
Dear Bernie. I’m Sorry I Am the Problem with America - sebg
https://medium.com/@robmay/dear-bernie-i-m-sorry-i-am-the-problem-with-america-40d03eee071f#.ac5jwrjvo
======
sbenj
I have nothing but admiration for the writers hard work, and I (as a Bernie
fan) want to strongly object to it. I think my objections and his mirror the
political divide in this country - the left wants a more compassionate world,
the right sees the desire for redistribution as lazy people wanting to take
from the people who've actually earned. While there's a bit of truth in both
viewpoints, I'd ask him to consider :

\- because he had to go through this experience, should everybody? would it be
better if we had, say, government-paid college? more opportunity? maybe he
could have studied something he wanted?

\- do we really want a society where you pretty much have to choose between
entrepreneurship or starvation? No poets? physicist? Teachers?

\- college is far less affordable now then when he or I went to school (didn't
read the cite at the end, sorry, but the fact is there regardless of who's
responsible)

\- Our society has unquestionably become more economically savage in the last
few decades. Out of work? good luck on your health care, sucker. Do we really
want a society where everybody has to give up everything to strive to be
wealthy because that's the only safe harbor?

~~~
nonanako
College is probably a lot more expensive than it needs to be -- do we really
want to pick up that inflated bill? There has to be a better solution. I only
went to college to get away from my parents (and party) for four years. I
probably didn't need the excessive campus and amenities.

~~~
jjn2009
College costs are decided by the market, and right now there is no shortage of
those who can get their hands on loans, and there is not much limit to the
size of loans they can get, so prices have to go up until supply and demand
hit equilibrium.

So it absolutely _does_ need to be expensive, because scarce resources such as
an education have an inverse relationship between degree value and number of
degree holders. Otherwise it will be soon enough that our advanced engineering
degrees are worth much less than before. Software Engineering average salary
doesn't even keep up with inflation any more so in my opinion we are already
seeing these effects.

Also I would argue a lot of the worthless degrees we see today are worthless
due to both the volume of the holders of those degrees as well as the fact
that they are premised on a field which doesn't have much practical value but
if they were scarce they would be worth much more in the job market.

------
yolesaber
This is one of the most insipid pieces of writing I've read on this site in a
long time. Despite apparently achieving his dreams and becoming a millionaire,
he sounds very bitter and unhappy because...a politician isn't paying him lip
service and personally thanking him? Because people have hard lives and want
to see a system that works for them rather than oppressing them under of the
guise of "hard work pays off"?

"But the wonderful thing about America is that if you are willing to make the
right sacrifices, you can achieve whatever you want."

Except this is patently false for a large, growing portion of people, those
that get denied opportunities because of their race, their class, their names,
their lack of funds.

The whole rhetoric of "I gritted my teeth and pulled up my sleeves and became
a millionaire and you can too!" is so hollow and facetious in its victim-
blaming that it's insulting.

So yes, Rob May, I do think you are part of the problem. Not because you are a
millionaire or worked hard, but because you are myopic and unsympathetic to
anyone who is not like you.

~~~
lcr94
This doesn't make a lot of sense.

It is not "patently false" that a large population will not achieve what they
want through hard work because they lack a certain racial or socioeconomic
edge. It is true that they will have to work harder, but it does not mean they
are barred from trying. Why do you think that people are victims of their skin
colour and heritage? Why does that make them a second class citizen?

~~~
yolesaber
I'm not saying they are barred from trying, just that matters are stacked
against them and that's why people are upset and want change. Rob May seems to
think they just need to "work harder".

>Why do you think that people are victims of their skin colour and heritage?

Because studies have shown that people with "black" or "ethnic" names are
often passed over in favor of more European/Christian names. Because an entire
generation of minority fathers were systemically targeted by police as part of
the misguided War on Drugs. Because nearly fifty percent of the wealth gained
by blacks was wiped out in the housing crisis because they were the victims of
predatory loan practices.

>Why does that make them a second class citizen?

In America, if you don't have money you are a second class citizen. If you are
black, in many areas you are a second class citizen. I wish more than anything
this was not the case but it is a reality that I've witnessed and that many
have to fight through.

Just saying "hey, sorry things are broken and you are at a huge disadvantage,
guess you'll have to work harder!" is a pathetic redress to the economic
realities of today.

------
Joof
This man worked hard, took risks and got rewards from it; I don't think this
is something that anyone wants to punish. He certainly isn't a bad guy.
Neither is any other rich person; they are taking maximum advantage of a
system that produces outcomes that can be disproportionate to the hard work
and risk that people put in.

Mark Zuckerberg is ~$50 billion (I'm sure theres an exact number somewhere).
This means he is likely to be around 1000x richer than the person writing this
article. Did he take larger risks or work harder or was he 1000x more
effective at his job?

