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.
34 years ago I invested 10,000 dollars of my own money; with the help of PAL grants and 5 years of my life I got an engineering degree. This year I am on track to make 200,000. Not a bad investment if I do say so. Never been unemployed, house paid for, no insurance worries and plenty in my rainy day fund.
If I can figure it out, why can’t they? Maybe because I had a dad and grandpa in my life who taught me common sense and the value of hard work. I also had some good mentors early in my life.
These kids are not being lead by logic, they are being taken advantage of by fake degrees and collage staff and professors who have tenure, nice houses and BMW’s and jobs for life. All paid by the gullible kids with no guidance from adults.
Ms Olsen was, of course, involved in the campus Women’s Centre, which boasts of being “empowering,”
How’s that working out for her?
How’s that working out for her?
As illustrated many times, while leftism may flatter the vanities of the young and credulous, in reality it’s a bit of a poisoned chalice. And in terms of success and lasting satisfaction, probably best avoided.
So, here we are.
The Elite Master
—That pointedly listed in the section for discussions of social classes
Maybe because I had a dad and grandpa in my life who taught me common sense and the value of hard work. I also had some good mentors early in my life.
Ayup.
About the tallow-tainted £5 notes….
A few months in circulation and they’ll all be smeared with cocaine. That’ll cancel out the minute tallow trace (I think?).
If I can figure it out, why can’t they?
To be fair, not everyone is cut out for engineering. I knew a few guys on my course who signed up then realised they detested it, and had a miserable time, and didn’t stick it out. I am extraordinarily lucky in that I always knew I wanted to do engineering and then joined an industry which provided work* that I enjoyed and paid incredibly well. You don’t need to defend wasters like this Olsen woman to know that not everyone can do what to me came pretty easily (albeit I had to live in some right shitholes).
*I use that term loosely.
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.
Deals with private arrangements symptomatically and subjectively, which starts yet another self-destructive positive feedback loop. In other words, becomes political and therefore inherently progressive.
The really simple solution to non payment of college debt is to have courts treat the repayments as they do child support. That should focus up a few minds.
Enter the progressive positive feedback loop. Given the courts’ ruinous – read: leftist, special interest-bound, hyper over-lawyered, collectivized – work in “child support”, the last thing you want is this, assuming you’d even agree to evaluate causes by results, and those ills will be your results.
The solution, such as it is, is that loans remain wholly private and contractual and discharge however parties agree. There may be no official umbrella whatsoever outside the scantest mediation and bankruptcy proceedings.
Managing social life by progressive law we know to be madness.
“I’m an experienced reporter, editor, web producer… and general internet person.” says Ms Olsen.
I bet at my advanced years I am far more of an experienced ‘general internet person’ than she is. I am never off the damn thing. So.. gimme that well-paid job!
Hey, these giant porcelain shoes aren’t so bad.
She looks good enough. She has a career option that would have her rolling in cash, if she is truly as desperate as she claims. One that her male counterparts do not have.
The poor, little entitled darling could have gone to a Community College for her first two years, as I did, while working and paying my own tuition and as both of my children did, thus, saving herself tens of thousands of dollars. That, alone, would have made her total tuition cost far, far less.
When our daughter transferred to a four year school, she worked full-time as a waitress/bartender and carried a full load and did internships. She didn’t sleep much. Her employer reimbursed her 2500 per year in tuition costs and she paid down her tuition with a vengeance. She graduated summa cum laude from the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.
Before she graduated, she realized that her major had been a poor choice. She was making 50K as a waitress/bartender. She could get a job making 24K as a reporter. She became a technical writer and has now moved to one of the best companies in America doing fraud investigations.
Or, the little darling could have done what our son did. Community college for two years, Marine Corps to finish his degree while a Marine and with deployments. He earned a BS in Business and had zero debt at the end.
There are lots of options if you are not a whiny, entitled little girl who thinks the world owes you.
I’ve removed the padding from the rotary paddles and notched up the RPM, so it should be quite… bracing.
Hehehe – that’ll learn me!
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.
Yes, this. I guess I never realized people thought this way. I have always chosen where I lived based on my income and affordability (based on that income) of housing in the area. /shrug It just seemed the logical thing to do…
Likewise, millenial gardeners think the garden should produce in accord with their appetites.
This just in:
Yes, that $65,000 education really paid off.
You all will go to incredible lengths to make it seem like racism against white people is a thing. It’s not.
Is that what they call a self-refuting statement?
Is that what they call a self-refuting statement?
Well, pretty much. But this is someone who uses the word “white” to denote some implied “privilege” and culpability, simply by virtue of one’s pigmentation levels. Evidently, being so rebellious and non-conformist, Ms Olsen has internalised the modish posturing of her peers and educators, such that her definition of racism has been casually gutted of reciprocity. Which is morally absurd, laughably ahistorical, and practically stupefying. But I suppose that doesn’t much matter if all you’re doing is indulging in some pretentious social signalling.
And remember, this isn’t some random idiocy. This has been learned, at great expense.
Sailor,
My brother and I dropped out of Uni about a year apart, both after 2+ years, and worked various jobs while trying to figure out what to do next.
I worked splitting firewood from piles of huge logs left behind by the Forest Service, as a Chain-of-title searcher for a Title Insurance company, and as a lab technician at a silicon valley startup.
He worked as a “lumper” (unloading large trucks full of boxes of mostly-frozen chicken parts), a delivery driver for a worker-uniform service company, and running lens polishing machines for an industrial laser firm.
Our father called this “making a list of jobs you don’t want to do for the rest of your lives.”
We both saved every penny we could, and eventually went back for degrees and graduated with negligible debt. (I basically subsisted on one whole chicken and a pot of rice per week. Starbucks? Don’t make me laugh.) We then spent careers doing things not on those lists (though I still split firewood for fun).
Both of us also discovered that this work history made us vastly more hire-able upon graduation than were our peers. Our drop-out history? Nobody cared. Imagine that, huh?
I was completely open with my own kids about this history when they were planning college, though it’s too soon to tell what effect it had.