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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

#241

Post by hoaw »

alkibiades wrote: post #121
wonderwonder wrote: post #12

The top 1% of American's own more wealth than the bottom 90% and this concentration is only increasing. Soon no cities regardless of size will deliver for low skilled workers as there will simply not be enough of the proverbial pie to go around. As wealth is concentrated and rents and property values rise the vast majority of this country will (does?) live paycheck to paycheck. This is unsustainable and will either n…

“not enough money to go around” Where do people get this strange idea that if someone else makes money it somehow precludes others from doing it? Bill Gates got rich with an invention that also generated probably a trillion dollars in economic growth for everyone. Including most people on this sites income.

The whole purpose of a business is to capture the wealth they create. Business will create less wealth if they can capture more. Housing market being a prime example.

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

#242

Post by danans »

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?…

The American term "middle-class" means something far less specific than the original British meaning of "well to do, town dwelling, non-aristocratic business owner". In that definition, a "middle-class" person is never an employee (which would make someone "working-class").

The American use of the term reflects (whether or not it is borne out in reality) the achievement of a comfortable and secure lifestyle (relative to the current time period) by an employee. In a way, it's a more flexible definition than the British one. The post WWII economic boom was the first time that, en-masse, people who were not inheritors of significant educational or monetary capital or status could achieve that lifestyle.

However, the problem with the American definition is that it chooses to ignore how much that achievement actually has to do with class and other inertial societal constructs, perhaps because frank discussion of class effects is still considered taboo in American society, whereas older societies with openly acknowledged class structures can actually have that discussion.

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

#243

Post by atmosphereiv »

hmmmDisagree wrote: post #200
irrational wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive?" Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for. If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons. It should be about exposing you to new ideas and thoughts you hadn't b…

College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons. College is not at all about that. One, college is really damaging to the social fabric of towns across the country. My high school friends are gone, and we all lost touch immediately after high school. Why? College. Did I make new friends? Friends at college? No. Not by the same measure of friendship. These people were cardboard cutouts. People to dr…

You are claiming a lot of absolutes in this. I attended college to expand my mind, learn new things, and mature into an adult. I went to a large but reasonably prices state school and did everything you said no one does. I don't even use my degree but going through thought me a lot of lessons I still use (working well with people I don't know, learning things quickly and applying them, making new friends). I, and I bet a lot of others, learned and grew a lot during University with out the notion of finding a career.

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

#244

Post by fastball »

wonderwonder wrote: post #181
fastball wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places where people get free food This is somehow a problem Hmm.

Is that... is that really your argument? That everything is fine because these people in line at the food bank are able to get free food so that their children don't starve to death? So we can ignore the massive wealth disparity and the vast number of people living in poverty because we don't force them to die of hunger. That's very magnanimous of you. Imagine what they could accomplish with both free food and knowle…

I was responding to your complete lack of an argument ("FOOD BANKS EXIST!?!!") in turn. Seems like the best way to respond to people who interject completely useless comments into conversations.

If you want to have an actual discussion we can, but I doubt it will be productive, as it is already very clear that you either lack the critical reasoning skills to recognise the difference between wealth disparity and poverty, or you are deliberately obfuscating the difference and are arguing in bad faith. Either way, it's a problem.

But I'll give it a go anyway: wealth disparity has no impact on poverty levels. There is no causal relationship between the two things. Nobody is dying of hunger because Jeff Bezos is a billionaire instead of a millionaire. Nobody is struggling to take care of their kids because your neighbor has three cars when you only have one. In fact, in recent decades the relationship between wealth inequality and poverty reduction has been positively correlated. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Phrased another way: economic productivity is greater than the sum of its parts.

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

#245

Post by StudentStuff »

codinger wrote: post #224
coredog64 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and kids are all taking one class at the local community college. Tuition was nearly $400/student, plus a $200 book and a mandatory $200 online program. You can find the book used, and we economized by only buying 2 books for 4 people.

You can usually google the book and find a pdf on the first page of results. The online codes some of the professor's require is highway robbery.

WaMAP and similar open source offerings are finally starting to eat into this market, and they work significantly better than Pearson's MyLab & ilk.

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

#246

Post by ams6110 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #182
jamiek88 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a point on the population of Manhattan, it’s be careful with those numbers and applying them to modern day. People used to cram into death trap tenements 10 to one windowless room in some cases. Hundreds of thousands would live on a street that now houses a thousand people. I don’t think that density is coming back or desirable.

You're exaggerating the population density. It definitely wasn't hundreds of thousands per street! Some figures here: https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhat... And it's worth pointing out that the peak population density in walk-up tenements was still well below what can be accomplished with tall modern day residential apartment buildings. No one is saying the tenements were desirable, or wishes…

SROs have also largely gone away. Not that many of them were very nice, but better than the street for a single person with limited means.

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

#247

Post by people_not_bots »

oralty wrote: post #76
moorhosj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==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.

The state school school is the interesting issue. California has the CSU system that offers education for about 280 a unit or about 3000 before financial aid with over a dozens campuses throughout most of the state in both rural and urban areas. The Cal States have become the primary options for any California residence below upper income. Most states don't have a system similar to this set up with at most 1 or 2 major state schools per state. The cheaper state schools often are key to bringing the price down.

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

#248

Post by ausjke »

codinger wrote: post #227
the_fuzzyone wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't hear you over your dog whistling

No kidding, wait until he finds out Texas was formerly Mexico and many of the brown people are descendant of US citizens when Texas became a part of the US.

that's like you saying most Americans should return to Europe because what they have done here was so evil, unfortunately you can not roll back history

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

#249

Post by fastball »

ihalip wrote: post #202
fastball wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeat after me: Wealth is not a zero sum game. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Wealth is not a zero sum game.

Repeating something 3 times doesn't make it true.

You're right.

The good news is that it's true regardless.

The repetition just makes it more likely to get into the skulls of people who have a hard time grasping the concept.

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

#250

Post by hoaw »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #232
wasdfff wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can’t see how a CEO being compensated 1000x more than whoever cleans their office is a problem? Money flows like a river, and when every executive diverts egregious amounts of money that they’d never spend in their lifetime into their little pools, theres less money flowing downstream along the river. Do you really think that Bill Gates needed to become one of the richest men on earth to proselytize ms dos? Be…

Do I care if someone has 1000x the artistic talent I do? Is there a shared river of inspiration we're all drinking from? You seem to believe there's a fixed pile of money in the world that every human competes for (e.g., 16th century Mercantilism). Go into the woods and turn a tree into a chair. Where did that value come from? Will it run out?

I think it is hard to make that into a constructive argument.

Either you care and the 'allocation' is unfair.

Or you don't care, which means that the market doesn't work since you caring is what is supposed to allocate resources fairly, and it is still unfair.

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