Wall street trading is a high value job and many PHDs are hired to work in the
field. It produces almost nothing of value. We have a system that provides
incentives for the brightest people to do something that provides no value and
hides all their innovations (trade secrets!).

Then there's the question of economic stratification's impact on the market
itself; it's largely agreed on that reducing the difference is better (and
that everyone equal is equally silly). Billionaires just don't spend the
majority of their money or bother putting it back into the economy because
they don't have to.

I also want 'free' college. Investing in education tends to pay off for
everybody who can hack it. These people contribute more to society (even as
artists) and are much more likely to be out of poverty, make more money,
advance society and generally be good citizens. Having the government pay 100%
gives them more leverage over what the colleges spend money on and may
actually reduce the costs (but IANAE). If a productive person has more time in
college to explore their interests, might they be more productive overall?
Most unskilled service jobs add very little to society; instead of working a
job, he could have been building his company or saving that money to put
towards his company.

Bernie's rallying cry is politics; it vilifies people instead of the system
that they naturally take advantage. This works well as a narrative, but the
people aren't villains. I'd much rather have as many productive people as
possible take advantage of systems that create the most progress in society
overall.

------
kalekold
A very interesting comment:

"I find it interesting that you don’t mention the fact that you’re a VP of
Datto, which just happens to be one of the companies under investigation by
the FBI for Hillary Clinton’s classified email debacle. I think most people
would think that it is a conflict of interest that you write against the
candidate possibly preventing her becoming president, since her being
president of the united states would probably take a lot of potential stress
off of you and your company… especially since we still don’t know who had
access to those classified emails." \- Ryan

~~~
a_shane
Ooh, I'm glad I scrolled down to see your comment identifying this (I
generally avoid the comments section online unless it's on HN, heh).

I was taken aback by a lot of statements made in the article, which seemed to
essentially state "I worked hard and it's not fair if other people don't have
to, too" but in light of this his stance on the matter makes a lot of sense.

------
curtis
I don't think the author is "the problem with America". On the other hand I
_do_ think he should be paying more in taxes.

If you want to talk about "problems with America", well one of them is this
notion that we only two choices and they are one extreme or the other.

~~~
antod
I don't think he's sorry about it either.

------
niftich
Author, over the course of at least 15 years, worked 2 jobs to fund his way
through college and went on to start several businesses. He credits his work
ethic and contends that he sacrificed a great deal to get where he ended up.
However, he feels like Sanders guilts and scapegoats people like him for being
millionaires who "everything was handed to (...)" and "don't deserve the money
they made".

He descends into bitter resentment towards "people like the smart Yale student
who majors in something useless, travels the world, and then graduates with
$100,000 in debt that people like me should pay off via higher taxes." People
much like "(...) many of the college students [he's] hired in the last few
years. They study what they love — philosophy, political science, art,
regardless of whether or not they have good job prospects. They travel. Mostly
they seem to go to Vietnam and Cambodia. They eat out a lot more than [he] did
at their age. They know all the trendy restaurants and hot bars."

Author's experience exclusively reflects of class envy in the Northeast United
States: trust fund babies vs. hard-working self-made entrepreneurs, old money
vs. new money, liberal arts majors vs. business majors, carefree (careless)
people vs. an adversarial 'the world is rigged against me' work ethic. He
unironically suggests "Unfortunately, we've come to believe that achievement
should be easy. Changing that attitude is the first step towards making
yourself more successful." His worldview is framed along this dichotomy; if
you're not one, you must be the other. In his view, socioeconomic background
has two discrete states: rich by birth and not-yet-rich, race and gender are
not considered, and attitude is paramount.

~~~
yolesaber
The dichotomy between the "liberal arts" students and STEM/ aka what the
author considers"successful" people is one of the biggest annoyances I have
about modern tech culture. In the 60s and 70s, some of the most significant
computing advances were made by implementing ideas from the humanities with an
extraordinary degree of technical acumen - this was Douglas Engelbart's whole
MO. The book "What the Doormouse Said" is a great overview of this. I wish
more tech people realized that they aren't diametrically opposed to one
another. They need each other.

------
nattaylor
>According to Bernie, the world needs fewer people like me, and more people
like the smart Yale student who majors in something useless, travels the
world, and then graduates with $100,000 in debt that people like me should pay
off via higher taxes.

This is either a cheapshot or a fundamental misunderstanding of Sanders'
vision. Sander's policy proposals are designed to benefit the middle class and
he isn't even proposing any changes to federal income tax for those households
earning under $250k (which is plausible for the author becoming a millionaire
over 15 years.) It seems more fair to debate the viability of his policies,
than the goals.

------
pinnen
Comments like this (from the author in response to another comment): "Also,
where is this hunger problem? I keep reading the poor have an obesity problem.
Which is it?" makes it very hard for me to sympathize with anything he has to
say.

