Poverty And How To Get There
It’s time to turn, once again, to the pages of Everyday Feminism, where Ms Hannah Brooks Olsen wants to educate us about “the real face of poverty” – specifically, Millennial poverty, as experienced by herself:
As a white, 22-year-old college graduate in a second-hand dress, I did not look like what we think of as “poor.” Of course, at that exact moment, I had, yes, a college degree and a coveted unpaid (because of course it was unpaid) internship at a public radio station. But I also had a minimum wage job to support myself, $17 in my bank account, $65,000 in debt to my name, and $800 in rent due in 24 days.
It’s not a happy tale. This is, after all, Everyday Feminism.
I was extremely hungry, worried about my utilities being shut off, and 100% planning to hit up the dumpster at the nearby Starbucks… I had no functional stove in my tiny apartment because the gas it took to make it work was, at $10 per month, too expensive.
Such, then, are the hardships of “Millennial college grads,” whose suffering, we’re told, often passes unremarked:
Through college debt, we are minting a new generation of people with fewer opportunities, rather than more. Even if you glossed right over the teachings of Thomas Piketty…
the teachings of Thomas Piketty
…you probably know that those who begin poor are more likely to stay poor… New grads no longer start from zero – they start with a negative balance.
Well, it’s generally the custom that loans have to be repaid. And so choosing a degree course, or choosing whether to take one at all, is a matter of some consequence. Such is adulthood.
Many college graduates are worse off than they would have been if they’d directly entered the workforce debt-free.
And so, as in many things, one should choose wisely. Ms Olsen goes on to ponder the woes of “Millennials of colour,” and the alleged “gender pay gap,” before wondering whether all university education should be “free” – which is to say, paid for by some other sucker. Say, those who would see no benefit in being forced to further subsidise the lifestyle choices of people who end up writing for Everyday Feminism.
And then, eventually, we come to the nub of it:
I grew up poor. I went to a university – something that neither of my parents did, through choice and circumstance and a systemic series of beliefs about who college is for – because I believed that that was the only way to be not-poor. I believed this because I was told it, by guidance counsellors, the media, and many adults. And yet, going to college made me more poor, at least in the years since I’ve graduated.
As noted previously, in response to another Everyday Feminism contributor, the lifetime return on many degrees is very often negative, typically those in Angry Studies and the arts and humanities. It turns out that the market is still not crying out for even more literary theorists or twenty-something denouncers of neoliberal patriarchy. Shocking, I know, but there we are. And so there’s something to be said for practicality, especially if your background is a modest one. Social mobility – the journey from poor to “not-poor” – presupposes a certain realism, a pragmatism, and making choices accordingly – including with regard to the costs and benefits of tertiary education, which is for most an expensive one-time opportunity.
However, Ms Olsen insists,
This is not about a lack of fiscal responsibility.
Our unhappy feminist goes on to stress that she and those like her should not be chided for “their perceived poor decisions,” which, she says, doesn’t “actually address the problem.” As if the issue at hand – being insufficiently alluring to employers in glamorous and lucrative lines of work – had no obvious connection with any decisions on her part. What passes unmentioned in the article is that Ms Olsen’s degree, the one that left her poking about in dumpsters and $65,000 in debt – twice the US student average – is in English literature and rhetoric. Not, perhaps, the most practical use of time and other people’s money. It may, however, explain why the author describes herself as “a white person who tends to gravitate toward post-modernism.” (During her years at Western Washington University, Ms Olsen was, of course, involved in the campus Women’s Centre, which boasts of being “empowering,” albeit in ways that aren’t entirely clear, as in the case above.)
When not informing the world of her preferred pronouns, and describing herself as a “political troublemaker” determined to “catalyse significant social change,” or writing about “social justice issues,” and about how unfair her life is, Ms Olsen also offers “personal guidance” via the medium of Tarot card readings.
