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> but are you okay with your livelihood being making shoes? If you're capable of doing higher-value work then isn't it a "waste" for you to be doing lower-value

> but are you okay with your livelihood being making shoes? If you're capable of doing higher-value work then isn't it a "waste" for you to be doing lower-value work? This assumes that everyone can do the higher-value work per their standards, right? US is probably the most educated country in the world, while in the meantime we still have millions adults[1] who don't have college degree. We still have millions of kids who struggle with basic algebra. And per my interaction with kids and college students in the past many years, I have to conclude that not everyone can or like to take on "high-end" jobs. In any class except those magnetic schools, you can see the bottom 20% or more students are hopeless in learning STEM or sophisticated writing. However, they may get decent jobs if there are other demand in the market. [1]Between 2011 and 2021, the percentage of people age 25 and older who had completed a bachelor's degree or higher increased by 7.5 percentage points from 30.4% to 37.9%. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20the%20population,from%2030.4%25%20to%2037.9%25 https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio....

taylodl 4y ago
That worries me, actually. Are we leaving a large group of people behind? Have we written them off because they're not able to do "high value" work and yet our life expenses in the U.S. are such that they're not economically viable for doing the "low value" work, either? Is living on public assistance really the best option? Or working in the gig economy? I don't have answers to these questions but I do think about these things.
- Hermitian909 4y ago
  > That worries me, actually. Are we leaving a large group of people behind? Have we written them off because they're not able to do "high value" work and yet our life expenses in the U.S. are such that they're not economically viable for doing the "low value" work, either? The answer to both of these questions is "yes". I've worked in education and am very familiar with homeless communities and their issues. It's very obvious that in some locations (like the Bay Area) there simply isn't enough low-complexity work for the bottom 10-15%, people for whom "dishwasher" is a complex job. Technology has just been slowly eating away at those jobs for a century and replacements have not come in as fast the jobs are disappearing.

taylodl 4y ago

That worries me, actually. Are we leaving a large group of people behind? Have we written them off because they're not able to do "high value" work and yet our life expenses in the U.S. are such that they're not economically viable for doing the "low value" work, either? Is living on public assistance really the best option? Or working in the gig economy? I don't have answers to these questions but I do think about these things.

Hermitian909 4y ago
> That worries me, actually. Are we leaving a large group of people behind? Have we written them off because they're not able to do "high value" work and yet our life expenses in the U.S. are such that they're not economically viable for doing the "low value" work, either? The answer to both of these questions is "yes". I've worked in education and am very familiar with homeless communities and their issues. It's very obvious that in some locations (like the Bay Area) there simply isn't enough low-complexity work for the bottom 10-15%, people for whom "dishwasher" is a complex job. Technology has just been slowly eating away at those jobs for a century and replacements have not come in as fast the jobs are disappearing.