Why this sub forum is so obsessed with class and money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree it’s illogical. Objectively many technical blue collar jobs would earn more than many ba college grads with free or much cheaper training. Year they are shunned by the striver class. It is a perception only.

Can you name any blue collar job that makes more than an engineer and 1) doesn't destroy your body and 2) has any upward mobility? The great thing about blue collar jobs is that the trade offs between health and salary are very clear. You can earn 200k as an underwater welder, but you will be lucky to do it for a decade let alone a career. A long haul trucker makes great money, but they are away from home most of their lives.

I'm curious as to how you think working 80-hour weeks in biglaw is healthy. All the sitting?

That’s why they’ve added standing desks.

Oh, phew. That's okay then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s kinda about money, but more about prestige. A quirky 22-year old Yale graduate who works in a bookstore gets a totally different response compared to the same employee who attended George Mason. Why? Because, you imagine that the Yale grad just loves books, is interesting/curious, probably soon going to a prestigious graduate school or writing a novel, and is carving an idiosyncratic, but exciting path. Unfortunately, you imagine that the GM student is working for money until they can find something better. They are a cog in the wheel of life hoping to find somewhere to fit. May not be true, but so it goes.

You cannot be serious, though sadly I know that you are. Not enough eye rolls for this.
NP

I don't think you understood the point.

(Another NP)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree it’s illogical. Objectively many technical blue collar jobs would earn more than many ba college grads with free or much cheaper training. Year they are shunned by the striver class. It is a perception only.

Can you name any blue collar job that makes more than an engineer and 1) doesn't destroy your body and 2) has any upward mobility? The great thing about blue collar jobs is that the trade offs between health and salary are very clear. You can earn 200k as an underwater welder, but you will be lucky to do it for a decade let alone a career. A long haul trucker makes great money, but they are away from home most of their lives.

I'm curious as to how you think working 80-hour weeks in biglaw is healthy. All the sitting?

That’s why they’ve added standing desks.

Oh, phew. That's okay then.

Do you want to compare OSHA stats or workers comp rates for law firms to blue collar professions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree it’s illogical. Objectively many technical blue collar jobs would earn more than many ba college grads with free or much cheaper training. Year they are shunned by the striver class. It is a perception only.

Can you name any blue collar job that makes more than an engineer and 1) doesn't destroy your body and 2) has any upward mobility? The great thing about blue collar jobs is that the trade offs between health and salary are very clear. You can earn 200k as an underwater welder, but you will be lucky to do it for a decade let alone a career. A long haul trucker makes great money, but they are away from home most of their lives.

I'm curious as to how you think working 80-hour weeks in biglaw is healthy. All the sitting?

That’s why they’ve added standing desks.

Oh, phew. That's okay then.

Do you want to compare OSHA stats or workers comp rates for law firms to blue collar professions?

No, because I thought we were all in on the funny joke, delivered dryly, that lawyers have the standing desks and that makes all the difference.

In reality I support worker protections for everyone, just pointing out the irony of steering a student away from jobs that involve manual labor "for their health."

[Anonymous]

unlike other countries, college cost fukc ton of money

[Anonymous]

Ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s kinda about money, but more about prestige. A quirky 22-year old Yale graduate who works in a bookstore gets a totally different response compared to the same employee who attended George Mason. Why? Because, you imagine that the Yale grad just loves books, is interesting/curious, probably soon going to a prestigious graduate school or writing a novel, and is carving an idiosyncratic, but exciting path. Unfortunately, you imagine that the GM student is working for money until they can find something better. They are a cog in the wheel of life hoping to find somewhere to fit. May not be true, but so it goes.

If I meet a Yale grad who works in a bookstore my reaction is, "you paid $350,000 for your degree so you could do this, lmao!"

[Anonymous]

Because it is always, always about the Benjamins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because the DMV is a hellmouth full of the kind of tiresome people who think they and their kids are in some kind of gladiatorial deathmatch toward an arbitrary version of success that they've seen on TV, or heard about from the country club their boss let them visit once--or dreamed about before they or their parents came to America, or the east coast from Iowa, or Appalachia, or Antigua--whatever.

You know all those people in high school who thought student government was interesting? Who ratted you out for running in the hallway? Who would never dare to wear black? They're all here. Every last one of them. And they all have Extremely Important Jobs. They'd tell you more but they're in a hurry. Extremely Important, remember? That's why they drive around you when waiting to make a left turn to make one themselves, that's why they honk the millisecond the light turns green, that's why they look like they got dressed using the Preppy Handbook c. 1983 and a Talbot's catalogue as their style guide.

I respect the idea that college should be a training ground for future employment--hard to disagree with that. But the narrow version of success these people outline is deeply conformist, uncreative, aesthetically terrible, and, in most cases, bound to turn their kids into neurotic, miserable people who constantly chase a brass ring that most will never reach... those that do will spend the next few decades talking to their therapist about having imposter syndrome.

Tin pot admins who whine about their 2.5 million dollar houses. No, seriously I'm not jealous. You people have the worst taste.

A-plus comment. Do go off, Queen!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want your kids to be affluent, tell them to go to a state university and become a regional business owner. That is who makes up rich in this country.

For some reason this Harvard/Stanford graduate was shocked at this information (didn't even know what a beverage distributor was) when he found out but it is common info for anyone who has spent any time at all in normal America.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/opinion/sunday/rich-happiness-big-data.html

Beverage distributors are the ultimate rent seekers. I say this as someone whose family has made a lot of money off of a distributorship- they should not exist. I'm not surprised that people who thought about it didn't realize that laws required beer to be sold though a middleman with exclusive territorial rights

What is your point? Pretty much all industries in which people get rich are that way due to various government policies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One would expect a forum about higher education to be more focused on higher education but unfortunately class and wealth seems to be the bigger obsessions here. Why is that so?

Because 99% of people care more about career prospects than they do education. College is a means to an end, not the end itself

This is a blue-collar point of view.

[Anonymous]

Combination of
- rising income inequality (spoils increasingly going to the very top)
- DC is full of super smart people in public sector etc who can’t afford college but have too much for financial aid (MC/UMC squeeze)
- human tendency to do a quick sort/size up, while decades after university, people still ask me where I did undergrad early in first meeting (surprised how often this happens) not to mention employer screens