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I don't think it's a commonly accepted conclusion that education increases income primarily through competitive advantage (i.e. it's a zero sum game). Take, fo

I don't think it's a commonly accepted conclusion that education increases income primarily through competitive advantage (i.e. it's a zero sum game). Take, for example, being educated on home farming methods to grow 200 cabbages a year instead of 100. In this case your income grows directly as a result of your education. Now yes there are some cases that may be signaling, but I'd like to see some empirical evidence that education is mostly zero-sum.

autarch 10y ago
Unless, of course, all home cabbage farmers receive the education, thus doubling the supply of cabbage on the market, which we would expect to more or less halve the price, leading to ... a zero sum game ;)
- rickycook 10y ago
  and now we need half as many cabbage farmers, which means that half those people doing manual labor can do something else, which in turn makes the economy more productive either way, you get more of something in the economy, even if it's not money for those in poverty. in this case, it'd likely lead to food becoming cheaper and more people being able to eat I fail to see how education hasn't benefited those in need in this (somewhat contrived) analogy
  - DiabloD3 10y ago
    Except we're now leading to one of the major problems in the current US economy: we now have too many workers, and not enough jobs, due to the large scale improvements in efficiency since the end of WW2. So, we're back to what started this: people are going to school, getting education, and now they're working as the local McD's night shift manager with a masters in their pocket. Making better workers only helps if there are enough better jobs to go around, otherwise it is just inflating a massive bubble in the education industry.
    - EliRivers 10y ago
      Or we abandon the idea that the purpose of people is to serve the economy. This will be a very difficult change to make.
      - musha68k 10y ago
        The problem is that neo-liberal capitalism has essentially been the only remaining big "story" over the last 30 years. First it weeded out all ideas of communism and recently it seems to slowly but steadily trump even European social capitalism, eventually it might simply eat itself and turn humanity into a literal "state-machine". There really seems to be "no alternative" today and consequently people seem to see no way out of that box for the most part. "The Unnecessariat" which got posted here yesterday was a very sobering read in that regard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581
      - rhapsodic 10y ago
        > Or we abandon the idea that the purpose of people is to serve the economy. I don't know who believes that the purpose of people is to serve the economy. However I believe that, where no actual disabilities exist, family units should be self-supporting and should also share in the burden of maintaining a free, just and civilized society.
        tokensimian 10y ago
        It's a common way of expressing teh question, does the population serve the economy, or does the economy serve the population? Put another way, should countries protect workers or owners? (A false dichotomy, of course, and an oversimplification to boot.)
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      We definitively do NOT have "too many workers". There are millions of jobs out there which are simply not getting done due to lack of a worker willing/able to do them, or due to regulations making the job illegal. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_our_jobs.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou... We have "not enough jobs" when everyone who wants one has a butler, maid, cook and driver. (Or butlerbot, cleaning bot, autocook 2000 and self driving car.) That's not the world we live in today.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    This only works if the increase was achieved on a sustainable way. In practice it's probably over farming leading to destruction of the soil, eutrification or poisoning of water courses, and other damaging behaviours that are a long term detriment. Farmers and farms can't be switched on and off to different crop production or different skilled occupations without considerable lag.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  > doubling the supply of cabbage on the market, which we would expect to more or less halve the price, leading to ... a zero sum game ;) No. Noooo. This stuff is all connected. At a minimum, leading to consumers of cabbage spending less money in the market for foodstuffs, instead being free to spend the money elsewhere, leading to an increase in their personal well-being and economic growth in other sectors. (And that's assuming that there is no change in the number of entrants into the home-cabbage-farming sector.)
  - Programmatic 10y ago
    From the perspective of the farmer it's still worse than zero-sum because they've paid to become educated while still bringing home the same amount of income. This scenario also assumed that education brought real productivity gains vs. being a signal.
    - Domenic_S 10y ago
      It's actually negative-sum, because it presumably costs some amount of money/work/resources to produce more cabbages. So while cost-per-cabbage increases, sales price decreases. Compare and contrast to the arguments about "highest worker productivity in history" while wages stagnate.
vezycash 10y ago
The farmer from your example benefits both himself and the society because he'll be richer and create more jobs. The article was concerned about the fact the growth rate of job creation is less than the growth rate of schooled people. This according to the article is the formula for increased poverty rates. An educational system that increases job makers - not job hunters, is the cure for poverty.

