431–440 of 632 posts
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Learning is not just formal education. Learning costs much less money today than it probably ever has. Practically everyone in the US has the access of all the world's collective information.
And all the free time in the world while working 3 jobs: https://youtu.be/wFNj5sireDo
Wage growth would help, but for some reason, these articles never even mention immigration. The scale of immigration both legal and illegal I believe has the greatest impact on the lowest sectors of society. The lack of discussion on the impact so many potential new workers is having on wage growth leads one to think they believe labor cost is the one thing immune to the law of supply and demand.
The FT had a couple of great podcasts last year ([0], [1]) that discussed the economic and fiscal impacts of immigration. I don't remember all of the details, but the key points were, to the best of my recollection: * Highly skilled/educated immigrants provide a significant boost to economic growth and pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. I don't recall whether the podcast addressed the impact of these im…
In a magical hand-wavey manner where we ignore alternatives, obvious consequences, and opportunity costs.
They gloss over the reason they are considered a net positive is because almost everyone is.
For example their models will show that if the poorest Americans have lots more kids we will collectively be better off.
It’s pretty much just economists and the Catholic Church who believe it.
It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…
>you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. This is a traditional, stereotypical belief that in order to escape poverty you have to work harder. This is old understanding of meritocracy and it's no longer valid. The new meritocracy is that you have to learn harder. And now, given all the learning resources available for free on the internet (which is also very accessible nowadays) it's probably the best t…
Or is this the same old trope with an extra step added?
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Yes, for (1) I had a $10/hr job working as a cashier until I saved up enough for a laptop and got an unpaid internship in tech. For (2) as I said: libraries are free, coffee shops are free. hotel lobbies are free, heck some whole areas have free Wi-Fi. Internet is very easy to find. I'll be the first to admit I had a good education, caring and supportive family, and my story would be different and harder without them…
try being a person of color in a coffee shop or hotel lobby. Maybe you heard about some difficulties for a pair of young men had in a Philadelphia Starbucks?
A few threads seem to believe that the minimum wage is high enough / need not be increased. I don’t actually want to argue about mechanism, but think that it’s imoortant to note that the math says our (current) minimum wage is demonstrably insufficient to remove poverty. With the Federal minimum wage currently at $7.25/hr, that’s just $15k/year at full-time. That puts many minimum wage workers below many countries’ a…
- Agreed on the single earner families on minimum wage guaranteed to be in poverty. But, pointing somewhere else and saying "It's better there!" seems off to me. Pick a specific policy and advocate for it. Higher minimum wage? Guaranteed housing? Universal basic income?
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There is something wrong with this: "There must always be more jobs available than people that want them, not slightly fewer." Even at 5% unemployment, your condition can be satisfied. For example, jobs might be unfilled because the candidates are unwilling to move. The candidates might be unqualified... shall we hire a random person as a brain surgeon? There could be a dozen job openings per person, and still the un…
Yes, there's frictional unemployment. How much, though? This may differ by country, but you typically only show up in the numbers if you were fired. After all, if you quit your job, you aren't involuntarily unemployed, which is what the numbers are supposed to measure. How often do people get fired? I remember reading numbers of every 20 years on average (don't have the source handy, I'm afraid), but let's call it ev…
We're discussing the US here, and for the US this is not correct: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed
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OP originally said it was expensive. She did not argue that it was easy or the person had free time. That's a cute clip, but if you look at statistics you'll see Americans with less than a high school degree work on average 7.8 hours a day, and only 30% work on weekends and holidays. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t04.htm
Statistics hide the raw numbers and emotional reality. 30% is how many people? What’s their schedule look like if they have kids too? That’s a cute trick, using cold hard facts to normalize away bullshit
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> nor it makes it any more statistically possible for the masses to win the hard mode gameplay they were dealt. You don’t have to go back many generations to see that compared to today almost everyone played on hard mode.
> You don’t have to go back many generations to see that compared to today almost everyone played on hard mode. Hard mode is comparable across the same game. Those in 1800 played 1800s game, those in Nigeria play the Nigerian game, etc. You wouldn't consider it much of a success if a person with huge work, skills, and effort got themselves to 1800-era middle class possessions TODAY, would you?
Our ancestors struggled in a much harsher world and got us to a point where we can enjoy easy mode.
Why can’t the poorest Americans do the same?
A few threads seem to believe that the minimum wage is high enough / need not be increased. I don’t actually want to argue about mechanism, but think that it’s imoortant to note that the math says our (current) minimum wage is demonstrably insufficient to remove poverty. With the Federal minimum wage currently at $7.25/hr, that’s just $15k/year at full-time. That puts many minimum wage workers below many countries’ a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. This is a traditional, stereotypical belief that in order to escape poverty you have to work harder. This is old understanding of meritocracy and it's no longer valid. The new meritocracy is that you have to learn harder. And now, given all the learning resources available for free on the internet (which is also very accessible nowadays) it's probably the best t…
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 signi…