5 ms·

Manufacturing also provides jobs for both high and low skill workers. As such can be seen as more valuable to a community than say, a software company that only

by rfrank 10y ago

Manufacturing also provides jobs for both high and low skill workers. As such can be seen as more valuable to a community than say, a software company that only hires engineers and a CS center in a different state. Manufacturing was one of the best roads for a low skill worker to earn good money and move up the rung economically - something that only seems to be getting harder as time goes on.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
It may seem to be getting harder, but in reality it's not. Rank based measures of mobility are stable. Since income inequality is up, absolute mobility has also increased. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/chettyetalAERPP2014.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/chettyetalAERPP2014.pdf
- rfrank 10y ago
  "When compared to 24 middle-income and high income countries, the U.S. ranks 16th in the amount of inter-generational earnings mobility. The relatively low level of mobility in the U.S. may arise in part because low-income children in the U.S. tend to have less stable and lower-income families, less secure families, and parents who have less time to devote to their children." http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-SOTU-2016-Economic-Mobility-3.pdf http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-...
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    The numbers you quote do not address the point under discussion at all.
    - rfrank 10y ago
      "However, the increase in inequality has also magnified the difference in expected incomes between children born to low-(e.g., bottom-quintile) versus high-(top-quintile) income families. In this sense, mobility has fallen because a child’s income depends more heavily on her parents’ position in the income distribution today than in the past. Since the appropriate definition of inter-generational mobility depends upon one’s normative objective, we characterize the copula and marginal distributions separately in this paper." It would appear we have different normative objectives.
- 6502nerdface 10y ago
  Interesting paper. It actually concludes that reasonable seeming (IMO) definitions of mobility give different results on the question of whether mobility has increased or decreased (or stayed the same) since the 70s. "Based on all of these measures, we find that children entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income distribution (relative to their parents) as children born in the 1970s. "Although these rank-based measures of mobility have remained stable, income inequality increased over time in our sample, consistent with prior work. Hence, the consequences of the "birth lottery"---the parents to whom a child is born---are larger today than in the past. A useful visual analogy is to envision the income distribution as a ladder, with each percentile representing a different rung. The rungs of the ladder have grown further apart (inequality has increased), but children’s chances of climbing from lower to higher rungs have not changed (rank-based mobility has remained stable). ... "Together, these two facts can be used to construct various measures of mobility. For example, if one defines mobility based on relative positions in the income distribution---e.g., a child’s prospects of rising from the bottom to the top quintile---then intergenerational mobility has remained unchanged in recent decades. If instead one defines mobility based on the probability that a child from a low-income family (e.g., the bottom 20 percent) reaches a fixed upper-income threshold (e.g., $100,000), then mobility has increased because of the increase in inequality. However, the increase in inequality has also magnified the difference in expected incomes between children born to low- (e.g., bottom-quintile) versus high- (top-quintile) income families. In this sense, mobility has fallen because a child’s income depends more heavily on her parents’ position in the income distribution today than in the past."
- whybroke 10y ago
  No, the result of increased wealth inequality, even if you maintained the same level of social mobility, will worsen not improve situation. The description of a rise in absolute mobility would be a misunderstanding of the issue. If that is too theoretic, consider the analogy of a lottery where one group of children win automatically and an other group has say a 10% chance of winning during their life. Increasing the prize (i.e. a rise in inequity among classes) serves only to worsens the situation not only for the median and average members but the vast bulk of the lower class since those who don't rise (the vast majority) are now even worse off relatively. Or indeed by your logic simply raising the salary of a CEO by a massive amount also raises the "absolute mobility" of all other employees So unless mobility also raises by at least a corresponding amount, any worsening of inequality at birth will only worsen the situation by every meaningful standard. And even then it is probably a bad idea.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Or indeed by your logic simply raising the salary of a CEO by a massive amount also raises the "absolute mobility" of all other employees Yes. If I had a 1% chance of being the CEO and having my income go from $100k to $1M, my expected payoff was $900k x 1% = $9k. If my income stays at $100k but the CEO income goes to $10M, and my odds of being the CEO stay at 1%, my expected payoff is $9.9M x 1% = 99k. My situation has not been worsened and has a possibility of being improved. You seem to think it somehow makes me worse off if my CEO makes more money. Can you explain? Note that I'm not a person prone to envy.
    - whybroke 10y ago
