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Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

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Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#71

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19
netcan wrote: post #10

" middle-class life to those without a college degree " Anytime you start delving into what has changed for a subset of people, over decades, the most important piece of the puzzle is decided ding who qualifies for the subset. I mean concepts like "middle class" or "without a college degree." A lot more people get degrees, in 2018. Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people?…

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

The more I learn about Texas, the more it seems like they're doing everything right.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#72

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Retric wrote: post #54
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also dubious about college as a proxy for skill, in the skilled labour sense. A lot of college is very general education, with even less focus on marketable skills than high school. At one time there was an argument that general skills had value. We as a society have become super specialized and those general skills relatively ubiquitous that those general skills aren't terribly valued any more. Your employer d…

Jobs have become less specialized not more. Being able to effectively communicate over email takes more writing skills than most people assume. The internet adds a lot of flexibility in the kind of things the average office worker will do.

> Jobs have become less specialized not more.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2012/01/31/the-end-o... https://hbr.org/2011/07/the-big-idea-the-age-of-hyperspecial... http://theconversation.com/want-a-job-its-still-about-educat...

The general consensus I can see is that that is not the case - employers want specialties.

And absolutely communication is a skill we require, but for some reason it's not valued.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#73

Post by [deleted] »

pytester wrote: post #62
abakker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, critically as another comment a few days ago put it, "automation crowds out those who are just starting their careers, more than those who have already started". Automation can easily prevent you from entering the workplace and moving from low-skill to high skill through experience.

The outsourcing boom did this, not automation. Dogsbody type work is routinely offshored rather than being given to local juniors. Every company I've worked at in the last 3 years bar one has had a component of their workforce doing this kind of work - in the philippines or india.

[deleted]

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#74

Post by ensiferum »

llukas wrote: post #6
swampthinker wrote: post #2

My tinfoil hat theory is that this is being caused by the increasing concentration of wealth. Which is being enabled by increasing levels of automation and efficiency.

> Which is being enabled by increasing levels of tax evasion. FTFY. Automation and efficiency is a good thing.

Depends how the wealth is distributed. Currently what happens that let's say a factory installs a new machine that does the work of 10 employees. Instead the workers work amount being reduced (the total monthly labor is now 1600h less) and everyone working less the factory will downsize the work force appropriately, the 10 employees will be terminated and the benefit and value added by this new machinery goes to the owners of the factory.

In the short term (as long as there's still more people working than there are those whose jobs are being cut) this benefits the economy (even if the wealth distribution is not great), but what happens then the jobs displaced exceed the remaining jobs?

After all the money is supposed to go around. Your time and wealth is the income for someone else. When there's enough people without purchasing power the whole thing will eventually collapse.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#75

Post by deboflo »

halbritt wrote: post #32
YawningAngel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who on earth employs a "solutions architect" whose only qualification is some random certificate that tests AWS trivia?

Backwater IT orgs deep in the heart of Texas that have heard that they have to move everything into the cloud?

No, startups in Silicon Valley are starting to look at these certs because they realize how expensive poorly configured cloud infrastructure can be. It’s a skill that few people have at this point.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#76

Post by oralty »

moorhosj wrote: post #29
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

==I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes.== I think this highlights the true question. Do colleges exist to promote education and intellectual curiosity or to train workers? According to PEW, Americans believe colleges are for work training: "Americans are split on the main purpose of college, with 47% saying it is to teach work-related skills and 39% saying it is to help a student grow personal…

> Do colleges exist to promote education and intellectual curiosity or to train workers?

When college cost in the US what it did in the 1960s this sort of little bit false-dichotomy, little bit navel gazing question was at least fairly harmless. Now it's just fucking ridiculous even for most public schools.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#77

Post by landryraccoon »

zanny wrote: post #50
SamuelAdams wrote: post #26

> So what’s to be done in order to help mid-skilled and non-college workers live decent, middle-class lives? ... build lots more housing in cities, driving down rents and making cities more livable for everyone. This is a nice idea in theory, but isn't this a temporary fix? For the first five years, housing prices will lower. But as more companies (demanding higher-educated individuals) realize more people are availa…

So five years later you build more housing . We as a species are capable of building absurdly dense cities that are probably per-capita the cheapest place a person can live (since you cram so many into every skyscraper). We choose not to because "property values" and "my view from my window" and "I don't want those people living here".