Update, via the comments:
Ms Olsen doesn’t make explicit exactly what kind of career she was expecting to breeze into, armed with an urge to “catalyse significant social change” and her $65,000 degree in English literature and rhetoric. It does, however, seem reasonable to suppose that it was something involving writing and leftist activism. Given the rapid and widely acknowledged decline of journalism as a viable full-time occupation, especially leftist journalism, this seems a tad optimistic.
Such unworldliness reminded me of Mr Amien Essif, a kindred spirit and fellow would-be Bringer Of Light. Mr Essif conceded that his chosen line of work was no longer entirely viable, due to a chronic shortage of paying customers, or indeed public interest, and was likely to get worse. He nonetheless felt entitled to coerced public subsidy of his written output. You see, the taxpayer must be forced to “subsidise creativity” – i.e., his creativity – because apparently there just aren’t enough leftwing graduates already writing about “consumerism, gentrification and hegemony.”
Update 2:
For those with time to kill and some morbid curiosity, Ms Olsen’s twitter feed is quite revealing, albeit in ways you’d probably expect. There’s the obligatory chippy, sour tone, a disdain for both debate and practical advice, and some ostentatious grizzling about the word “hysteria” and how it’s “uniquely gendered” and therefore impermissible. All peppered with pronouncements that are faintly hysterical. It isn’t clear to me how Ms Olsen’s online presence, this snapshot of her personality, would entice potential employers, at least from outside of her immediate peer bubble. In the wider world, describing yourself, on LinkedIn, as a “political troublemaker” may not be wholly alluring to people looking for reliable staff.
Readers may wish to consider the extent to which this captious disposition is a result of the disappointment that seems likely to follow years of cossetted self-flattery in academia’s Clown Quarter. And being led to believe, by left-leaning educators, that, like them, you should be in the vanguard of some social and political transformation – a “change agent,” to borrow the jargon – and then finding yourself unemployed, and practically unemployable, precisely because of the vanities you’ve so eagerly internalised.
Ms Olsen also offers “personal guidance” via the medium of Tarot card readings.
I’ll pass.
Such a pity she didn’t get hold of the Tarot deck before she chose that degree course.
College students should be poor.
Pity she didn’t consult her Tarot cards when choosing her degree, ain’t it?
“…she didn’t consult her Tarot cards when choosing her degree …”
What is it about her self-described situation that seems to you inconsistent with having made decisions based on Tarot cards or any other fortune-telling nonsense?
Part of the problem – which, to be fair, Ms Olsen brushes against, briefly – is that far too many young people are being led to believe that they should go to university in the first place, often seemingly regardless of ability and aptitude, and regardless of whether there’s any credible economic benefit in doing so. Judging by Ms Olsen’s account, there wasn’t much cautioning by adults in her sphere that a degree in, say, English literature and rhetoric – costing $65,000 – is by no means a Golden Ticket to lucrative and satisfying employment.
Compounding this is the rather pernicious notion that tertiary education should be thought of primarily as an exercise in personal growth and some kind of egalitarian right, with economic utility a mere secondary concern, if that. It seems to me that encouraging people from humble backgrounds to pursue courses of limited (if any) market value, and thereby running up massive debts that may never be repaid, is very close to an act of cruelty.
informing the world of her preferred pronouns, and describing herself as a “political troublemaker” determined to “catalyse significant social change,”
She should just wear a big sign that says DO NOT HIRE.
Regarding Mis Olsen, she says of herself:
At 20 something, no you are not “experienced” in all, or any, of those things, which gets us back to the entitlement/ Dunning Kruger mentality of these types.
The abject poverty and oppression of the horribly beat-down Miss Olsen:
You know, I lived a similar life, and was faced with similar choices. In fact, my story is the same as hers, almost verbatim… up until one decision point.
I grew up poor. I went to a university – something that neither of my parents did, through choice and circumstance and a systemic series of beliefs about who college is for – because I believed that that was the only way to be not-poor. I believed this because I was told it, by guidance counsellors, the media, and many adults. I looked at what would make a viable career.
I considered veterinary science, but I didn’t have the grades to get into that school. I had top marks in chemistry, and industrial chemistry had a range of well paying positions for that skill set, and so I went to university with the intent of becoming a chemist.
