3 ms·

I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees: - People with more money live better lives, so let's just print/hand out money and everyone will live

by jaccola 10mo ago

I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees: - People with more money live better lives, so let's just print/hand out money and everyone will live a better life! - People with college degrees live better lives, so let's just push more people through college and everyone will live better lives! In both cases, of course, completely missing the underlying reasons money/college degrees provide(d) better lives. It's hard to believe that any single person in government truly thinks printing money will increase resources or that more easily handing out college degrees will automatically make everyone better off. So I don't fully understand how this happens, perhaps pandering to the electorate.

echelon_musk 10mo ago
I like to call this degree inflation.
JKCalhoun 10mo ago
Consider the contraposition. • Poor people live shorter, unhealthier lives. • Without a college degree, your employment options are diminished. It's fine to trash "handing out money" or "pushing more people through college" but then what is left is: there's nothing we can do for poor people.
- Aeolun 10mo ago
  Make money not a consideration in applying for college? Not by handing out whatever the universities are asking for of course, but by giving them a fixed $X per student.
  - drivingmenuts 10mo ago
    That might have worked if we had established that right after WWII, but it would never get off the ground now. The current system is too entrenched.
    - Aeolun 10mo ago
      You have a president that’s willing to wage war on institutions of higher learning. If anything this is the only time it’s even been remotely possible.
- anon291 10mo ago
  Of course there is. You can just hire them and train them. Most positions don't require college degrees. Everything you need to know for most jobs you learned in high school. At most you need a certificate program of some kind.
  - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
    Construction, a few trades… Help me, I've run out of ideas without resorting to "Walmart Greeter". Most of those jobs went overseas a long time ago. Short of the couple I could think of, the rest of the jobs remaining that don't require some advanced education don't pay a "living wage". I'd love to see the US have a vocational "track" beginning in high school again. But that also requires we have the jobs for them when they graduate.
    - edot 10mo ago
      If you've ever worked at a random Fortune 500 company and looked around the office at people whose pinned apps are "Outlook, Powerpoint, Excel", those are jobs that can easily be done if you're moderately smart and learn a few things on the job. You have a reasonably well-defined set of goals, projects, and meetings, and you just have to talk to other people and move numbers around in Excel, then put them into Powerpoint and set up meetings in Outlook to discuss. There are millions of these jobs, and you can get extremely senior once you just learn the business of your company (which would never be taught in college). You don't need a college degree for these. A friend of mine is a senior executive at a large insurance company and does just fine at their job with no degree. Given, they got into that job decades ago when degrees weren't required, and worked their way up, but the same could be done now if employers let people be hired based not on degree but on an apprenticeship or similar trial period.
      - anon291 10mo ago
        Employers would let people be hired but any sort of employer based assessment opens the company up to accusations of discrimination. This was litigated. Many companies got in trouble decades ago. And then all companies turned to college degrees and the American consumer was fleeced for good
- baiwl 10mo ago
  You have better employment options only if there are not enough people with degrees. If you give everybody the option of obtaining a degree then nobody is better off. In fact those at the bottom of the barrel end up in an even worse position.
  - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
    That assumes there are a large number of jobs that require no advanced education. Short of construction, those jobs flew overseas decades ago.
AnimalMuppet 10mo ago
The difference is that printing money creates more money, but doesn't create any more stuff. College degrees (theoretically) create more educated people. If you just "hand out" degrees, that doesn't happen, but if you actually teach people, then it does.
- linguae 10mo ago
  I agree with you. The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck. What happens when a large number of college graduates enter a tough hiring market while they have five- (or even six-) figure student loan balances? It’s one thing to work at McDonald’s debt-free with a high school diploma; it’s another thing to end up at McDonald’s with tens of thousands of dollars in debt with a bachelor’s degree. Of course, there’s more to going to college than career prospects, and there’s also the reality that no one is owed a job. Still, given the amount of adults struggling with paying off their student loans, it’s no wonder more people are reevaluating the economic value of going to college.
  - OGEnthusiast 10mo ago
    > The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck. Told by who?
    - tolerance 10mo ago
      Well for starters, perhaps the older homeowners who live in safe neighborhoods and provide for [young Americans] without living paycheck-to-paycheck. Their parents.
satvikpendem 10mo ago
It's a prime example of the tragedy of the commons and there's honestly not much that can be done because of how competition on the supply side of the labor market works; for employers, a degree is no longer a differentiator among candidates.
- baq 10mo ago
  It isn’t in that it doesn’t guarantee a job, but not having one all but guarantees HR drones will discard your CV algorithmically.
venturecruelty 10mo ago
The good news it that you don't need to hand out money or degrees. See, some people have an inordinate, obscene amount of money, and they would be able to lead full, happy, fulfilling lives if some of that money went to help people who have very little. Because if you're making $30,000 per year working at a gas station, and you lose that income, you're basically screwed. But if you make millions of dollars every year, you won't really miss a small portion of that. You'll be just fine. So you just need to sort of move wealth around such that it is less egregiously unequal. Oh, and states can fund universities like they did a few decades ago. :) Win-win! Poorer people get to participate more freely in society, with more opportunities, and you don't have to print any extra money.

by jaccola 10mo ago

echelon_musk 10mo ago

I like to call this degree inflation.

