Agreed. brb 60k plus debt for low value degree. Stupid

I get what you are saying, and its solid advice for many people who have the ability to do what you wrote but don't because they lack the energy or motivation or care.

However, not everyone has the ability. Everyone's situation is different. This doesn't mean I want Bernie Sanders to tax some rich dude out the ass to buy me free ****. However this idea that everyone and anyone can just say "I think I can, I think I can" and become a CEO is ridiculous.

I am not looking for sympathy, but this is my parent's situation in cliffs:

-Father worked 30 years as a comissioned officer in a foreign military and retired as Lt Col. In this country Lt Cols make what an E-3 in the US makes.
- The country sucks and is full of corrupt commies that started to take over the gov.
- Father get asylum from US and GTFO
- 7 year old kid and a wife, with no US certifications, no US degree, no experience in the Us, no credit, no valid resume, minimal English, no properties, no home, no car, nothing.
- Worked his ass off at a warehouse stacking boxes in the graveyard shift for a couple years, eventually became a deliveryman
- Parents started their own cleaning company and worked from 5 to 11 every night after dayjob cleaning offices
- the 2008 recesion hits and my father gets laid off, all but 1 customer cancel their cleaning contract with my parents
- Suddenly my father has no income and has to live on savings
- Savings run out and he had to get shady loans just to pay the rent and stay off the street
- Its been 8 years and he now has a job that pays half what he used to make, has to do odd jobs each month to make enough for the rent, insurance, gas, food, electric, etc. The only unnecessary expense is basic cable.


My father is 60 years old, has a fuked up back, has to work every day of the week and there's no chance he is simply going to give up his job that's just keeping him afloat to study engineering at a uni or teach himself compute rscience and advanced coding when computers came out when he was 35 years old.

I don't need anyone to give him free ****, I don't need sympathy, but I do prefer that people don't call him a lazy fuk because a recession fuked him over and he's simply too old and busy to start fresh like an 18 year old with an extended family they can mooch off of in the US can.

Well I can't argue with this. It's true. As for the engineering and top professional jobs etc yeah those may be out of reach, but even the moderately ambitious should be able to live above the poverty line and achieve a modicum of success. Lazy kents everywhere bro.

You will probably die in the same ecenomic class you were born in. Dont give me none of this "you should be making more than poverty wage". That hardly matters. Thats a mediocre society. Tell me about who is born in poverty and moves up.
Tell me about who is born in middle class and moves upWot? Thats corporate cuckold mentality.

Odds you will die in the same class you born in. When america was great, upward class mobility was very feasible.

Not so much now or in other historical declining societies.


I would like to see what your parents make and what you make. This goes for anybody who claims that "working hard" or "making smart decisions" will lead you to the promise land.

Well this conversation is not really for 60-year olds. I wouldn't give that advice to a 60-year old and I didn't see Iceman1800 in here. A 60-year old who came over here 15 years ago has a different set of obstacles.

I and others have acknowledge that old people with no skills have it rough finding work and learning new skills, it's not realistic or possible. That's bad luck. But alot of these cases arent that(old people with no chance getting fuked over)

well it is though. I asked for some reasons that people cant find decent jobs. The one case I believe is that old people have it pretty much impossible. That's true for sure.

I meant my 'conversation'/advice withUS_Ranger.

oh yea.

Co-signers...

It is true that upward mobility is low in US, but in terms of people at the bare minimum making it out of minimum wage type poverty, the question we need to answer is why. And the answer is NOT lack of opportunity.

Not saying everyone can be CEO 10k day. But someone willing to train up for better jobs that are practical and in demand will almost always find a way out of the minimum wage hell that many are in. If not, why not?

Free life privilege got me lazy like a wild animal. I just happen to be a wolf among sheep, so there's no reason to work.

So you think the vast majority of 18-20yr olds dont have anyone that can co sign a loan for college? I've seen poor as fuk kids go to college and take out loans. Most can.

also

http://www.excite.com/education/fina...out-a-cosigner

There is A LOT more to it than that most goes into. I am not saying it is impossible (for most), but it isn't easy. Especially, if your family is middle class, but don't have the money to help.

Wellas long as you acknowledge upward mobility is low.

Youre being more practical i like that.

I too can agree that with our current ecenomic situation it is not difficult to move away from minimum wage.

However i would love to see the day again where the average man could go find work and afford a house and a car.

Being poor is a mentality. If you think you'll always be poor and there's no way out because someone oppressed you, you're not going to pass up the opportunity to buy some cigarettes, crack rocks, iphones, and rented chrome wheels because it's better for you in the long run. You don't give a chit about the long run. I've seen people making $60k/yr living this way (minus the crack) and bitching about how people making $120k/yr are the cause of it. I was raised dirt poor, am extremely lazy, and still crushing life. And could easily continue to crush life for $10k/yr if I had to. Lost my job 2 years ago and not really planning to ever have a regular job again. The only advantages I was given are that I have above average intelligence, I took roughly $7000 in federal grants to go to technical college, and I was raised without a victim mentality. My parents never gave me 50 cents. In fact they stole money from me.

