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Comment by murph-almighty | Hacker News Reader

> you'd probably see a lot more STEM degrees and a lot fewer of everything else

I honestly think art schools are going to start running into problems convincing people it's a good idea to pay 60k a year for minimal ROI.

My cousin wants to go into stage drama, and I don't want to tell her to not pursue her dream, but I think it's a lot to ask her to put herself in debt for years for a piece of paper that says she can act.

FWIW I majored in ECE, got a job as a software engineer with 100k salary plus benefits, and I'm ~140k in debt. I definitely overpaid, but my salary gives me a way out. People who came from my alma mater who majored in drama can't say the same.

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Same. My sister was looking at a $40k/yr private school photography degree. I sat her down and we discussed how much that was going to cost her when she graduated, what kind of job she'd need to pay it back in a reasonable time, etc. In the end, she started her own wedding photography company instead.

> In the end, she started her own wedding photography company instead.

That's awesome! I wish more people had smart person to sit down and explain these things to them.

What about some sort of state-funded guidance counselor that is required before you sign the paperwork to go to college? Or heck maybe force the colleges to pay for it.

> People who came from my alma mater who majored in drama can't say the same.

Don't worry, your salary gives them a way out too. And I'm not just saying that to be snarky, I think it's very likely what will end up happening: you'll end up paying for their poor choices one way or another. If it's not directly via taxes to pay off their student loans, it'll fund their retirement.

> Don't worry, your salary gives them a way out too. And I'm not just saying that to be snarky, I think it's very likely what will end up happening: you'll end up paying for their poor choices one way or another. If it's not directly via taxes to pay off their student loans, it'll fund their retirement.

Social Security benefits, without any other retirement savings, puts you right around poverty level. I would not consider that "retirement".

Being a software engineer, who makes more than many other professions, doesn't automatically make you better for doing so. It just means you've optimized for a specific system. Congrats! The world still needs plenty of professions where the pay sucks and college is required (teachers, civil engineers, LPNs), that are arguably far more useful/noble/whatever you want to call real value. Consider that when you're sending your kid(s) off to school, crossing a bridge on your way to work, or are in the hospital being cared for.

I'm not thinking just SS. Imagine in 30-40 years when SW engineers are retiring with their $5m 401k, but their neighbor is still barely making rent at their service-level job. I imagine there are many more people who have foregone retirement savings to pay off their massive college loans.

Politically, the story would be something like this: why should you, a multi-millionaire SW engineer who hasn't paid taxes on your 401k not pay your fair share so that these other folks can spend some time with their families? After all, they were the victims of predatory lending! Close the loophole that allowed your opulent lifestyle!

And remember, 401ks are a multi-trillion dollar market of untaxed dollars. Do you really think tomorrow's politician in 30-40 years is going to miss that, never mind their constituents?

Taxes are at historically low rates, and current governments have continually borrowed from the future to fund wars and tax cuts (outstanding US government obligations are in the trillions of dollars [1]).

Of course taxes are going to go up. Plan accordingly. If you've put millions of dollars in a pre-tax retirement account, you're a fool if you think it's coming out at anything near current tax rates. You're banking on a political climate that cannot exist existing. That's your fault.

And before blaming your average citizen, look how little anyone cares about what citizens want regarding net neutrality, a tax bill that is going to gut entitlements to support tax cuts for the top 1%, and so on.

[1] https://treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current (~20 trillion dollars in US gov outstanding debt obligations)

> Of course taxes are going to go up. Plan accordingly

They already did. The GOP tax bill specifically targeted our demographic as a way to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses. The GOP doesn't even deny it.

Like it or not, we are the scapegoats for all the problems afflicting the poor. And it's not a stretch to believe the GOP is going to use popular support to extract every dime from us until we are homeless too.

Medicare cuts->Elderly dying off faster->Voter demographic change. Law of unintended consequences? Possibly. I can see the political winds shifting back hard over the next 3 years.

Enough Puerto Ricans might have moved to Florida already to turn the state blue. Won't know until next elections.

A lot of people Puerto Ricans are moving to traditionally blue Florida locations. SE Florida, Orlando, Tampa are the 3 most populous areas and all are strongly blue. Through gerrymandering they'll continue to get the same representation.

If these new residents makes the statewide elections close, things would be improved (because in general in close elections, candidates have to appeal to the tiny amount of voters on the other side that switch parties, so toning down extremism), plus as Puerto Ricans, they had pretty much no say in the federal government versus some say after they moved from the island to the mainland.

>>I'm not thinking just SS. Imagine in 30-40 years when SW engineers are retiring with their $5m 401k, but their neighbor is still barely making rent at their service-level job.

It's interesting that you believe people with $5M+ networth would have service workers as neighbors. :)

I live in the Peninsula (San Mateo County, CA). My side of the street is mostly rentals (2BR townhouse duplexes) costing about $4k/mo. The other side of the street is single homes, 3BRs that go for $1.6M. If you want good schools for your kids in the Peninsula, $4k/mo isn't a crazy rent, you might be able to go somewhere else in the area and pay $3k, but maybe you care enough about your kid's future to pay the extra $1k/mo for better schools... so you have a lot of people who are tradespeople or who are struggling to save much after they take care of their kids, but a lot of the homeowners are probably worth $5M at retirement.

My former next door neighbor had to move far away because she just couldn't afford it anymore, but probably at least a half-dozen families on my block could plausibly have net worths in the $5M range. In a neighborhood like this you see $70k and $10k cars parked next to each other.

