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The Rise and Rise of the Cognitive Elite
hessian writes "As technology advances, the rewards to cleverness increase. Computers have hugely increased the availability of information, raising the demand for those sharp enough to make sense of it. In 1991 the average wage for a male American worker with a bachelor's degree was 2.5 times that of a high-school drop-out; now the ratio is 3. Cognitive skills are at a premium, and they are unevenly distributed."
Isn't this more an indiciation of a widening income gap between working class and middle class backgrounds? There are a lot of not-so-smart people with degrees.
This is an alternative interpretation of the data:
In 1991, the average American with a bachelor's degree earned 25% (?) of what the top 1% earned. Today, the fraction is 7% (?). Cognitive skills are no longer valued as much as they were.
Another contributor to the increasing ratio of college-educated salaries to those without has been the decline of manufacturing. There was a time over the last 2-3 generations when someone without a college degree could still get a decent job in manufacturing with benefits and good pay. There was value in skilled trades. The specific example I am thinking of is the automotive industry, where an assembly-line worker could make $20-30 an hour with benefits, and a good machinist could earn as much as a white-collar. Whether that was prudent or sustainable economically or socially is another matter, but it was the case.
With the decline in manufacturing jobs and labor unions, brought on by increased productivity, increased global competition, and the economic downturn generally, it is harder for the uneducated to find jobs that don't have shit conditions for a shit wage.
More recently, the economic downturn has hit those without college educations disproportionately high (manufacturing, construction, etc.), which would tend to depress their median income level, leading to a greater skew that might not otherwise be there.
Hell, I had one coworker who couldn't sit through half a f*cking meeting, but got paid 5 times what I did to go to conventions and schmooze.
Clearly you're underestimating the value of a good schmoozer. Connections are very important in business, as important as the quality of your product.
As one of those Kids These Days: When I was in the "paying some dues" stage of my career, I didn't mind putting in a full day's work. I did mind putting in 14-18 hours a day 7 days a week for pay that amounted to about $7.50 an hour for months on end. Call me unreasonable if you like.
I am officially gone from
^THIS^
I can't stress this enough, emotional IQ is as important if not more important to success as technical intelligence. The best built software in the world is useless if nobody can sell it. It's really time for technical folks to stop bitching about how unfair this is and start trying to teach themselves interpersonal skills and sales skills. Get a job in consulting where both are highly valued. A good technical person that can also schmooze, sell and build relationships is worth their weight in gold.
Schmoozers are their own pricey little bubble. The only reason you need schmoozers is to connect with other schmoozers. If we all chopped the schmooze department off the balance books, we could get back to doing real business deals without all the pomp and fluff.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I've known a number of rich kids in my life. Some of them are the most lazy useless wastes you'll ever meet. I've also been to 3rd world slums, some of them full of the most hard working people in the world. Why is this?
Do the rich deserve to be rich, and the poor deserve to be poor? No, most of the discrepancy in wealth is not due to hard work, but class structure: nepotism, corruption, who you know rather than what you know or how hard you work. I'm not saying that some poor don't rise up, and some rich don't sink down, as is deserving of their character. And in fact the USA does a better job of meritocracy than most other countries. But so much else going on is NOT meritocracy, clearly.
For that reason, many libertarian beliefs only serve to reinforce existing class structures, because so many libertarians don't understand how unfair the distribution of wealth is. In a just society, you NEED to artificially distribute wealth down, because the existing structure naturally concentrates wealth up.
Libertarian philosophy starts with this insane assumption that society is a meritocracy, when all evidence is to the contrary. I agree that society SHOULD be a meritocracy, but to make it a meritocracy, you need to artificially counteract the natural tendency of wealth to attract more wealth.
Libertarians: class structure is real, and growing in the USA. Now you can deny that, or you can do something about that. But making castle-in-the-sky pronouncements about adhering to a meritocracy that doesn't fully exist is just an exercise in fooling yourself.
Some people need to read less Charles Darwin, and more Charles Dickens.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And the won't get off your lawn, either!
Seriously, are college grads today really any worse than the counterculture from the 60s/70s? Or Gen X'ers in the 80s/90's? Or pretty much every generation in history (Back through at least the Ancient Greeks, and probably beyond)? It is in our nature to assume that our cohort is the pinnacle of human thought, and all generations before and after had, have, and will have mannerisms that are contrary to what "decent people" should aspire to. Don't blame this generation, your generations was probably just as stupid (and just as reviled) as this one when you were 20.