6 ms·

Other measures of human welfare that are declining in the U.S.: * "This year, the number of domestic undergraduate students dropped 224,000" https://www.nytim

Other measures of human welfare that are declining in the U.S.: * "This year, the number of domestic undergraduate students dropped 224,000" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollment-drop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollme... * If nothing is done, the number of Americans with health insurance is expected to decline by millions this year (due to the repeal of the health care tax (I forget the term they used) in the new tax law). * With CHIP not being funded, the number of children with health insurance also should decline.

pknopf 9y ago
The system will stretch us thin, until we break. I don't know what "break" means, but I don't think it will be pretty.
- shams93 9y ago
  I lived through the LA riots, breaks means every block in every city on fire with people angry out of their mind breaking everything they can get their hands on and people shooting everywhere. You reach a breaking point and you have sudden social collapse.
rayiner 9y ago
The first number is a good thing. We’re overeducated in the US.
- dqpb 9y ago
  Define overeducated
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > The first number is a good thing. We’re overeducated in the US. Is that even possible? It's not as if we're swimming in demand for unskilled labor at a living wage. The underlying problem seems to be that college (along with housing and healthcare) are too expensive and people can't afford them.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. Is college too expensive or is it over-required, or both? Even if it was free, that's a pretty substantial 4 year opportunity cost. The other part, a drop in international students is something different, though. To conclude how damaging that is, we'd need to know how much of the cohort that dropped off would've otherwise stayed in the country, etc.
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      > We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. This comes from misalignment of specialization. We have too many English majors and not enough physicians and engineers, and the English majors can't all find skilled employment. That allows the unskilled employers to require a college degree, because the unemployed English majors will take an unskilled job over nothing, so the availability of degree-holding job seekers allows employers to use a degree as a filter to include only people who have demonstrated the ability to follow instructions and stick with something for multiple years. But that doesn't mean we have too much education, it means we need to educate more people in things that are in higher demand rather than lower demand so they don't end up doing unskilled labor (and depriving actually-unskilled people of that work). So we could do with fewer low-demand graduates, but we want all of them and more to instead become high-demand graduates, which means the cost still matters.
      - majormajor 9y ago
        We could shift the low-demand graduates to high-demand graduates with somewhat decreased cost, in theory, by simply axing two thirds of the low-demand programs, no? But here's where I run into a problem with this theory: why haven't we already, then? If the demand is that imbalanced, why aren't more companies desperate for labor to the point of training workers themselves despite mismatched (or no!) degrees, or why isn't the big pool of under-employeed workers finding massive benefit to individual re-training that should pay off in spades? Even in the most immediately obvious areas, software, a lot of bootcamps have mixed or dubious outcomes, yet in theory it should be easy to do extremely well with that.
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> If nothing is done, the number of Americans with health insurance is expected to decline by millions this year (due to the repeal of the health care tax (I forget the term they used) in the new tax law). This is a bad metric. We should be worried about healthcare costs, not insurance coverage. You can have "universal coverage" and still be wrong, because people are paying $5000+/year in insurance premiums they can't afford. If it didn't cost a hundred thousand dollars to get sick then it wouldn't be a problem for people to not be insured against it.
- majormajor 9y ago
  > If it didn't cost a hundred thousand dollars to get sick then it wouldn't be a problem for people to not be insured against it. This is a dicey one. One of the things that drives treatment costs up is more advanced technology. Should we go back to 70s/80s-era cancer treatments, HIV treatments, surgical outcomes? We need a lot more national discussion about where the real opportunities to save money are, and what should and shouldn't be covered, and if there's a one-size-fits-all solution or not, because some of the costs will continue to trend upwards as we become more able to keep more people alive for longer (otherwise a good thing!). Some [surgeries, drugs, treatments] cost tens of thousands of dollars and save lives. Some cost tens of thousands of dollars with dubious outcomes. That's where the meat is. But we have no hope whatsoever of getting there if we can't even agree that mandated health insurance at at least some minimum level is necessary policy. Insurance needs that much to be able to work at all. Or give me the reverse: if you opt out of health insurance when you're healthy, saying the sick can fend for themselves, then you don't ever get to opt back in. (That's not gonna happen, obviously.)
  - make3 9y ago
    there is no legitimate reason the us should be praying at least an order of magnitude more for the same treatments
    - majormajor 9y ago
      I certainly don't like the US having higher prices than elsewhere in the world, but what I would like to see more discussion of there is "where does the funding for the development of the treatments come from" rather than just comparison of absolute cost. I suspect we're subsidizing (especially at the top of the market) a lot of research that the rest of the world is also benefiting from. This isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world, but I would like to see the numbers and, if it is the case, find out why the burden isn't shared more equally? I worry, a bit, that this is an area where other wealthy countries act in somewhat bad faith through their health services, to keep their own costs down while knowing that a corporation will make the deal since it's still greater total income and profit than not selling for full cost overseas. I fear a race to the bottom where new treatments are impractical to pursue much more than I fear a stratified market where new treatments are only available to the rich at first. Look at how totally we've managed to fuck up the incentives for academic research -- I want to tread lightly, in these areas.
volkl48 9y ago
Your first point is misleading. As birthrates fluctuate (ex: "the baby boom" was a high point), so do the number of people who can potentially be starting college in a given year (at the traditional age). The next few years of Americans to turn 18 are smaller than the year before them. If the likelihood of Americans to go to college remains similar, domestic student populations will decline for reasons of demography, not malaise.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > If the likelihood of Americans to go to college remains similar That's a problem. Prior generations became more educated than their predecessors, more able to understand the world, and did higher-skilled and better-paying work. Now, it's stagnated (or is going backward).

