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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

Depends what you define as success. Hard work generally does lead to gainful employment and the ability to afford a home/car which used to be the canonical symbol of success in America.

If you think success is "be as rich and respected as I desire to be" then that absolutely will not hold.

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Yes, if the baseline for the richest country in the world is "has a roof" then hard work mostly is enough to succeed. But there are too many people who work extremely hard, sometimes at two or three jobs, who barely can afford to eat and need government assistance. So no, hard work is not a good terminology.

There simply isn't a link between "working hard" and any measure of success above the lowest baseline. Some people succeed because of a small one million dollar loan from their parents without having to ever work hard.

The difference is where you start. If you start lower middle class or working class, odds are working hard will get you at best stable employment and the ability for your children to do something. Start upper middle class or upper class and you're going to the best high schools, best colleges, and have a shot at politics or being worth 70 billion dollars.

I've met too many poor and undereducated people who are as capable as my coworkers who went to Harvard, but the poor and uneducated have to work extremely hard, be extremely lucky, and do things others can't imagine to succeed.

The system is rigged against them, and it's hard for the well-off to admit that they got a 30-yard head start or for them to begin to understand it. Maybe that's why the system remains as it is, with the same millionaires and billionaires telling people who make 30k a year how they should live.

I don’t think it’s realistic for everybody to “have a shot at politics or being worth 70 billion dollars.”

It used to be well known that it takes generations to move up the class hierarchy but that concept seems to be lost to time. Now we see a lot of complaining that literally everyone doesn’t have access to an upper class lifestyle. I’m not sure how that would even be possible or why it would be desirable.

Not everyone will be successful. I’m highly skeptical of any philosophy that doesn’t factor that concept in.

In many real estate markets in the west, gainful employment substantially above the median income is still not even close to enough to secure a reasonable sized 'home'.

Then there are places like Vancouver, where the average yearly income is less than the average yearly payments for residential properties.

But if you got in and leveraged yourself to the hilt starting in 2008, you could own a sizable equity stake in a growing stable of 30+ detached dwellings if your relationship with your local mortgage broker was on point.

Why does success mean being able to afford a home in one of the most expensive real estate markets in North America?

If I were to say "I'm not successful because I only make $200K and can't afford a home in Manhattan", people would laugh in my face.

I think we're radically changing the goal posts of success if a wide swath of educated, hard working young professionals can't afford to lay down roots in the cities they grew up in because of the current absurd asset bubble's effect on home prices.

Additionally, your example is kinda silly. on an income of $200k, you can afford a high end luxury apartment with approximately half of your income - as a bachelor.

I think you have it backwards. It’s not that there is an asset bubble, it’s that labor is feeling the effects of globalization. The lifestyle that people in the US have come to expect (urban home ownership for instance) was a historical anomaly based on the United States unique position as the leading super power post two world wars that decimated the rest of the globe but pre labor globalization.

The reality is most people will never attain the 20th century consumer lifestyle and I think a lot of people would argue that’s a good thing.

I don't disagree that real estate is inflated due to cheap money, but I would challenge the idea that just because you were born in a city you have the right to expect to be able to own a home there.

As for the $200K comment, I meant own a home, not rent an apartment.

No, but if you work in a city, you should be able to afford a home there. And that's increasingly not the case anymore.

Are you saying extreme length commutes should be the norm?

They already are in NYC, but thankfully the train and subway alleviate that somewhat.

The interesting thing is that people are willing to put up with commutes that long. Or, they just suck it up and move their family into a one-bedroom.

Point is, if people aren't willing to do it, it won't ever change.

200k annual income is enough to service the mortgage on a luxury apartment on Manhattan proper without straining the budget too much. This is about owning, not renting.

If you meant 'detached house' by home that's another thing entirely.

Though getting the money for a down payment is a bigger problem. It takes a while to save up the $250K down + closing costs (let's not forget that 1% mansion tax) on a $1.2M one bedroom apartment.

Depends on what you define as hard work. There's stories on Reddit's late stage capitalism subforum about a graduated biochemist entertaining customers at Starbucks with random facts; it was considered cute by the original poster, like, wow, a smart barista. While it was sad that he worked hard to get his papers but couldn't land a job.

I don't see how job opportunities in any field reflect on whether or not hard work is effective?

Presumably they worked hard to get that degree.

It proves that hard work had nothing to do with succeeding. Getting a biochemistry degree is hard work yet it gave the owner nothing more than a job a high schooler can do.

I'll throw in a personal anecdote too.

The hardest worker I've ever met was the manager of the produce department at a grocery store I worked at as a teenager. He was here on political asylum from a South American country. His (and my) manager lied to the state department to get him deported because "Mexicans need to go back to where they belong". Afaik he's now rotting in a particularly shitty prison despite doing everything he should have and more.

Simply because they worked hard to get the degree doesn't mean that the degree is useful, or benefits society.

If there is currently an over saturation of bio-chemists in relation to the amount of jobs open, he cannot add anything to the greater food. From that, there is no reason that his degree/hard work should grant him personal benefits, as he would be taking more than he is giving. Very few people would argue that someone who does a bunch of worthless hard work (something like digging ditches and refilling them) deserves stuff, simply because it required a lot of effort, as what they are doing adds no value to society. Therefore, if the biochemist has a degree that took him a lot of time and work, but isn't needed, there is no reason he should get benefits just because he did work.

I believe the issue is people saying "hard work leads to success" fail to add on that "hard work leads to success, given that you are doing something valuable".

Maybe it should be a little more clear what is considered 'valuable', before people spend years of their life's efforts and a great deal of money on education.

The data is readily available to make an informed decision. It’s the responsibility of the person getting in debt to do the research.

Except that can change within the 4-5 year lag time between entering school and graduating.

People definitely should not be making huge bets on such unstable industries.

Forgive my ignorance - where is this data?

Pretty much everywhere. Here’s the first google result for “starting salary by major”: http://time.com/money/collection-post/3829776/heres-what-the...

basic necessities of life, healthcare, and no worry with emergency destroying you completely

Not really... I've known hard workers, they work hard, no success, they work hard, an unlucky event intervenes, they work hard, still no success, so on and so on and so they ask: what's the point in hard work? Can you blame them? Even to be a hard-worker implies that you've been lucky enough in life to see a correlation between hard-work and success.

What does "no success" mean in this context?

Let's go with homeless. Plenty of hard workers end up homeless.

I believe this comment is going to trigger my rate-limit so apologies for not being able to give further context. But to one: how about being poor, working hard and then staying poor?

More importantly why should it matter how someone defines success? I think the false and self-perpetuating notion of meritocracy is massively benefitted by the lowered expectations of the lower class. If I'm born poor, making it to lower middle class could be a huge success for me, if I'm born rich that same outcome would be a massive failure. Even to acknowledge that that is true is admission of how massively tilted opportunity is. If the poor and the rich had the same visions of success, they dreamed the same dream, do you think we could still say with a straight face that, really, hard-work is the most important factor in success? I don't think so.

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