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Geographic Segregation By Education
The wage gap between college-educated workers and those with just a high school diploma has been growing — and accelerating. But the education gap is also doing something unexpected: clustering workers with more education in cities with similar people. "This effectively means that college graduates in America aren't simply gaining access to higher wages. They're gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, less crime, even cleaner air." Most people are aware of the gentrification strife occurring in San Francisco, but it's one among many cities experiencing this. "[Research] also found that as cities increased their share of college graduates between 1980 and 2000, they also increased their bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, museums and art galleries per capita. And they experienced larger decreases in pollution and property crime, suggesting that cities that attract college grads benefit from both the kind of amenities that consumers pay for and those that are more intangible." The research shows a clear trend of the desirable cities becoming even more desirable, to the point where it's almost a necessity for city planners to lure college graduates or face decline.
"We want to be as wealthy and well-positioned as people who worked their asses off in their 20's even though we couldn't be bothered to educate ourselves after high school and spent our 20's living with our parents, partying, and having a sweet car that we could only afford because we lived with our parents."
Here's a thought: Teach your kids the concept of long-term goals... It worked wonders for me.
Who did what now?
My observation is that people who don't go to college tend to get a job locally. People who do go to college often attend a college outside of the local area, and when they graduate, often apply for jobs nationwide.
The process of going to college makes moving to a new location much more natural.
It's no wonder that college grads will move to places where they can get good jobs, and that this would be places that already have a high concentration of people with college degrees.
They're gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants...
Work in a restaurant for less than minimum wage.
I'm a research student in London and I did my undergrad here too, what's amazed me is the number of people I know/knew who did their undergrad elsewhere that are now popping up all over the city. Turns out a graduate level job market attracts graduates who in turn attract graduate level jobs... What the summary fails to point out, of course, is that the growth of all the extra facilities - bars, restaurants, dry cleaners etc. - also ensure the job market grows in non-graduate jobs too, so it's win-win for everyone that lives in the lucky city. That city then grows at the expense of its neighbours that lose jobs in all sectors of the market (again, as we see in the UK where London and the south east is a giant black whole sucking up money and talent from the rest of the country). Whether or not you think this is a bad thing varies, of course...
... the college education included acquiring the desire to move to such places?
Personally, I don't consider places like NYC or SF to be desirable places to live. "Clean air"? "Low crime?" "Better schools?" Certainly, compared to other "cities of size". But, to me, the choice isn't limited to which "big city" to live in. And those criteria work to exclude larger cities, in my opinion.
If that's your cup of tea, and you've the good fortune to select a profession that pays the bills your entire life in your chosen metropolis, I say more power to you. Others may find solace in living more simple, rural lives.
Remember, much of the benefit of higher wages is just more money passing through your hands to accommodate the cities' higher cost of living.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
less crime? OK. clearner air? compared to....? NYC is a big place - its not just Manhattan or the upper East (or West) side. In fact, you might make the argument in reverse when it comes to NYC, that lower "skilled" workers are clustering there and getting the benefits described.
" We've always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, ." -- Mitt Romney
For true equality we need collectivization, or genocide, whichever comes first.
Really?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
There's more restaurants because there are more high-income college grads to spend money there. There's less street crime because Johnny the Finance Douchebag isn't likely to do anything worse than public urination. (white collar crime is another matter)
As for better schools, hasn't happened yet at least in NYC -- the system is very uneven and the lengths parents will go through to get their kid in a better elementary school are legendary. Lose the battle, and welcome to the suburbs. If it does happen, it'll again be because the well-educated wealthy college students are there.
Cleaner air is mostly because there's little polluting industry left. Which means fewer blue-collar jobs.
The implied narrative that those rich overeducated scum are hogging all the good places and leaving the poor in high-crime areas with bad schools, dirty air, and no amenities gets cause and effect completely wrong.
Ah, yes. That. I live in Portugal and I see that attitude show every now and then in the people. You do not want that to happen in your region. It's bad.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Yes, lots of educated (and wealthy) citizens create markets for better services in cities. But decades of surveys of companies planning locations and of educated workers considering relocation tell us it works the other way around, too.
