This is incredible. Mike Rowe has a blog and he apparently understands economics (based on first answer.) once again HN has made my day.
A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
81–90 of 230 posts
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't care less about the warm words in that pledge. I'm fearful of the mindset of the person that wrote it. We all fancy the "meritocracy" mindset, but we can't just ignore that there are very, very important factors at play (your gender, the color of your skin, your upbringing, the wealth of your family, the social standing of your family..) that determine a persons success regardless of their conduct, determi…
If an employer is dumb enough to not hire a great worker because of their gender or skin color, then that business is doomed in the long run anyways. Because somewhere out there is a competitor who will snatch up that talented person and crush them. Capitalism is a brutal business, but it does have a way of sorting these things out.
> Because somewhere out there is a competitor who will snatch up that talented person and crush them.
Empirically, this is not always the case.
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#83Here's maybe a simple solution: Why can't it be made illegal to list 'college degree' as a requirement for a job? Everyone knows of jobs that any moron can do, but a college degree is required. Especially for white collar jobs in large corporations, you can't make it past the first layer of HR without a degree.
So your solution to the complex problem of college tuition increases over almost 30 years is "Make a law, then create n enforcement department, then levy fines"? I'm presuming the latter too since it makes no sense to "Make a law" that isn't going to be enforced. To enforce this over the 20,000,000 job postings out there - probably need a department of at least 50 people. Budget $80,000 per employee + $20,000 in taxes + benefits = $100k per person x 50 = $5m budget each year. I guess we'd better make those fines pretty high so we can pay for the department but, if not, that's okay - we can raise taxes 0.004% on everyone to offset it.
Mike talked about how Repubs and Dems want the same basic things but disagree about (a) how to get there, and (b) the role of government. I'm guessing you and I are on different sides of (b).
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#84I hadn't heard about Mike Rowe until he started his program to popularize the trades. It's an interesting perspective, and I don't really have a beef about it. But let me make a few factual points, borne out of my experience and the experience I have in growing up around tradespeople and being related to tradespeople. * The trades are physically hard labor edit: It might not be clear what this entails, as perhaps not…
> The trades do not pay well until/unless you specialize into certain areas. A problem that makes this particularly bad is that many now don't pay at all until you manage to become qualified as a high-skill specialist. A lot of the low-end work has been automated, which has gutted the traditional pipeline where you start with low-skill jobs and move upwards. It's not just that low-skill welding jobs (say) don't pay w…
As a former electrician, I should mention that trade unions usually have their own forms of college as well, in the form of apprenticeships -- these vary from trade to trade, but at least within the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, you got access to very cheap, job-specific vocational education that combined classroom learning with on-the-job training, and graduated pay as you progress.
When I was doing it many years ago, in Memphis, TN, a first year apprentice made, basically minimum wage, or something close to it, but graduates of the program made an actual living wage, or a rate of something like $25 an hour.
Those rates have likely gone up, since I'm talking at least decade-and-a-half old numbers, but the notion that they don't pay well is a relative term. Compared to minimum wage, they pay extremely well, once one reaches a level akin to 'college-educated'.
The majority of my family are blue collar workers, in trades from electrical to HVAC to fiber optics, etc., and they're all doing well. They aren't rich by any metric, but they all have comfortable housing, adequate/reliable vehicles, ample food, and enough surplus that nobody's starving, and nobody's generally in more debt than their mortgage.
In today's economy, that is something worth mentioning. That there are 600,000 of these jobs[1] is baffling to me, and merits further research.
[1] - Potentially, I'd like to see how many of them match up to what I'm picturing, as I see the numbers in dispute, so it's possible that there are a few of these jobs, while the rest are far lower, I dunno.
