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Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites as Our Society Frays
- spada 13y agoOvereducated? What is the optimal level of education?
- im3w1l 13y agoBy overeducated the author means that there are many more being educated then there are positions to fill.
- camus2 13y agoYeah,that's why US businesses spend their time outsourcing engineering positions or recruting foreigners or demanding immigration reforms... because US citizens are over educated...yeah right.
- mieses 13y agoover-entitled, maybe
- chadwickthebold 13y agoI may be wrong but I think the author specifically referred to an overproduction of Law Degrees? Not seeing too many of those being outsourced..
- FedRegister 13y agoNo, they often do so because they don't want to pay the rates demanded by US-educated engineers. The education bubble affects more than just the people that take on the debt. Their demands for a salary that can maintain and pay off that debt affects US businesses. It's a competitiveness issue. Often the reason a firm will outsource the position is to save money and have a level of labor control that would be illegal in most states if the worker were a citizen and employee instead of foreign contractor.
- pwnna 13y agoI think it's poorly worded. It's saying that that level of education has enough people employed. Anybody continues to pursuit that career (lawyers according to the article) is therefore "overeducated".
- skunkworks 13y agoIt reads better than "underjobbed".
- WalterSear 13y agoIt's more accurate than 'overqualified'.
- JonSkeptic 13y ago9000
- plorkyeran 13y agoIn the specific case of a law degree, for most people the sole purpose of the degree is to get a job as a lawyer, so if they are not able to find such a job then they receive no utility from their level of education and so are overeducated. In general I dislike the concept, as it's usually used to decry education that the author sees as pointless, rather than the recipient of the education.
- keithpeter 13y ago"...for most people the sole purpose of the degree is to get a job as a lawyer, so if they are not able to find such a job then they receive no utility from their level of education..." Might the system as a whole benefit from some selection of those with law degrees (minimum criterion) for best fit to available jobs?
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoI hope that this article is a witty attempt at self satire!
- spiek 13y agoWhat do you mean? You're saying that because it was published by Bloomberg?
- samolang 13y agoI think he's saying it was written by a rich, overeducated elite.
- jerf 13y agoEven as a libertarian, I agree that too much inequality in a society is a bad thing. However, I find myself quite suspicious of the solutions that are generally proposed, even here on HN, which are generally of the form "Give the elite more power", usually as "give the government more centralized power". I agree that our elites are a problem, but I find it a bit sad/amusing that so many people are so ready to solve the problem in exactly the way the elite want you to want it solved.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoWhy would you think that inequality is a bad thing?
- jerf 13y ago"Too much" inequality. Admittedly, phrased that way it's tautological, but I'm not willing to stuff a precise definition into an HN message. I'm certainly willing to tolerate more than than your average liberal or communist, but no, I don't think a society divided into plutocrats and plebians is a good idea either, as it's actually bad for the market. Indeed, one of the major reasons I'm a libertarian and not an anarchist is that I believe one of the governments main duties is monopoly busting. Anything that gets too big should be sliced into pieces, government or corporation. (And yes, again, "too big" is itself tautological, but again, HN comment.) I believe that people who are only willing to accept one side of that statement don't realize that that "too bigness" will flock to where ever it is tolerated and in the end there's not that much practical difference between "too big" corporations and "too big" government.
- pwnna 13y agoInteresting article. I have not seen a lot of quantitative studies on society in general (that is probably personal bias, however). Is it wrong to say that a lot of the root cause of this is from capitalism? Is socialism a better solution for more complicated societies like the ones we have today?
- craigyk 13y agoMy take is that it's all a continuum. more capitalist is probably better in fast growing/developing areas (note: not just countries) with a move toward more socialist as things equilibrate. The end-state of capitalism, barring major disruptions, is monopoly, which is essentially the economic equivalent of dictatorship. Also, things that didn't exist 3 decades ago might start to become more like a utility (internet), which to me indicates it should be treated more like a social good.
- devindotcom 13y ago"Overeducated" =/= lawyers. Society isn't "fraying," either — it is a time of accelerated change brought on by a number of factors such as globalism, the Internet, and so on. Distribution of wealth and the purchase of politics are serious problems, but this article doesn't seem very on the mark.
- craigyk 13y agoWhy? High education and underutilization might be big multipliers for social unrest. I can't think of a group that might be more pissed as they realize just how large a role luck and birth can play in "success".
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoIndeed. US Society is about as "unfrayed" as it's ever been.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoInequality is actually down, but hey - believe whatever you want. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/11/world-inequality-is-down.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/11/world-inequality-is-do...
- WalterSear 13y agoGlobally, yes. This article was about the US. Things aren't going in the same direction globally as in first world countries.
- joshklein 13y agoThese data refer to worldwide inequality, while the article speaks to American inequality. The former is significantly skewed by the rural-to-urban migration of India and China as they rapidly modernize.
- jfb_1973 13y agoAccording to your link, world inequality as a whole is down. This article is about how inequality within a political system (say the USA) affects social stability. Within this context, it matters not whether or not millions of Chinese and Indians have been lifted out of absolute poverty, because those people are not part of our political system. It's actually a pretty interesting article, you should read it, rather than dismissing it because of your political bias.