States like Arizona and Texas that base their plans for attracting high-wage (lots of educated employees) employers on cutting taxes usually do it by also slicing schools and other services.
That seems to be working in places like Austin, where the city makes up for the lack of State support for education (or actual hostility to it) by cranking up local sales taxes -- which fall more on the poor than on the affluent. Which is a sweet deal if you're making serious money as a twenty-something in technology there, but might not look so good when you have kids and you're looking for daycare and primary schools.
We're doing the experiment. Check in again in ten or twenty years to see which way the arrow of cauality runs.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Look at all these jobs we've created! means, more and more, subsistence level service industry jobs that will afford the children of these citizens a measurable disadvantage over the offspring of parents with professions.
When measuring ability versus resources, remember that no one scores without the ball.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The self-taught "experts" may not be complete dumbfucks, but they never have as complete of a body of knowledge as somebody who has actually even just tried to get some sort of a formal education in their chosen field.
I'm talking about the guy who maybe never even finished high school, but he read a couple of Ruby on Rails books, hacked together a simple blog system that kinda worked, and now he considers himself a computer science expert.
I've worked with enough of these self-proclaimed self-taught "experts" to have noticed some trends. One of the most singificant is that they have massive holes in what they know. They may know the basics of using a given programming language, but then they'll have no idea about security, or algorithms, or writing code that performs well. They won't know about Big-O notation and its implications. They don't know anything about relational theory and have no idea about the ACID principles, so they use NoSQL DBs, write what would be simple SQL queries using complex JavaScript code instead, and create "databases" that corrupt or lose data left and right.
The guy with the bachelor's degree may not be an expert, but at least he'll have likely heard at least something beyond the basics. He at least knows that an O(n^4) algorithm isn't going to scale well. He at least knows how to use foreign key constraints when designing a DB.
Hell, even the guy who only managed a couple of years of college before dropping out is probably a better candidate than the self-taught "expert" with no college experience whatsoever.
As an industry, we don't need yet another high school reject who read a shitty Ruby on Rails book thinking he's anything more than a shitty high school reject who read a shitty Ruby on Rails book. We need less such people, in fact.
More bars, more restaurants, and more dry cleaners makes my point. Bars are negative. Eating in restaurants is negative. And forget dry cleaners! Bars are a disaster as alcohol is now seen as the greatest killer in America. Restaurants are part of the health and obesity epidemic. And dry cleaning should be illegal. Not only are the chemicals used bad for the environment but imagine the transportation required for people to run back and forth to get their laundry. A city is nothing more than a cancer which inevitably reaches out and destroys rural areas. Yes, a city can support a museum. That way people can go see a stuffed animal that used to be common on the very ground underneath the museum. Never spend a penny on alcohol and don't even drink it if it is free. Avoid restaurants! Your wallet will love you and your waist line will look better as well. And if it isn't wash and wear don't allow it in your home.
... people that make more money buy nice things, live in nicer houses, and send their kinds to nicer schools.
Someone actually spent money on this?? Go to Maine and look at old mill towns like Saco/Biddeford and Lewiston/Auborn. Mill towns, where the wealthy lived on one side of the river, and the mill workers lived on the other.
I would say it's obvious to most people and no study was needed, but I guess someone has to justify their wasted college education by getting paid with government subsidized studies so they can live in the nicer part of town.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The self-taught "experts" may not be complete dumbfucks, but they never have as complete of a body of knowledge as somebody who has actually even just tried to get some sort of a formal education in their chosen field.
Most college graduates are money-seeking who don't understand anything, too.
I'm talking about the guy who maybe never even finished high school, but he read a couple of Ruby on Rails books, hacked together a simple blog system that kinda worked, and now he considers himself a computer science expert.
So in other words, you're comparing completely ignorant idiots to people who got some amount of formal education. Not a big surprise there. On the other hand, people who do self-education right...
I hope you're not using these people to deride all autodidacts. The self-taught "experts" you speak of are barely self-taught at all, so the comparison isn't really valid.
As an industry, we don't need yet another high school reject who read a shitty Ruby on Rails book thinking he's anything more than a shitty high school reject who read a shitty Ruby on Rails book. We need less such people, in fact.
