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The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

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Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#221

Post by aerophilic »

OJFord wrote: post #181
alexhutcheson wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it common for modern used cars to not last 8 years? I know lots of people driving cars that are 10-15 years old at this point.

Is it common for houses not to last centuries? I know lots of people living in very old houses. Perhaps mortgages should have longer terms too?

Short answer: yes it is common for a building not to last long periods of time (unless properly maintained). I recall a civil engineer telling me once that most “tract” homes only are designed for a 35 year useful life. While I can’t find a reference for that, I did find this Quora article from a structural engineer: Answer to What is the design life span of a building? by Vishnu Vijayakumar https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-design-life-span-of-a-buil...

Note: while he quotes 60-80 years, the concrete is still in that 30-40 year timespan.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#222

Post by icebraining »

papln wrote: post #104
war1025 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in the Midwest on a Midwest salary ($85k/yr), currently 30 years old, have 3 kids, a stay at home wife, and a net worth that just peeked over $250k. Also, our work health insurance is shit, so $200 gets taken out of my paycheck each week for that, which puts it right around the $12k you mentioned. Daycare is stupid expensive. Healthcare is stupid expensive. We handle the former by having my wife stay home. The…

A single-income family with children and a stay-at-home parent isn't an unfortunate fact of life, it's a stable economic and social arrangement that promotes health and welfare of children, giving them a strong prospect for future success.

war1025 said that the healthcare being stupid expensive is an unfortunate fact of life, not the single-income family.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#223

Post by JamesBarney »

wwweston wrote: post #154
jseliger wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His central argument is that IT is only increasing productivity in open source software and does not cause any productivity improvements in businesses, which is a strange argument. But low demand also explains everything he talks about.

When you hear hoof beats think horses not zebras.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#224

Post by JamesBarney »

ineedasername wrote: post #75
dfilppi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the government subsidizes loans.

That may be a problem, but it's a bit beside the point I was making. Whether or not college costs & therefore debt is increasing as a result of easy loans says nothing about the job prospects of graduates from bachelor programs. Even if we posit a world where the loans didn't exist, college costs were lower, and therefore just as accessible as it is today then we still have the same underemployment problem. If such a…

Unless most majors generate signal instead of human capital.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#225

Post by JamesBarney »

robohoe wrote: post #2

One thing that I noticed in this article and charts was the unprecedented growth of auto loans. They too have skyrocketed. That seems like another "bubble" waiting to happen.

I think of lot of this is very low interest rates which makes new cars more affordable.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#226

Post by patrick5415 »

leetcrew wrote: post #162
thrower123 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas mileage is a very marginal improvement in any of the vehicles I'm interested in, on the order of 16 mpg then to maybe 20, now. Bodywork is plastic or aluminum, so it is less repairable, but there's the anti-corrosion factor. Everything else listed I would want to actively avoid in my next vehicle.

> Gas mileage is a very marginal improvement in any of the vehicles I'm interested in, on the order of 16 mpg then to maybe 20, now. this says more about the vehicles you're interested in than the overall trend in vehicle efficiency. I get ~34mpg out of my hot hatch with a heavy right foot.

Not really. I used to drive an Saab turbo from the 80s that got close to 30mpg. Old civics pushed 40. 34 mpg isn’t really an improvement over that.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#227

Post by sorenn111 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #217
derefr wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, though, the "product that [was] being sold" that made these students originally go to school, is employment—or rather, a proxy signal for employability that the consumers of the product hope will get them employment. People consume education when they can't find a job, in the hopes that they'll become more employable, even though this makes the problem of their unemployment more dire rather than less (b…

I guess we have to decide whether the it's "We have a problem with too many snake oil salesman!" or "We have a snake oil effectiveness problem".

I think you present a false analogy, but I found your phrasing very funny

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#228

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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…

Using a graph that shows soaring productivity to argue that soaring productivity isn't happening seems a little counterintuitive to me. But I'm not a prize-winning economist, so perhaps I'm missing something.

The US economy can't be fixed by educating more plumbers. The core problem is that the US has turned itself into a peacetime rationing economy. Essential services - healthcare, education, housing, financial support - are strictly rationed for reasons that are strictly unnecessary and economically destructive for the majority of the population.

The extracted value paid by individuals to the companies that provide and finance these services is effectively a privatised form of tax. It's vastly more onerous than the official tax rate, while providing no true public benefit - and no democratic representation.

More plumbers and electricians won't change this, because they'll still be working in a system where they'll have to charge unaffordably high prices to make a decent personal profit after the "corporate taxes" on health care and education (and personal housing) are paid.

Ultimately it's a political choice to run a starvation economy for most workers, and that won't change unless there's a political shift.

Which badly needs to happen. This is not about automation, and it's not about AI. There's a huge amount of productive work that isn't being done - new infrastructure, maintenance of old infrastructure, childcare, health care, education at all levels, housing, trade and building work, academic research and open-ended no-immediate-return blue sky R&D - because the political economy is biased against that kind of activity rather than for it.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#229

Post by patrick5415 »

vidanay wrote: post #8
thrower123 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last twenty years, new vehicle prices have doubled. My eyes just about roll out of my head when I see what the sticker price is for a new truck or minivan. I assume people must be leasing more than they used to, because I can't see any other way to get the payment down into a palatable $500/month range.

Coincidentally, my newest vehicle is almost 20 years old.

Mine is 21, which makes this whole discussion rather humorous to me.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#230

Post by jessriedel »

asabjorn wrote: post #202

This is a bit like saying "People buying luxury cars is just a problem with people not having high-paying jobs". It seems more fruitful to focus on what product is being sold through state-subsidized loans and if they provide the necessary value. Bloated administrations is largely to blame for the increased cost, and a middle class student getting a student loan they can't default on for a degree without earning pote…

Agree with most of this, but there are good reasons to think education costs are not driver by bloated administration.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...

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