The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe • Hacker News Board

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#151

Post by StanislavPetrov » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #139

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to support yourself and a family with a (single) full time job. That includes owning a home, a car, being able to afford to see a doctor when you have to, going to the occasional movie and taking a vacation once in a while. It includes being able to do all these things without being one illness or one unexpected expense away from being homeless or destitute. It includes the prospect of being able to be abl…

That all seems pretty true. People have spent that past decade telling me that I'm going to be less well off than my parents, though. So I guess my opinion is that it's best to just accept it and adjust your lifestyle accordingly. We still live like kings compared to most of human history. Also, the social safety net in the US isn't great, but it definitely exists. You can be a pretty big screw up and still have a ro…

>People have spent that past decade telling me that I'm going to be less well off than my parents, though. So I guess my opinion is that it's best to just accept it and adjust your lifestyle accordingly.

If I told you I was going to beat you up and steal your money every night, it doesn't mean you should just smile and accept it as inevitable, even if that's really my plan.

>We still live like kings compared to most of human history.

We have more collective wealth than any time in human history, and more collective wealth than we did ~40 years ago when working people had the living conditions I described above. As far as I'm concerned, there's no "good" or "acceptable" reason that the artificial system ("the economy") that we designed and continue to maintain, that has resulted in far worse living conditions for the average American, should not be changed so that our collective wealth is more evenly distributed among those who participate in our system. Especially dishonest and (more frequently) ignorant people will blame the, "free market" for the massive (and growing) disparity in wealth, but there is nothing about our economic system that is "free". From our central bank to our byzantine "regulatory" structure to our legal system to our tax code to currency control and beyond, we have a financial system that is tightly controlled, regulated, and guided by powerful, entrenched interests at the upper echelon of the financial world. It isn't even useful to draw a distinction between governmental and non-governmental entities at this level, because they are the same. Our economy has been guided and controlled by a rotating door of corporatists (or whatever other adjective you choose to describe our economic oligarchs) to ensure wealth consolidation.

We can either recognize the problem - that our whole system has been off the rails for some time and is horribly broken - or we can continue down the same path of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer until we reach a breaking point. Hopefully we choose the former path but unfortunately the latter seems more likely.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#152

Post by mcguire » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

lemcoe9 wrote: post #26

joelbluminator wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't a 28 American with an English major do a coding bootcamp and find an entry level job? I'm sure if he's reasonable intelligent and ambitious he can. There aren't that many h1b's around competing with him, most American jobs aren't h1b jobs.

Why is "do a coding bootcamp" the common refrain from tech workers trying to help non-tech people?

Because tech workers like devaluing their skills.

Because the number of openings for entry tech workers is essentially infinite. (Wait, what?)

Because non-technical work is regarded as completely worthless and there is more merit in being a minimally-competent HTML-slinger.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#153

Post by mcguire » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

leakybit wrote: post #92

hobofan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the barrier to entry is still quite low. While maybe not "Anyone who could spell HTML could get a job" low, as said in another comment here, it's still so low that I'd wager a decently clever person with a good 3 month bootcamp can get a _entry-level_ job.

I would say the entry level market for devs is very saturated.

If they're making more than any other job you can get with 3-6 mos. of training, the market is not saturated.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#154

Post by wwweston » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #138

ineedasername wrote: post #64

I'm not sure the author's suggestion that potential students be diverted to trades/coding bootcampts etc., will solve too much, and instead may simply shift the problem into those trade industries as well. Somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000,000 students earn a bachelors degree each year. Let's say 25% of students should be diverted into trade schools instead. That will mean an additional 500,000 student per year ente…

There are two books that cover this subject well: The Case Against Education : https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-educatio... , which argues that most "education" is really signaling, not human capital acquisition, and Paying for the Party : https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... , which argues that many schools have evolved some substantive majors and some non-substantive ma…

Krugman's point is not uncontested:

http://www.scottsantens.com/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy...

Additionally, even if we're not peering around the metrics for dynamics hiding behind them, there's the question of how much of the by-Krugman's-metric still rising (if not "soaring") productivity it would take to soften the labor market. I'd like to think he knows the answer to that question, but it isn't clear.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#155

Post by mars4rp » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #64

I'm not sure the author's suggestion that potential students be diverted to trades/coding bootcampts etc., will solve too much, and instead may simply shift the problem into those trade industries as well. Somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000,000 students earn a bachelors degree each year. Let's say 25% of students should be diverted into trade schools instead. That will mean an additional 500,000 student per year ente…

That is not so bad to depress some of those wages, my plumber is making $2k/Day. I don't know too many people making that kind of money even in tech, let alone other disciplines!