As an industry, we also don't need more shitty college graduates who have no idea what they're doing (the majority). And no, not even they understand things like Big-O notation and its implications, because pretty much all they cared about was getting a degree, and the colleges were happy to take their money.
If I seem hostile, it's only because I've seen people lump in idiots who barely even tried to self-educate with people who worked hard to educate themselves. In my mind, I separate college students who go there almost solely to get a degree (in other words, brainwashed losers) and college students who go there to get a better understanding of the universe around them. Why can't others do the same?
I have not seen any example of people being taught to hate the rich, nor have I seen anyone specifically bitching about people making something of themselves. Perhaps you do fear these ideas are being taught to the current generation, but if so, these fears are completely unfounded. In your position, I would re-examine the source of these fears and likely (going forward) disregard all information from these sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
https://www.google.com/webhp?c...
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion(s) of the article, but on the general topic of income inequality I am certain that not addressing it as a problem will cost all of society more in the long term, and, a lot of research is being done wrt to cause and effect of income inequality. None of the articles produced by this research are motivated by jealousy, or a hatred for people that made something of themselves. They are motivated by the belief that our democracy at least, and our very nation possibly, are seriously threatened by income inequality.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
so an employeer paying good wages to its workers is now a bad thing??? since when???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
can we really quit bitching about people who make something of themselves???
Many people have a "zero-sum" mental model of economics. They believe that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, and therefore, if some become richer, others must become poorer. Although some people become rich through corruption and rent-seeking, most get there by creating wealth rather than just concentrating what was already there. Rather than pushing others down, they pull others up by creating jobs and demand. But there are plenty of people that don't see it that way. Enough to support political parties and governing majorities based on their misguided beliefs.
If you've fallen in love with the Walt Disney World experience, you now have the option to live in a town designed by Disney itself: Celebration, Florida. Resembling "Main Street, USA" and the "EPCOT World Showcase" writ large, Celebration helps blur the distinction between between Disney and real life, effectively letting you live in a theme park.
Know who doesn't live in Celebration, Florida and its mean income over $75k/yr? The people who work in Celebration, Florida.
It's not hard to find new developments across the US where you see new apartments and condominiums built alongside or even on top of faux city shops (complete with acres of parking) to give the residents the "gentrified neighborhood" experience. But you can bet that the folks who actually work in Whole Foods or PF Chang's don't actually live there. And the folks that work there can't afford to shop there.
The article only discusses domestic segregation, but the elephant in the room is national differences.
If global warming becomes as bad as they say, many heavily populated areas of the world (think India) will become too unproductive to support their population. Other areas (think Canada or Scandanavia) will become more habitable. Clearly the only humane policy will be totally open borders and to allow unlimited migration globally. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
My point is simply to mock the massive hippocracy and parochialism of western societies.
Except that immigrants to the US are a self-selecting group. Only the most motivated people are going to go through all the hassle and work that it takes to actually get here, so of course they are more likely to be successful once they do. There are also a lot of successful black people that grew up poor. But there are just a lot more black people overall, and as a group they didn't choose to be here in a country that is constantly shitting on them. As to your claim that there is no oppression any more, that is constantly disproved by studies that show having a "black" sounding name will result in fewer job interviews, less support from university faculty, harsher law enforcement treatment, etc. It is a reality that you cannot deny.
Is this really about education or is it just self-selection based on wealth? People have noticed the latter for thousands of years.
I'm not an American, by the way, [...] If that hurts your feelings, bugger off.
I think we've worked out your nationality. Cobber.
Since the beginning of the 80, when the current unsustainable debt system started, the growth of all of the so called services and on some level IT jobs have been fueled by the constantly mounting of new debt. If this were not the case, the growth would not have been so rapid, and the others part of the less efficient/not needed economy would have been fast annihilated and not allowed to exist as in the current system. These jobs tend to be concentrated in or around the cities and here it stands very basic relation, between the reason most of the collage graduates are going to these places. In most recent time, the current bubble-debt based system was not allowed to re-balance naturally in 2008, but was fueled by cheap money by the FED. This continuation and inflammation, on it's own, tends to accelerate the movement human resources to these cities, by allowing these regions to mount more and more debt. At some time in the near future, this bubble, and the current debt base system, will deflate rapidly, via inflation (very disruptive for the common people) or any other means, not excluding some kind of sever social disruption/revolution. When this happens these places of concentration will be the hardest hit due to inability of the masses to sustain themselves, without the system allowing debt base/resources extraction to the cities.