pknopf 9y ago

The system will stretch us thin, until we break. I don't know what "break" means, but I don't think it will be pretty.

shams93 9y ago
I lived through the LA riots, breaks means every block in every city on fire with people angry out of their mind breaking everything they can get their hands on and people shooting everywhere. You reach a breaking point and you have sudden social collapse.

rayiner 9y ago

The first number is a good thing. We’re overeducated in the US.

dqpb 9y ago
Define overeducated
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> The first number is a good thing. We’re overeducated in the US. Is that even possible? It's not as if we're swimming in demand for unskilled labor at a living wage. The underlying problem seems to be that college (along with housing and healthcare) are too expensive and people can't afford them.
- majormajor 9y ago
  We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. Is college too expensive or is it over-required, or both? Even if it was free, that's a pretty substantial 4 year opportunity cost. The other part, a drop in international students is something different, though. To conclude how damaging that is, we'd need to know how much of the cohort that dropped off would've otherwise stayed in the country, etc.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. This comes from misalignment of specialization. We have too many English majors and not enough physicians and engineers, and the English majors can't all find skilled employment. That allows the unskilled employers to require a college degree, because the unemployed English majors will take an unskilled job over nothing, so the availability of degree-holding job seekers allows employers to use a degree as a filter to include only people who have demonstrated the ability to follow instructions and stick with something for multiple years. But that doesn't mean we have too much education, it means we need to educate more people in things that are in higher demand rather than lower demand so they don't end up doing unskilled labor (and depriving actually-unskilled people of that work). So we could do with fewer low-demand graduates, but we want all of them and more to instead become high-demand graduates, which means the cost still matters.
    - majormajor 9y ago
      We could shift the low-demand graduates to high-demand graduates with somewhat decreased cost, in theory, by simply axing two thirds of the low-demand programs, no? But here's where I run into a problem with this theory: why haven't we already, then? If the demand is that imbalanced, why aren't more companies desperate for labor to the point of training workers themselves despite mismatched (or no!) degrees, or why isn't the big pool of under-employeed workers finding massive benefit to individual re-training that should pay off in spades? Even in the most immediately obvious areas, software, a lot of bootcamps have mixed or dubious outcomes, yet in theory it should be easy to do extremely well with that.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> If nothing is done, the number of Americans with health insurance is expected to decline by millions this year (due to the repeal of the health care tax (I forget the term they used) in the new tax law). This is a bad metric. We should be worried about healthcare costs, not insurance coverage. You can have "universal coverage" and still be wrong, because people are paying $5000+/year in insurance premiums they can't afford. If it didn't cost a hundred thousand dollars to get sick then it wouldn't be a problem for people to not be insured against it.

majormajor 9y ago
> If it didn't cost a hundred thousand dollars to get sick then it wouldn't be a problem for people to not be insured against it. This is a dicey one. One of the things that drives treatment costs up is more advanced technology. Should we go back to 70s/80s-era cancer treatments, HIV treatments, surgical outcomes? We need a lot more national discussion about where the real opportunities to save money are, and what should and shouldn't be covered, and if there's a one-size-fits-all solution or not, because some of the costs will continue to trend upwards as we become more able to keep more people alive for longer (otherwise a good thing!). Some [surgeries, drugs, treatments] cost tens of thousands of dollars and save lives. Some cost tens of thousands of dollars with dubious outcomes. That's where the meat is. But we have no hope whatsoever of getting there if we can't even agree that mandated health insurance at at least some minimum level is necessary policy. Insurance needs that much to be able to work at all. Or give me the reverse: if you opt out of health insurance when you're healthy, saying the sick can fend for themselves, then you don't ever get to opt back in. (That's not gonna happen, obviously.)
- make3 9y ago
  there is no legitimate reason the us should be praying at least an order of magnitude more for the same treatments
  - majormajor 9y ago
    I certainly don't like the US having higher prices than elsewhere in the world, but what I would like to see more discussion of there is "where does the funding for the development of the treatments come from" rather than just comparison of absolute cost. I suspect we're subsidizing (especially at the top of the market) a lot of research that the rest of the world is also benefiting from. This isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world, but I would like to see the numbers and, if it is the case, find out why the burden isn't shared more equally? I worry, a bit, that this is an area where other wealthy countries act in somewhat bad faith through their health services, to keep their own costs down while knowing that a corporation will make the deal since it's still greater total income and profit than not selling for full cost overseas. I fear a race to the bottom where new treatments are impractical to pursue much more than I fear a stratified market where new treatments are only available to the rich at first. Look at how totally we've managed to fuck up the incentives for academic research -- I want to tread lightly, in these areas.

volkl48 9y ago

Your first point is misleading. As birthrates fluctuate (ex: "the baby boom" was a high point), so do the number of people who can potentially be starting college in a given year (at the traditional age). The next few years of Americans to turn 18 are smaller than the year before them. If the likelihood of Americans to go to college remains similar, domestic student populations will decline for reasons of demography, not malaise.

forapurpose 9y ago
> If the likelihood of Americans to go to college remains similar That's a problem. Prior generations became more educated than their predecessors, more able to understand the world, and did higher-skilled and better-paying work. Now, it's stagnated (or is going backward).