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Not that I endorse not taking math, but many of my classmates who work in IB/PE/Consulting never really progressed past calculus, and they do seem to be doing a

Not that I endorse not taking math, but many of my classmates who work in IB/PE/Consulting never really progressed past calculus, and they do seem to be doing all right for themselves. I think schools should be as rigorous as possible, but STEM isn’t the only path to success.

redis_mlc 5y ago
Your comment would have been a reasonable one 20 years ago. However, the underlying narrative today is that math is being attacked as white supremacist and objective by cultural Marxists. ("white supremacist" used to mean KKK, but today it means "all white people.")
defterGoose 5y ago
| I think schools should be as rigorous as possible, but STEM isn’t the only path to success. While that's true in a very realistic sense, i take issue with it because our modern economy is based in large part upon technology and theory developed by STEM workers. If you don't have people doing the hard work of pushing civilization forward, then there's nothing for the managers to manage. If America wants to remain a dominant force in the global economy, we have to be doing the things we were, educationally, in the mid-century period. But this stuff is hard and makes your brain hurt, which is why we've experienced the "financialization" of the economy. It's just too easy to make money by moving money around these days.
- mbg721 5y ago
  Are the Moving-Money-Around types really mostly people who struggled with math in high-school, though? When I was in college, investment banking/quantitative analysis/predictive analytics were marketed as lucrative career paths for people with solid math-based degrees who didn't want to get their hands dirty with engineering. Granted, they may not have to remember anything past calculus, but that's a little different.
  - defterGoose 5y ago
    Fair enough. I've never worked at Goldman or anything, and I know people personally who do quant stuff for a living with math/physics degrees. It's been no surprise to me that trying to explain to them why rising economic inequality is a bad thing is like talking to a brick wall. As Upton Sinclair put it, "It's very difficult to explain something to a man whose paycheck depends on him not understanding it." This quote is quite apropos, as the very thing that has allowed the proliferation of jobs in finance is the middle class largely not being in control of their financial destiny: all the money is floating (or perhaps being sucked) up. So I need to add another qualification: doing such a job is similarly low on the totem pole in terms of societal good. The goal isnt to provide a good or service as such, only to make more money (whether for the managers or their shareholders, who are, again, largely affluent to begin with.)

redis_mlc 5y ago

Your comment would have been a reasonable one 20 years ago. However, the underlying narrative today is that math is being attacked as white supremacist and objective by cultural Marxists. ("white supremacist" used to mean KKK, but today it means "all white people.")

defterGoose 5y ago

| I think schools should be as rigorous as possible, but STEM isn’t the only path to success. While that's true in a very realistic sense, i take issue with it because our modern economy is based in large part upon technology and theory developed by STEM workers. If you don't have people doing the hard work of pushing civilization forward, then there's nothing for the managers to manage. If America wants to remain a dominant force in the global economy, we have to be doing the things we were, educationally, in the mid-century period. But this stuff is hard and makes your brain hurt, which is why we've experienced the "financialization" of the economy. It's just too easy to make money by moving money around these days.

mbg721 5y ago
Are the Moving-Money-Around types really mostly people who struggled with math in high-school, though? When I was in college, investment banking/quantitative analysis/predictive analytics were marketed as lucrative career paths for people with solid math-based degrees who didn't want to get their hands dirty with engineering. Granted, they may not have to remember anything past calculus, but that's a little different.
- defterGoose 5y ago
  Fair enough. I've never worked at Goldman or anything, and I know people personally who do quant stuff for a living with math/physics degrees. It's been no surprise to me that trying to explain to them why rising economic inequality is a bad thing is like talking to a brick wall. As Upton Sinclair put it, "It's very difficult to explain something to a man whose paycheck depends on him not understanding it." This quote is quite apropos, as the very thing that has allowed the proliferation of jobs in finance is the middle class largely not being in control of their financial destiny: all the money is floating (or perhaps being sucked) up. So I need to add another qualification: doing such a job is similarly low on the totem pole in terms of societal good. The goal isnt to provide a good or service as such, only to make more money (whether for the managers or their shareholders, who are, again, largely affluent to begin with.)