4 ms·

>There are a lot of dubious claims about education though. I would take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Some even claim that gaining an education will res

by lsc 8y ago

>There are a lot of dubious claims about education though. I would take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Some even claim that gaining an education will result in earning more money, all while incomes have remained stagnant for decades upon decades and educational attainment has ballooned. How does one earn more money while also earning the same amount of money...? all incomes? are you seriously going to clam that incomes for tech workers and others of this (mostly highly-educated) caste haven't risen dramatically in the last three decades?

randomdata 8y ago
> all incomes? are you seriously going to clam that incomes for tech workers and others of this Tech workers make up, what, about 5% of the workforce at best? I know software developers only make up 0.8% of the workforce. We are talking about an exceedingly small group of people. And not all of them are doing well. There are a lot of low-paid tech workers around, especially if you look beyond the Bay Area and outside of software. The lowly network admin working at Mom and Pops in Nowheresville is probably not even making the median income. In the US, about 35% of the population graduate with a four year college degree or more, and 45% with a two year degree or more. That is a lot of people. Practically half of the population. They are in no way they are all seeing their incomes rise (beyond inflation). Incomes are stagnant and have been for many decades. There are always outliers who buck the mold, but on the whole incomes are not rising even for those with education. And why would they? It does not follow from any realistic economic model that incomes should increase.
- lsc 8y ago
  >There are always outliers who buck the mold, but on the whole incomes are not rising even for those with education. And why would they? It does not follow from any realistic economic model that incomes should increase. My model is that technology has allowed us to produce more per unit effort; Even in my field, I can manage a whole lot more computers than I could when I started in the mid to late '90s. For that matter, even if I was still fixing desktop computers, if I'm fixing desktop computers for EEs this year who are massively more productive than they would have been in the late '90s because of improved technology, it's natural that I'd still get paid more, because even if I'm only saving those people the same number of work hours, those work hours produce more and thus there's more surplus to pay me. It seems totally reasonable that increased productivity could lead to increased wages. (I mean, there are a bunch of failure modes where it wouldn't, to... but I'm just saying, anyone who is even slightly ideologically capitalist or market oriented is going to argue that increased productivity drives increased income)

by lsc 8y ago

randomdata 8y ago

> all incomes? are you seriously going to clam that incomes for tech workers and others of this Tech workers make up, what, about 5% of the workforce at best? I know software developers only make up 0.8% of the workforce. We are talking about an exceedingly small group of people. And not all of them are doing well. There are a lot of low-paid tech workers around, especially if you look beyond the Bay Area and outside of software. The lowly network admin working at Mom and Pops in Nowheresville is probably not even making the median income. In the US, about 35% of the population graduate with a four year college degree or more, and 45% with a two year degree or more. That is a lot of people. Practically half of the population. They are in no way they are all seeing their incomes rise (beyond inflation). Incomes are stagnant and have been for many decades. There are always outliers who buck the mold, but on the whole incomes are not rising even for those with education. And why would they? It does not follow from any realistic economic model that incomes should increase.

lsc 8y ago
>There are always outliers who buck the mold, but on the whole incomes are not rising even for those with education. And why would they? It does not follow from any realistic economic model that incomes should increase. My model is that technology has allowed us to produce more per unit effort; Even in my field, I can manage a whole lot more computers than I could when I started in the mid to late '90s. For that matter, even if I was still fixing desktop computers, if I'm fixing desktop computers for EEs this year who are massively more productive than they would have been in the late '90s because of improved technology, it's natural that I'd still get paid more, because even if I'm only saving those people the same number of work hours, those work hours produce more and thus there's more surplus to pay me. It seems totally reasonable that increased productivity could lead to increased wages. (I mean, there are a bunch of failure modes where it wouldn't, to... but I'm just saying, anyone who is even slightly ideologically capitalist or market oriented is going to argue that increased productivity drives increased income)