- potatolicious 13y agoLike others have said, this article is strictly about American inequality - as you can see, all the examples given, and all the points discussed, were purely American. The reduction in global inequality actually relates to the rise in American inequality, as industries that previously drove the growth of the American middle class have off-shored and are now contributing to the growth of the middle class elsewhere. Stagnant industries that used to be the bread and butter across the US are now major growth factors in China and India.
- munificent 13y agoThe article mentions "U.S." nine times and "world" only once in "World War II". I'm confused as to how you could have interpreted it to be about world inequality.
- tokenizer 13y agoWhile this was a decent article highlighting an interesting point about the impending collapse of the US, this part was obviously classist: > There was a wave of terrorism by labor radicals and anarchists. Yes. Terrorism gave us the 40 hour workweek, and in my country of Canada, single payer healthcare...
- potatolicious 13y agoI don't see the "obvious classism". Author isn't talking about demonstrations or protests, author is talking about extremists blowing things up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bo... And more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing I don't think calling bombings in public spaces "terrorism" is really straining the definition of the word. In fact it seems pretty on-the-nose. And far from driving any sort of positive change, these bombings derived zero concessions from the government. Their only long-term effect was the further marginalization of the political left in the USA, as they became associated with violence. This is a legacy that is still here in the US today, where words like "socialist" are still being used as obvious pejoratives. It's interesting that you bring up single payer health care in Canada. The first real implementation of public health care in Canada was in Saskatchewan, under premier Tommy Douglas, who was IIRC voted a few years ago as the Greatest Canada Who Ever Lived. Public health care was achieved in Saskatchewan not by hostage-taking, bombing, or shooting anyone, but by persistent demonstration and political participation. Not a shot was fired to win single payer health care in Canada. Terrorism gave us nothing except fear, violence, and death. In every place it has shown up it has actively worked against the causes it purports to advance (see: OWS and rioting). It is in spite of violent extremists that these causes have succeeded, it should get zero credit.
- Glyptodon 13y agoI think there's more ambiguity to a lot of events in that era. I mean take stuff like the Bisbee deportation... I doubt it gets called terrorism most of the time.
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- known 13y agohttp://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-falla...
- zaguios 13y agoLook at the graph the article presents for US political violence. It's actually at or near an all time low, they just added a new "category" of terrorism to inflate recent numbers. The cycle may or may not actually exist, but if it does we're almost as far away from a spike as you can get.
- bananacurve 13y agoYeah they should have left out that graphic because it completely undermines his thesis.
- SloughFeg 13y agoOf course, let's blame the elite's for all our societal woes. Humans are rather good at blaming everyone for problems but themselves.
- JabavuAdams 13y agoDid you read the article, or just the title?
- alextingle 13y agoOK. Let's blame people who can't use apostrophes instead.
- jgalt212 13y agoOur society is fraying because folks like Mitt Romney think it's OK to not pay taxes for 10 years, and then run for President.
- brandoncor 13y agoCan you explain this a bit further? I'm not a fan of Mitt Romney, but I've never understood the outrage at his tax returns. It was my understanding that the low tax rate was due to 1) donations and 2) the fact that most of his income comes from capital gains. Do you think people considering running for president should go out of their way to pay more taxes?
- JonnieCache 13y agoThe point is, the people who benefit from those tax laws and the people who made those tax laws are, to a first approximation, the same people.
- ditonal 13y agoHe kept several years of tax returns hidden, had shady offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and while I don't expect him to pay more taxes than legally required, it would be nice if he acknowledged or addressed as a policy issue that he made orders of magnitudes more money than a middle class person yet paid a quarter of their effective tax rate. Capital gains taxes are bad, but so are income taxes, and I don't think it's coincidence we keep the ones that is largely shouldered by the middle class high.
- brandoncor 13y agoThis is a much better argument. Do you happen to have a source for his using Cayman Island and Switzerland offshore accounts? Edit: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mit...
- logfromblammo 13y agoThere was also the issue of the balance in his retirement savings account. If I recall correctly, it was far beyond what the maximum amount expected from an "ordinary" person, contributing the maximum amounts allowable from even a 7-figure CEO salary for 50 continuous years--ten times as much, or more, in one third the time. The whole business simultaneously screamed "tax avoidance loophole" and "elite privilege".
- kokey 13y ago"Increasing inequality leads not only to the growth of top fortunes; it also results in greater numbers of wealth-holders. The “1 percent” becomes “2 percent.” Or even more." So, a larger percentage of wealthy people in society is a product of _more_ inequality? My brain has a bit of trouble with that statement.
- delluminatus 13y agoWell, sure. If you think about inequality in terms of variance from the mean income, an increase in the size of the very wealthy class (an "outlier class") increases the variance in the same way that an increase in the size of the extremely poor class (another, less extreme "outlier class") does.
