I wouldn't call living paycheck to paycheck "making it." Most people aren't making it--by the numbers.

I know the type of person that posts these kinds of incredibly out of touch comments on here. You work at a corporation, or your skills are currently in high demmand. You are surrounded by people making good money. This insulates you, leading you to extrapolate the conditions you are living under over the WHOLE WORLD--today's world!

Let them eat cake?

In today's world it's: let them withdraw from their 401k if they fall on hard times.

It's ridiculous and frankly insulting and dismissive of the plight of many struggling people. It's the old aristocratic mentality: anyone that doesn't succeed is a fuck up. It's a method of projecting the failings of the system onto those it fails, used over and over throughout history.

I suspect with the political instability of this nation, we won't be having these types of arguments much longer. As the system fails, debates will become viciously partisan. There will be no more "if you try hard, you can succeed." Everything will be reduced to, "Submit to the will of the party, and you're good. Don't and you're a traitor deserving of elimination." This is what happens when people retreat behind slogans and refuse to address reality. Things break down, then things get out of control because we have failed to adapt. Then comes the age of horror where the system has to destructively seek a new equilibrium.

It depends how you define "success" of course, but by my criteria of "living with financial independence, real happiness, and the ability to choose what impact you have on the world" very few HN readers will ever be successful. We trade our happiness and satisfaction that comes from making a real impact on the world for a pile of cash to make tech people don't care about.