The kids that fall into this bucket talk about it a lot (when they’re successful). The vast majority of successful people in America (for some definition of success) did not drop out, and the vast majority of drop outs do not find this type of mainstream success.
This is not to say that dropouts without that kind of success aren’t happy. I do believe that America does afford a lot of leeway for people to be happy and comfortable in non-traditional life paths. They’re just not the ones being discussed din this comment.
