The Choice

100k plus is a choice, one that I was not aware of the implications and thus I sit here trying to find a forum to educate future generations, but it was still a choice to make.

As a 'lower' middle class teenager, college was most certainly an option, especially for someone like myself who excelled in that environment, but there were other choices, many of which I see my peers having made and doing much better than myself at this point.

Well, I guess there wasnt many choices, college, mooch, or work, as my simple mind can put together.  I chose college as did many of my equals, intellectually (ha that's a stretch for myself to deem myself intellectual but we'll run with it) not all economically, in high school.  Others who did not see the benefit of more schooling chose work.  I wont go into option b, but I assume there is a choice to do nothing and allow those, society and family, around you to cover the tab.

Work presented many benefits that college did not. Money.

I started working at age 15 and made a couple thousand each yeah but no more than 8k until I start my professional career.  Maybe that was a lack of motivation to be something more while being an academic but either way I did not make an above poverty level wage until 23 while those who chose work made a full time workers salary, whether that be even minimum wage, still add in up to around 15k a year.  Others took it further and work allowed them to make much more than that, thus receive the benefits of financial freedom prior to college graduates.

Work seems like a much more viable option, but the ceiling is much lower, or the potential ceiling I must say is much lower. But that's all obvious.

But that's also all a choice.

A necessary choice by a mind much to young and inexperienced to understand the life long implocations or either choice.

But that's another argument for another blog.

The choice I chose was 100k plus, one I assumed and hope would lead to an accounting position, a career path I was told in high school was booming.

I never made it to that career path, and thus I sit here and bitch, or preach, or try to pen words to show others(ha like who? I must ask) to make a more informed choice.

A New York Time article(today's for some reference other than my babbling) called 'Falling wages at factories squeeze the middle class' make the choice of Work seem much less viable, and the choice in general much more complex.  It basically sums up that manufacturing positions, which I saw some 'friends' pursue, do not simply pay as well as they once did.  Also obvious,  at least in my eyes, with that field being one sent to foreign (The Elephant and the Dragon, a economic commentary on the rise of both nations worth a read) labor markets that present a much cheaper landscape.  But is that what we must accept.

The article also goes on to explain and show the government's hand in the overall industry, as evidently seen in the auto manufacturing industry, while wages still have succumbed to a decreasing trend. 

One which may seem to be a contradiction in a democratic nation.

For the people?

For the industry.

For the company.

So how is work versus schooling going to win the debate?

I myself have seen wages by a manufacturing company in my community which was taken over by an Indian company, slashed.  A position that was somewhat well paying and held by one of my peers as I went off to college and saw him be able to support himself with the company but the company has been reduced to minimum or close to minimum wage positions for jobs that are above the duties of many workers at that same wage.

This trend is not a welcome in the battle of work versus school but that is what also must be understood, trends at the time of The Choice.

The Choice is not easily formulated, even with my hopeful Life Equation, but its a necessary and inevitable choice.