Comment by hiram112 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hiram112 | Hacker News Reader

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I've noticed that there are two groups that downvote posts like this on both tech forums and in general:

1) 25 year old software guys making $100K while their friends are at half that, possibly living at home.

2) Older people (i.e. Boomer generation).

The software guys in their 20's are doing alright - for the moment. In 10 years, they'll have hit the glass ceiling due to offshoring and H1Bs, while they're friends in marketing and business will have caught up in pay, and won't be nearly as disposable due to globalization in tech. Living in a shared apartment with the bro's won't work either, when kids, wife, etc. are taken into account.

The boomers, OTOH, really don't understand how things are much more difficult for younger generations. They had it made, and anyone who doesn't have what they got must be lazy and entitled.

You are very likely right in my opinion. There are still very many people, where the arguments that where spread from the Reagan/Thatcher era on, stick.

It is a seducing thinking, to have a simple explanation for the difficult questions in life, eg.: Why do people earn differently? It is so simple and seducing to be just able to say: "Hey, the others are just not diligent enough or not smart enough. The African/South-American people are just to corrupt and that is the reason, most of them live in poverty!"

Once I also belonged to those people that would have downvoted my posts, because I believed in the system. Today, several years later, I see the outcomes and also where this is leading us to. I also see, that there are no such simple answers to the questions and that exist.

The problem is, that I get the impression that humanity might not learn in the long term. We already had the industrialization era, where we thought, industry will make the world a better world, but it made the world a horror for so many people. We already had all these simple explanations -- but education does not stick, not more than 50 years.

What really haunts me, is that those politicians that harmed their countries most, are often those which are still the most popular ones. Those that really made a difference (or tried to) are forgotten much to fast.

Thank you very much, for your answer!

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