11 ms·

The Downward Ramp

87 points by Futurebot 12y ago

kanamekun 12y ago
This is a key quote, and anecdotally I've seen it playing out with people I know: "[T]he drying up of cognitively demanding jobs is having a cascade effect. College graduates are forced to take jobs beneath their level of educational training, moving into clerical and service positions instead of into finance and high tech. This cascade eliminates opportunities for those without college degrees who would otherwise fill those service and clerical jobs. These displaced workers are then forced to take even less demanding, less well-paying jobs, in a process that pushes everyone down. At the bottom, the unskilled are pushed out of the job market altogether."
- kourt 12y ago
  Shockingly, the NYT didn't use this article to call for MOAR IMMIGRATION.
- DustinCalim 12y ago
  I wouldn't say this is necessarily a bad thing, but more like the effects of market correction as our entire workforce transitions to a higher level putting pressure on people to operate at a higher cognitive level. And, I think we would want as much of our population as possible in cognitively demanding positions, and having the ability to outsource labor to other countries helps that happen. Now the next question I see is- 'Is our education system ready for that?' and I don't know a lot about the inner workings of it, but my gut feeling says we're not there yet.
  - kourt 12y ago
    "we would want as much of our population as possible in cognitively demanding positions, and having the ability to outsource labor to other countries helps that happen" 1) What if you had a brother with an IQ of 98. Would you rather he had a respectable factory job, or become homeless? 2) Are you aware that many of the least-tradable services are the least "cognitively demanding"? So I guess you want to tailor the bell curve of the population so that everyone is either > 120 so that they can do very highly cognitive work, or < 80 (so that they are content doing extremely menial work). Isn't it a little inconvenient that around 68% of the population is 85-115 IQ?
    - adrianN 12y ago
      I would rather that the respectable factory job is done by a robot. I don't think we should force humans to do repetitive work that can be automated just so that they can somehow justify their existence in a society that is obsessed with work. Our goal should be as little employment as necessary paired with a basic income.
      - wallflower 12y ago
        Marshall Brain's Manna which has been mentioned before on HN is an interesting take on where automation and robots will take us. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        brazzy 12y ago
        "will"?
        wallflower 12y ago
        s/will/may Rereading it again. He basically foreshadowed Amazon warehouse workers. Though he may fall short on the leap from Amazon to the rest of the working class.
        BrandonMarc 12y ago
        Interesting read. It starts off showing a nightmare scenario of capitalism gone wrong ... similar themes with the original Robocop movies (without the violence and gore). It finishes with a dreamy scenario of communism gone well, though it ignores many issues, hand-waves others, and ends rather abruptly. It was interesting to see where one futurist believes we could go.
      - JoachimS 12y ago
        Ok, where are the money for the basic income coming from? All the people getting replaced by automation will be less able economically to buy stuff, use services - and pay taxes. Automation removes a lot of costs, frees up a lot of resources and increases profits. But all those positive effects does not compensate for the negative effects unless there is real net gains. For most of the society.
  - pygy_ 12y ago
    According to the article, the demand for cognitively demanding work peaked in 2000 and has been falling ever since, first sharply then at a slower but steady pace.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- malandrew 12y ago
  It's happened once before with horses. During the industrial revolution horse-employment plummeted to the point that there were very few horses left laboring. IMHO, the most disruptive technical solution in the pipeline is self-driving cars. Once we enter the age of the "driverless carriage", the amount of unemployment that occurs will be unprecedented. People completely under-estimate how many industries are touched by automobiles. The industry I'm most curious about with respect to the downward ramp is medicine. The hollowing out and automation is likely to happen with doctors more than nurses. With that in mind, will doctors suffer the most or will they push out the nurses underneath them.
mmphosis 12y ago
US Presidents during The "Upward" Ramps: John F. Kennedy - January 20, 1961 - November 22, 1963 Lyndon Johnson - November 22, 1963 - January 20, 1969 Jimmy Carter - January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981 Bill Clinton - January 20, 1993 - January 20, 2001
- jqm 12y ago
  I'm not sure that means much. Sometimes the effects of previous policies are inherited. And more importantly, the president of the US, contrary to popular opinion, doesn't control everything in the universe.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    There's a Mathematica worksheet which demonstrates that stock market returns (DJIA) are highly sensitive to start date / policy effect delay assumptions: http://www.demonstrations.wolfram.com/StockMarketReturnsByParty/ http://www.demonstrations.wolfram.com/StockMarketReturnsByPa... It's not proof that you would observe a similar effect in this data, but it's enough for me to put no stock in any speculation of this sort that doesn't come with a sensitivity analysis :)
- meritt 12y ago
  The data shows this trend is not unique to the US. http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554 http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554 page 17.
- girvo 12y ago
  As a non-American, I have no allegience to either party... but couldn't you be mixing up cause and effect here? Perhaps instead of one party creating the economic effects, perhaps that party is voted in when the country is doing economically well?
  - srl 12y ago