In my first year, I discovered that a) I didn’t really care for lab work as much as I thought I would, b) I was getting top marks in my mathematics and computer science courses, and c) computer science skills were highly in demand. As a new discipline, computer science was likely to grow as a career path, more so than chemistry, and so I switched my major.
And so, while going to college put me in debt, by working during school it was a manageable amount, and upon graduation, I was earning about 30% more than I would have made as a high school graduate. That allowed me to pay off my student debt with 10 months of graduation, and my increased earning power has served me well in the years that followed.
I looked at what would make a viable career.
And yet there are no end of rent-seeking educators – generally lecturing in subjects of negligible intellectual or market value – who insist that such concerns are philistine, and that more working-class people should spend money they don’t have on post-colonial studies or gender studies, or some other question-begging pseudo-subject. It can all sound very flattering to the young and credulous, and it’s pretty much a staple of the Guardian’s comment pages. But the likely result is a qualification of little or negative value and a large debt burden that’s unlikely to shrink any time soon. As a supposed means of social mobility, it’s laughable, practically grotesque.
While I don’t regret the years I spent studying literature and philosophy, I always knew that I would have to pay the bills which go with being an adult. That is the world which has always existed. It’s not a world where hipsters sit around drinking overpriced lattes paid for from bank accounts which magically are never overdrawn.
@TheTooner
Good Point
As a white, 22-year-old college graduate in a second-hand dress…
Sometimes them young girls do get weary.
I grew up poor. I worked through college “poor”. I went through grad school “poor”. Thankfully I finally have a “real job”, albeit a temporary one (ahhh the joy of post docs – even in the Hard Sciences and Engineering). Through all of that I knew that to survive and get where I was going in life I needed to live within my means. I may have been “poor” by some standards, but I always had the basics necessary for life.
My first thought on reading David’s summary was “wtf is she doing paying $800 a month for rent??”. On a MIN WAGE job??? Methinks her “poverty” is largely self-inflicted.
I’ll report my unsympathetic cis-white female arse to the correction booth now for reprogramming…
I’ll report my unsympathetic cis-white female arse to the correction booth now for reprogramming…
I’ve removed the padding from the rotary paddles and notched up the RPM, so it should be quite… bracing.
In one word or less, WHY??? And the solution is to-hand, and the Donald just might be the man to implement it; return students’ RIGHT (for it was) to discharge student loans through bankruptcy (like everybody else can discharge every other unmanageable debt).
Instantly, market forces will re-assert themselves. Social Justice majors won’t be able to get student loans; the banks will become very philistine about post-grad employment prospects. And colleges, having feasted-on these klutzes for decades, will be face-to-face with losing most of their tuition fees; they’ll have to immediately get back to basics – EMPLOYABLE basics.
Or do I achieve the Mencken definition of simplicity?
My first thought on reading David’s summary was “wtf is she doing paying $800 a month for rent??”. On a MIN WAGE job??? Methinks her “poverty” is largely self-inflicted.
This sort of thing is highly dependent on local real estate conditions; $800/month in the local warlord’s scrip around here wouldn’t get you a one-bedroom apartment, but in the university town an hour down the road it’ll get you a two-bedroom within driving distance of the local Marxist indoctrination centre.
That said, I have noticed a tendency among the millenial generation to assume that the prices of things – like rent – ought to be determined by what you get paid, rather than what you get paid determining what you can afford.
That said, I have noticed a tendency among the millenial generation to assume that the prices of things – like rent – ought to be determined by what you get paid, rather than what you get paid determining what you can afford.
That.
That
See also this. And again, note the author’s disregard of such basic considerations as supply and demand.
…note the author’s disregard of such basic considerations as supply and demand.
This is probably related:
the teachings of Thomas Piketty…
looked at what would make a viable career.
Although Ms Olsen doesn’t make explicit exactly what kind of career she was expecting to breeze into, it seems reasonable to suppose that it was something involving writing and leftist activism. Given the rapid and widely acknowledged decline of journalism as a viable full-time occupation, especially leftist journalism, this seems a tad optimistic.