My little brother is doing even better. He got an engineering degree from a good university by doing the work to get scholarships that hardly anyone even bothers to apply for, and working several jobs the entire time. He's not lazy like I am. Got a great job right out of school with zero debt and zero parental support. And people say you can't work while getting an engineering degree. I think his GPA was like 3.88.

Best success story of all though, girl I know worked up to a regional manager or whatever at KFC making 50-something thousand a year just by showing up when she's supposed to and doing the work with a good attitude. It's sad that it takes so little effort to be a top 1% fast food employee. Literally anyone could do that.

I do too, I voted for Trump for that reason. Change. We cant accept this slow economic death.

But again as you acknowledge, I'm talking about people saying that they work like hell and arent paid enough to live. Most of these people can get out of that situation if they put in the work, which I'm not saying is easy. When did this country start accepting the excuse that something cant be done because it's hard?

Some people can do math. Rent and tuition costs more than ever and if you can only make $12 an hour and have a kid or w/e you are fukked until a particularly good opportunity comes along.

who was student loan?

There are more cost effective options, such as trades that can also get you out of minimum wage poverty

Assuming a student loan plus a part time job will cover your costs which is a huge 'if' in a lot of cases.

Not sure why people refer to trades as if it is some guaranteed means into the middle class. Here in Canada anyways it works by apprenticeship and they tend to pull from a pool of dumb kids doing chit entry labour. Not sure if you want to do labor that may or may not cover the bills to maybe possibly get picked for an apprenticeship that may or may not be the type of trade that you have any desire to do. I've welded for years and wouldn't recommend it to anyone with a triple digit IQ that isn't desperate.

Trades is a good point. I'm an attorney so don't know much about those industries. I can't think of any good reason as to why one could not commit to 2 years as an apprentice in a trade to get their chit together.

The Anglo / Protestant work ethics is not for everybody, OP. Lots of lazy fuks in the world, believe me. Work ethics is strongly linked to deep cultural factors, despite what the liberal kumbaya-singing bitch-ass media will tell you.

Books like Mastery + early retirement extreme > school

B-b-but Trades & STEM or /self *******.

Agree with what other posters have said. If you are a single parent, making 12 bucks an hour, now you are supposed to go to school too and survive on 3 hours of sleep a night and if you can't do that you are a bum. Oh and if you neglect the kid while doing this, then you parental scum. More obstacles you put in people's path the less likely they are going to want to even try scaling those obstacles.

Inb4 I'm a ******* and showing any sympathy for people in tough situations makes me a bish ass *******

I used to think that anybody who didn't have a well-paying job by the time they were 30 just didn't try hard enough or was stupid. Now here I am, nearing 30, and have been struggling to find employment that would allow me to afford an apartment on my own.

I understand the hard work argument, and in many cases it's applicable. I don't believe hard work alone will dig me out of the hole that I'm in, however. I graduated from high school at 16, after a year of college I joined the Army. Went into special operations, got out of the Army, and fell into the BS that my parents fed me. You know, the whole, "Get a degree and you'll get a good job!" thing.

Got a four year degree in something completely worthless. I planned on going to law school, but then I researched the job prospects, and was quickly dissuaded considering the cost of attending (scored well enough on the LSAT to get into any T-14 except HYS).

So now I'm just working with no future because I didn't do my due diligence. I understand that my position is all my own doing. Fortunately I have no debt because of the GI bill. Realistically though, what can I even do to find gainful employment? Are the trades my last resort? Post-Bacc doesn't mean ****, and many schools don't even allow that.

TL;DR: Some of us messed up and can't just go back and do STEM or even school at all. Despite the aptitude, some of us just don't know where to turn.

IMO, it comes down to 2 things.

1. Innate intelligence/ mental aptitude.
2. Desire

Some people are just too f*cking stupid to amount to anything more in life than having a menial job.

The second part would be desire. If you truly wanted something, you're not going to sit on your ass and complain. You're going to do everything you can to find a way to get what you want.

You arent a bum, but we all have different challenges in life and if you need to go the extra mile to overcome your difficulties and arent willing to do it, that's not societies fault.

once again, MOST LIKELY people that make $12 an hour with kids didnt plan their family properly. If you wait to have kids until you have a good degree and career going, and then lose your job your aren't going to be damned to minimum wage poverty jobs from thereafter. that's not reality. and most of the time I bet it's the other way around. Someone has a kid before they are financially ready, in which case the entire situation is there own doing

I could see this being difficult to get out of, but you admitted that it's your own fault for getting a worthless degree and you're not blaming society. Good job looking at the data and deciding law school and that massive debt wasn't the answer.

and we're not talking about "well paying" jobs even, we're talking about jobs that at least get you out of the poverty pay check to pay check cycle.

Trades wont be for everyone, but it is a route out of the minimum wage/poverty job cycle that some people claim it's impossible to escape from.

Some people ITT are pretending that everyone in this situation can't possibly find the time or money to pick a better career and get the training. Maybe 1 in 10 has a situation that bad and of those half have themselves to blame like having kids before they had their career set.

If people can't afford college then why won't they just head to the nearest library and start reading books there?
I mean it doesn't grant you a degree but you sure as hell can become smarter and find what you're looking for instead of doing nothing and becoming a consumer slave to society.