So if you could remake the world you would be a serf? Because under feudalism that's your only choice, and it doesn't matter how smart you are or how hard you work, your circumstance will NEVER improve.
If you're under the delusion that YOU would fare differently because you're (ahem) *special*, realize that what enables that delusion is the democracy and equality GIVEN to you by previous generations of socially conscious activists.
There are only so many chairs at the top, and NONE of them have your name on it peasant.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
have you not been paying attention to san fransicso for example? slashing bus tires, attacking people who work for google for simply working for google, there is a real hate for those who are making something of themselves there. the same could be seen in NYC during the occupy movements.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Absolutely right. I grew up in an economically disadvantaged area, went to college, and settled in one of the best-performing metro areas in the country. My classmates who skipped college are still there, driving 1-2 hours each way to the closest job they can find, and enduring the double disadvantages of lacking a college degree and living in a depressed area.
When one is living dangerously close to the poverty line, moving away from friends and family will be perceived as unacceptable risky. Only the most ambitious will leave, and most of those people went to college anyway.
With an economic model based on the exploitation of scarcity of resources ...
Except that our economy is mostly NOT based on the exploitation of scare resources. Someone writing code is not "stealing" from anyone else. They are creating value from nothing. The raw materials (petroleum and metal ore) in an iPhone is worth about 5 cents. The main commodities that our economy needs (oil, coal, iron ore, silica sand) are not "scarce", and it is absurd to claim that poor people would be better off somehow if they were left in the ground.
they don't care as long as its some homeless 'bum'
So if we close all the diamond mines, we will no longer have homeless bums? Sure. Whatever.
Opening the borders is absolutely the quick patch to the issue, but the long-term compounding of the issue to the point of catastrophic failure. While "wealth" may not be a zero-sum concept, planetary resources are absolutely zero-sum. It is possible to use these resources more efficiently, but there is a limit.
If a region's population has outstripped it's resources, it is up to that population to reduce it's own population. I do not advocate killing people, but I do advocate population controls.
Limiting the number of children to 2 per person can almost guarantee the population will reduce itself to a sustainable level.
It requires:
1. No new people are allowed in (closing borders)
2. Once a man or woman has had 2 children, they are medically prevented from having any more.
3. No fertility treatments are permitted (prevents attempts at having triplets and more at once)
*If triplets or more are expected, there should be no penalty. I do not advocate forcing someone to terminate a fetus because it would put them over the limit.
While I believe in the above statements, in my country it would never come to pass because a person's individual freedom outstrips long-term planning. (there is also a large number of people that would argue that it violates their religious freedom)
Wow. Please record some of your observations and discussions and upload them to youtube. OMG I will send you money if you do.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
... or just an ongoing occurrence that is becoming more visible due to the larger amount of data available for analysis?
That's not totally true. Just look at blacks in the US. While they were primary located in the southeastern states at first, there were several waves of mass migration. That's how we ended up with major cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Washington D.C. that have black majorities.
They moved to get away from the KKK and segregated bathrooms. Are you suggesting that solution is somehow applicable now? Start a KKK against people who didn't go to college so they will move?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I saw a report on I think 60 minutes probably 10 or 15 years ago where the black community was up in arms because they were losing out on scholarships. The complaint was they were losing them to the children of recent immigrants from Africa, a group that hadn't gone through the history of slavery because their ancestors didn't live in the US. (The whole point as far as they were concerned was this was to give a leg up to people that as a class had suffered through slavery and racism and recent African immigrants were not in this group but qualified for the scholarships and took them away from the people they were intended for.) To add insult to injury the recent African immigrants tended to be fairly successful and that lead to the complaint they didn't need the help anyway. But like you wrote, these immigrants were a self selecting group who went through all that hassle and they were more likely to be successful in the end.(It looks to me as though any group that intentional migrates will tend to do well because they're the driven to find success while people that are forced to migrate probably won't.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I agree with what you said kosh271 except:
1) if the population reduction is great (say 75% or more) and the need is urgent (say 50 years or less), then birth control can not possibly be adequate.
