The headline ("Two College Degrees Later, I Was Still Picking Kale For Rich People") is a statement of disappointed entitlement, of outrage over a belief that some implicit social contract has not been fulfilled.<p>The reality is that just having "a degree" in a generic sense is no longer the magical ticket to a middle class lifestyle that it was in 1960. It's become too common and is no longer much of a differentiator in most job markets.<p>A related issue is that many, many people have degrees in non-marketable subjects. Whatever one may think of the intrinsic value of studying history, philosophy, English literature, anthropology, art history, etc. there simply is not much demand in our society for specialists in these fields -- and so you wind up picking kale for rich people, with a pile of student loan debt to pay.<p>We utterly fail to communicate that fact to young students entering college. We do the opposite: follow your dream, follow your passion for anthropology or whatever and it will all somehow work out in the end. Turns out that's not actually true. Telling students that it is true is what leads to indignation and this sense of entitlement. Society just doesn't need more than a tiny number of anthropologists. Whether one thinks that society <i>ought</i> to need more of them is irrelevant.<p>It's disingenous to keep encouraging kids to get degrees in non-marketable subjects, to keep pretending that economic reality should not be a factor in what you choose to study.
After reading that article, I realize how much truth there is to the old adage that, with a good article, you delete more than you save. This article feels like an interesting and thought provoking topic, but if it's there, it's hard to pinpoint while wading through the biography of half the author's family.<p>Twenty three paragraphs but no message.
The topic itself is worth discussing. However I'm not actually sure why this specific article was the one being picked for a second chance.<p>It's one long life story (stories?), and there is nothing in it supporting either the title or subtitle. Yes, her upbringing was bad, but I wanted to know what happened personally to her after graduating that she's where she is now. Or even better: what exactly could have helped her (by government or society) getting to where she want to be in life? Those details are no where to be found.<p>And I'd like to hear others' opinion on this, but I don't consider her writing to be good. <i>Maybe</i> if she want to be a writer, that has something to do with it?
> I was nonetheless positioned only marginally better off than my grandparents<p>>listing the indignities she felt working these jobs with a laconic intensity and steady determination: washing the house’s windows inside and out, cleaning the mattresses and box springs, scrubbing the floors on her knees, a lunch of a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk offered by a client that was quickly rejected, getting paid $3 a day.<p>I'd argue that smartphone in hand, greater than minimum wage rate, flexible work schedule and the option of going to post secondary education constitutes more than a "marginal" improvement. This person is claiming that she's no better off than 2 generations prior, and but in reality is using a peer comparison to try and prove it. Short of absolute equality, someone has to be behind someone else. Someone has to have "less". But if that relative "Less" is consistently more in an absolute sense, with each generation, then clearly things are getting better.<p>The "poor" of today have more food, more tvs, better technology, greater rights than several generations back. Largely because the rising tide is lifting the vast majority of ships.
I think this article is important and useful, but the title she chose is misleading. The content has absolutely nothing to do with higher education, or <i>either</i> correlative or causative connection to her employment with Instacart. Social mobility is an interesting research area, and it's important to be aware that most people who claim bootstrapping out of poverty is easy are the folks who've never been in poverty or worked menial jobs.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...</a><p>Press coverage:
<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-social-mobility-parents-income/399311/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-...</a><p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the_myth_destroying_america_why_social_mobility_is_beyond_ordinary_peoples_control/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the_myth_destroying_america_...</a><p><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2015/05/27-inequality-great-gatsby-curve-sawhill" rel="nofollow">http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2...</a><p><a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america-no-less-socially-mobile-it-was-generation-ago-mobility-measured" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...</a><p>Original research / scholarly articles:<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115000062" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115...</a><p><a href="http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc262g.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc262g.pdf</a>
In my experience, writing (or any other art) is maybe the most downwardly-mobile profession there is. The supply of artists <i>far</i> outstrips the demand for art, and getting your first job often depends on proximity to industry gatekeepers. I can't speak specifically for the publishing industry, but in film and television people tend to get writing jobs through personal connections.<p>The four paths I've seen for people who make it in film/tv:<p>* Have a family member who gets you your first job.<p>* Have rich parents who completely subsidize your work for a few years and provide anonymous funding for your first feature film.<p>* Have upper-middle class parents who partially subsidize your work for a few years, and get ready to be an assistant for 3-25 years while you build connections with the business bros that determine your future.<p>* Have lower-middle class parents. Be extraordinarily driven and ignore all material needs while you win festivals and get noticed.<p>The lower you are on the list, the more effort it takes to maximize your probability of success. Realistically, almost no one makes it from the bottom category.
> The woman who laughed at me was one of these customers with very discerning tastes currently causing me a lot of anxiety... With “all my education,” as my family would say, two degrees and the student loans to show for it, I was nonetheless positioned only marginally better off than my grandparents, who ran errands and did other grunt work two generations removed from where I now stood.<p>I can't tell who the more entitled person is. The wealthy woman who believes she is entitled to have her discerning tastes met, or the author who believes she is entitled to work as an author regardless of her commercial success.<p>No excuse to treat people who work for you poorly, but I think the entitlement runs both ways.
I find it amusing that one of Instacart's competitors, TaskRabbit, is currently blanketing the NYC subway system with ads that say "We do chores. You live life." The implication being, at least the way I read it, that they consider their workforce to be perhaps slightly less than human.
I think it's interesting that we're 44 comments in and nobody has commented on how race fits into this.<p>She sees herself as someone working her way up into a freelance writing career. Her customers, her bosses and her family view her as the kind of person unlikely to do anything more than what her parents and grandparents did: bounce around through low-wage, low-prestige jobs like Instacart their entire working life.<p>When everyone around you assumes you won't make it higher, it's hard not to wonder if they're right. And society assumes African-Americans are much less likely to achieve career success. [1]<p>[1] See <a href="http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html</a> for instance: "Race, the authors add, also affects the reward to having a better resume. Whites with higher quality resumes received 30 percent more callbacks than whites with lower quality resumes. But the positive impact of a better resume for those with African-American names was much smaller."