- scarmig 13y agoI had trouble parsing that statement as well. I think at heart it comes down to how inequality is a very slippery if not vacuous concept, but here's the most plausible explanatory mental model I could come up with: Let's define the elite as people who have, say, 10 times the income/wealth/power as the median person. As inequality increases, the cutoff point for people who have 10x what the median person has decreases from 99th percentile to 98th percentile (or whatever). This is workable numerically if you think of income as falling along a Pareto distribution. I'm not sure it's workable as a definition of the elite, though: why would the 98th percentile have more access to power with more inequality? Although they outstrip the median fine, they'd be even further away from the 99th or 99.9th percentile.
- a3n 13y agoIt could be because there is a disappearing middle, with little gradation between super rich and fucked.
- mrcactu5 13y agoThe roots of the current American predicament go back to the 1970s, when wages of workers stopped keeping pace with their productivity. * head explode * So this has been going on for the past 40 years and we have stopped questioning it? What if you were Black or a woman in the 70's? Did wages ever keep up with productivity in the first place?
- craigyk 13y agowell, unmentioned in the article is that this was partially offset by falling prices which allowed quality of life to continue improving. the ability for this offsetting to compensate may no longer be enough though.
- pyrocat 13y agoMaybe the author meant "The roots of the current [White Middle Class] American predicament..." But regardless, when you look at graphs of wealth inequality, business regulation, the militarization of police, and incarceration rates, they all start going rapidly in the wrong direction starting at about 1970.
- calinet6 13y agoYES! This. This graph tells all: http://i.imgur.com/ZxBWh.png http://i.imgur.com/ZxBWh.png And yes, we've simply learned to ignore it. The gap of productivity and wealth that is no longer being earned by the working/middle class is being systematically extracted from the market by the powerful corporate class. The craziest part of this I've heard is that one of the main methods of this market extraction is via the broad use of credit by the working/middle class, who, now that they aren't making enough money to afford basic life, need to borrow to afford it. They borrow from the upper class/bankers and pay interest, thereby funneling even more money into the top echelon of society, even though we're already being systematically squeezed out. All just because they can. Because it is possible to take the money, so they do, each individual entity at each point of decision chooses this lopsided power-extreme optimum, and it causes this extreme imbalance in turn. And we act like this is all a normal part of society. Because we've been told so. Why there is not extreme uproar about this is beyond me, but I think it has to do with the fact that the media is also owned by the powerful corporate class, as is the government. It is sickening if you think about it hard enough. But we don't, because we're told we're powerless to change the society we're in. Which makes it even worse.
- tootie 13y agohttp://www.reddit.com/r/panichistory http://www.reddit.com/r/panichistory
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- leoc 13y agoFrom /Nationalism/ by Elie Kedourie http://www.amazon.com/Nationalism-Elie-Kedourie/dp/0631188851/ http://www.amazon.com/Nationalism-Elie-Kedourie/dp/063118885... http://www.worldcat.org/title/nationalism/oclc/27812918 http://www.worldcat.org/title/nationalism/oclc/27812918 : "The writers who invented and elaborated the post-Kantian theory of the state belonged to a caste which was relatively low on the social scale. They were, most of them, the sons of pastors, artisans, or small farmers. They somehow managed to become university students, most often in the faculty of theology, and last out the duration of their course on minute grants, private lessons, and similar makeshifts. When they graduated they found that their knowledge opened no doors, that they were still in the same social class, looked down upon by a nobility which was stupid, unlettered, and which engrossed the public employments they felt themselves so capable of filling. These students and ex-students felt in them the power to do great things, they had culture, knowledge, ability, they yearned for the life of action, its excitements and rewards, and yet there they were, doomed to spend heartbreaking years as indigent curates waiting to be appointed pastors, or as tutors in some noble household, where they were little better than superior domestics, or as famished writers dependent on the goodwill of an editor or a publisher." This group produced colourful people like Karl Sand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Ludwig_Sand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Ludwig_Sand , and of course an ideology which was eventually to burn Europe down at least a couple of times. Substitute engineering for theology and you have a pretty accurate description of many of the angry young men of the present-day Middle East too.
- amerika_blog 13y agoThese rich, overeducated elites seem to all be Ivy League style Frankfurt School liberals. Just sayin'
- squozzer 13y agoKeep in mind the problem aren't the elites, their success in reproduction which causes the imbalance between their numbers and the number of (suitable) positions available to them. After all, a core tenet of The American Dream™ states one must do better - in terms of social status - than one's forebears. And when was the last time you heard a college professor brag about having a mechanic for a son? Not that there's anything wrong with either profession when they act honestly. I kind of dig the analysis, as it resembles Asimov's psychohistory, but it's still a bit haphazard because the analyst assumes some kind of periodicity to the phenomenon. This kind of work lends itself to other questions, such as whether one can increase its' predictive power by analyzing social artifacts such as music, books or visual arts.
- squozzer 13y agoI dug into the professor's work a little deeper and he does not assume periodicity for his observations in general but goes on to say they have periodic tendencies.
- cafard 13y agoIt is kind of a property owned by Michael Bloomberg to warn us off rich elites.