"The Hoarding of the American Dream"

[Adam]

I guess I was drawn to your click bait.

I literally LOL'd at this.

[Adam]

Just because you were lucky to have parents that already had good jobs and made sure you didn't pick some stupid ass major because they didn't want to piss away their hard earned money doesn't mean that everyone else that was told to blindly go to college and things would be awesome were wrong to listen to the adults while they were still minors and had no idea what they were doing.

...

Sure hindsight is 20/20 and if some of those people went into trades they would be doing better, but how were they supposed to know at 17? I went into computers and when I graduated there were no computer jobs and I had to go back for an entirely different major. Everyone told me computers were the way to go. I was supposed to just know what would be in demand?

Using my hindsight and recollection, I remember when we were juniors or seniors in high school, there was a "career counseling" or something event where you took a survey and talked with a counselor about what the best career/education path was for you. Something along the lines of "tell us what things you like and we will tell you what jobs do that". What I don't remember, however, is ever talking about employment opportunities or the potential monetary impact of the decisions. It mostly mapped your interests to the equivalent college degree.

The point of the program seemed to be "go do what you like forever", which is part of the problem. If I like drawing pictures or taking photos that means I'm supposed to get an Arts degree in college, but then what? What they should have been doing instead was looking at the skill set that makes you good at your hobby and used that to choose a career which wouldn't leave you living in your parent's basement potentially unemployed. In the previous example they could have steered people with good hand-eye coordination and talents for finding aesthetically pleasing things towards graphic design, marketing, or industrial design. Instead they were all pushed towards arts degrees at a 4 year school where their best employment opportunity was to go back to school and become a teacher of the arts.

Back to my history, based on almost entirely on my automotive interests, I was told I should be a mechanic or a mechanical engineer (since I was also good at math). Neither of those things ended up working out, but I think I did alright in the end (eventually).

[bill25]

Something along the lines of "tell us what things you like and we will tell you what jobs do that". What I don't remember, however, is ever talking about employment opportunities or the potential monetary impact of the decisions. It mostly mapped your interests to the equivalent college degree.

The point of the program seemed to be "go do what you like forever", which is part of the problem. If I like drawing pictures or taking photos that means I'm supposed to get an Arts degree in college, but then what? What they should have been doing instead was looking at the skill set that makes you good at your hobby and used that to choose a career which wouldn't leave you living in your parent's basement potentially unemployed.

This is exactly what I went through in the late 90's in high school. They literally preached that "everyone is going to college". They did exactly what you stated with the mapping and told people to go get useless degrees. These people being told heard this from like 13 years old till they graduated high school. That is why I get pissed when people are like "well why didn't you know better?" My wife got stuck with some loans with 15 and 12% interest. I get that at some point you say, "Ok this sucks, but I still need to do something about it." I changed my major and went back for another 4 years. I agree that you can't depend on hand outs, but if this was flipped the other way and the elderly was being hustled with 100K of useless debt, that would be a problem, right?

[Adam]

What are we arguing about again? The reason why this article is wrong?

[kevm14]

Relevant: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ ... spartanntp

"We are moving into an era of extensive automation and a period in which capitalism is just simply not going to need as many workers," said Jennifer Klein, a Yale University professor who focuses on labor history. "It's not just automating in manufacturing but anything with a service counter: grocery stores, movie theaters, car rentals ... and this is now going to move into food service, too.
"What are we going to do in an era that doesn't need as many people? It's not a social question we've seriously addressed."

Instead of worrying about the mass unemployment a robot Armageddon could bring, we should instead shift our attention to making sure workers — particularly low-wage workers — have the skills they need to compete in an automated era, says James Bessen, an economist, Boston University law lecturer, and author of the book Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth.

"The problem is people are losing jobs and we're not doing a good job of getting them the skills and knowledge they need to work for the new jobs," Bessen said.

Addressing this skills gap will require a paradigm shift both in the way we approach job training and in the way we approach education, he said.
"Technology is very disruptive. It is destroying jobs. And while it is creating others, because we don’t have an easy way to transition people from one occupation to another, we’re going to face increased social disruption," he said.

In this new age, Bessen said, we can't treat learning as finite. 

In other words, to survive going forward, you can't reasonably expect to be paid for a labor job that is easily replaced by a robot. As an example.

This next part is big but let me paste it because it is important and gets to what I was saying before about this problem not being new.

Americans have been worrying about automation wiping out jobs for centuries, and in some occupations, automation has drastically reduced the need for human labor.

In 1900, 41% of American workers were employed in agriculture, but by 2000, automated machinery brought that number down to just 2%, MIT professor David Autor wrote in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2015.

The arrival of the automobile ushered out horses, reducing the need for blacksmiths and stable hands.
In the 21st century, computers are increasingly performing tasks humans once did. 

But the relationship between automation and employment is complex. When automation replaces human labor, it can also reduce cost and improve quality, which, in turn, increases demand.

Such was the case in textiles. In the early 19th century, 98% of the work of a weaver became automated, but the number of textile workers actually grew. 

"At the beginning of the 19th century, it was so expensive that ... a typical person had one set of clothing," Bessen said. "As the price started dropping because of automation, people started buying more and more, so that by the 1920s the average person was consuming 10 times as much cloth per capita per year."

More demand for cloth meant a greater need for textile workers. But that demand, eventually, was satisfied. 
When ATMs were introduced in the 1970s, people thought they would be a death knell for bank tellers. The number of tellers per bank did fall, but because ATMs reduced the cost of operating a bank branch, more branches opened, which in turn hired more tellers. U.S. bank teller employment rose by 50,000 between 1980 and 2010. But the tasks of those tellers evolved from simply dispensing cash to selling other things the banks provided, like credit cards and loans. And the skills those tellers had that the ATMs didn't — like problem solving — became more valuable.