    This is a theory I've often heard, and personally suspect to have a good deal of validity (although obviously it's an oversimplification). In good economic times, people don't mind the government spending a lot - after all, the economy is doing well, what can go wrong? In bad economic times, people think the government ought to be more stingy. Of course, this is pretty much the opposite of what you really want. When the economy is doing well is the time to reel in spending and raise taxes. When the economy is doing badly is the time for stimulus spending and a larger deficit.
michaelochurch 12y ago
I think the "Four Turnings" model of Strauss and Howe might be accurate. Their hypothesis is that American society (actually, Anglo-American) experiences crises about every 80-90 years (Armada, Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, Civil War, World War II). The First Turning is the post-crisis high (for the past 500 years, we've emerged successfully from each, although that's not guaranteed to continue. The Second is the peak, the Third Turning is a cynical, chaotic unraveling period, and the Fourth is the crisis. (For the past 100 years, most of the world has been on the Anglo-American cycle.) In the recent First Turning (1945-65) we saw broad-based improvements for all social classes, and progress on civil rights. In the Second (1965-85) Turning, technological progress continued but the working class was thrown under the bus, while the middle class continued to do well. The Third Turning (1985-2007) saw the middle class get hit as well, but the upper-middle-class did OK. In the first half of the Fourth Turning (2008-) the upper-middle class ("the 9 percent") is getting smashed and, later on, it will start to affect the upper class. It seems to be a pattern whereby the rot travels up the social ladder. The disintegration is finally recognized as a problem only when it starts taking out the elite (as it did, last, in 1929). It's not clear what our "crisis" looks like or even whether we're in one, but I think that will be more clear in a few years. In this light, none of this news surprises me.
affebeaf 12y ago
Isn't it a cognitively-demanding task to create a new product, or to start a new company?
- zxcdw 12y ago
  It indeed is, no doubt about that. Why are you asking? Edit: What is this, constructive and sincere question getting downvoted?
- TTPrograms 12y ago
  How many founders can one nation really have though? At some point you just run out of useful things to build companies around. Entrepreneurs are extreme outliers for any of this discussion, I think.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > At some point you just run out of useful things to build companies around. Given how many non-product are there, both physical and virtual, I think we've reached that point some time ago.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
leorocky 12y ago
If fewer people got philosophy degrees or other majors of questionable utility in the work force and instead focused on getting an education in marketable skills with job openings maybe the story might be different. This trajectory of being an undecided major and then just kind of getting some degree or other with the hopes just having that paper will land you a job somewhere never struck me as realistic. For the United States, there is even a site where you can help plan your next ten years, find something that's high growth: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/ http://www.bls.gov/ooh/ You can sort occupations by projected growth rate: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm?pay=&education=&training=&newjobs=&growth=30+percent+or+faster&submit=GO http://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm?pay=&education=...
- nahname 12y ago
  The problem is opportunity has fled this generation of students. We have boomer managers with non-relevant degrees posting entry level jobs expecting 4 year degrees and five years of highly specialized relevant work experience.
  - leorocky 12y ago
    The thing about a capitalist economy is that people need to create opportunities. If more people optimized their career better we'd have better ratio of matching opportunities with workers which will mean less unemployed people which means economic growth which would could lead to more growth. Looking to the government to enact keysnian economics didn't work so well for Japan. And anyway policy matters and is important, but people at the same time need to take their lives in their own hands and make changes. Hard changes. Just like we're always trying to get everyone to give up their gas guzzling carbon emitters, we should also be trying to get everyone to adopt a little bit more of a responsibility of managing their own lives. For the social good. The more people earn, the more wealth we have to lift all boats.
- Grae 12y ago
  Undergraduate education is not synonymous with vocational training. There is value in degrees like philosophy and other "questionable" majors not directly related to their utility in the job market. Don't get me wrong: many undergrads would be better off for paying greater attention to the job market and their coming role in it, but education can also be a step towards less tangible goals or an end in itself.
Zigurd 12y ago
Since about 1990 I have been acutely that only a minority of my high school cohort has lives as comfortable and financially secure as their parents. A disturbingly large number of my university cohort have fallen off the upward ramp. If you graduate from an elite university, and you are sharp enough to find the next wave to surf, America is still a fine place to be. But the cost of that education is crazy now. Your parents have to among the fortunate to afford it. The ladder has been cut off under, and in a few cases, above many of the people reading this.
- morgante 12y ago
  > If you graduate from an elite university, and you are sharp enough to find the next wave to surf, America is still a fine place to be. But the cost of that education is crazy now. Your parents have to among the fortunate to afford it. Not really. That's a pernicious myth. The elite universities have amazing financial aid which actually makes it easiest to attend for those who can least afford it. The hurdle is getting in, which by definition is impossible for the vast majority of Americans. Not that any of this matters. The continued success of the elite is irrelevant to the continued struggles of the 99.5%.