JKCalhoun 10mo ago

Consider the contraposition. • Poor people live shorter, unhealthier lives. • Without a college degree, your employment options are diminished. It's fine to trash "handing out money" or "pushing more people through college" but then what is left is: there's nothing we can do for poor people.

Aeolun 10mo ago
Make money not a consideration in applying for college? Not by handing out whatever the universities are asking for of course, but by giving them a fixed $X per student.
- drivingmenuts 10mo ago
  That might have worked if we had established that right after WWII, but it would never get off the ground now. The current system is too entrenched.
  - Aeolun 10mo ago
    You have a president that’s willing to wage war on institutions of higher learning. If anything this is the only time it’s even been remotely possible.
anon291 10mo ago
Of course there is. You can just hire them and train them. Most positions don't require college degrees. Everything you need to know for most jobs you learned in high school. At most you need a certificate program of some kind.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  Construction, a few trades… Help me, I've run out of ideas without resorting to "Walmart Greeter". Most of those jobs went overseas a long time ago. Short of the couple I could think of, the rest of the jobs remaining that don't require some advanced education don't pay a "living wage". I'd love to see the US have a vocational "track" beginning in high school again. But that also requires we have the jobs for them when they graduate.
  - edot 10mo ago
    If you've ever worked at a random Fortune 500 company and looked around the office at people whose pinned apps are "Outlook, Powerpoint, Excel", those are jobs that can easily be done if you're moderately smart and learn a few things on the job. You have a reasonably well-defined set of goals, projects, and meetings, and you just have to talk to other people and move numbers around in Excel, then put them into Powerpoint and set up meetings in Outlook to discuss. There are millions of these jobs, and you can get extremely senior once you just learn the business of your company (which would never be taught in college). You don't need a college degree for these. A friend of mine is a senior executive at a large insurance company and does just fine at their job with no degree. Given, they got into that job decades ago when degrees weren't required, and worked their way up, but the same could be done now if employers let people be hired based not on degree but on an apprenticeship or similar trial period.
    - anon291 10mo ago
      Employers would let people be hired but any sort of employer based assessment opens the company up to accusations of discrimination. This was litigated. Many companies got in trouble decades ago. And then all companies turned to college degrees and the American consumer was fleeced for good
baiwl 10mo ago
You have better employment options only if there are not enough people with degrees. If you give everybody the option of obtaining a degree then nobody is better off. In fact those at the bottom of the barrel end up in an even worse position.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  That assumes there are a large number of jobs that require no advanced education. Short of construction, those jobs flew overseas decades ago.

AnimalMuppet 10mo ago

The difference is that printing money creates more money, but doesn't create any more stuff. College degrees (theoretically) create more educated people. If you just "hand out" degrees, that doesn't happen, but if you actually teach people, then it does.

linguae 10mo ago
I agree with you. The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck. What happens when a large number of college graduates enter a tough hiring market while they have five- (or even six-) figure student loan balances? It’s one thing to work at McDonald’s debt-free with a high school diploma; it’s another thing to end up at McDonald’s with tens of thousands of dollars in debt with a bachelor’s degree. Of course, there’s more to going to college than career prospects, and there’s also the reality that no one is owed a job. Still, given the amount of adults struggling with paying off their student loans, it’s no wonder more people are reevaluating the economic value of going to college.
- OGEnthusiast 10mo ago
  > The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck. Told by who?
  - tolerance 10mo ago
    Well for starters, perhaps the older homeowners who live in safe neighborhoods and provide for [young Americans] without living paycheck-to-paycheck. Their parents.

satvikpendem 10mo ago

It's a prime example of the tragedy of the commons and there's honestly not much that can be done because of how competition on the supply side of the labor market works; for employers, a degree is no longer a differentiator among candidates.

baq 10mo ago
It isn’t in that it doesn’t guarantee a job, but not having one all but guarantees HR drones will discard your CV algorithmically.

venturecruelty 10mo ago

The good news it that you don't need to hand out money or degrees. See, some people have an inordinate, obscene amount of money, and they would be able to lead full, happy, fulfilling lives if some of that money went to help people who have very little. Because if you're making $30,000 per year working at a gas station, and you lose that income, you're basically screwed. But if you make millions of dollars every year, you won't really miss a small portion of that. You'll be just fine. So you just need to sort of move wealth around such that it is less egregiously unequal. Oh, and states can fund universities like they did a few decades ago. :) Win-win! Poorer people get to participate more freely in society, with more opportunities, and you don't have to print any extra money.