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No one cared about my spreadsheets

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Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#321

Post by omnicognate »

hgomersall wrote: post #285
renewiltord wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Students who graduated from such universities often are more capable of independent thinking in my experience. Germany: 111 Nobel Laureates University of Columbia: 83 Nobel Laureates The whole country struggled to produce just a little more than one American university. They may think more independently, but it seems that it was so independent as to fail to advance human knowledge much more than a single American u…

As others have pointed out, that comparison is poor. A better one is Nobel laureates per capita: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_l... There are a good few European countries above the US.

Including Germany (one position higher).

Love that the Faroe Islands is at the top with one prize.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#322

Post by omnicognate »

Lio wrote: post #320
hgomersall wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have pointed out, that comparison is poor. A better one is Nobel laureates per capita: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_l... There are a good few European countries above the US.

Do we count all Nobel laureates the same in that list? i.e. is a Peace Laureate the same value in showing the superiority of a particular university as a Chemistry Laureate or even Literature Laureate? The list looks very different if you take that into account.

There's a table with only scientific prizes taken into account there, too. Doesn't change much, Germany is still higher than the US.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#323

Post by hgomersall »

omnicognate wrote: post #321
hgomersall wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have pointed out, that comparison is poor. A better one is Nobel laureates per capita: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_l... There are a good few European countries above the US.

Including Germany (one position higher). Love that the Faroe Islands is at the top with one prize.

Both the top island nations have their one prize in economics, which is a fake Nobel prize, and shouldn't be on that list at all.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#324

Post by saint_fiasco »

cycomanic wrote: post #318
saint_fiasco wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caplan is talking about all education, but he says each kind has different value. In short he believes k-12 is useful as daycare, and college is useful as a signal of how smart and hard working and conformist you are. He believes those benefits are not worth the massive subsidies. Moreover, the signalling thing doesn't work if everyone is pushed to go to college because it turns into a Red Queen's race. He praises vo…

So what is his argument to dismiss the high correlation between many economic indicators and education spending both historically and geographically? I had a look at the spreadsheets but I don't clearly see what are the factors that go into his calculation of benefit to society calculation except for crime rates. I mean how about R&D necessary to grow the economy, competitive advantages for attracting immigrants, par…

The usual argument when a correlation goes against your theory is to say "aha! but what if the causation goes the other way?" and that's pretty much what the author does.

He sees higher education as a luxury good. Something that rich societies do when they become rich, because they are rich.

If you look at some of the top comments in this thread you might see some evidence in favor of his position. Most people are not trying to justify education spending because of practical concerns about growing the economy and attracting skilled immigrants[1]. They are saying that education has a higher value that cannot be measured in traditional economic terms[2].

[1] By the way, hasn't higher education traditionally been used to restrict immigration? They don't let you work in many rich countries if you don't have a college degree, and some rich countries have point-based systems that deduct points if you don't have a college degree. That sounds a lot like college attracts skilled immigrants, but if you look at the glass half empty it also discourages a lot of skilled immigrants who for some reason or another can't get a college degree.

[2] The author then spends many pages discussing social desirability bias and how people are reluctant to argue against maximizing spending for good things even long after the good thing reaches diminishing returns.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#325

Post by roenxi »

periheli0n wrote: post #293
edanm wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more…

> There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is. Judging the benefit of education only on the financial bottomline is bound to underestimate its real value. For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex in…

Judging the benefits of anything only on the financial bottom line is risky. Many extremely valuable things are valuable because they are cheap to the point of irrelevancy. Which is why it is a valid question to ask whether the resources are worth it.

> For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on.

It has worked pretty well for the last 2,500 years with voters possessing extremely questionable education. The main issue is whether a democracy has a culture of being graceful in both political victory and defeat.

> Education is correlated with health and longevity.

Correlation is not causation. Wealthy people tend to be healthy, long-lived and well educated. It might not be the education as much as having enough wealth for leisure and health.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#326

Post by omnicognate »

hgomersall wrote: post #323
omnicognate wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including Germany (one position higher). Love that the Faroe Islands is at the top with one prize.