Why is that interesting? After working for 40 years, saving religiously, it’s entirely possible that they’re living a solid middle class lifestyle not much different from someone else who also lives the same lifestyle but rents and doesn’t save money.

Strangely enough that proposal was floated around in earlier versions of the currently proposed tax bill: the 401(k) yearly contribution cap was going to drop from $18,000/year to $2,400/year. That would have driven savings into Roth 401(k)s/Roth IRAs so that the tax income would be realized sooner rather than later.

I currently save at a 50/50 mix of 401(k)/Roth 401(k) just in case the scenario you described comes true. I expect that as I age I'll contribute more post-tax dollars to my Roth and fewer to my 401(k).

I was a bit miffed to learn that the max contribution for an IRA and Roth IRA combined is only $5,500. I did some reading and understand the point of it but I would much prefer to be in control of my own money and where it is invested than some of the limited options given through an employer's 401k.

When you change jobs, you can rollover your 401(k) into an IRA, so if you're in an industry where change jobs every 3-5 years, the extra savings makes the difference pretty small (you can always put your money into a low-fee index fund in the 401(k) and then manage it more when you rollover).

Further, a lot of 401(k)s at larger companies that use Fidelity (at least, possibly others) have a feature where you can allocate money into a general brokerage sub-account, where you can invest in anything you could if you opened an IRA at Fidelity.

Yes, that's what I did after leaving my last job and read up more on IRAs. For retirement savings, the plan is for index funds. I was more annoyed by the max on IRAs since a lot of the companies I've worked for have either not offered 401ks or just had poor options.

This Bogleheads post had some good replies about why this is the way it is in terms of contribution max:

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=115303

It is what it is and, until I find something decently high-paying, doesn't really matter in the short run.

Plus you cannot contribute at all to an IRA once your income is above a number (132,000? last year) that is way below valley software average salary. It's kind of a way to encourage one to work for a company that has a 401K I guess.

> Congrats! The world still needs plenty of professions where the pay sucks and college is required (teachers, civil engineers, LPNs), that are arguably far more useful/noble/whatever you want to call real value.

Shame on you for working in tech and not a more noble profession. I recommend that you resign from your job next week and become a high school math teacher.

(I got a job in tech because I feel it adds the most value to the world so I'm not a hypocrite)

>The world still needs plenty of professions where the pay sucks and college is required

Quite a self-contradictory statement. I mean, if the world was in such a dire need of said professions in such quantities, then their pay wouldn’t suck in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

As if the world was a free market, and compensation was tied to value.

Everything you look at was built by engineers, don't be so quickly to dismiss your own people

>compensation was tied to value.

It is the definition of value. Value is the compensation others are willing to give you in exchange for your goods/services.

>Value is the compensation others are willing to give you in exchange for your goods/services.

Value includes far more than that. It includes all kinds of tangibles and intangibles, including compensation in exchange for absolutely nothing, such as in the case of nonworking shareholders being paid dividends, such dividends arising from the expropriation by owners of surplus value created by workers.

Nonworking shareholders are being paid for their investment risk. The company pays them for taking said risk instead of investing their capital somewhere else.

Workers are paid wages for creating said surplus value using the company’s capital. If the shareholders’ capital were indeed not necessary for producing said surplus value, then why wouldn’t the workers create it by themselves, thus avoiding the expropriation?

>Workers are paid wages for creating said surplus value using the company’s capital.

Workers are paid wages to produce. Wages, stagnant for the last forty-plus years, have proven unlinked to productivity, which has risen very sharply over the same time. Wages are also unlinked from investment risk, which compels no rise in wages when it retires.

> then why wouldn’t the workers create it by themselves, thus avoiding the expropriation?

They do - you have described cooperative ownership of an enterprise. To tie back to value: given the fundamental conflict of interest under capitalism in the apportioning of value between creators and expropriators, I think we should expect cooperative ownership to grow in popularity.

It's important to allow that value reasonably includes the satisfaction of workers, customers, neighbors, and the taxpayers who subsidize the enterprise. It's understandable that these things would escape the category of "value" under a system that enshrines the satisfaction of shareholders as the prime motive of the enterprise.

That's assuming a perfect, infallible market.

There's no other way in my opinion too. This is super stressful to me. I started working a few years ago, working my ass off with a full time job and part time one at night and I wonder if it's going to be of any worth someday or if I'm just working against my own later benefits by putting myself in the "too wealthy compared to my age class future average" fringe.

There are some art and design schools who graduate students with great career prospects. In general people with really good modeling and animation skills can find work in entertainment. Not many people will pursue a career in drama, but I have worked with many people with that background who had great presentation and communication skills. This is an engineering heavy forum, but look around the place you work. Is everybody in management an engineer or scientist?

Looking at current management may give you inaccurate data since the competitive environment for new grads has worsened compared to 20 years ago for humanities majors.

A better data point would be to look around entry level or mid level in non development roles (sales, marketing, HR/admin, etc.) and see what majors are represented there.

Education doesn't always need to have an ROI, sometimes it's just worth what you spend on it.

The vast majority of folks can't afford something that expensive without an ROI. What's being discussed here is how our current system encourages getting into debt for it and how that's negative for our society.

But American society as a whole encourages that behavior. It's not just education.

For sure, but the issue is whether you should borrow so much that it becomes a public policy issue.

Who fault is that really? The banks and gov for over extending risky loans? Or the people who borrow? Probably both, but if the banks do not know the risk of over extending risky loans Im not sure what will ever be done.

It does when it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What is the EV for a drama degree? Some actors make millions in their 20s. Probably .01% of actors?

and now you could* likely pay for private stage lessons.

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