When computers take over some human tasks within an occupation, Bessen's research shows those occupations grow faster, not slower. 
"AI is coming in and it’s going to make accountants that much better, it’s going to make financial advisers that much better, it’s going to make health care providers that much more effective, so we’re going to be using more of their services at least for the next 10 or 20 years," Bessen said.

These examples, though, are of occupations where automation replaces some part of human labor. What about when automation completely replaces the humans in an entire occupation? So far, that's been pretty rare. In a 2016 paper, Bessen looked at 271 detailed occupations used in the 1950 Census and found that while many occupations no longer exist, in only one case was the demise of an occupation attributed mostly to automation: the elevator operator.

A 2017 report from the McKinsey Global Institute found that less than 5% of occupations can be completely automated.

I also said something that this seems to back up, as far as this happening and being, for lack of a better term, messy socially during the transition:

History has taught us a lot about how automation disrupts industries, though economists admit they can't account for the infinite ways technology may unsettle work in the future. 

When a new era of automation does usher in major economic and social disruption — which Bessen doesn't predict will happen for at least another 30 to 50 years — it's humans that will ultimately decide the ways in which robots get to change the world.

"It's not a threat as much as an opportunity," he said. "It’s how we take advantage of it as individuals and a society that will determine the outcome."

[kevm14]

Oh look, the elephant in the room has been exposed. Finally.

This will happen whether or not you want it to take place. It already has to a degree. What MUST happen so we can all survive is "Accountable, Systematic Birth Control" especially for the poor, uneducated masses. Better to stop a birth before it happens, than to watch them starve or be killed for rioting, looting, and uprisings. You may disagree....But, do the math and you will see that I am correct in every way. This will of course apply to all. Only the strong(and smart)survive.

[kevm14]

Check this out.

1979.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNT1L3jGjbA

Everything was fine until the very last thing he said. But hey, close enough!

[kevm14]

Found this vid while I was watching their video on car loans. Fits right in with this theme.

Trade school vs college.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoJ_H_W3VGY

[kevm14]

Full Mike Rowe video. I bet this is worth a watch. I will do so later.

"If we are lending money that ostensibly we don't have to kids who have no hope of making it back in order to train them for jobs that clearly don't exist, I might suggest that we've gone around the bend a little bit," says TV personality Mike Rowe, best known as the longtime host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.

"There is a real disconnect in the way that we educate vis-a-vis the opportunities that are available. You have - right now - about 3 million jobs that can't be filled," he says, talking about openings in traditional trades ranging from construction to welding to plumbing. "Jobs that typically parents' don't sit down with their kids and say, 'Look, if all goes well, this is what you are going to do.'"

Rowe, who once sang for the Baltimore Opera and worked as an on-air pitchman for QVC, worries that traditional K-12 education demonizes blue-collar fields that pay well and are begging for workers while insisting that everyone get a college degree. He stesses that he's "got nothing against college" but believes it's a huge mistake to push everyone in the same direction regardless of interest or ability. Between Mike Rowe Foundation and Profoundly Disconnected, a venture between Rowe and the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, Rowe is hoping both to help people find new careers and publicize what he calls "the diploma dilemma."

Rowe recently sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss his bad experience with a high school guidance counselor (3:20), why he provides scholarships based on work ethic (6:57), the problem with taxpayer-supported college loans (8:40), why America demonizes dirty jobs (11:32), the happiest day of his life (13:14), why following your passion is terrible advice (17:05), why it's so hard to hire good people (21:04), the hidden cost of regulatory compliance (23:16), the problem with Obama's promise to create shovel ready jobs (33:05), efficiency versus effectiveness (34:17), and life after Dirty Jobs (38:24).

Aprrox. 41 minutes. Cameras by Meredith Bragg and Joshua Swain. Edited by Bragg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzKzu86Agg0

[kevm14]

Mike Rowe on NBC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33h2mgrY_ZI

I mean the interviews have a lot of overlap but this one is a lot newer (with even worse statistics that prove his point, than the older 2013 stuff).

I think one of the things that he is trying to get across is that a great deal of the jobs that are available require skills that are not being taught in schools, but that the working conditions are not in fact nearly as bad as the education system insists that they are, and that the living that you can make in those careers is nothing to sniff at either.

I am an Journeyman Steamfitter and I love my job.  I have many opportunities to work near home, and I have many opportunities to work while travelling.  I can quite easily make over $100K / year and I get to see all kinds of neat things in different settings all of the time.  A lot of the work I do I have to essentially design myself quite often with a partner, then have to actually plan and build the entire piping portion of the mechanical system.  it's like he was saying, when I go home my workplace tends to look different than when I came in that morning because I actually built something.

Random comment.

It's like the government, over the course of 4 decades, sat down with academia and said, "hey, we can help push kids your way if you tell them that by getting that liberal arts degree that they are following their passion." Then in the 90s we started throwing real money at it.

And also there is this narrative that "oh, these manufacturing jobs have been going away because of globalization and automation, so you should have even MORE reason to get that 4 year degree." Yet Mike has the numbers - there is a job shortage in many blue collar industries. Manufacturing is just one area.

Maybe the new message should be....you want to be a doctor? Lawyer? Engineer? There are probably other examples, but go to school for those things. Oh and as Mike has pointed out, the high prices will take care of themselves when we drop this student loan nonsense, which will be fine to do because people can realize, in some cases, they don't actually need that 4 year degree.

I don't know if I am making any sense but I fully back what Mike is doing and I think he is right on.