Both the top island nations have their one prize in economics, which is a fake Nobel prize, and shouldn't be on that list at all.

I rather agree with you there.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#327

Post by southerntofu »

edanm wrote: post #281
kwhitefoot wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, Not everywhere. Next to no homeless people here in Scandinavia yet education is universally available at almost no cost to the student. The US is richer both in absolute terms and per capita so lack of money is presumably not the reason for the diffe…

I wasn't saying that it's either education or specifically helping the homeless. I'm saying it's a tradeoff between spending on education, vs. spending on other things. If homelessness isn't a problem, great! There are still other ways to spend the money. Maybe raise the standard of living of the poorest 10% by giving them a UBI. Maybe build nicer gardens. Maybe just have lower taxes! It's totally possible that educa…

Abolish police and military, and suddenly you'll have plenty of funds for your UBI or whatever cool system you'd like to invest in.

Also worth noting: money is just a meaningless abstraction designed by the rich to extract value from the poor (without money, the rich and the poor don't even exist). If you're really concerned about welfare of people, abolition of money and private property is a question worth raising and studying seriously.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#328

Post by zaarn »

regularfry wrote: post #319
zaarn wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you need to make your spending on these other problems more effective. Give tenants more rights to stay in a home, give people more job security, make mental health programs cheaper and target vulnerable populations. Etc.

...and the same argument applies again. It doesn't matter how effective they are, the same logic applies: money you spend on thing A cannot then be used on thing B. That is a choice. I should add that changing things to make them more effective also costs money.

But can you then spend anything? Because spending anything is also a decision on what is more important? By the argument you propose, spending money seems immoral. But spending money on education and homelessness isn't immoral in most moral frameworks, hence the argument must be faulty. Something must be spend and that means allocating how much to spend on what. Preventing future harm on countless people is morally better than preventing current harm on countable people, hence it must be better to prioritize improving the situation in the future before improving the current situation. In conclusion, we ought to spend on education first (or preventative measures in general), then on everything else.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#329

Post by edanm »

southerntofu wrote: post #327
edanm wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't saying that it's either education or specifically helping the homeless. I'm saying it's a tradeoff between spending on education, vs. spending on other things. If homelessness isn't a problem, great! There are still other ways to spend the money. Maybe raise the standard of living of the poorest 10% by giving them a UBI. Maybe build nicer gardens. Maybe just have lower taxes! It's totally possible that educa…

Abolish police and military, and suddenly you'll have plenty of funds for your UBI or whatever cool system you'd like to invest in. Also worth noting: money is just a meaningless abstraction designed by the rich to extract value from the poor (without money, the rich and the poor don't even exist). If you're really concerned about welfare of people, abolition of money and private property is a question worth raising…

> Abolish police and military, and suddenly you'll have plenty of funds for your UBI or whatever cool system you'd like to invest in.

Abolish police and then what? Who will enforce any kinds of laws? Or do we just revert to having nothing?

Abolish the military and leave every country at the mercy of any invader that comes along? I can certainly understand the idea of not spending as much money on the military, but how can anyone that has heard of any amount of history take seriously the idea that a country like the US can just abolish its military without it being in catastrophic danger?

> Also worth noting: money is just a meaningless abstraction designed by the rich to extract value from the poor

That's... a pretty bold statement.

But I'm curios. What do you mean? If the abstraction of money didn't exist, what would happen exactly? In some sense you are right that money is just an abstraction, it's just an abstraction for the fact that there are limited resources that everyone wants.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#330

Post by Kbelicius »

roenxi wrote: post #325
periheli0n wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is. Judging the benefit of education only on the financial bottomline is bound to underestimate its real value. For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex in…

Judging the benefits of anything only on the financial bottom line is risky. Many extremely valuable things are valuable because they are cheap to the point of irrelevancy. Which is why it is a valid question to ask whether the resources are worth it. > For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on. It has worked pretty well for the la…

> It has worked pretty well for the last 2,500 years with voters possessing extremely questionable education. The main issue is whether a democracy has a culture of being graceful in both political victory and defeat.

I would like to hear more about this democracy that has lasted 2500 years please.

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