      Or by that logic you could cut your pay from $100K to $1K and give your CEO $10M and be just as happy. There are plenty of people who live on $1K a year after all. Although in the CEO's case, often no further harm is done, if half of a population has a massive increase in wealth while the other half does not then then poorer half must compete for limited resources with a group that will not only drive prices up but can now purchase assets as a form of rent seeking. So in fact, greater inequality acts as currency devaluation for the disadvantaged group. The CEO example was not meant to cause unjustified envy but to show that according to your logic, instead of ever giving employees a raise you could simply give all raises to the CEO and tell employees that by cost benefit analysis the effect is the same, that they are better off. To put it concretely, from now on, every time you ask for a raise just ask that your boss get that extra compensation instead. I think you will find the effect is not remotely the same. Or from now on, ask for all of your pay check that exceeds poverty line for chances at a completely fair trillion dollar lottery. Simple cost benefit multiplication is being erroneously applied in these cases (and often is)
Inconel 10y ago
You make a very important point with regards to manufacturing providing jobs for both high and low skill workers. I would add that it can also be a very good way to go from being a low skill worker to becoming a high skill worker on the job, meaning that you are being paid while improving your skills. If you're already poor and don't have any particular skills, it can be extremely difficult to improve upon your situation while trying to make enough money to survive. Many times additional schooling, either at the college/university or trade school/community college level, are out of reach, or at least made much more difficult, once you've already worked a 40-50 hour week. I work as a technician in aerospace and when I started I had zero experience in this type of manufacturing environment. If I hadn't gotten the opportunity to improve upon my skills while on the job I would most likely still be stuck in a much lower paid and less satisfactory low end retail or service job.
- rfrank 10y ago
  Definitely, the on-the-job training aspect of a manufacturing job is huge, and there's just so much knowledge that's hard to pass on in a set of standards and best practices. Agreed on all points about skill development & continued education when you're poor. It strikes me as one of the harder problems to fix when it comes to mobility/inequality as the economy changes. You sound a lot like me professionally haha. I had the same level of experience when I started at the EMS provider I'm with, just doing CAD library stuff and learning as much as I could when requests were light. Graduated to helping out with bits of full board designs like routing/placement, then graduated to full boards eventually. Having both a design team and SMT lines in the back to learn from is invaluable experience that's hard to recreate.
BurningFrog 10y ago
Then again, software is one of the few industries where you can do quite well without a formal degree or license. This makes it unusually open to the uncredentialed, if not the unskilled.
- mamon 10y ago
  Define "unskilled". I would say that even if software developer does not have a degree he or she still needs to be quite smart. Now imagine typical blue collar worker having IQ below 100, who dropped from high school (as they often do) learning advanced technical concepts like network protocols, dozen of JS frameworks, not to mention higher order functions and macros. That's the issue with technical advancements: there are more and more jobs for people with high IQ and vast knowledge, and less and less jobs for people who can only work with their muscles, not brains.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    Not all "Blue" collar jobs are unskilled and some do require intelligence for example an experienced machinist or technician may know as much if not more than the "Profesional"
    - clarry 10y ago
      But even there the trend is towards making the "blue collar" machinist a mere button pusher & tool bit changer while the machining process is planned and the machine programmed elsewhere. Perhaps by a former machinist now sitting in an office. I can only imagine it going more and more in this direction with improved CAD & CAM tools that enable people without any machining experience to program the machines. I don't have a problem with this development. It can be quite a depressing sight to take a tour at the machine shop floor where machinists sit next to their CNC machines, maybe wiping coolant off of pieces and putting them in boxes, maybe just reading a comic..
  - randomdata 10y ago
    > Now imagine typical blue collar worker having IQ below 100 I, quite honestly, really struggle to imagine this person. As someone involved in the agriculture industry, I see a lot of blue collar people. They all seem quite intelligent and capable to me. Some I could consider absolute geniuses. Save a small group who have real crippling disabilities, I'm not sure I have ever met a person who I think would struggle with those technical concepts. It's a time commitment, for sure, but not a particularly difficult undertaking. What I have observed over the years are numerous people who think that this kind of technical work would be an awful way to make a living. That's the real barrier to entry. It is difficult to put in the necessary time when you get absolutely no enjoyment out of it, as difficult as that is for me – and I expect everyone else around here – to understand. Or maybe I've just lived a sheltered life. The high school completion rate where I live is about 90%, so these people who you say can be identified as high school dropouts are not particularly common to begin with.
jameshart 10y ago
I've seen many people work their way up within IT from help desk to sysadmin to ops to management to CIO. Some successfully transition into development. Manufacturing doesn't have the monopoly on on-the-job skill-driven mobility.
- rfrank 10y ago
  Manufacturing is more open to a broader set of candidates than IT. Want to point out the part where I say mfg has a monopoly on on the job training?
eveningcoffee 10y ago
What is even more troubling is the amount of people who seem to believe that such people do not deserve a decent pay.

