Europeans often have this opinion but I don't think it's an accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. In the past, you could pay for college by working summers at the local restaurant. Today the average debt is $30K and you still won't get a decent job.

The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship.

Good point. I did not intend to argue otherwise. To go into trade is not an irrational reaction on an individual level — quite the opposite in fact. What I did argue however, was that making it hard for people to get a higher education is not a good thing for a society. Not good in the short term, because educated societes will make more informed decisions, and at the same time not a sustainable strategy for any western society that wants to play any role in the next century.

Having an educated society should be in the national interest just like having public roads or drinkable water is.

> accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything.

That was the American dream. This is a nice model to keep big numbers of people playing the lottery and bear a ton of stress, because they have the hope that one day they might win and then everything will pay off.

But even of you are one of the few lucky ones that wins you still live in a society where 90% are struggling and crushed. There may be people that enjoy being on top while everybody else suffers, but I personally would prefer being middle class in a society where nobody is poor over being a billionaire in a society where everybody is crushed. Maybe this is empathy, but maybe it is also just egoistic: I like to walk through my city and not see suffering, I like to walk through my country without having to fear being robbed, shot or angrily screamed at. I simply prefer living in a healthy, happy society where people help each other over living in one where everybody has to kick down to stay on top.

Not that that any nation achieved that goal, but there are certainly observable differences in tone between the industrial nations.

As I said, the issue is that this hard work no longer results in progress. The system has become broken. This is easily observable via a bevy of statistical measures like inequality and college costs.

I think it leads to people drawing their distinctions, around who is superior and who is inferior, and then it leads to those people making an unnecessary logical jump and deciding that those inferior people need to be HURT or REMOVED… and we've seen all this before.

And they go from there to decide that anyone arguing, wishes to crown those inferior people as the kings, and hurt the superior ones, because that's the only way they can perceive anything anymore… and they just get hostile and paranoid we've seen all that before too.

I don't know how to convince them that seeking a civilized environment for all the people (without it being conditional on performance) produces the best societal result, through the widest possible range for SOME person of whatever description to excel.

It seems like there are a lot of people for whom, they're more than happy to throw away overall system performance because they're mad that anything lower-performing can even exist. They are PC builders so mad that RAM can't run as fast as L2 cache that they're all CPU and refuse to have any RAM installed. It's stark madness from my point of view.

Society functions THROUGH conflict and chaos. It's like brownian motion, noise in circuitry: if you're trying to define an ideology where there's no more conflict, the most direct way is to define an enemy and then rally everyone to destroy it. And that is said to work for a thousand years but actually blows up within ten, leaving enormous wreckage and shame.

Better to design the fault-tolerant system that runs through conflict and chaos.

What you are talking about is a war-based society, a fault-tolerant system, with lots of redundancy, that runs through conflict and chaos. The last two decades were an experiment in that one.

Call it toxic or not, there's a male drive toward autonomy. Joining corporations that are run by HR just isn't as attractive.

That sounds...reasonable. I can't speak for the rest of Europe but a $30k student loan would be perfectly normal after a 4-5 year of study in Sweden.

Back of the envelope, $30k for 4 years is $625 a month and that is not much for just food and rent.

The numbers aren't great, but the majority of students finish with either zero debt or a very manageable amount of debt. There is a small fraction of students taking massive loans that skew the overall picture.

And bachelor degree holders continue to earn, on average, $1 million more than high school graduates over their career.

All that said, I agree college should be affordable without loans. Summer jobs, co-ops/internships, etc.

https://www.aplu.org/projects-and-initiatives/college-costs-...

Many young 20's somethings don't complete college, but end up with debt as well.

If the question is whether is a difficult for society to maintain college as a necessity for success, they should be included in the review.

OECD data seems to suggest so

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...

However, there should be a playground for innovation as well.

Europe makes it so damn hard to innovate because of it's many laws. Ambitious people inevitably move to the US.

(ignore the headline and go to the actual numbers)

Germany is much better at shunting people away from university who are not qualified to be there. Generally, they go to trade schools and apprenticeships.

So I don't have a problem with the MA, but the framing of "life is wonderful in Europe" is missing the fact that the only theoretical upside is you had less choice.

But if paying the full cost, there would be a choice where down one path there is more money because less resources were consumed, and one that would be roughly equivalent.

Flash forward and I start to rethink the decision. I want to go back now, but I’ve attempted multiple times to investigate it and the numbers never work. Because I didn’t play my HS years correctly, the bureaucracy will not let me in, regardless of the things I’ve accomplished in the years since. Additionally the price is just so prohibitive, combined with the fact that I would get next to no aid and even a standard State school would be ridiculously expensive. These are just a handful of the issues though. Let’s not even bring up how I would need a simultaneously drop out of the workforce, suddenly turning the financial burden into Tuition/Books/Fees + everything needed to survive.

I’m really convinced that universities in the US do not want non traditional students at all. Obviously there are some programs that target them, but are often limited. I.e. you have to be part of the right demographic, be limited in the areas you can study. A notable state university near me offers over a dozen online Bachelors programs, but not a single “useful” degree, they’re all BA’s in subjects that people in HN mock. Other seem to cobble together “made up” degrees, which are bachelors that don’t have a traditional or on-campus equivalent and seem to be not particularly useful for employment in attempt to scam poorer, non-credentialed people out of their money.

I could still probably go back, but since I can not hack my way out of the bureaucracy or financial cost, majority of the value proposition would be completely dead by the time o could manage it.

I don’t know where you live or what you want to study, but if you focus on taking the coursework you need it becomes a lot easier. I’d suggest calling admissions departments as well, not trying to piece everything together yourself online. Feel free to email me if you want to share more information and I can give more specific and better researched suggestions.

I mean, what is the goal of a good live? Extract as many resources from your surroundings as possible, kicking your competition down and then die in an slightly above average house? I want to live a good live and leave my environment in a better shape than I entered it in, because the two are not a contradiction.

This seems like a pretty good guiding principle in life.

Thanks cap, there is always this one commenter who thinks we in europe don't understand how taxes work.

Edit: Of course, if you’re very well off and live somewhere that’s relatively stable, large gaps in equality might benefit you. That’s for a select few though.