Which reminded me of this chap, who conceded that his chosen line of work was no longer entirely viable, due to a chronic shortage of paying customers or public interest, and was likely to get worse, but who nonetheless felt entitled to coerced public subsidy of his written output. You see, the taxpayer must be forced to “subsidise creativity” – i.e., his creativity – because apparently there just aren’t enough leftwing graduates already writing about “consumerism, gentrification and hegemony.”
…far too many young people are being led to believe that they should go to university in the first place, often seemingly regardless of ability and aptitude, and regardless of whether there’s any credible economic benefit in doing so.
Quite so. This is a scandal. If such blatant con artists operated in any other sector, there would be an outcry. You see, it’s edukashun, so it’s somehow all right…
But there my sympathy ends for Ms Olsen. Having made one bad choice, she’s embracing another – by opting for victimhood and radical opposition to what she perceives as a system, and wasting time and energy on being angry, rather than trying to retrieve her situation by acquiring some additional qualification that would enable her to earn a living and then pay off her debts….She lives in an opportunity-rich society, but she prefers to whinge. A few years of grim part-time jobs could finance a marketable qualification.
the lifetime return on many degrees is very often negative
And therefore, Something Must Be Done.
As someone who came from relative poverty and who chose a non-angry-studies degree field at a prestigious university, soldiering through on canned chicken and rice and through several panic attacks to try to obtain a serious degree which could contribute to family income rather than a frivolous sort I’d have enjoyed, going deeply into debt and struggling for years out of college… what would be a suitable vulgarity?
Oh, I’ve got one: a cactus. She can go fuck herself and her tarot card flummery with one. Repeatedly.
My first foray into Uni had me taking, as I liked to put it, “anything starting withe an f: physics, French, philosophy…”
I dropped out in year 3 because I ran out of enthusiasm, money, and mathematical ability roughly simultaneously. After working 3 years in a clerical job and a tech startip job, I went back and did 3 years of EE and CS in 2 years, living on a loan from my last boss (a Czech refugee from behind the iron curtain).
Not great planning but sometimes hard work can overcome that.
Dropping out and working full time really focussed my thinking about what school could do and not do.
“Prices of things…”
That kind of thinking is now bleeding into my avocation area. I had a biotechnology startup tellnme the company should be valued (for investment purposes) at 12 million because “that’s how much money has been put in so far in government grants”.
Never mind that a) they’d spent it all and had no cash in the bank, and b) they’d created maybe 2 million of knowledge and company value in the process.
I am ABD (all but dissertation toward a Ph.D.) in “Romance Studies,” meaning that I studied lots of Spanish Literature and a bit of Spanish Linguistics.
I was training to be a Spanish Lit professor but realized that I hated teaching classes. So I moved back in with my parents (after sending my resume to a few dozen publishing houses in NYC and getting no offers).
I got my first tech writing position through nepotism–there was an opening where my brother worked–and after that contract was canceled I applied for a tech writing firm that gave me an editing/writing test, which I passed. I moved out of my parents’ place after a year.
All my technical training was on the job, and now I’ve got a great career in writing technical documentation for software companies.
I know what it’s like to look at the job postings and despair that I didn’t have marketable skills.
I also know what it’s like to have only ~$9000 in debt after 7 years in grad school because grad students in foreign languages teach 1-2 courses per semester and/or have fellowships to pay for tuition.
Of course tuition for my freshman semester was around $450 (at BYU), so that shows you how insanely the tuition costs have gone up when the consumer doesn’t place controls on prices. Third-party payer also has made healthcare costs rise almost as fast as tuition.
I was training to be a Spanish Lit professor but realized that I hated teaching classes.
Well, that would do it, I suppose.
And therefore, Something Must Be Done.
It’s as though the signature arrogance of the taxpayer-funded art world has spilled over into the wider culture.
“I believed this because I was told it, by guidance counsellors, the media, and many adults”
And that bit is entirely credible!
We really need to stop the education industry advertising itself whilst posing as educating people.