by rfrank 10y ago

yummyfajitas 10y ago

It may seem to be getting harder, but in reality it's not. Rank based measures of mobility are stable. Since income inequality is up, absolute mobility has also increased. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/chettyetalAERPP2014.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/chettyetalAERPP2014.pdf

rfrank 10y ago
"When compared to 24 middle-income and high income countries, the U.S. ranks 16th in the amount of inter-generational earnings mobility. The relatively low level of mobility in the U.S. may arise in part because low-income children in the U.S. tend to have less stable and lower-income families, less secure families, and parents who have less time to devote to their children." http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-SOTU-2016-Economic-Mobility-3.pdf http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-...
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The numbers you quote do not address the point under discussion at all.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    "However, the increase in inequality has also magnified the difference in expected incomes between children born to low-(e.g., bottom-quintile) versus high-(top-quintile) income families. In this sense, mobility has fallen because a child’s income depends more heavily on her parents’ position in the income distribution today than in the past. Since the appropriate definition of inter-generational mobility depends upon one’s normative objective, we characterize the copula and marginal distributions separately in this paper." It would appear we have different normative objectives.
6502nerdface 10y ago
Interesting paper. It actually concludes that reasonable seeming (IMO) definitions of mobility give different results on the question of whether mobility has increased or decreased (or stayed the same) since the 70s. "Based on all of these measures, we find that children entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income distribution (relative to their parents) as children born in the 1970s. "Although these rank-based measures of mobility have remained stable, income inequality increased over time in our sample, consistent with prior work. Hence, the consequences of the "birth lottery"---the parents to whom a child is born---are larger today than in the past. A useful visual analogy is to envision the income distribution as a ladder, with each percentile representing a different rung. The rungs of the ladder have grown further apart (inequality has increased), but children’s chances of climbing from lower to higher rungs have not changed (rank-based mobility has remained stable). ... "Together, these two facts can be used to construct various measures of mobility. For example, if one defines mobility based on relative positions in the income distribution---e.g., a child’s prospects of rising from the bottom to the top quintile---then intergenerational mobility has remained unchanged in recent decades. If instead one defines mobility based on the probability that a child from a low-income family (e.g., the bottom 20 percent) reaches a fixed upper-income threshold (e.g., $100,000), then mobility has increased because of the increase in inequality. However, the increase in inequality has also magnified the difference in expected incomes between children born to low- (e.g., bottom-quintile) versus high- (top-quintile) income families. In this sense, mobility has fallen because a child’s income depends more heavily on her parents’ position in the income distribution today than in the past."
whybroke 10y ago
No, the result of increased wealth inequality, even if you maintained the same level of social mobility, will worsen not improve situation. The description of a rise in absolute mobility would be a misunderstanding of the issue. If that is too theoretic, consider the analogy of a lottery where one group of children win automatically and an other group has say a 10% chance of winning during their life. Increasing the prize (i.e. a rise in inequity among classes) serves only to worsens the situation not only for the median and average members but the vast bulk of the lower class since those who don't rise (the vast majority) are now even worse off relatively. Or indeed by your logic simply raising the salary of a CEO by a massive amount also raises the "absolute mobility" of all other employees So unless mobility also raises by at least a corresponding amount, any worsening of inequality at birth will only worsen the situation by every meaningful standard. And even then it is probably a bad idea.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Or indeed by your logic simply raising the salary of a CEO by a massive amount also raises the "absolute mobility" of all other employees Yes. If I had a 1% chance of being the CEO and having my income go from $100k to $1M, my expected payoff was $900k x 1% = $9k. If my income stays at $100k but the CEO income goes to $10M, and my odds of being the CEO stay at 1%, my expected payoff is $9.9M x 1% = 99k. My situation has not been worsened and has a possibility of being improved. You seem to think it somehow makes me worse off if my CEO makes more money. Can you explain? Note that I'm not a person prone to envy.
  - whybroke 10y ago
    Or by that logic you could cut your pay from $100K to $1K and give your CEO $10M and be just as happy. There are plenty of people who live on $1K a year after all. Although in the CEO's case, often no further harm is done, if half of a population has a massive increase in wealth while the other half does not then then poorer half must compete for limited resources with a group that will not only drive prices up but can now purchase assets as a form of rent seeking. So in fact, greater inequality acts as currency devaluation for the disadvantaged group. The CEO example was not meant to cause unjustified envy but to show that according to your logic, instead of ever giving employees a raise you could simply give all raises to the CEO and tell employees that by cost benefit analysis the effect is the same, that they are better off. To put it concretely, from now on, every time you ask for a raise just ask that your boss get that extra compensation instead. I think you will find the effect is not remotely the same. Or from now on, ask for all of your pay check that exceeds poverty line for chances at a completely fair trillion dollar lottery. Simple cost benefit multiplication is being erroneously applied in these cases (and often is)

