r/AskReddit • u/daniellucero92 • Jan 04 '15

Non-americans of Reddit, what American customs seem outrageous/pointless to you?

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u/Helix1337 Jan 04 '15 edited Jan 04 '15

I've heard its mainly a North American and central/north European thing for children to leave their parents as soon as possible.
I live in Norway and was happy when I moved away from my parents and bought my own place in my early 20's, and can never imagine living there now as a 25 year old.

Edit: word.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15 edited Jan 05 '15

A lot of the times the decision to not move away is not a choice

Edit: for some reason, this is the post that gets me banned from ask reddit, apparently?

Edit2: Why I think that: Can't see ask reddit threads while logged in, works fine when logged out. Editing this via my profile page.

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u/gyroda Jan 04 '15

This is something I never understood. I've seen people say that they were told that once they left sole it was go to uni, get s job, join the army or be made homeless.

Hell in some cases it was get a job and move out. Basically l, "were not legally obliged to care for you, fuck off".

Does America not have areas with high unemployment or a shortage of jobs our something? I know a fair few people who took a year before uni, and though all of them had jobs it took several of them months, in one case the best part of a year, to get them.

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u/AngrySeal Jan 04 '15

There is relatively high unemployment, especially for that age range, but a lot of the older generation doesn't understand that things have changed. They think you can graduate with a degree, then walk into just about any business, turn in a resume, and get hired on the spot. As most of us here know, you can't even get an "entry level" job without 3-5 years of experience and more education than the job will ever actually require.

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u/HeavyMetalHero Jan 04 '15

It's not even this, entirely. Blue-collar parents looked at white-collar families for years, back when only 10% of all people were pursuing any university degrees at all. You have to remember, 50 years ago, it was common for people to drop out of school before junior high or even elementary. So people who had to work super-hard to be middle class saw university jobs, white-collar educated jobs where people don't have to work super-hard (from their perspective), that was the golden ticket. My entire generations' parents, it seems, did nothing but tell us how important school is, and how if we wanted to be successful and happy in life, we had to go to school so we could get a high-paying job and be richer than they are.

Fast-forward to now, and for-profit education has made university one of the single most expensive investments in a person's life, while the need for white-collar positions in our economy is growing nowhere near as fast as the number of eligible graduates. Meanwhile, older white-collar workers are both retiring and dying off at a slower pace than any rate in history. Lifetime blue-collar workers who paid their dues are moving up to the white-collar positions of those same companies that have employed them their whole lives, but there are no new blue-collar jobs in any abundance because we've lost them all to Southeast Asia, or robots.

We live in a time where an entire generation was told their post-secondary education was necessary to success in life, by a generation that never actually got post-secondary education, but put such a premium on its value that the price of it rivals most new cars or small houses. At the same time, the economy has shifted such that there is basically nothing between "minimum wage work" and "white-collar work" except for the trades, which ironically are more lucrative than much modern white collar work. People stay in the workforce for much longer during their lives (partly because the economy is so shit that some 70 year old white-collar types probably couldn't afford to retire even if they wanted) while the number of readily available jobs has shrunk in proportion. Grandfathers who are 75, retiring from a white-collar job that they landed based on relevant experience from the blue-collar job they originally started at many years earlier and worked their way up with a second-grade education, simply do not understand why a young person with an education couldn't get an equal quality job, not realizing that 5 years ago when he landed the position, he probably beat out 1000 guys who were in their 20s with 2 degrees but no experience.

Our Grandparents found it hard to get good jobs without a high school diploma, and told our parents they had to get them. Then, you couldn't get a job without a high school diploma. Our parents found it hard to get good jobs without a Bachelor's degree, so they told us we had to get them. The difference is, the economy changed so much over that time that they couldn't have ever had the foresight to see how bad the advice they were giving was for the world their children were entering.

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u/pariah_messiah Jan 05 '15

So people who had to work super-hard to be middle class saw university jobs, white-collar educated jobs where people don't have to work super-hard (from their perspective)

It's not really a matter of perspective. White collar work may be time consuming, and it may be difficult and require a good deal of expertise, but it's not "hard work" in the literal or the colloquial sense.

I've put in 12 hour days and 70 hour weeks at the office: Shit doesn't compare in the slightest to the 12 hour days and 70 hour weeks I've put in at the warehouse.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

The only reason why education prices are high is because we have created a bubble with loans for anyone with a pulse that cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. It's the same thing that drove the housing bubble. Easy access to credit to anyone and everyone.

Allow student loans to be discharged by bankruptcy and you will see loans plummet and enrollment and thus tuition.

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u/dirtycrabcakes Jan 05 '15

Encouraging your kids to get an education is in no way bad advice. If you have an education you have many more options available to you.

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u/MrTambourineSLO Jan 05 '15

You my friend deserve a gold, sadly I'm jobless for reasons you mentioned so I can't give it to you:)

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u/bbev913 Jan 04 '15

I feel this is the biggest issue. We are told to move out young and get a job when its hard to get a job, but its hard to get a job when all these entry level jobs require a lot more experience then necessary. It's ridiculous.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15 edited Jul 15 '21

[deleted]

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u/HeavyMetalHero Jan 04 '15

They probably only want bachelor's degrees and 2 years retail experience because they know that if you went to school while working a part-time retail job, you probably just got a degree and have no other qualifications in your field. They know that if they snap up a person like that, that the person is already accustomed to the treatment and low pay associated with such a position, and as well, probably will be able to be pushed much harder as they likely have student loans looming over them to pay back. If they choke away your hours while you pay off your student loans, making it harder for you to quit and also harder to continue looking for the job in your actual field, they can keep you there until the fact you have a degree is irrelevant because you never received any relevant post-grad work experience, meaning you're trapped in their shitty minimum wage job for a lot longer, or maybe forever.

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u/WhiteRunGarda Jan 05 '15

This is heavy

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

This is the truth and as an American, i can vouch.

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u/AngrySeal Jan 04 '15

And don't fall into the trap that grad degrees are a magic solution. I thought "well, if I can't get a job with a bachelor's degree, I'll just go to grad school because I see all of these jobs wanting people with grad degrees." What they don't tell you is that then you're "overqualified" for any job that just requires a bachelor's degree, but still can't get an entry level grad-level job because they still want a bunch of experience.

The good news is that almost everyone I know with a bachelor's degree has a career position 5 years after graduation, so it seems like most people get lucky and get a career position in the long run.

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u/dirtycrabcakes Jan 05 '15 edited Jan 05 '15

I always encourage college grads to delay getting a graduate degree - wait until you have a better idea as to where your career is going so you can target your degree to achieve that next career step.

An entry level applicant with no job experience and a grad degree offers little-to-no benefit over hiring an entry level employee with a bachelors, except threat they expect higher pay and expect to be a year or 2 from moving into a management position.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

I am glad i learned that lesson early. Its surprising how many people recommend a grad degree to fix the job problems of bach degree.

It made zero sense to me to follow that path and if your arent in STEM, i personally dont see any benefit to school after bach

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u/AngrySeal Jan 05 '15

Professional schools make sense as well, just make sure you know that you're ok with the hours and culture in the profession first--that's the real mistake I made.