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Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#131

Post by rejectedandsad »

Bostonian wrote: post #8

Education is a multiplier of IQ, not an equalizer. Many people, although policymakers won't admit it, don't have the IQ to study at the high school level, for example learning algebra. Even more people don't have the IQ to study at the college level, for example studying calculus and writing a coherent, footnoted term paper. And only a small fraction of the population has the IQ to do significant research and earn a…

I’m skeptical of tabula rasa myself (Speaking as someone on the less capable/“inferior”/low IQ side of the curve) but if true this will have to be remedied with a a robust safety net, right? Somehow Murray doesn’t seem to agree - as a set of policy prescriptions, it feels to me that the message is people like me should just starve.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#132

Post by silvestrov »

iammisc wrote: post #108
TrackerFF wrote: post #19

In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. Furthermore, strong labor laws have compressed salaries towards the mean, so people are not locking themselves into poverty by working low-wage / low-skill work, but there's a difference enough that people are incentivize…

> In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. That is a great explanation in theory, but simply does not work out in practice. In order to support the safety net, the EU has to impose several regulations that remove the ability of people to 'take chances', such as…

> higher taxes on business

  Denmark + Norway: 22%
  Sweden: 21.4%
  Finland: 20%
  Germany: 15%
  Nederlands: 25%
  France: 25%
  USA: 21%  (but 35% until 2017).
So the tax argument does not hold, especially for the period before 2017.

Birth rates are also the same: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...

> the EU is not particularly excellent at any

Odd that there are so many EU countries at the list of most happy countries when EU is not good at anything:

https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/the-10-happiest-countries...

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#133

Post by gumby »

mc32 wrote: post #121
gumby wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One interesting thing is that Europeans benefit from American innovation. They have iphones, windows pcs, use google, etc like everyone else. Until the iPhone, Europe dominated the mobile phone business both in handsets and wireless network equipment. And this wasn't just the manufacturers; texting was pretty heavy and ubiquitous in the mid 1990s while it was still a novelty for the US a decade later. Europe was a…

Has regulation changed appreciably the last two or three decades resulting in less drive for innovation?

I don't think so; in particular I believe the strength of the European economy in the late 90s was merely hysteresis from the growth and investments of the 70s and 80s.

There is a certain structural "stiffness" which is a mix of regulation and culture but I don't believe it changed much. There was a big war in the middle of the 20th century that you might have heard of :-) and I feel like it upended things; poor countries like Sweden and Switzerland were able to spring ahead and the low energy point that the economy settled on was actually pretty solid for the second half of the 20th century: a resilient network of medium sized businesses with great socialization (the soi-disant "Mittelstand" of Germany is the most well known example). Unfortunately it didn't respond well to the global giants of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#135

Post by harimau777 »

kungito wrote: post #31
John23832 wrote: post #7

Two parts: First, I think the ability to DO THINGS is the great equalizer at this point. Being a do-er lifts you out of poverty (or at least out of poverty's worst resting state). Being a do-er expands your network. Being a do-er prolongs your life (people with jobs/daily activities tend to live longer healthier lives). The best part about this is that technology has made it easier to become a do-er. You don't need a…

I feel like the US has to split into separate countries and maybe adopt a system like EU. Everything in the us gets so generalized no one has any agency over it except companies with enough money to push a narrative across 300 mil people. Either that or the way you think about US has to change. I find it hard to believe every state does things the same way but still you say "US" has a problem and not Georgia or Calif…

I'm not sure how that would work without allowing the individual states to act like separate countries. E.g. by being able to put tariffs on other states, sue them for their externalities, place restrictions on people who don't live and work in the state, etc.

At that point, I'm not sure what you gain by not being completely separate countries.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#136

Post by Jcowell »

rayiner wrote: post #90
kungito wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

Elections? Healthcare? (Continuing to push Medicaid expansion onto states that don’t want it?) Child care? Education?

Honestly the first two should be a federal thing. I just don’t understand how a federal election has 50 different ways of doing and qualifying things and not one way for a position that affects the whole country. If we were to pull up on a Alien planet and see this kind of election style we would ridicule the ridiculousness that is the US election system.

Don’t get me started on how it makes any sense that we don’t leverage the power of the government for something as crucial as life. Why in the god damn fuck is giving birth in this country not free?

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#137

Post by rejectedandsad »

mc32 wrote: post #128
rejectedandsad wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it’s pretty real, we just call it going to a top school. People like me will never achieve what the people at Ivy+ schools will, and I’ll be locked in a lower caste for good.

I thought one of the main complaints of the system is “too many ivy leaguers” (who share diff values), so why aim for the thing that we talk bad about? What’s bad about not being part of the derided elite class?

Being near the bottom of any hierarchy is bad, and without smashing these hierarchies people like me are just destined to suffer.

After all, the elite class is usually not derided anyway - and many of the people deriding them (think JD Vance) are elites already.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#138

Post by tshaddox »

hobs wrote: post #106
iammisc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmental Policy (EPA). Family policy (gay marriage, transgenderism, etc via the Supreme Court). Healthcare (Obamacare). Education (no child left behind, the dept of education). Higher education (federal backed guarantees). We can go on...

This has been one of the least informed comments I have read recently - most of the things you are attributing to democrats are were actually republicans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Pr... President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act#Legislativ... The ACA was championed by republicans until it became a politic…

While a lot of that is true, it’s also pretty pointless to argue about what political labels people used decades ago as if that is relevant to the merits of political groups today with those same labels. Political parties and other such labels drift significantly over time. You might as well argue that the GOP is great because John Milton was a “republican.”

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#139

Post by triceratops »

iammisc wrote: post #100
kungito wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

Environmental Policy (EPA). Family policy (gay marriage, transgenderism, etc via the Supreme Court). Healthcare (Obamacare). Education (no child left behind, the dept of education). Higher education (federal backed guarantees). We can go on...

> Family policy (gay marriage, transgenderism, etc via the Supreme Court).

If it's via the Supreme Court, can you really blame "Democrats"?

The Supreme Court upheld gay marriage on the basis of equal rights to all. States can't pass laws that violate the US constitution.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#140

Post by distances »

iammisc wrote: post #108
TrackerFF wrote: post #19

In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. Furthermore, strong labor laws have compressed salaries towards the mean, so people are not locking themselves into poverty by working low-wage / low-skill work, but there's a difference enough that people are incentivize…

> In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. That is a great explanation in theory, but simply does not work out in practice. In order to support the safety net, the EU has to impose several regulations that remove the ability of people to 'take chances', such as…

> paternity/maternity leave policies that cause parents to have fewer children

Could you expand what you mean by this? The higher birth rate in US (compared to Europe) is usually attributed to poverty and religion.

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