired for giving a kid lunch when they have no money so infuriating, and food insecurity is an enormous problem that is likely happening in your neighborhood today, and it&amp;#x27;s often overlooked.  It&amp;#x27;s not easy to move upward especially when your choice is between &amp;quot;Do I improve myself by working hard or do I eat?&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>wishigotitfree</author><text>Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one&amp;#x27;s parents&amp;#x27; education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual&amp;#x27;s future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn&amp;#x27;t BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success stories, but it seems more and more people are seeing through the illusion. In my opinion, that&amp;#x27;s a good thing, as recognizing the true state of things is the first step to improving them, and this combination of consciousness and lived experience can prove to be potent immunization against bad faith actors who want to maintain the illusion of widespread social mobility.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>caf</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Working as a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter can be quite lucrative, and they are certainly things that society needs.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I hear this kind of thing, but I have to say it is less than convincing when most of the people saying it don&amp;#x27;t seem to be sending &lt;i&gt;their&lt;/i&gt; kids to trade school.</text></comment>