And we really need to make sure that said industry is liable for faulty products as any other industry is.
We really need to stop the education industry advertising itself whilst posing as educating people.
I distractedly read this bit as “educated people”. Which is perhaps also true – anyone making a claim that general non-specific “education” will earn one anything may in fact be a dullard.
Iowahawk’s axiom that “go to college” is to education what “put food in your mouth” is to nutrition comes to mind.
As Pat says:
We really need to stop the education industry advertising itself whilst posing as educating people.
It is fraud. It is misleading the gullible.
“If you wanna get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” F. Zappa (from memory, sorry) (Also, the bit about getting laid in college may be over the edge, risk-wise, these days…)
“Where’s the college library?” H. Rennick
I was extremely hungry, worried about my utilities being shut off, and 100% planning to hit up the dumpster at the nearby Starbucks when I was done there.
Starbucks? Starbucks?
Surely it can’t be much longer till we discover that Everyday Feminism is the world’s most successful example of astroturfing, and that it was actually funded by Andrew Breitbart all along?
He did after all apparently help get The Huffington Post off the ground.
Then again, there’s this which … is … err … erm …
There’s a faint but honest passivity to her tale, especially the awareness that she “tends to gravitate toward post-modernism.”
Given the associated, spiraling trajectory, that’s actually not a bad diagnosis. I hope she recovers.
Part of the problem – which, to be fair, Ms Olsen brushes against, briefly – is that far too many young people are being led to believe that they should go to university in the first place, often seemingly regardless of ability and aptitude, and regardless of whether there’s any credible economic benefit in doing so.
In the US at least, a big part of the problem is that companies have increasingly made a bachelor’s degree the requirement for entry-level white collar work. You can thank in part Griggs v. Duke Power Co. for that, as companies use a college degree as a proxy for whatever other tests they would have administered.
And quite rightly; the shutting down of those grubby for-profit colleges victimizing credulous students and parents is completely called for.
Why, however, the grievance studies departments in every university across the land haven’t been similarly pilloried is an abiding mystery.
(The spam filter is nothing short of tedious. First attempt at posting told me I needed to refresh the page. Refreshed, posting not possible. Had to go to a different browser. And I didn’t even screw up any HTML.)
The spam filter is nothing short of tedious.
Also capricious and unfathomable. For a day or two, some months ago, I had to fish every one of my own comments out of the damn thing.
Imagine the indignity.
Imagine the indignity.
One simply doesn’t, dear boy.
There now appear to be two types of college degrees: those where you learn something while you’re there, and those where you figure it out afterward.
The latter are much more expensive, of course.
I had no functional stove in my tiny apartment because the gas it took to make it work was, at $10 per month, too expensive.
What’s the betting she was in Brooklyn or some other overpriced shithole where hipsters and “artists” insist on living rather than say, far more affordable South Carolina?
In the US at least, a big part of the problem is that companies have increasingly made a bachelor’s degree the requirement for entry-level white collar work.
. . . and increasingly, that big part is getting towards a “masters degree” as being the basic requirement.
Actually no: she lives in Seattle. Close enough.
“[…] return students’ RIGHT (for it was) to discharge student loans through bankruptcy (like everybody else can discharge every other unmanageable debt).”
Assume, for a minute, that you are a freshly graduated Doctor (medical type, that is). At this instant in time, you have no income.
Declare bankruptcy and wipe out your medical degree debt. NOW get a job and profit!
That happened quite a bit, so the brute-force solution was to not allow anyone to weasel out of their student loan debt.
I’m not sure how you prevent people from gaming the system in that fashion.
“English literature and rhetoric – costing $65,000”
Not to worry, the Democrats will absolve them of their student loan debts, dumping the obligation on the taxpayers (you know, the makers..)
OT: Mick Hartley braves a particularly cringe-inducing piece from the Guardian.
http://mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2016/11/turning-into-an-arsehole.html
My first thought on reading David’s summary was “wtf is she doing paying $800 a month for rent??”
I have never been poor. But for many years I was broke.