2) if birth control is inadequate or unattainable (you said it can not come to pass in your country) then what?
None of us want to advocate killing, but the next most drastic step after birth control (and maybe the next most drastic step after that) lead us to ethically taboo places that no one is willing to discuss. That suggests that our fate is demise though inaction because all suffupicientky effective actions are too drastic to consider.
Raise this subject in a room full of activists and you'll empty the room in an eye blink. No one dares to discuss it publicly.
thing with you but I've seen similar stuff with self taught "experts". Let's see, I've seen experts that didn't know what the real difference between a list and array were, let alone knew what a map was. (CS 102 stuff.) Would always try to reinvent the wheel whether it was writing their own quick sort instead of using the built in one or building their own formatting routines that make the same strings as the ones already available in the class they're using. Then there's the whole issue of doing object oriented code because they're using C++ but having no concepts of some pretty basic OO ideas. (Like encapsulation or inheritance. Everything is public and everything is implemented multiple times it classes that really should be derived from one basic class.) Of course I'm guessing yours said the same stuff like "Oh my code is linear, if we need it to run faster get a faster computer." (It wasn't, it was order N^2)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I really thought this was rather obvious, and that everyone already knew it, whether they discussed it or not.
Yeah I've seen that. And I'm sure that more of that is inevitable if the way our economy works doesn't change. The behavior your describing is the -effect- of relative income inequality (trickle down supply-side economic policy) growing wider over the last 35 years. And it's going to get worse, much worse, and it's going to cost "us" a lot more to ignore than if we actively alter course.
Emotion based outrage, increase in crime rates, riots, and eventually violent revolution are the -predictable- effects of growing relative income inequality and loss of social mobility. And, as in the past, the powerful and elite are digging in their heels -which actually makes the situation worse.
The point is, this is not an issue specific to any generation or culture being more prone to jealousy than another. It's a predictable -response- of every human population in similar circumstances.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Public transportation means that you don't have to own a car or pay for gas/insurance.
Unless you get an ultimatum that if you don't come into work on one of the 58 days a year when buses don't run, you'll lose your job. In my city, this includes New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the first Sunday of the year, the second Sunday of the year, ..., and the fifty-second Sunday of the year.
The amount of arable land in the world is fixed. Some people live on a thousand acres, some people live in a tenement building.
The amount of currency in the world is effectively fixed even in a fractional reserve system.
Concentrated wealth does not create jobs, distributed wealth does. If there is a demand for shoes (lots of people want and can afford shoes), there WILL be a shoe factory. If people cannot afford to buy new shoes every year then there will NOT be a shoe factory and no amount of tax cuts for the wealthy will cause there to be one.
Money goes where money is, like gravity. If it's not broken up and dispersed from time to time the gears will eventually grind to a halt. --this is why there will always be a death tax btw.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
It's not. Perhaps I should have made it clear which attitude I was referring to. I mean that we shouldn't (and I think it's bad) hate people who make something of themselves (or, more specifically, who make a lot of money), and that that attitude is not something you want in your area, or anywhere.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
None of which is stealing, unless you listen to industry propaganda.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It takes two people to create a job: one to offer the position, and one to accept it. Otherwise, the job hasn't really been "created." Proponents of trickle-down theory usually seem to ignore this fact.
Meanwhile, those who offer the positions are greedy and are always trying to pay as little as they can get away with, so I wouldn't consider them to be any more virtuous than those who accept the positions.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The research shows a clear trend of the desirable cities becoming even more desirable, to the point where it's almost a necessity for city planners to lure college graduates or face decline.
I drew a different conclusion from this article. I know the article's focus was on attracting college graduates so that the city can prosper, but I instead considered the contrapositive: If a city is not prospering, then it has a lower-than-average percentage of college graduates. I see it as another confirmation of residential segregation.
More and more, there is becoming a "separate and not equal" divide in communities based on their socioeconomic status. As a teacher, I see it all the time in schools: there are some schools that leverage the taxpayer for new buildings, new technology, higher salaries, and less stressful work environments, while many others struggle due to an inability to levy. Instead of governments focusing on what to do about producing and/or attracting college graduates, perhaps it should instead consider what to do about the absence of them in their community.
