61–70 of 119 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't most kinds of business require some capital to start?
Less capital now than ever. Local service businesses like "Mop It Up" would cost almost nothing to operate. The barrier to entry is simply that the work is undesirable. This makes it valuable.
Perhaps it needs to be made very clear, in case there are some that still are confused about why many people (who study non-technical subjects) choose to go to college (aside from many of the well-known ones like the promises of how it would lead to a 1950s style middle-class lifestyle; because their parents made them; because it's rite-of-passage; or because their friends are there), for /whatever/ major they choose…
I used to think on similar lines, that at some point there wouldn't be enough work to do. But it's absolutely Utopian horseshit. There is ALWAYS useful work to do sometimes there's just of shortage of funds or skilled workers to do it. Look at our aging infrastructure, fix our bridges, tunnels, roads, buildings, houses, etc. Care for our old and sick, learn art and design and make the world more beautiful, engineer s…
It's not Utopian horseshit. Please be less dismissive of ideas.
Should note that it's "attended college" but not necessarily graduated, and that makes a huge difference.
This is hugely important, and seems to have been glossed over. "attending college" != "graduating from college". College is, for better or worse, a binary signal. You either graduated or you didn't. When you apply for an Engineering license, the Engineering board doesn't care that you completed 100% of your Engineering courses but never received a degree because you forgot to take History 101. Because of this, it's e…
Perhaps it needs to be made very clear, in case there are some that still are confused about why many people (who study non-technical subjects) choose to go to college (aside from many of the well-known ones like the promises of how it would lead to a 1950s style middle-class lifestyle; because their parents made them; because it's rite-of-passage; or because their friends are there), for /whatever/ major they choose…
I used to think on similar lines, that at some point there wouldn't be enough work to do. But it's absolutely Utopian horseshit. There is ALWAYS useful work to do sometimes there's just of shortage of funds or skilled workers to do it. Look at our aging infrastructure, fix our bridges, tunnels, roads, buildings, houses, etc. Care for our old and sick, learn art and design and make the world more beautiful, engineer s…
Yep, the only problem is the amount of this work. Fixing or building a road or a bridge takes a lot less people than it used to. Trends in other fields are similar. You can argue that this can be compensated for by building more or better bridges, but at some point the society's appetite for useful bridges will hit a cost barrier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know close to 50% of new grads are unemployed right? This is millions of kids a year who were told to get educated and now have no job waiting for them when they do. Acting like millions of kids should just get a job mopping floors and drop the entitlement is super ignorant and borders on dangerous. I would put a lot of this blame on the fact that tax cuts for the rich that were supposed to "raise demand for work…
That, and new Scooba models from iRobot (makers of Roomba), who mop the floor with efficiency similar to those Anthropology majors at fraction of the cost.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your presumption is that there are jobs available; according to the bureau of labor statistics, as of March 2012 there were 3.4 unemployed people for every job opening (roughly double the ratio at the start of the recession back in December 2007).
I don't know what the overall employment rate has to do with this. The article looks at the relative employment rate of people who have attended college vs those who haven't. People who have attended college should be more qualified for more jobs than those who haven't. They should be more employed, but they aren't. The simplest explanation(and the one that matches what I've seen/experienced) is that people who have…
In fact they are more employed, according to the article, if they actually graduated (as opposed to merely attending). The article gives, for people 25 and up, the following unemployment rates:
Overall: 6.6% unemployed
High school, no college: 7.7% unemployed
Some college, no degree: 8% unemployed
2-year college degree: 6.2% unemployed
4-year college degree: 4% unemployed
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You know close to 50% of new grads are unemployed right?" No, I didn't know that, but the statistic itself is largely unhelpful without a demographic breakdown. I would be curious as to the distribution itself by degree. I would additionally hypothesize that degrees that are more "geared" towards entering the workforce (Engineering) would have significantly lower unemployment numbers than degrees that are primarily…
How does the major affect the sheer number of people whose best option is now starting a mopping business?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your presumption is that there are jobs available; according to the bureau of labor statistics, as of March 2012 there were 3.4 unemployed people for every job opening (roughly double the ratio at the start of the recession back in December 2007).
I don't know what the overall employment rate has to do with this. The article looks at the relative employment rate of people who have attended college vs those who haven't. People who have attended college should be more qualified for more jobs than those who haven't. They should be more employed, but they aren't. The simplest explanation(and the one that matches what I've seen/experienced) is that people who have…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to think on similar lines, that at some point there wouldn't be enough work to do. But it's absolutely Utopian horseshit. There is ALWAYS useful work to do sometimes there's just of shortage of funds or skilled workers to do it. Look at our aging infrastructure, fix our bridges, tunnels, roads, buildings, houses, etc. Care for our old and sick, learn art and design and make the world more beautiful, engineer s…
There's always work to do exactly because there are always people looking for work. It's not the other way around. Most jobs aren't necessary for our survival, so people who don't want to work shouldn't be forced to work. It's not Utopian horseshit. Please be less dismissive of ideas.
Most jobs aren't necessary for our survival. OK, maybe people shouldn't be forced to work for their survival. But if they want much more than survival, they should do their fair share. And since I want much more than survival, I'd rather more people could pitch in and help out with that.
Pace comments that STEM majors are not part of the trend, consider this: I started my undergrad education following the dot com bubble years and was dissuaded to pursue compsci. I went into civil (structural) engineering instead. Over half of my civeng classmates would go to postgrad education -- in engineering, law, whatever -- precisely because of the inability to find a job in civil engineering. About a third of m…