autarch 10y ago

Unless, of course, all home cabbage farmers receive the education, thus doubling the supply of cabbage on the market, which we would expect to more or less halve the price, leading to ... a zero sum game ;)

rickycook 10y ago
and now we need half as many cabbage farmers, which means that half those people doing manual labor can do something else, which in turn makes the economy more productive either way, you get more of something in the economy, even if it's not money for those in poverty. in this case, it'd likely lead to food becoming cheaper and more people being able to eat I fail to see how education hasn't benefited those in need in this (somewhat contrived) analogy
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  Except we're now leading to one of the major problems in the current US economy: we now have too many workers, and not enough jobs, due to the large scale improvements in efficiency since the end of WW2. So, we're back to what started this: people are going to school, getting education, and now they're working as the local McD's night shift manager with a masters in their pocket. Making better workers only helps if there are enough better jobs to go around, otherwise it is just inflating a massive bubble in the education industry.
  - EliRivers 10y ago
    Or we abandon the idea that the purpose of people is to serve the economy. This will be a very difficult change to make.
    - musha68k 10y ago
      The problem is that neo-liberal capitalism has essentially been the only remaining big "story" over the last 30 years. First it weeded out all ideas of communism and recently it seems to slowly but steadily trump even European social capitalism, eventually it might simply eat itself and turn humanity into a literal "state-machine". There really seems to be "no alternative" today and consequently people seem to see no way out of that box for the most part. "The Unnecessariat" which got posted here yesterday was a very sobering read in that regard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581
    - rhapsodic 10y ago
      > Or we abandon the idea that the purpose of people is to serve the economy. I don't know who believes that the purpose of people is to serve the economy. However I believe that, where no actual disabilities exist, family units should be self-supporting and should also share in the burden of maintaining a free, just and civilized society.
      - tokensimian 10y ago
        It's a common way of expressing teh question, does the population serve the economy, or does the economy serve the population? Put another way, should countries protect workers or owners? (A false dichotomy, of course, and an oversimplification to boot.)
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    We definitively do NOT have "too many workers". There are millions of jobs out there which are simply not getting done due to lack of a worker willing/able to do them, or due to regulations making the job illegal. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_our_jobs.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou... We have "not enough jobs" when everyone who wants one has a butler, maid, cook and driver. (Or butlerbot, cleaning bot, autocook 2000 and self driving car.) That's not the world we live in today.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  This only works if the increase was achieved on a sustainable way. In practice it's probably over farming leading to destruction of the soil, eutrification or poisoning of water courses, and other damaging behaviours that are a long term detriment. Farmers and farms can't be switched on and off to different crop production or different skilled occupations without considerable lag.
fennecfoxen 10y ago
> doubling the supply of cabbage on the market, which we would expect to more or less halve the price, leading to ... a zero sum game ;) No. Noooo. This stuff is all connected. At a minimum, leading to consumers of cabbage spending less money in the market for foodstuffs, instead being free to spend the money elsewhere, leading to an increase in their personal well-being and economic growth in other sectors. (And that's assuming that there is no change in the number of entrants into the home-cabbage-farming sector.)
- Programmatic 10y ago
  From the perspective of the farmer it's still worse than zero-sum because they've paid to become educated while still bringing home the same amount of income. This scenario also assumed that education brought real productivity gains vs. being a signal.
  - Domenic_S 10y ago
    It's actually negative-sum, because it presumably costs some amount of money/work/resources to produce more cabbages. So while cost-per-cabbage increases, sales price decreases. Compare and contrast to the arguments about "highest worker productivity in history" while wages stagnate.

vezycash 10y ago

The farmer from your example benefits both himself and the society because he'll be richer and create more jobs. The article was concerned about the fact the growth rate of job creation is less than the growth rate of schooled people. This according to the article is the formula for increased poverty rates. An educational system that increases job makers - not job hunters, is the cure for poverty.