My advice to smart, hungry college grads: Be born rich

Congrats: You just learned America's secret to a successful life!

Life isn’t fair.

Felix Salmon, a famous digital journalist, has been arguing for some time now that the prospects for a career in digital journalism are not great, and young people considering the field should look elsewhere. Because technology is constantly revolutionizing the market, giving capital a big advantage over labor, skills are going to be rapidly devalued, and today's cutting edge digital natives are going to be yesterday's chemical photography experts.

As a working digital journalist, I'd naturally prefer not to believe Salmon's case, but it is pretty solid. The problem with the general case is he doesn't consider the counterfactual: What else are you going to do? You can make a similar case for just about any profession nowadays — and for well-remunerated careers, past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.