Most of those people received educations costing upwards of $60,000.
Re:The Refragmentation
by bespoke_engnr on Sunday January 03, 2016 @12:57PM
(#10831450)
I love HN as much as the next person but suggesting that the people who hang out here are somehow representative of anything except for the most lucky, wealthy, and privileged members of our society seems a bit strange.
The point you're making about tech startup costs is true, of course, although it looks like statistically speaking the chances of hitting it big are only slightly better than 'will become a famous singer' or 'will play for the NBA.'
But even if we assume that an average human with a laptop and AWS can now make it big, it seems like in the meantime so much of the other things that working-class people had going for them in the 1960s -- being able to support a family on construction wages, for example -- are gone.
You mean if you can't afford a computer and an AWS account you can't get started? Sure, maybe not, but it's a far cry from the capital you needed in the 1960s to get started. I bet a lot of the readers of this forum know people personally that have made a million dollars or more with their laptop (to a first order approximation).