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Educated Fools

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Re: Educated Fools

#221

Post by swiley »

claudiawerner wrote: post #197
mar77i wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an employer, this seems kind of missing the point: you spent your time at college. Did you do real work yet?

As someone who's about to graduate with an MEng degree: No, I haven't done real work yet, and I hope that most employers don't share this attitude which gets me in a catch-22. I need to have worked to find work, but to work I need to have found work. The only option seems to be these "graduate jobs", a large percentage of which demand arcane tests modelled after IQ tests and tedious timed calculator tests in order to…

Who is recommending university for knowledge (at least in STEM?) If knowledge is all you want you’re far better off going to Wikipedia, libgen, sci hub or even buying the books. Heck if you really need lectures for the classes (or from researchers even!) you can legally watch them for free on YouTube!

University helps shape you socially and drag you through some cultural stuff that a lot of people would otherwise ignore, that’s about it.

Re: Educated Fools

#222

Post by chii »

pdonis wrote: post #181
ben_w wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this recently. I’m not qualified in politics, and I’m aware that my knowledge is too limited to be properly aware of how limited it is, but the thought was: Democracy isn’t so much the best form of government as the best steering wheel to keep the government aligned with the interests of the people. The best actual form of government is technocracy, but technocracy with no democratic accountabili…

> The best actual form of government is technocracy In a fantasy world where we actually had sciences for all the things governments are asked to do, sure. But in the actual world we live in, no way. You can't have experts running government if there are no actual experts.

or worse - experts that have an inbuilt bias (which they might not even know they have!). For example, economic experts.

Re: Educated Fools

#223

Post by DebtDeflation »

war1025 wrote: post #133
jayd16 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue social safety nets that Dems do push for (such as healthcare) do benefit the labor class.

Healthcare is something that would benefit the working class. Unfortunately one of the side effects of Obamacare is that rates have skyrocketed to the point that many people can't afford it. There are subsidies, but the premiums / deductibles are still high enough to be basically useless for many people. Add to it that we had a mandate that you needed to have insurance or you'd be fined. There are a lot of good thing…

>Unfortunately one of the side effects of Obamacare is that rates have skyrocketed to the point that many people can't afford it.

Is that really a causal relationship? What I see in the data is annual insurance premiums rising at 3-4X the CPI inflation rate starting in the 1990s and continuing to the present. The ACA was an attempt to address the fallout from this. It may not have been entirely successful in doing that, but it certainly wasn't the cause of the problem.

* Check the McKinsey study and the Commonwealth Fund study for data. In the 3 years prior to the ACA, nationwide premiums averaged a 10% annual increase, in the 3 years after the implementation of the ACA they averaged a 6% annual increase.

Re: Educated Fools

#224

Post by wangii »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #99
wangii wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

barrack Obama was super popular in UK. the day he was elected, his speech was played everywhere in Manchester, over and over again. my questions were for US voters as well.

Yeah it is clear now but I am wondering if you edited the comment or I just misread.

no, I didn't.

Re: Educated Fools

#225

Post by blippage »

bumby wrote: post #61
analog31 wrote: post #13

In my view, education has begun to act like wealth, because education is a form of wealth, and the productivity divide between wealth and work is increasing. Still, I'm skeptical of the whole idea, because it just seems too convenient for Republicans to drive a wedge between the Democratic party and the working class based on a perceived social division rather than real policy: We took away your unions and safety net…

> education has begun to act like wealth, because education is a form of wealth, and the productivity divide between wealth and work is increasing You might be interested in reading “The Meritocracy Trap” which discusses how elitism, particularly in regards to education and hyper-competitive productivity, drives inequality. The idea is that this is ultimately worse for both the non-elites who can no longer compete an…

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

-- Winston Churchill

Re: Educated Fools

#226

Post by gttalbot »

tacitusarc wrote: post #168
IIAOPSW wrote: post #146

I'm going to break slightly with the authors opinion here and say we do solve every problem with "be more like us" but that doesn't always mean college. Other solutions involve "why don't you just move", better mass transit / fewer cars, some form of retraining (not college per se) etc. There's a whole basket of diverging "elite" values such that even if they stopped telling people to go to college tomorrow they woul…

Part of the problem is the suggestion that they need help in the first place. So what Joe the garbage truck driver didn't go to college? So what he has a small house in a kinda shitty neighborhood? Maybe he's doing the best he can and maybe he actually has a pretty happy life. The working class doesn't need pity and suggestions to move or go get a degree. Here's something novel: why are the roads in nice neighborhood…

The situation at that level is far more dire. A non-union garbage truck driver doesn't have a house. Can't afford a family. No health insurance. No retirement plan or pension.

And if you go to any large company, you'll find that it's the same there unless you're in the upper "employee" caste--you're working for a contractor company, and have the same bad deal.

For all the discussion of diversity, any pathway out is pretty much closed. Even if you're in a historically disadvantaged group, the large company doesn't want to set a precedent that would establish the contractor group as employees. So the large company will block training and advancement, extracurricular networking opportunities, etc.

