zlacker

There is a pretty high threshold before book learning provides any payoff. The minimum cutoff that some employers take seriously is 12 years of school or the equivalent. Lets guess the guy selling pens is at a grade level of half that. If he could self-teach at the same rate as the education system would advance him (unlikely), that is still 6 years of sitting in a library before reaching the first threshold of significance (GED). Self-teaching is not a likely road out of a desperate situation!

>>dzdt+(OP)
There is one kind of learning that you do to get a job. But education in general is something that is beyond that.

Learning basic personal finance, or a skill, or learning to exercise, or reading about government services, learning cooking etc can go a great deal in fixing one's problems.

Education often involves learning something, its not always reading text books and writing exams.

>>dzdt+(OP)
Payoff is somewhat proportional to self-education effort. For a big payoff you may need to spend years on learning. But for many people earning extra few hundreds bucks per month can drastically change their lifestyle. And that kind of change doesn't require years of self-education, but a little bit of curiosity, determination and perseverance.