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Comment by stevenwoo | Hacker News Reader

There was a recent bit on NPR (Planet Money?) where they interviewed young people in Seoul - they had so little faith in their ability to earn a living and save money by working a regular job in Korea they were putting all their savings into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and hoping to hit the jackpot. It was alarming.

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http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/73...

> Low-income South Koreans are finding it harder and harder to rise to the middle or high-income classes through their own efforts and abilities, a recent study shows. Just two out of every ten households saw their economic status rise through increased income and assets over a three-year period, the findings indicate.

Crypto provides an alternative economy where class mobility isn't broken in the same ways. Youth will continue to flock to it until the local economies sort themselves out.

I wonder if young folks in the same situation in America are doing the same thing.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01-23/why-some-young-south-...

Thanks - same print source it seems, maybe different radio story - that's dated today! South Korea now sounds like Japan of a few years ago before China got in the WTO, Japan was the "big threat" to US manufacturing/exports of that time, so Japan got a close examination for things the US could learn to copy. But it also sounds a bit like US today or maybe it's all around the world - the college grads not seeing a lot of opportunity for the average or even superior college experience from those examples. It feels like the world is in a lot of trouble if this is true for most college grads everywhere.

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