And historically disadvantaged minorities will be overrepresented in the contractor group because of both economic and educational disadvantage.

And to throw salt on it, arbitration agreements that you are forced to sign to work will preclude you using a class action suit to try to fix it, like Microsoft's testing group did in the 1990s. (Thank you Roberts court.)

Re: Educated Fools

#227

Post by [deleted] »

woodandsteel wrote: post #5

Conservatives are split about the changes the article discribes. Traditional conservatives are glad the labor movement was destroyed, and see the Knowledge Economy as good because it is the latest product of the unrestrained free market. On the other hand, Trump supporters are very angry, but the problem is that Trump's program won't do anything at all to fix the problems that are making them unhappy.

[deleted]

Re: Educated Fools

#228

Post by DebtDeflation »

woodandsteel wrote: post #5

Conservatives are split about the changes the article discribes. Traditional conservatives are glad the labor movement was destroyed, and see the Knowledge Economy as good because it is the latest product of the unrestrained free market. On the other hand, Trump supporters are very angry, but the problem is that Trump's program won't do anything at all to fix the problems that are making them unhappy.

> Trump supporters are very angry, but the problem is that Trump's program won't do anything at all to fix the problems that are making them unhappy.

There's no way around the fact that more education (doesn't necessarily mean college) and greater labor force mobility (providing people with the ability to move where the jobs are) has to be a significant part of the solution. Stating the facts is not condescension, but I guess it can and does cause politicians to lose elections.

Re: Educated Fools

#229

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #211
jml7c5 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The class conflict [...] is really the driver of much of social progress. How so?

I'm thinking: because it gives people a strong, active, positive goal to pursue. Members of each class want to migrate to the higher one, or at the very least, have their children break into the higher one. If you're discriminated or treated unfairly by a group of people, the natural reaction would be to separate yourself from that group of people, not fight it. But if for some reason you really want to join that gro…

Except that the article says that the working class in the US - and the UK - don't want to migrate. They just want to complain and break everything.

They don't want to improve anything for anyone in a strategic sense. They want textbook authoritarianism with a daddy figure lying that he loves them, and telling them who to hate so they can feel better.

It's an utter infantilisation, and the right are happy to sponsor it and farm it for their convenience. But attacking the left for pointing out that it's not really a solution seems to be part of the rhetorical package it's wrapped in.

The right are always happy to demonise the left for the working classes, because duh - of course they are.

The problem on the left - and I wouldn't consider most of the US Democratic Party as the left, incidentally - isn't so much "be like us" as a failure to understand just how murderous, dishonest, and literally criminal the elites on the other side are, and how limitlessly violent, self-serving and treacherous they can be in pursuit of their aims.

This wasn't a problem for the old turn-of-the-19th-century left, which had direct experience of being beaten up and shot at. But by the time you've been through college and acquired a fairly comfortable job it's hard to remember what your comfort is built on.

These facets of political history are conveniently erased from official nation-building stories of "progress" in the UK and the US, and people have to make a real effort to find out about them - which hardly anyone does now.

Re: Educated Fools

#230

Post by futureshock »

goatinaboat wrote: post #208
dougmwne wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it's possible. We all have plenty of incentive to keep on pretending that the emperor has clothes. The educated elite run the world. Why would we overthrow ourselves? The degree is the first fence protecting the gated community of the new urban aristocracy.

The degree is the first fence protecting the gated community of the new urban aristocracy But it isn’t a gate anymore really; in the UK at least basically everyone below a certain age has a degree, since they converted the polys. Having a degree isn’t in any way “elite” now, although of course there are still elite universities.

Apologies. I should have offered the disclaimer than I was talking about the US. The article is describing US politics and I was responding to it. European countries have different systems, different social classes, and different barriers to entry than we do. We also do not have your safety nets. Many here are one missed paycheck away from living on the street.

As the article states, in the US, 70% of people over 25 do not have a 4-year university degree. And contrary to the UK and the rest of Europe, American University is staggeringly expensive. And despite what you might read on HN, without a 4 year degree, nearly all professional jobs would be off limits. And if you did manage to sneak past the first gate, as some talented coders on HN have done, you can look forward to a lifetime inferiority complex, knowing that your co-workers have a safety and desirability you lack.

In the US, the 4-year degree really is a significantly high barrier to entry to the professional class. You also need to be living in one of a dozen elite cities, be the right race, have the right politics, the right friends and family, and the right set of previous employers. Only then have you gained that special status that lets you own a home you're not afraid to lose, go to a doctor you can afford, and enjoy a job that affords you comfort, stability, respect, and some measure of control over your destiny.

The overall point of this article is that in the US economy, there's not enough spots at the top for everyone. And everyone not at the top will live economically precarious lives. One political party likes to pretend that there is endless opertunity for all with promises of more university, and the other party has realized the lie and is decending into anti-intellectual madness, rejecting acedemia, experts and science.

Your country has some uncertain times ahead and there will be plenty of call to more closely emulate the free-market American system now that you've distanced yourselves from the more regulated and socialist European system. Do be careful.

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