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    Elite universities can offer a hand up to those extraordinary cases of highly intelligent kids coming up from poverty. But they are MUCH less affordable for and admit far fewer kids from ordinary educational backgrounds with middle class parents. I doubt my own trajectory is repeatable without an added couple $100k in debt.
    - morgante 12y ago
      > But they are MUCH less affordable for and admit far fewer kids from ordinary educational backgrounds with middle class parents. That's just false. Huge numbers of middle class students enroll in elite institutions. My family is decidedly middle class and, in line with their standard financial aid policies, every elite university I applied to offered an aid package which would make it affordable. The total debt required would have been around $5k over 4 years (just books). Obviously this is just anecdotal, but I do elite education's unaffordability is a pernicious myth which keeps great students from applying.
chantech 12y ago
It seems like every other article I see talks about squeezing of the middle class, inequality, etc. At least in my area, I don't really see it happening. The majority of the people I know went to a public state school, aren't abnormally intelligent, didn't work abnormally hard, or do particularly well in school (2.5-3.5 GPAs), and all have little problems getting jobs paying 75k+ (only 25% are in software). In fact, most of us have little problems finding jobs paying 125+ in the midwest. Companies can't find enough qualified talent. People who are always learning and adapting. It's a supply and demand problem. If you get a degree with no demand, you shouldn't expect to find employment. In the past, the limit to economic growth was knowledge workers and a simple college degree guaranteed a middle class lifestyle. Today, the limit is entrepreneurs and companies creating value. We need to hold up guys like Elon Musk as heroes. They're the ones creating the jobs and industries of tomorrow. The government needs to stimulate entrepreneurship - not necessarily provide more grants for college educations in useless degrees.
- justin66 12y ago
  > In fact, most of us have little problems finding jobs paying 125+ in the midwest. Wow. Please elaborate, with some detail.
gtirloni 12y ago
I tried to understand the original paper but it's way over my head. So the decrease in demand of cognitively demanding jobs is an temporal economic situation or a long-term trend? It seems the theory was always that less cognitively demanding jobs would be replaced by automation/robots but more demanding ones would be safe. How to place this article in that perspective?
JacobAldridge 12y ago
If you like reading charts, check out some of the detail in this article [1]. In particular, the second of the market graphs (with the red lines) that goes much further back than this story. It concurs with the flatness since 2000, but rather than predicting a downward ramp, is suggesting the timing is right for a new period of growth to commence. [1] http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/_blog/Driving_business_performance/post/thrive-to-innovation-first-understand-market-trends/ http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/_blog/Driving_business_perfo...
- musesum 12y ago
  Or it could be part of a sigmoid. How to interpret depends on whether you're an optimist or a skeptic.
cornholio 12y ago
"the upscale Democratic elite – a constituency historically more concerned with social and cultural issues than economic ones. [...] If their children begin to face hurdles similar to those confronting manual and semi-skilled workers, interest in a more activist government may grow" Yeah, right. This flies in the face of everything we have learned about human nature. When faced with economic shortages and crises the first to be thrown overboard are the poor.
- mdda 12y ago
  If you read the sentence you quoted, you'll see that you agree with it : It says that Democratic elites (even those that are more concerned with social and cultural issues) don't really care about an issue until it affects their own children. Assuming the elites aren't poor, then the poor (by that stage) have already gone by the way-side.
  - cornholio 12y ago
    If you read my answerer you've replied to, you'll see that I disagree: the economic game of musical chairs will always corrode social progress and cohesion, see the Depression, neoclasical reforms of the 80s etc. Poor people (and their parents) can't afford to be anything but individualistic.
cturner 12y ago
"Beaudry, Green and Sand make the case that the technology bubble that burst in 2000 was far more significant than generally recognized." As I see it, there have been two milestones in corporate IT history. The first was around getting things into databases that could be shared by multiple users. A good example of this is stuff that used to run on the VAX. Then there was a desktop revolution triggered by the combination of the internet, and Windows NT/2000. You could now push a computer around without being a hobbyist, and microsoft office brought various kinds of productivity. The mindsets created by the previous revolutions are holding us back now. * IT departments suffer from the architectural mistake of creating vast databases with multiple dependent systems on them, making maintenance and quality very hard. How many times have you asked your gas company to make one change that has resulted in some bizarre side-effect on your account? * The dominance of single-user document-centric systems like Microsoft Office hampers effective collaboration. This narrative explains why we're bogged at the moment. It's similar to much of what was written in the 90s - at the time, writers complained that that return on investment in IT was very low, and wealth was shifting to Japan not China.
avz 12y ago
I hate when journalists lump all college graduates together. Going to college can be detrimental or highly advantageous to your future employment prospects compared to entering labor force immediately after high school. It depends on the subject.