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#156

Post by itronitron » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #118

zaroth wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s non-dischargeable so that it can be offered to people with no collateral and who are otherwise entirely un-creditworthy. Not surprisingly, this results in high delinquency rates! The alternative is most people wouldn’t qualify for this level of debt, you would more highly subsidize cheaper public education, and private universities would have to rely entirely on endowments to provide financial aid to people who…

> if you were to limit the amount of educational debt someone could take on — for example by only making the first $20k non-dischargeable. It would fix the delinquency problem, drastically lower the total annual student loan rate, and cause private tuition prices overall to decline, but it would be called institutional racism. The solution to structural racism is more scholarship money, not more debt. Pell and Social…

>> The solution to structural racism is more scholarship money, not more debt

I completely agree, scholarships and grants should be greater than the loan debt that a student takes on, and the maximum financial aid for a student should be capped annually in some way. There are simply too many student loans being made available to students that don't need them. I have a colleague that got a full ride through undergrad but managed to graduate with over two hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt. It is predatory lending to loan students more money than they need to cover their cost of education and cost of living (for a student).

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#157

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #118

zaroth wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s non-dischargeable so that it can be offered to people with no collateral and who are otherwise entirely un-creditworthy. Not surprisingly, this results in high delinquency rates! The alternative is most people wouldn’t qualify for this level of debt, you would more highly subsidize cheaper public education, and private universities would have to rely entirely on endowments to provide financial aid to people who…

> if you were to limit the amount of educational debt someone could take on — for example by only making the first $20k non-dischargeable. It would fix the delinquency problem, drastically lower the total annual student loan rate, and cause private tuition prices overall to decline, but it would be called institutional racism. The solution to structural racism is more scholarship money, not more debt. Pell and Social…

[deleted]

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#158

Post by SantalBlush » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #118

zaroth wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s non-dischargeable so that it can be offered to people with no collateral and who are otherwise entirely un-creditworthy. Not surprisingly, this results in high delinquency rates! The alternative is most people wouldn’t qualify for this level of debt, you would more highly subsidize cheaper public education, and private universities would have to rely entirely on endowments to provide financial aid to people who…

> if you were to limit the amount of educational debt someone could take on — for example by only making the first $20k non-dischargeable. It would fix the delinquency problem, drastically lower the total annual student loan rate, and cause private tuition prices overall to decline, but it would be called institutional racism. The solution to structural racism is more scholarship money, not more debt. Pell and Social…

That's not to mention the lenders who signed people, knowing that they were taking on low-grade debt, to have someone package those mortgages with the good ones to obscure their risk and sell them to speculators.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#159

Post by uoaei » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #138

ineedasername wrote: post #64

I'm not sure the author's suggestion that potential students be diverted to trades/coding bootcampts etc., will solve too much, and instead may simply shift the problem into those trade industries as well. Somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000,000 students earn a bachelors degree each year. Let's say 25% of students should be diverted into trade schools instead. That will mean an additional 500,000 student per year ente…

There are two books that cover this subject well: The Case Against Education : https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-educatio... , which argues that most "education" is really signaling, not human capital acquisition, and Paying for the Party : https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... , which argues that many schools have evolved some substantive majors and some non-substantive ma…

It behooves one to read the comment thread replying to Dr. Krugman's post.

Many arguments emphasizing the disparity between real output vs. employment in manufacturing. Paul Krugman is wrong surprisingly often about these sorts of things. He cherry-picks one graph and says that this graph, combined with the opinions of cherry-picked esteemed colleagues, supports his conclusion, when ample evidence exists and is provided in near-real-time to refute it.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#160

Post by Atheros » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #148

fibers wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to disable these systems, or is something baked into the car where if you disable it the car won't run? This seems very suspicious unless the auto dealer/contractor is expecting most people to not even bother with the gps system.

I know that for my most recent vehicle purchase (paid cash, no loan) the dealer left their own anti-theft device installed. From what I could gather online, they use them for anti-theft on the lot and then can try to upsell you on a service that uses the same hardware during the sale. It's wired directly into the ignition system. Despite having a computer engineering degree and enough experience to be reasonably conf…

If you're smart and capable enough to reverse engineer the device, there's a 95% chance you're smart and capable enough to have a job that pays enough to not need ultra high-interest car loans.