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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

#251

Post by travisoneill1 »

irrational wrote: post #189
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…

"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…

What is it with this attitude that somehow learning new things is only honorable when those things are useless in the job market? Do you really think that anybody is taking up 4 years of their life and 200 thousand of their (probably borrowed) dollars just for the purpose of "expanding their horizons"?

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

#252

Post by ams6110 »

shams93 wrote: post #119
robhunter wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College education was something only upper class folks could receive (especially a liberal arts degree with dubious value in society) due to it's expense. With the emergence of things like state schools, the barrier became lower. This is not factually correct - tuition at non-state schools increased 10X in the last 30 years, way ahead of the pace of inflation. College education is significantly much less affordable…

Its even more stark when you look at University of California. My first year at UCI in 1990 tuition was $80, 5 years later my last year of tuition had leaped to $10,000. By the time all my student loans were paid I had paid off $750,000, there's a lot a person could do with that money. Baby Boomers with their $80 a year tuition were able to buy homes, invest in the market. There was a decision made in the 90s to tran…

Really, UC tuition was essentially free before 1990? I had no idea. Is that true?

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

#253

Post by fastball »

claudiawerner wrote: post #219
fastball wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am impressed with the level of nonsense in this comment.

I'm impressed by the fact that people on a site like HN, supposed to be held at a higher caliber than Reddit, prefer to downvote rather than engage with the substance of comments.

What substance?

That comment reads like someone fed a thesaurus of non-words and a copy of the Communist Manifesto into a Markov chain.

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

#254

Post by leesec »

irrational wrote: post #189
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…

"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…

>Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for.

Whatever it "should" be for doesn't really matter. The majority of people (in America) operate under the assumption that going to College helps you get a job.

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

#255

Post by hoaw »

peisistratos wrote: post #222
smokeyj wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth?? The question was really simple. Your answer is the kind that inevitably ends with "you just have to read Das Kapital". That is not an answer.

> If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth?? As I said, when, after the electricity bill etc. is paid, created wealth is split between dividends to heirs and wages to those who worked and created the wealth. If in your hypothetical situation there is no split - if the person who worked and created wea…

I never understood why people are so casual about inequality. To put it bluntly a lot of people will eventually, if not already, be working something like three quarters of their lives for society, a company and a land owner. And only one quarter for themselves.

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

#256

Post by cat199 »

danans wrote: post #242
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…

well put

it also helps us to conveniently ignore economic sovereignty when contemplating 'success' or 'prosperity'

which of course is a useful frame given the bulk of the post war american middle class was created by essentially trading economic sovereignty in the form of small farms for corporatism

not sure how it could have developed otherwise given the rise of factory farms, etc, but this direction was certainly influenced by large players as well..

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

#257

Post by travisoneill1 »

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?…

Right. Your credential only has value because other people don't have it. Increase the supply of degree holders and the value of the degree drops. If I made this statement about any other economic commodity it would be called obvious, but for some reason people don't get it with education.

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

#258

Post by zdragnar »

irrational wrote: post #189
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…

"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…

> 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

This is patently false. Colleges compete and advertise based on their job placement rankings. Just a few years ago, law schools were sued for misrepresenting their employment statistics.

Whatever ideal, romanticized version of university and college experiences are touted, the reality is that they are marketed to parents and kids as the way to a better lifestyle.

Sure, "Liberal Arts" are largely about enriching the mind, but that doesn't change the fact that very, very few people can afford the luxury of going to get a 4 year degree just to "expand your horizons".

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

#259

Post by ams6110 »

natoliniak wrote: post #139
grawprog wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's been on employment insurance before. I can't understand the appeal of ubi. Getting a small amount of money to do nothing is excruciating. It's really not a fun way to live.

> It's really not a fun way to live. this is exactly why I find UBI appealing. For those who are unable to work, it will provide minimum means not to fall into abject poverty, but it will still carry enough incentive to improve oneself, find meaningful work and be a net contributor.

For those who are really unable to work, we already have a safety net.

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

#260

Post by shados »

I wonder how much of this (or anything related to inequality getting worse) is also a proxy of the "new permutations" of families that were "created" over the last couple of decades (sorry for the poor terminology. I'm not sure how best to describe the concept).

If for a while the norm was a single low skill working parent with someone staying at home to take care of a large families, then that's what you'll need to live in a high demand area. If you have zero working parent, or a larger family, then you're a few steps away from that.

However if we introduce a few more possible optimizations: - 2 working parents. - No family (as in, no kids) - College education.

And so on, and you make those things very common (common enough to affect local economies), then the people who don't have those things are even further from the norm. DINKs with significant educations are miles ahead from more "traditional" families as far as economic situation go, and they're becoming more and more common, but back then they were nearly unheard of. Fill a city with DINKs, and everyone else is screwed.

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