87 points by Futurebot 12y ago

This is a key quote, and anecdotally I've seen it playing out with people I know: "[T]he drying up of cognitively demanding jobs is having a cascade effect. College graduates are forced to take jobs beneath their level of educational training, moving into clerical and service positions instead of into finance and high tech. This cascade eliminates opportunities for those without college degrees who would otherwise fill those service and clerical jobs. These displaced workers are then forced to take even less demanding, less well-paying jobs, in a process that pushes everyone down. At the bottom, the unskilled are pushed out of the job market altogether."

kourt 12y ago
Shockingly, the NYT didn't use this article to call for MOAR IMMIGRATION.
DustinCalim 12y ago
I wouldn't say this is necessarily a bad thing, but more like the effects of market correction as our entire workforce transitions to a higher level putting pressure on people to operate at a higher cognitive level. And, I think we would want as much of our population as possible in cognitively demanding positions, and having the ability to outsource labor to other countries helps that happen. Now the next question I see is- 'Is our education system ready for that?' and I don't know a lot about the inner workings of it, but my gut feeling says we're not there yet.
- kourt 12y ago
  "we would want as much of our population as possible in cognitively demanding positions, and having the ability to outsource labor to other countries helps that happen" 1) What if you had a brother with an IQ of 98. Would you rather he had a respectable factory job, or become homeless? 2) Are you aware that many of the least-tradable services are the least "cognitively demanding"? So I guess you want to tailor the bell curve of the population so that everyone is either > 120 so that they can do very highly cognitive work, or < 80 (so that they are content doing extremely menial work). Isn't it a little inconvenient that around 68% of the population is 85-115 IQ?
  - adrianN 12y ago
    I would rather that the respectable factory job is done by a robot. I don't think we should force humans to do repetitive work that can be automated just so that they can somehow justify their existence in a society that is obsessed with work. Our goal should be as little employment as necessary paired with a basic income.
    - wallflower 12y ago
      Marshall Brain's Manna which has been mentioned before on HN is an interesting take on where automation and robots will take us. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - brazzy 12y ago
        "will"?
        wallflower 12y ago
        s/will/may Rereading it again. He basically foreshadowed Amazon warehouse workers. Though he may fall short on the leap from Amazon to the rest of the working class.
      - BrandonMarc 12y ago
        Interesting read. It starts off showing a nightmare scenario of capitalism gone wrong ... similar themes with the original Robocop movies (without the violence and gore). It finishes with a dreamy scenario of communism gone well, though it ignores many issues, hand-waves others, and ends rather abruptly. It was interesting to see where one futurist believes we could go.
    - JoachimS 12y ago
      Ok, where are the money for the basic income coming from? All the people getting replaced by automation will be less able economically to buy stuff, use services - and pay taxes. Automation removes a lot of costs, frees up a lot of resources and increases profits. But all those positive effects does not compensate for the negative effects unless there is real net gains. For most of the society.
- pygy_ 12y ago
  According to the article, the demand for cognitively demanding work peaked in 2000 and has been falling ever since, first sharply then at a slower but steady pace.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
malandrew 12y ago
