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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

#291

Post by irrational »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #251
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…

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"?

Who is paying 200,000 for college? That's crazy. I have 2 kids attending a private college and each one pays $2000 a semester. They both have academic scholarships - so their tuition is covered - but even if it wasn't, that is less than $20,000 over 4 years. You can get a good education without attending an ivy league university.

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

#292

Post by zjaffee »

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.

Because that's how our economy works, there is a limited cash supply dictated by the central bank, the only way for more liquid cash to be created is through central banks buying up securities and in turn introducing more liquidity into the economy (which then results in all other sorts of consequences).

The ability for new wealth to be created is predicated on the fact that we have an expansionist monetary policy, or else people would simply never invest and we'd have a society comparable to a feudal state.

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

#293

Post by zjaffee »

fastball wrote: post #134
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…

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

Wealth is absolutely a zero sum game depending on how you segment things. Increases in productivity and innovation are not zero sum, but things like land ownership on earth is absolutely zero sum.

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

#294

Post by grigjd3 »

nostrademons wrote: post #284
hoaw wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most concise modern class definition I have seen goes something like this: Working class: work to survive. Middle class: work to do other things. Upper middle class: work for wealth. Upper class: work optional. People rightfully like to talk about the working poor and the disappearing middle class, but I think we are actually already past that. What we are seeing now is that between education, housing and financi…

"What we are seeing now is that between education, housing and financial insecurity it is hard to be even upper middle class anymore without existing wealth." I'm not sure that's really true - or at least, it's an incomplete model. Rather, what's happening with education, health care, & housing is that you have three sectors with flat productivity growth and large barriers to entry, which implies that the number of p…

In higher ed, at least, we have an abundance of people with PhDs that could theoretically teach at a college level - which is why a single tenure-track job will have 300 applicants. Not saying that supply and demand aren't involved here, but a simple application of supply and demand like you suggest isn't an adequate description.

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

#296

Post by moate »

Stubb wrote: post #107

“The goal [of government] is to have an economy which makes it possible for normal, average young people to marry and have kids.” From: https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/tucker-carlson...

That article...woof.

Also, why is that the goal of a government? Isn't that the goal of a culture? Governments are meant to define and protect the rights of their citizens. Economics are only a portion of what governments do (unless you want to consider everything economics?)

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

#297

Post by zozbot123 »

graeme wrote: post #203
njarboe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old people in America now own the majority of the assets. If they transfer those assets to the young in exchange for work, things will get better. If the old are split into those that have a huge amount of money and spend a little percent of it in retirement, passing the rest onto their heirs, and a large number of old people that need to keep working just to survive, locking out the young people from moving up,…

At a global scale, ownership of assets isn't really savings. Imagine an island society, with a bunch of 40 year old workers. You own the company that gets all the profit from their labour. So, you have a real resource, which you could trade with other places. Now of course this island has no children. How do you feel about your investment once the workers reach age 80. It wouldn't produce very much. In fact you'd nee…

Savings are invested into creation of long-lasting capital goods that are just as real as grain reserves or oil stockpiles, and that yield a positive return over the original investment - companies being "massively more productive per worker" isn't the exception, it's (hopefully) the rule. Yes there is risk involved and some investments won't work out, but that's why you diversify and make conservative assumptions. (Now if the economy was projected to stagnate in the future, you might have a bit of a point. But since our economy is growing, even "paper" wealth like government bonds can easily yield a positive return.)

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

#298

Post by zjaffee »

shados wrote: post #260

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…

I don't think it's that simple, the work force participation rate today is about the same that it was in 1980 (abet there has been population growth since then).

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

#299

Post by AlexandrB »

rifung wrote: post #271
expertentipp wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unacceptable that social services are a zero-sum game between those employed and those not employed, while employers cut margins and funnel out basically all profits - the famous „socialize the losses, privatize the profits”. I hope FAANG, McDonalds, IKEA, Deutsche*, automotive companies, fossil fuels companies, investment funds, and whatnot will get the feel of cold talons of the social justice.

> I hope FAANG, McDonalds, IKEA, Deutsche*, automotive companies, fossil fuels companies, investment funds, and whatnot will get the feel of cold talons of the social justice. It's not like the people running these corporations are all evil and out to ruin people's lives. People behave based on the incentives laid out in front of them and the current combination of capitalism and laws incentivizes the behavior we are…

> People behave based on the incentives laid out in front of them and the current combination of capitalism and laws incentivizes the behavior we are seeing.

True, but the same people also largely support programs and politicians that preserve or extend those incentives. They're not innocent bystanders.

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

#300

Post by Bartweiss »

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?…

> Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people?

An interesting touchstone for the article: high-rent cities in the US have started to see restaurant turnover not from 'normal' financial failures but from labor shortages. For midrange restaurants that aren't either selling luxury or exploiting captive demand (e.g. lunch for nearby offices), there's no price point where they can make ends meet while paying servers, dishwashers, etc enough to accept high rents and/or long commutes.

I agree that treating "non-college" as a constant bracket is a misleading measure, and I can complain all day about the spread of overpriced credentialism in hiring. But observationally at least, I think there's a separate issue with big cities and low-skilled labor where work we consider part of "normal functioning" for our society is increasingly incompatible with the housing prices and transit options available around urban centers.

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