Inconel 10y ago

You make a very important point with regards to manufacturing providing jobs for both high and low skill workers. I would add that it can also be a very good way to go from being a low skill worker to becoming a high skill worker on the job, meaning that you are being paid while improving your skills. If you're already poor and don't have any particular skills, it can be extremely difficult to improve upon your situation while trying to make enough money to survive. Many times additional schooling, either at the college/university or trade school/community college level, are out of reach, or at least made much more difficult, once you've already worked a 40-50 hour week. I work as a technician in aerospace and when I started I had zero experience in this type of manufacturing environment. If I hadn't gotten the opportunity to improve upon my skills while on the job I would most likely still be stuck in a much lower paid and less satisfactory low end retail or service job.

rfrank 10y ago
Definitely, the on-the-job training aspect of a manufacturing job is huge, and there's just so much knowledge that's hard to pass on in a set of standards and best practices. Agreed on all points about skill development & continued education when you're poor. It strikes me as one of the harder problems to fix when it comes to mobility/inequality as the economy changes. You sound a lot like me professionally haha. I had the same level of experience when I started at the EMS provider I'm with, just doing CAD library stuff and learning as much as I could when requests were light. Graduated to helping out with bits of full board designs like routing/placement, then graduated to full boards eventually. Having both a design team and SMT lines in the back to learn from is invaluable experience that's hard to recreate.

BurningFrog 10y ago

Then again, software is one of the few industries where you can do quite well without a formal degree or license. This makes it unusually open to the uncredentialed, if not the unskilled.

mamon 10y ago
Define "unskilled". I would say that even if software developer does not have a degree he or she still needs to be quite smart. Now imagine typical blue collar worker having IQ below 100, who dropped from high school (as they often do) learning advanced technical concepts like network protocols, dozen of JS frameworks, not to mention higher order functions and macros. That's the issue with technical advancements: there are more and more jobs for people with high IQ and vast knowledge, and less and less jobs for people who can only work with their muscles, not brains.
- walshemj 10y ago
  Not all "Blue" collar jobs are unskilled and some do require intelligence for example an experienced machinist or technician may know as much if not more than the "Profesional"
  - clarry 10y ago
    But even there the trend is towards making the "blue collar" machinist a mere button pusher & tool bit changer while the machining process is planned and the machine programmed elsewhere. Perhaps by a former machinist now sitting in an office. I can only imagine it going more and more in this direction with improved CAD & CAM tools that enable people without any machining experience to program the machines. I don't have a problem with this development. It can be quite a depressing sight to take a tour at the machine shop floor where machinists sit next to their CNC machines, maybe wiping coolant off of pieces and putting them in boxes, maybe just reading a comic..
- randomdata 10y ago
  > Now imagine typical blue collar worker having IQ below 100 I, quite honestly, really struggle to imagine this person. As someone involved in the agriculture industry, I see a lot of blue collar people. They all seem quite intelligent and capable to me. Some I could consider absolute geniuses. Save a small group who have real crippling disabilities, I'm not sure I have ever met a person who I think would struggle with those technical concepts. It's a time commitment, for sure, but not a particularly difficult undertaking. What I have observed over the years are numerous people who think that this kind of technical work would be an awful way to make a living. That's the real barrier to entry. It is difficult to put in the necessary time when you get absolutely no enjoyment out of it, as difficult as that is for me – and I expect everyone else around here – to understand. Or maybe I've just lived a sheltered life. The high school completion rate where I live is about 90%, so these people who you say can be identified as high school dropouts are not particularly common to begin with.

jameshart 10y ago

I've seen many people work their way up within IT from help desk to sysadmin to ops to management to CIO. Some successfully transition into development. Manufacturing doesn't have the monopoly on on-the-job skill-driven mobility.

rfrank 10y ago
Manufacturing is more open to a broader set of candidates than IT. Want to point out the part where I say mfg has a monopoly on on the job training?

eveningcoffee 10y ago

What is even more troubling is the amount of people who seem to believe that such people do not deserve a decent pay.