It's happened once before with horses. During the industrial revolution horse-employment plummeted to the point that there were very few horses left laboring. IMHO, the most disruptive technical solution in the pipeline is self-driving cars. Once we enter the age of the "driverless carriage", the amount of unemployment that occurs will be unprecedented. People completely under-estimate how many industries are touched by automobiles. The industry I'm most curious about with respect to the downward ramp is medicine. The hollowing out and automation is likely to happen with doctors more than nurses. With that in mind, will doctors suffer the most or will they push out the nurses underneath them.

mmphosis 12y ago

US Presidents during The "Upward" Ramps: John F. Kennedy - January 20, 1961 - November 22, 1963 Lyndon Johnson - November 22, 1963 - January 20, 1969 Jimmy Carter - January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981 Bill Clinton - January 20, 1993 - January 20, 2001

jqm 12y ago
I'm not sure that means much. Sometimes the effects of previous policies are inherited. And more importantly, the president of the US, contrary to popular opinion, doesn't control everything in the universe.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  There's a Mathematica worksheet which demonstrates that stock market returns (DJIA) are highly sensitive to start date / policy effect delay assumptions: http://www.demonstrations.wolfram.com/StockMarketReturnsByParty/ http://www.demonstrations.wolfram.com/StockMarketReturnsByPa... It's not proof that you would observe a similar effect in this data, but it's enough for me to put no stock in any speculation of this sort that doesn't come with a sensitivity analysis :)
meritt 12y ago
The data shows this trend is not unique to the US. http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554 http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554 page 17.
girvo 12y ago
As a non-American, I have no allegience to either party... but couldn't you be mixing up cause and effect here? Perhaps instead of one party creating the economic effects, perhaps that party is voted in when the country is doing economically well?
- srl 12y ago
  This is a theory I've often heard, and personally suspect to have a good deal of validity (although obviously it's an oversimplification). In good economic times, people don't mind the government spending a lot - after all, the economy is doing well, what can go wrong? In bad economic times, people think the government ought to be more stingy. Of course, this is pretty much the opposite of what you really want. When the economy is doing well is the time to reel in spending and raise taxes. When the economy is doing badly is the time for stimulus spending and a larger deficit.

michaelochurch 12y ago

I think the "Four Turnings" model of Strauss and Howe might be accurate. Their hypothesis is that American society (actually, Anglo-American) experiences crises about every 80-90 years (Armada, Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, Civil War, World War II). The First Turning is the post-crisis high (for the past 500 years, we've emerged successfully from each, although that's not guaranteed to continue. The Second is the peak, the Third Turning is a cynical, chaotic unraveling period, and the Fourth is the crisis. (For the past 100 years, most of the world has been on the Anglo-American cycle.) In the recent First Turning (1945-65) we saw broad-based improvements for all social classes, and progress on civil rights. In the Second (1965-85) Turning, technological progress continued but the working class was thrown under the bus, while the middle class continued to do well. The Third Turning (1985-2007) saw the middle class get hit as well, but the upper-middle-class did OK. In the first half of the Fourth Turning (2008-) the upper-middle class ("the 9 percent") is getting smashed and, later on, it will start to affect the upper class. It seems to be a pattern whereby the rot travels up the social ladder. The disintegration is finally recognized as a problem only when it starts taking out the elite (as it did, last, in 1929). It's not clear what our "crisis" looks like or even whether we're in one, but I think that will be more clear in a few years. In this light, none of this news surprises me.