During that time I did not buy Starbucks, because that was an expense I could not afford. I did not have expensive umbrellas or wear branded clothing. She does not appear to be behaving as I would if I were that in debt.
I was training to be a Spanish Lit professor but realized that I hated teaching classes.
My first job was horrible and I hated it. I lasted three years though before I got a better one. It was a job, and I needed a job.
If you had no Plan B, then at least getting a job at it until you came up with Plan B seems to me the wisest course of action.
Richard Cranium:
Make student loan debt non-dischargeable for a certain period of time. Or, perhaps, have only a percentage of it discharged depending on how much of the debt was already paid off.
…you probably know that those who begin poor are more likely to stay poor…
And her degree is in English?
New grads no longer start from zero – they start with a negative balance.
And come out more foolish than when they went in, in my experience – but far more sure of the ignorance of those who disagree with what they enjoy believing.
a systemic series of beliefs about who college is for
My father was born in the “holler” of Appalachia, went to college on an athletic scholarship, was kicked out of college, got drafted, went to Vietnam (combat medic, which the Army figured he was qualified for because he “had college”), came home, went back to college, got a degree in computer science before it was even being called that, and eventually became a big-deal project manager for a major telecommunications corporation.
How many of these Millennials think college is “for” gawky, hillbilly-bred jocks who’ve been shot at by Communists?
a second-hand dress
Now the height of fashion.
As a person with a humanities major, who switched to that from STEM (I’ve almost got enough credits for an animal husbandry/biology double minor, which would be ridiculous to pursue, but can come in handy when teaching English…who knew?), I don’t regret my choice or lot in life (ok, sometimes I wish I had the money to buy a Lexus, but who doesn’t?) as I like the field (ok, I don’t like what has become of the department, nor the crap in the mandatory syllabus for 100,200 level class…but it merely forces a person to be inventive and creative in finding a work around, a challenge).
If I had one wish, it would be that I actually got to teach the classics and grammar/rhetoric/morphology instead of “studies in victimhood”…I hope for the future. In the meantime, it hones one’s skills in how to manage under a Stalinist system, so that may come in useful. So, no regrets — I love teaching, and I love to teach literature and writing.
I never had any school debt due to: 1)planning ahead; 2) working through school; 3) budgeting!; 4) not being averse to signing on for a federally sanctioned work for tuition program (it’s known as the Veteran’s Grant and GI Bill and they pay you while your work, and provide stuff!…of course, you do have to be willing to go through the program…).
And I never worried about finding work afterwards because 1) I made sure I went to a good school and got very good grades, and went for canonical studies classes, not “women who can’t write, but we’ll study them anyway because they have labia” classes — 3.98/4.0; 2)wasn’t afraid to work gritty, but decent paying jobs until something came open, made sure I had the skills to do those jobs…and then I had other work experience, so if I lost my teaching contract (I did, every time I got pregnant and set aside a job for the task of motherhood) I at least could jump back into the workforce as a copyeditor, animal husbandry specialist, trucker driver, or welder/painter/assemblylinesman to bring in a little extra pay for the family budget.
Oh, and yeah, I got married and stayed married — raising kids is usually a lot easier in all ways if you have a spouse who is helping.
I think one of
In one word or less, WHY??? And the solution is to-hand, and the Donald just might be the man to implement it; return students’ RIGHT (for it was) to discharge student loans through bankruptcy (like everybody else can discharge every other unmanageable debt).
Instantly, market forces will re-assert themselves. Social Justice majors won’t be able to get student loans; the banks will become very philistine about post-grad employment prospects. And colleges, having feasted-on these klutzes for decades, will be face-to-face with losing most of their tuition fees; they’ll have to immediately get back to basics – EMPLOYABLE basics.
Or do I achieve the Mencken definition of simplicity?
That latter thing. I believe I’ve pointed this out here before…who is really on the hook for these “loans”…
Read more: Who Actually Owns Student Loan Debt? | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/081216/who-actually-owns-student-loan-debt.asp#ixzz4RMBfxDjv