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#85> Think about it. Universities get to decide how much money to charge their students. Likewise, parents and students decide if they can afford to pay it. It’s a pretty simple proposition. But when the government suddenly makes hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans readily available — under the popular (and voter-friendly) theory that “everyone should go to college” — we see an unintended consequence. Well…
I looked into this a bit for the University of California system, and that did indeed seem to be the issue in that case. Tuition has gone up, but less than state funding has gone down. In other words, the university is getting cheaper to operate on a per-student basis, but nonetheless getting more expensive to attend, because of a large shift in who pays (from taxpayers to students). The historical public funding lev…
You can look at british uni's for another data point, though. It all has to do with demand, not the cost base. Uni's were free, but seeing how much the 'stupid americans' were paying (thanks to leverage), the UK started to reduce grants to 'tap into the damand', and they now purposefully issue debt to students as a from of highly targeted TAX.
The demand comes from the 'social marker' heuristic that a university degree conveys (ie, social proof) for employment and personal networking. Until there is a competing "commodity" whith this aspect of social utility, a degree with have economic value proportional to GDP, in a way like housing stock. The main problem with broad based inflation of the costs of college is that there is only so much "beach front" real estate in the degree system. The top 10 schools are typically the ones that matter, for social signalling, and quite frankly nobody cares how much you paid to get the degree. A "free" degree from cambridge (UK) has a good value, just like a $$$ degree from MIT or Stanford. Heck, many will argue a from a top 5 school has more going for them than a degree holder from a middle of the pack school.
The great thing about Berkeley is its one of the few state schools that has a powerful global reputation. And in that sense it remains good value for money (if you are a resident Californian). But the taxpayers and politicians seem to be playing a rather sophisticated game of stealth-taxation with the Higher Education system as a whole. It really doesn't matter the details until one unpacks how the system is really working. And what is driving supply and demand at a more 'meta' level.
Not to mention, barely anyone pays the "listed price" in the USA for any school.
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The trades do not pay well until/unless you specialize into certain areas. A problem that makes this particularly bad is that many now don't pay at all until you manage to become qualified as a high-skill specialist. A lot of the low-end work has been automated, which has gutted the traditional pipeline where you start with low-skill jobs and move upwards. It's not just that low-skill welding jobs (say) don't pay w…
>> If you really want to DIY a trade without a college degree, I'd recommend learning PHP or web design before I'd recommend trying to break into welding. Isn't that have the exact same 'problem', where only high-skill developers are paid $40/hour and a beginner is going to have trouble finding work and when he does it will only pay $12/hour?
Not the same problem. Many of the skilled trades not only require an apprenticeship to learn, but also to be licensed to perform the work independently. Coding could probably use more of an apprenticeship path, but there is currently nothing preventing a coder from pursuing just about any type of job that they can talk their way into.
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
His whole point at the end is that there are millions of well paying benefitted jobs that are available without a college education.
I'm not going to doubt that... I'm just saying there must be some underlying economic reason why that's true. Seems that things are in an equilibrium, but maybe not the optimal one (blasphemy, I know).
The reason is no longer true but it was true that corporations needed more educated workers to perform certain tasks and college graduates were relatively rare. Most of the college graduates in my parents' generation were gainfully employed consistently in my childhood. That is definitely not the case among my college educated peers today. Many are underemployed and in debt.
Some of the issue is that people are chasing the economic signals from an age past where the conditions were just different.
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#88I don't buy the arguments that trade jobs are a good option. It's especially hard to swallow from a college graduate who belongs to an anti-union political party.
Unless you are unwilling or unable to go to college, the numbers indicate that, on average, you will have much lower unemployment and a substantially higher lifetime income.
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#89Skate where the puck is going to be. How much confidence can you have nowadays that your job isn't one clever-roboticist away from being automated, if your main value contribution is skilled labor? The same economics that drive high pay for skilled welders who work in the heat also will drive dollars towards automating these jobs. If I have to pay a welder 100k a year now, if I can automate their job away for anything less than that then it's worth it.
The truth is college is a form of leverage. If you get a solid degree you have basically added a skills multiplier to many things you will encounter in your career. The same cannot really be said if you become a master tradesman, since the deeper you go the less transferrable your skills become.
Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
#90>most of the Republicans I know want the same basic things as most of the Democrats I know ... They all want a healthy planet
That's a crock of shit right there. Most Republicans put the almighty dollar ahead of the environment and many still think global warming or climate change effects are a hoax.
Mike Rowe must live in quite the small bubble.