affebeaf 12y ago

Isn't it a cognitively-demanding task to create a new product, or to start a new company?

zxcdw 12y ago
It indeed is, no doubt about that. Why are you asking? Edit: What is this, constructive and sincere question getting downvoted?
TTPrograms 12y ago
How many founders can one nation really have though? At some point you just run out of useful things to build companies around. Entrepreneurs are extreme outliers for any of this discussion, I think.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > At some point you just run out of useful things to build companies around. Given how many non-product are there, both physical and virtual, I think we've reached that point some time ago.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

leorocky 12y ago

If fewer people got philosophy degrees or other majors of questionable utility in the work force and instead focused on getting an education in marketable skills with job openings maybe the story might be different. This trajectory of being an undecided major and then just kind of getting some degree or other with the hopes just having that paper will land you a job somewhere never struck me as realistic. For the United States, there is even a site where you can help plan your next ten years, find something that's high growth: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/ http://www.bls.gov/ooh/ You can sort occupations by projected growth rate: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm?pay=&education=&training=&newjobs=&growth=30+percent+or+faster&submit=GO http://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm?pay=&education=...

nahname 12y ago
The problem is opportunity has fled this generation of students. We have boomer managers with non-relevant degrees posting entry level jobs expecting 4 year degrees and five years of highly specialized relevant work experience.
- leorocky 12y ago
  The thing about a capitalist economy is that people need to create opportunities. If more people optimized their career better we'd have better ratio of matching opportunities with workers which will mean less unemployed people which means economic growth which would could lead to more growth. Looking to the government to enact keysnian economics didn't work so well for Japan. And anyway policy matters and is important, but people at the same time need to take their lives in their own hands and make changes. Hard changes. Just like we're always trying to get everyone to give up their gas guzzling carbon emitters, we should also be trying to get everyone to adopt a little bit more of a responsibility of managing their own lives. For the social good. The more people earn, the more wealth we have to lift all boats.
Grae 12y ago
Undergraduate education is not synonymous with vocational training. There is value in degrees like philosophy and other "questionable" majors not directly related to their utility in the job market. Don't get me wrong: many undergrads would be better off for paying greater attention to the job market and their coming role in it, but education can also be a step towards less tangible goals or an end in itself.

Zigurd 12y ago

Since about 1990 I have been acutely that only a minority of my high school cohort has lives as comfortable and financially secure as their parents. A disturbingly large number of my university cohort have fallen off the upward ramp. If you graduate from an elite university, and you are sharp enough to find the next wave to surf, America is still a fine place to be. But the cost of that education is crazy now. Your parents have to among the fortunate to afford it. The ladder has been cut off under, and in a few cases, above many of the people reading this.

morgante 12y ago
> If you graduate from an elite university, and you are sharp enough to find the next wave to surf, America is still a fine place to be. But the cost of that education is crazy now. Your parents have to among the fortunate to afford it. Not really. That's a pernicious myth. The elite universities have amazing financial aid which actually makes it easiest to attend for those who can least afford it. The hurdle is getting in, which by definition is impossible for the vast majority of Americans. Not that any of this matters. The continued success of the elite is irrelevant to the continued struggles of the 99.5%.
- Zigurd 12y ago
  Elite universities can offer a hand up to those extraordinary cases of highly intelligent kids coming up from poverty. But they are MUCH less affordable for and admit far fewer kids from ordinary educational backgrounds with middle class parents. I doubt my own trajectory is repeatable without an added couple $100k in debt.
  - morgante 12y ago
    > But they are MUCH less affordable for and admit far fewer kids from ordinary educational backgrounds with middle class parents. That's just false. Huge numbers of middle class students enroll in elite institutions. My family is decidedly middle class and, in line with their standard financial aid policies, every elite university I applied to offered an aid package which would make it affordable. The total debt required would have been around $5k over 4 years (just books). Obviously this is just anecdotal, but I do elite education's unaffordability is a pernicious myth which keeps great students from applying.