This sort of reasoning is curious to me. Is growing food pointless too because people will just get hungry again and need more food? Is making smartphones pointless because they wear out or become obsolete and people need new ones?

We are nowhere near the physical limit of how much housing can be built. Building more housing is just an ongoing need of the human race, just like growing food is. We’ll be building housing until we go extinct.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#78

Post by CydeWeys »

cimmanom wrote: post #42
netcan wrote: post #10

" middle-class life to those without a college degree " Anytime you start delving into what has changed for a subset of people, over decades, the most important piece of the puzzle is decided ding who qualifies for the subset. I mean concepts like "middle class" or "without a college degree." A lot more people get degrees, in 2018. Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people?…

Only a couple generations ago, college was not a proxy for "middle class". Lots of blue-collar jobs (especially industrial ones) paid enough for a "middle class" lifestyle and financial security. Small businesses were competitive and many of their owners were not college educated either. College wasn't a necessary qualification for most blue-collar jobs, including some for which it now is (such as police work, in man…

The over-arching point I believe the parent comment is making is that the kinds of people who didn't get college degrees back then because they weren't needed are getting college degrees now, because they are needed as qualifications for jobs. They weren't incapable of it back then, it just wasn't necessary nor widespread. Now it is. So it's the same kinds of people doing police work then as now, with the same aptitudes, just those people are going to college now because they have to whereas they didn't then. (And in a way, increasing prevalence of higher education is a marker of success for a society.)

Unrelated, a huge point I'd like to see addressed more is how housing costs have outgrown inflation over the course of decades. We used to build enough housing, but NIMBYism and restrictive zoning has taken over recently. Housing is much more expensive in big cities in real terms than it was then, even though fewer people live in them in many cases now (e.g. the population of Manhattan reached its peak in the 1910 census and is down 30% since then). Real wages haven't decreased since the middle-class heydays of the 60s, and a lot of consumers goods have gotten much, much cheaper since then in real terms. The real headwinds in the face of middle-class prosperity are housing costs, healthcare costs, and (to end the digression) university costs, all of which have grown well above inflation.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#79

Post by crankylinuxuser »

moorhosj wrote: post #29
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

==I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes.== I think this highlights the true question. Do colleges exist to promote education and intellectual curiosity or to train workers? According to PEW, Americans believe colleges are for work training: "Americans are split on the main purpose of college, with 47% saying it is to teach work-related skills and 39% saying it is to help a student grow personal…

Well, the plebes can't afford to take classes to further ones academic horizons. When a class at a community college (read:too poor to go to a proper uni) is $900 and 30 students and no equipment needed, that class had better have strong income assurances. Else its a waste of money and further burdening of student loans.

And taking classes also means giving up time wise something else. Opportunity cost is also a thing.

So yes, liberal arts are the higher forms of education, which are also further from the rest of us who need a credential because of credentialism so we can merely live. (Food, water, electricity, housing, medical, internet are effectively all required to live these days. )

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#80

Post by cimmanom »

mschuster91 wrote: post #59
cimmanom wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a couple generations ago, college was not a proxy for "middle class". Lots of blue-collar jobs (especially industrial ones) paid enough for a "middle class" lifestyle and financial security. Small businesses were competitive and many of their owners were not college educated either. College wasn't a necessary qualification for most blue-collar jobs, including some for which it now is (such as police work, in man…

> you could start out as a file clerk with a high school degree and work your way up into middle or even upper management (at least if you were white and male). That upwards mobility depends on one thing: that old people drop out of the workforce either by death or by pension, so that young people can rise up the ranks. Now, given that people in their 80s need to work (!) to survive, this "generational contract" is b…

Or that employment is growing rather than shrinking - but I absolutely agree.
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