"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> I would not call that "make it". Maybe once they own couple of houses or business.

You sound exactly like the snobby kids in the story, judging who can be proud of "making it" and who can't.

Anyone who doesn't own a couple houses or business should feel ashamed for not "making it".

OP argued that US is so great, since it allows immigrants to "make it" by collecting trash. It is exactly this type of smugness, false positivism and immigrant exploitation I hate.

People should not be ashamed for not owning a house. But they should also know that chance to buy a house for unqualified worker in NY is 0.001%. If there is a realistic view of situation in US, they may stay at their home country.

Why attend college at all? By going to college, she's implying that people who haven't gone to college don't have exactly the same opportunities and security as anyone else. She's the real snob.

So you need to own a couple houses or businesses to be considered one who made it? I don’t have one of either, but I am somewhere where I feel I made it. Less of a safety net than if I owned a house of business, but then again those are too expensive to be pursued with no attention to alternatives and also provide a very porous shield from the crises.

Her parents collected cans to give their child an education and now her writing is on the front page of hackernews.

They fucking made it.

For whatever reason HN nerds love stories about recycling even though this family is clearly poor and not making good financial decisions.

Ah yes the good old, being poor is a character flaw. There's plenty of evidence that being poor is primarily due to nothing else but lack of money. But the rich/middle class love to feel superior by saying people are poor because of bad financial decisions.

He didn't say it was a character flaw. It's just context in which to put their other financial decisions.

The financial risk analysis of college is very different when you're poor.

I'm not saying it's a character flaw. I'm saying they held onto a job that wasn't optimal based on their other available options. They could have been middle class had they chosen another job. Down right negligent honestly since they clearly had no healthcare that entire time. One illness could have thrown them on the street.

> They could have been middle class had they chosen another job.

What the effing f? So they "chose" to be poor?

Actually.... Yea. In this case that's exactly what's happening. It's like if you got a job at McDonald's working minimum wage when you were 16 but then you never moved on.

When customizing their character, they should have chosen a different profession than "garbage picker" on the selection screen. To be honest, I really don't know how they found it - I didn't see garbage picker on the menu at all, and I don't even know any garbage pickers.

They funded their kid through school, they didn’t do that badly.

Yeah we don't know if the parents even ever tried to find better jobs, or if they just found the one job and kept at it.