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Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

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Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#241

Post by sjg007 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #238
sjg007 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one issue with home appliances is that they are becoming disposable and cheap enough to just throw away and buy if it breaks. Although the higher end stuff still breaks down and may justify a repair cost but a $300 dishwasher does not. Even washer and dryers are now very close to being disposable. I would have hoped it had gone the other way with today's products being super reliable due to improved manufacturing…

I think you can get cheap and reliable still, but it takes some looking. (I'd probably start with Consumer Reports.)

I bought a Consumer Reports highly rated dishwasher last year and it's turned out to be a complete nightmare. In fact the thing has destroyed my countertop and cabinet. In retrospect, googling the dishwasher brand/model and issues (steam / excessive moisture) basically would've saved me the pain since other people already had reported similar problems. I think my issue though is I didn't buy the cheapest one.. instead I got a whole kitchen package.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#242

Post by Consultant32452 »

wahern wrote: post #232
Consultant32452 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want the state to stop poor people from earning a decent living just because they haven't completed the full set of requirements for a state sanctioned certification? The going rate to have your main sewer line snaked in my area is $250. If that's the only thing you know how to do, why can't you just sell that service?

Because clients are rarely capable of judging competency. You can crack pipes with a snake. Furthermore, certifications typically come with a registration requirement, meaning clients have a mechanism for formally filing complaints. Similarly, there are often bond requirements, meaning you know that if the technician screws up a job you'll have a decent chance at recovering damages. Getting a bond without securing th…

ALL certification requirements are intended to limit entrants into the market. Whether or not that's worthwhile is subjective.

If a client is uncertain of their ability to judge risk, then they can hire from a trusted industry provider/union and pay a premium. I'd still like the ability to legally hire a poor person who may not have received a good enough public education to fulfill all of the state requirements for certification if the job is low risk enough. And I suspect the poor person would generally like to feed themselves or their family, so it's a win-win except for the incumbent wealthy who don't want their prices under-cut.

I don't need the government to tell me the electronics I buy are safe to plug into an outlet, there's private UL certification for that. I generally don't need the government to tell me who I'm allowed to pay for anything, even medicine.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#243

Post by coolaliasbro »

austenallred wrote: post #92
SapphireSun wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're downvoting me, and that's natural. I assume the bulk of vocal HNers are ancap libertarians (possibly some of you aligning with the Dark Enlightenment). However, you should take what I said more seriously. It represents a point of view with which you've perhaps had little contact, but is held by a significant (possibly even growing) portion of the population. It is diametrically opposed to many of the precepts…

The reason you’re getting downvoted has less to do with your argument and more to do with your tone. The strawman doesn’t help either.

Can you clarify the issue with parent's tone? I only read a set of rhetorical questions that made a slight appeal to emotion, which seems appropriate considering that the future of peoples' livelihoods are being discussed.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#244

Post by soundwave106 »

bsder wrote: post #70

Um, where are the statistics showing that wages in the trades are rising? Everything I have seen indicates that wages in the trades are stagnant which implies that they don't need any more people. Dumping a whole bunch of people into a system already at close to optimum employment will not benefit workers .

The BLS data that I've looked at between 2010 (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/home.htm) and 2016 (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/home.htm) seems to show a median pay rise of roughly 10% over that time period. (I only sampled a few trades -- carpentry, electrician, and plumbing -- to get that figure.)

This is honestly less of a wage increase than, say, computer programming, over that time period (see BLS data, 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20120401201347/https://www.bls.g... vs 2016 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...).

But it is certainly better than, say, the modest 9% average increase in wages for cashiers and retail workers (2010 -- https://web.archive.org/web/20120409173908/http://www.bls.go... vs 2016 -- https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/home.htm).

(Pity the poor modeling occupation, pay has actually decreased 33% during this time period).

Generally speaking, I still see a fair bit of "college premium" in the BLS data -- I would think it would be incorrect to interpret the headline advice overly broadly. However, I do think it's true that not all college degrees are equal, and that some vocational degrees might work out better as ROI goes.

"Trade school degrees" is also quite a broad term. For some reason, the construction trades are emphasized on HN when this topic comes up, but it's worth pointing out that "trade school degrees" also include occupations like some medical careers (nursing, dental hygiene, technicians), police and fire services, paralegals, and plenty of other career paths with fairly bright prospects as of now. The BLS shows growth rate in plumbing to be faster than average, but the same goes for RNs and paralegals.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#245

Post by AnimalMuppet »

erikb wrote: post #105

A financial gap of any kind comes from unfair advantages in a vastly complex system. How could something like that be solved by attending another kind of school. Imo these are two totally independent things.

