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Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

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Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#71

Post by rootusrootus »

whimsicalism wrote: post #54
billytetrud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elementary and middle school is far more important than high school. The earlier you go, the more important it is.

If we actually wanted to improve education in our schools, we would just finish desegregating them.

How do we accomplish that, short of randomizing which school students are assigned to and then dealing with the transportation headache to make it happen? Schools continue to be segregated because of underlying socioeconomic realities; changing that is how we desegregate the schools, I don't know how we could feasibly reverse that causality.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#72

Post by fallingknife »

bregma wrote: post #32
thebean11 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with your larger point but: > This may show up as lots of superfluous/unreproducible papers and journals many not even based on the scientific method. seems very STEM-centric. It sounds like you're saying academia outside of the realm of science is useless which I completely disagree with.

But everyone knows you can only get rich by working in STEM. Have you ever heard of a musician worth millions? Or a writer? Or an actor? Or an athlete? Fashion designer?

Have you ever heard of one any one of those who anybody gave a shit where they went or if they went to school? (Other than athletes, of course, but for them school is no more than an unpaid apprenticeship forced on them by monopolistic leagues.)

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#73

Post by jmeister »

whimsicalism wrote: post #21

It's interesting how much of Substack has quickly become an opinion page for a bubble of "rationalist", pseudo-libertarian thinkers. It is almost a mono-culture at this point: the obligatory links to Tyler Cowen, the obligatory mention of race and biology, and footnotes just for the aesthetic. > Trade-offs between the quality of research, and the welfare of social scientists, should always be resolved in favour of re…

The “bubble” you speak of find themselves censored out of the bigger bubble that is mainstream media/academia.

You’re free to look away.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#74

Post by bluedino »

grahamburger wrote: post #15
greenail wrote: post #14

Maybe the incentives for universities are all wrong. In the early 1900's only 4% of the US went to university. There ended up being a big push to get more people into college with the assumption that it would benefit society. Eventually we ended up with a notion that everyone should go to college and this has been buttressed with government support but what if this idea is wrong? What if the incentives created lots o…

This is basically my feeling as well. I would prefer that we (at least in the U.S.) focus on making high school much much better, to the point that fewer people have any need to go to college/university. And then, if we still need to, figure out what to do about University. (Saying this as someone who never finished college/university, largely because I was trying to pay for it myself and couldn't make it work.)

>> focus on making high school much much better

Meanwhile we're lowering standards and just passing every kid we can, for 'fairness'

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#75

Post by whimsicalism »

rootusrootus wrote: post #71
whimsicalism wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we actually wanted to improve education in our schools, we would just finish desegregating them.

How do we accomplish that, short of randomizing which school students are assigned to and then dealing with the transportation headache to make it happen? Schools continue to be segregated because of underlying socioeconomic realities; changing that is how we desegregate the schools, I don't know how we could feasibly reverse that causality.

I think randomization plus weighting for geographic distance could work. The issue with busing was never the actual busing, and there are plenty of places (like my hometown) where parents send their kids further out to ensure that they attend a school that is majority their race rather than the local neighborhood school.

I lived in Cambridge, MA, and they have successfully desegregated their schools with a similar approach that kept transportation very low and remained a popular plan with most parents (75% approval income over $100k, ~95% approval income under $75k).

In another place I lived, the top public magnet school was ~95% black. White parents pretty much universally refused to send their kids there, but would send their kids to a different magnet that was further away.

The "underlying socioeconomic realities" are often overstated compared to the unfortunate, but big reason that we don't like to talk about, which is lots of parents (to some extent, understandably) are afraid to send their kids to a school where they would be in the racial minority.

Schools are now as segregated as they were in 1976, which represents a backtracking from the peak in 1988. That represents an erosion of will more than a vastly changed socioeconomic reality.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#76

Post by whimsicalism »

jmeister wrote: post #73
whimsicalism wrote: post #21

It's interesting how much of Substack has quickly become an opinion page for a bubble of "rationalist", pseudo-libertarian thinkers. It is almost a mono-culture at this point: the obligatory links to Tyler Cowen, the obligatory mention of race and biology, and footnotes just for the aesthetic. > Trade-offs between the quality of research, and the welfare of social scientists, should always be resolved in favour of re…

The “bubble” you speak of find themselves censored out of the bigger bubble that is mainstream media/academia. You’re free to look away.

> You’re free to look away.

I read plenty of these blogs, the idea that they only have a home at substack is absurd, and there's plenty of people regularly saying more controversial things in the conservative media.

Tyler Cowen, etc. are hardly censored.

I just find them boring.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#77

Post by leetcrew »

whimsicalism wrote: post #41
michaelt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are the consequences of "elite overproduction"? Underemployment, leading to... Long term student debts, leading to... Fewer people starting families

> Long term student debts I agree that this is a problem, and to the extent that we make it too easy for 18 year olds to take out massive amounts of debt, that is bad. But I feel like many of the people arguing about "elite overproduction" would be opposed to something like making all public schools free or just free community college.

part of "elite overproduction" (or even the crux, as I understand it), is giving more degrees than jobs actually exist for those degrees. from this perspective, it doesn't make any sense to spend more tax dollars on even more degrees that we (allegedly) don't need. a college degree will stop being a "ticket to the middle-class" (as my alma mater described it) somewhere before everyone has one.

that's the economic side of the argument anyway. I partially agree with what you said further up the chain, that education is a value unto itself. but it depends on what kind of education is actually being obtained. imo, a four year program that focuses on one main area and requires a smattering of intro-level courses in others isn't worth that much if you don't end up getting a job related to that area of focus. I guess if the major was interesting to you, that's something, but was it worth four to six years of your life?

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#79

Post by rootusrootus »

whimsicalism wrote: post #75
rootusrootus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we accomplish that, short of randomizing which school students are assigned to and then dealing with the transportation headache to make it happen? Schools continue to be segregated because of underlying socioeconomic realities; changing that is how we desegregate the schools, I don't know how we could feasibly reverse that causality.

I think randomization plus weighting for geographic distance could work. The issue with busing was never the actual busing, and there are plenty of places (like my hometown) where parents send their kids further out to ensure that they attend a school that is majority their race rather than the local neighborhood school. I lived in Cambridge, MA, and they have successfully desegregated their schools with a similar ap…

> there are plenty of places (like my hometown) where parents send their kids further out to ensure that they attend a school that is majority their race rather than the local neighborhood school.

Ah, that is interesting. In my district (and state, AFAIK), school assignment is completely out of the hands of the parents, with some narrow exceptions.

I fully admit to having a narrow view on this, my state is not especially diverse, with more than 75% white and 2% black. So most of our school segregation, if it's fair to call it that, is completely socioeconomic even if the students are largely the same race.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#80

Post by nohuck13 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #66
nohuck13 wrote: post #30

We're walking into the middle of an argument that's been going on for a while here. "Economic(s) imperialism" is the tendency of economists to write papers topics outside traditional economics. While the people in (say) the sociology department seem to have to confine themselves to sociology. As Tyler Cowen writes on Marginal Revolution [1] quoted by Kevin Munger in the piece this piece is responding to: " - Mammogra…

One of my favorite podcasts is ostensibly economics, but I've noticed that the topics tend to really be only tangentially related to economics. What they really seem to be are statisticians, not economists particularly.

Ooo, would you share? Wild guess: "More Or Less"?
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