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Comment by forkandwait | Hacker News Reader

I am amazed by the pervasiveness of the assumption that most of the human race is inherently just too stupid to become upper middle like us.

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It's tough not to have that feeling, if you exist outside of bubbles of well-educated, high-IQ people. Shit, half the kids I grew up with were so LD they struggled mightily to learn how to read and do basic arithmetic, and another quarter were so low that they were labeled as MR. They don't have the capacity, no matter how much training and money and lamentations you spend on them.

It's sad that people like that can't have a little dignity and make a living doing what they're capable of, but that's where we're headed.

It's not stupidity, it's a combination of factors.

1) Lack of knowledge of options. Let's say you wanted to get into the oil business. Without Googling anything, what job would you want? What skills and credentials would you need to acquire to get that job? How would you go about getting those?

2) Lack of education - Imagine trying to learn how to program without knowing what variables are. And then let's say you struggle and become capable of doing junior web dev work. What happens when you encounter even an easy interview question like "Write a program to find the first n prime numbers"

3) Lack of time - Most adults don't have time to focus full time on training, even if they aren't working. Children and elderly family members can suck up a lot of time.

1) Without googling anything, I'd need... presentable clothes, good hygiene, and to be able to make sense when I talk and respond sensibly to questions. Get into the oil business? Everyone's got a mail room, janitorial staff, etc. Get a job doing that and show them that you can show up for work on time and do a good job at the mundane stuff with a friendly attitude, no complaining, and not causing drama. That goes a LONG way. The other items follow this one.

Well, half of the population has an IQ of less than 100. Also, if everyone tries to achieve greater education, then what's considered "upper middle" will shift. Just look at the devaluation of associates and bachelors degrees today.

The sad truth is that there will always be lower and lower-middle class jobs, because not everyone is capable of joining the upper-middle class. Should those people continue to experience a declining quality of life just because they haven't been genetically or socioeconomically blessed?

If every low-wage worker could start writing software, then writing software for an employer would also become a low-wage job. We're not paid well just because we have useful skills. We're paid well because the demand for our kind of skills hasn't been swamped by supply.

Yeah, especially if you're rural or inner-city.

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