A different kind of school can leave you prepared to exploit a different kind of gap. If that gap is the one that is currently widening, then being positioned to exploit it can be a wise choice, in two ways.

First, it can be wise for you. There's a lot of money to be made in filling that gap.

Second, though, it can be wise for society. That gap is growing because there aren't enough people going into that area to keep up with demand. That is, society needs more people doing that. It can help society function to have people meet that need.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#246

Post by quicklyfrozen »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #223
dmoy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a duplex and my neighbors are always impressed when I do simple things like fix cat5 cable caps, screw/caulk down a loose doorframe trim, or sometimes even just for having basic tools at all. When I was installing my blinds when I first moved in, a group of neighbors from down the street were walking by and asked me (through the open window) if I was the hired help (guess cus I looked too young to be the ow…

> It's like when you see the meme/trope about Ikea furniture being hard to assemble. Oh dear, I always thought that was about missing parts or pieces not fitting. This gives a new perspective …

I don't think missing or misfitting parts is a common problem with Ikea -- I've certainly put together a fair amount and haven't run into those problems.

TBH, I think many people don't have the patience to follow the instructions. Even with the wordless ones Ikea uses, it can take a few minutes of study to understand the exact orientation of pieces a diagram is calling for.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#247

Post by berbec »

GhostVII wrote: post #56
berbec wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The 6-year national college graduation rate is 59% for White students, 51% for Hispanic students, 46% for Black females, and 35% for Black males."[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_...

There are racial differences with pretty much everything in the US. Are benefits for poor people racist because they disproportionally help black people? Is having a required entrance average for universities racist because black people have statistically lower grades/graduation rates? Sure, if you are choosing to filter applicants based on criteria where the only effect of the filtering is changing the racial distri…

I agree, but there is potentially a larger point when part of the cause is unequal access to education based on race.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#248

Post by GuiA »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #228
GuiA wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wild to me too, but rich lazy people who subcontract out everything is much better for society than rich people who hoard their money forever, so I'm certainly not going to shame them about it :)

maybe they are rich because they work hard/long for more than $30/hr ?

It doesn't really matter to me why they're rich as long as a proportional amount of their earnings is reinvested in their local community, jobs, and infrastructure :)

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#249

Post by wahern »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #242
wahern wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because clients are rarely capable of judging competency. You can crack pipes with a snake. Furthermore, certifications typically come with a registration requirement, meaning clients have a mechanism for formally filing complaints. Similarly, there are often bond requirements, meaning you know that if the technician screws up a job you'll have a decent chance at recovering damages. Getting a bond without securing th…

ALL certification requirements are intended to limit entrants into the market. Whether or not that's worthwhile is subjective. If a client is uncertain of their ability to judge risk, then they can hire from a trusted industry provider/union and pay a premium. I'd still like the ability to legally hire a poor person who may not have received a good enough public education to fulfill all of the state requirements for…

UL certification requirements are often incorporated by reference into law. Which is one reason why there's not a proliferation of private standards in that space, with the concomitant race to the bottom.

_You_ might not need the nanny state to protect yourself from yourself, but many people do. In fact, pretty much everybody does, at some point in their lives, in some circumstances. (You just don't know when or where.) And because their loses are invariably externalized one way or another, society has an interest in providing minimum safeguards.

It's like taxes: taxes wouldn't work if everybody got to pick and choose where their taxes went. These solutions are intended to solve collective action problems, which by definition cannot readily and consistently be solved by everybody acting independently.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#250

Post by AnimalMuppet »

austenallred wrote: post #48

It should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever been to college that the model there isn't exactly one of "efficiency." My first two years were a good time, but if you're a 45-year-old man trying to get skilled as quickly as possible to put food on the table, taking three credits of Shakespeare just seems silly (and I absolutely adore Shakespeare). Not to mention the fact that the notion that you should decide wha…

Well, the 4 year degree at 18 may give you a framework to hang the rest of your learning on - the learning that you're going to have to continue to do throughout your career. The problem is, as you say, that it's too inefficient (and therefore expensive).

Something like Lambda schools may well be the answer - if you can scale it. (You say you can only cover a tiny portion of the market. What scaling problems do you face?)

What I think is really needed, long term, is something like an accredited institution that acts like a clearing house. You want a BS in CS? You need to cover at least this much material. Among the classes will be, say, advanced algorithms. For advanced algorithms, we recognize any one of this set of online classes as valid. That way, with the clearinghouse, you can get a degree that the wider world will recognize, purely online, from a variety of sources.

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