College doesn't work very often anymore. There are plenty of Comp Sci programs at US universities where half or more graduates can't get FTE jobs. We're so tired of seeing education being touted as a solution as underemployment continues to skyrocket because the new structural reality of the economy is that human bodies are being considered the most costly expense to be excised.
America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
11–20 of 39 posts
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#12I understand that this is just a summary of a book, but I have no takeaways after skimming this, as there was not one statistic or graph in the article. I love a good argument backed by statistics, and maybe the book has it... the article certainly didn't.
Are you perchance in a situation where you don't plainly see the dual economy right in front of your face when you go outside? I'm about as skeptical as they come, but not as much about things I can watch happen with my own eyes. Or was there something more specific in the article that seemed dubious? I'd encourage people not to let HN's ridiculous faux-scientific culture enable you to persist in denial about how aro…
Requesting that opinions be backed up with data is the hallmark of an actual scientific culture.
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#13I think that everybody have to understand that USA is very big country and it's extremely diverse, much more than countries in Europe. USA seems to have spots of extreme wealthy like Silicon Valley and most of the West Coast and extreme poverty like Detroit. With very small (in comparison to European countries) support for people in needs it's very easy to fall under poverty line only because of some accident.
Detroit has both extreme wealth and extreme poverty in very close proximity. Bloomfield Hills used to be one of the two or three wealthiest cities (townships?) in the country.
Drive down Woodward Ave or Telegraph Road and you get a cross-section of America.
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#14It ought to be FS (Finance & Software) instead of FTE. The TE (Technology & Electronics) isn't a growth sector. Seems most hardware is overseas, unless one assumes growth in automation, but again that's mostly software.
The SM in STEM doesn't pay, unless M is in Finance. Don't know why he would specifically call out Electronics unless he naively thinks that is software.
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#15We first moved to the US in 1981. For me, a lot of the country already seemed like that back then. Cars with '50s technology. Same for washing machines. Crumbling infrastructure, people (usually dark-skinned) doing jobs that had been automated since before I was born. Windows that didn't close properly. And yes, on the other hand incredible wealth. I went to a private school with people that never had, and probably n…
Numbers are better than gut feeling when it comes to economics... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...
It's a bit more than "gut feeling", it's qualitative data, and I think it helps tremendously with understanding something.
Quantitative data is important to see whether the qualitative data is actually representative.
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#16College doesn't work very often anymore. There are plenty of Comp Sci programs at US universities where half or more graduates can't get FTE jobs. We're so tired of seeing education being touted as a solution as underemployment continues to skyrocket because the new structural reality of the economy is that human bodies are being considered the most costly expense to be excised.
Interesting. Do you know of a detailed article about this?
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you perchance in a situation where you don't plainly see the dual economy right in front of your face when you go outside? I'm about as skeptical as they come, but not as much about things I can watch happen with my own eyes. Or was there something more specific in the article that seemed dubious? I'd encourage people not to let HN's ridiculous faux-scientific culture enable you to persist in denial about how aro…
Requesting that opinions be backed up with data is the hallmark of an actual scientific culture.
If Hacker News cargo-cults an actual scientific culture long enough, maybe it will transform into one.
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#18College doesn't work very often anymore. There are plenty of Comp Sci programs at US universities where half or more graduates can't get FTE jobs. We're so tired of seeing education being touted as a solution as underemployment continues to skyrocket because the new structural reality of the economy is that human bodies are being considered the most costly expense to be excised.
That's true. Hiring a human, period, is costly.
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#19I understand that this is just a summary of a book, but I have no takeaways after skimming this, as there was not one statistic or graph in the article. I love a good argument backed by statistics, and maybe the book has it... the article certainly didn't.
Agreed. I flagged this article because it is exactly the type of article I believe doesn't belong on HN. No empirical evidence, just opinions that may or may not be based in actual facts.
Well done, brave Throwaway. Now please keep flagging articles with no charts, even the ones who cater to your belief system.
Re: America is regressing into a developing nation for most people
#20> We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to i…
Yep.
Jordan Peterson has discussed how important IQ is in the modern economy and how both the left and the right are in denial about it. While the left thinks anyone can be anything, the right thinks lazy people just need to work harder. Both are wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0
Difficult problem.