chantech 12y ago

It seems like every other article I see talks about squeezing of the middle class, inequality, etc. At least in my area, I don't really see it happening. The majority of the people I know went to a public state school, aren't abnormally intelligent, didn't work abnormally hard, or do particularly well in school (2.5-3.5 GPAs), and all have little problems getting jobs paying 75k+ (only 25% are in software). In fact, most of us have little problems finding jobs paying 125+ in the midwest. Companies can't find enough qualified talent. People who are always learning and adapting. It's a supply and demand problem. If you get a degree with no demand, you shouldn't expect to find employment. In the past, the limit to economic growth was knowledge workers and a simple college degree guaranteed a middle class lifestyle. Today, the limit is entrepreneurs and companies creating value. We need to hold up guys like Elon Musk as heroes. They're the ones creating the jobs and industries of tomorrow. The government needs to stimulate entrepreneurship - not necessarily provide more grants for college educations in useless degrees.

justin66 12y ago
> In fact, most of us have little problems finding jobs paying 125+ in the midwest. Wow. Please elaborate, with some detail.

gtirloni 12y ago

I tried to understand the original paper but it's way over my head. So the decrease in demand of cognitively demanding jobs is an temporal economic situation or a long-term trend? It seems the theory was always that less cognitively demanding jobs would be replaced by automation/robots but more demanding ones would be safe. How to place this article in that perspective?

JacobAldridge 12y ago

If you like reading charts, check out some of the detail in this article [1]. In particular, the second of the market graphs (with the red lines) that goes much further back than this story. It concurs with the flatness since 2000, but rather than predicting a downward ramp, is suggesting the timing is right for a new period of growth to commence. [1] http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/_blog/Driving_business_performance/post/thrive-to-innovation-first-understand-market-trends/ http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/_blog/Driving_business_perfo...

musesum 12y ago
Or it could be part of a sigmoid. How to interpret depends on whether you're an optimist or a skeptic.

cornholio 12y ago

"the upscale Democratic elite – a constituency historically more concerned with social and cultural issues than economic ones. [...] If their children begin to face hurdles similar to those confronting manual and semi-skilled workers, interest in a more activist government may grow" Yeah, right. This flies in the face of everything we have learned about human nature. When faced with economic shortages and crises the first to be thrown overboard are the poor.

mdda 12y ago
If you read the sentence you quoted, you'll see that you agree with it : It says that Democratic elites (even those that are more concerned with social and cultural issues) don't really care about an issue until it affects their own children. Assuming the elites aren't poor, then the poor (by that stage) have already gone by the way-side.
- cornholio 12y ago
  If you read my answerer you've replied to, you'll see that I disagree: the economic game of musical chairs will always corrode social progress and cohesion, see the Depression, neoclasical reforms of the 80s etc. Poor people (and their parents) can't afford to be anything but individualistic.

cturner 12y ago

"Beaudry, Green and Sand make the case that the technology bubble that burst in 2000 was far more significant than generally recognized." As I see it, there have been two milestones in corporate IT history. The first was around getting things into databases that could be shared by multiple users. A good example of this is stuff that used to run on the VAX. Then there was a desktop revolution triggered by the combination of the internet, and Windows NT/2000. You could now push a computer around without being a hobbyist, and microsoft office brought various kinds of productivity. The mindsets created by the previous revolutions are holding us back now. * IT departments suffer from the architectural mistake of creating vast databases with multiple dependent systems on them, making maintenance and quality very hard. How many times have you asked your gas company to make one change that has resulted in some bizarre side-effect on your account? * The dominance of single-user document-centric systems like Microsoft Office hampers effective collaboration. This narrative explains why we're bogged at the moment. It's similar to much of what was written in the 90s - at the time, writers complained that that return on investment in IT was very low, and wealth was shifting to Japan not China.

avz 12y ago

I hate when journalists lump all college graduates together. Going to college can be detrimental or highly advantageous to your future employment prospects compared to entering labor force immediately after high school. It depends on the subject.