It takes two people to create a job: one to offer the position, and one to accept it.
Unless they are the same person. Billions of people are self-employed. Employing yourself is by far the most common way to get rich. People that seek out, or create, opportunity tend to do much better than people that sit around and whine about nobody handing it to them.
those who offer the positions are greedy ... I wouldn't consider them to be any more virtuous ...
Indeed. This is why economic systems that harness greed (e.g. capitalism) are far better at generating prosperity than economic systems based on virtue (e.g. socialism).
in other words, you want to keep a protected class, and keep out the techies, who are making things more accessible for all.... got it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The amount of arable land in the world is fixed.
In America, the arable land is owned by less than 3% of the people. In Ethiopia, it is 80%. So Ethiopia should be richer, right?
Concentrated wealth does not create jobs, distributed wealth does.
America has 492 billionaires, while Ethiopia has none. So Ethiopia wins again.
If people cannot afford to buy new shoes every year then there will NOT be a shoe factory
Yet in America, where people buy plenty of shoes, there are almost no shoe factories. In Vietnam, where most people cannot afford to buy new shoes every year, there are plenty of shoe factories, more than any other country.
well i like the america i was taught growing up better than the one we live in today
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
put in place by legislatures elected by the people.
When you have an awful two-party system where a grand majority of people mindlessly vote for one party or the other, and a significant amount of people do so because they believe the other guy is slightly more evil, does it really matter whether or not it was put in place by legislatures elected by the people? Most 'minor' issues get ignored in favor of hot topic issues like abortion, so there's no guarantee that people support even a majority of policies of the candidate they voted for. Besides, I'd say some of this is the result of outright bribery.
Just saying that I don't think mentioning that was relevant, considering the current (and past) state of affairs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
At least here in Norway this trend probably started even earlier, but we have a significantly larger proportion of dual-income university-educated couples. (This trend is supported by our one-year parents leave with pay, where the parents have to share this time, and by public kindergartens when the children are a little older.)
I suspect that a strong driver for this big city concentration is the fact that most couples meet sometime during their university studies, and when this switched from being men getting their MSc's meeting the girls from the nursing schools, to being men & women at the same university, they would have really strong incentives to try to settle in a city with a big enough employer base that both would have multiple job alternatives.
I.e. my wife & I have lived in Oslo for almost 30 years now, we have always had lots of employment options, while my youngest brother and his wife live in a far smaller town:
In their area it has significantly harder to locate alternate (and interesting) employment when bad times hit the company one of them worked at.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
If it's an unnaturally high wage, yes. Nature will always make sure everything eventually equalizes. When a bubble pops, that's nature fixing the imbalance.
The dark ages were awesome. Set us back about 200 years when in comes to technology, and we went from horse to space in less than 100 years. I would say "liberal democracy" is doing decent.
and who gets to decide what is "unnaturally high"??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I was referring to current law, not ideal policy.
> The amount of arable land in the world is fixed. Some people live on a thousand acres, some people live in a tenement building.
False. The amount of arable land 500 years ago was significantly less than today. Technological advances continue to increase land that is arable.
> The amount of currency in the world is effectively fixed even in a fractional reserve system.
This makes me wonder whether you have any idea what is going on. Currency is only a measurement mechanism for wealth. If the amount of currency were truly fixed, then you would get deflation, because wealth would increase from x --> y (where y > x) and therefore each unit of currency would represent a larger amount of wealth. Whether currency is fixed, increasing, or decreasing has exactly zero explanatory power in whether wealth is fixed. Wealth can be fixed or variable in either of those three currency scenarios.
> Concentrated wealth does not create jobs, distributed wealth does.
You have made an assertion, not an argument.
> If there is a demand for shoes (lots of people want and can afford shoes), there WILL be a shoe factory.
No, there won't, unless somebody has "concentrated wealth" to invest in the capital.
> If people cannot afford to buy new shoes every year then there will NOT be a shoe factory and no amount of tax cuts for the wealthy will cause there to be one.
You are obviously a raving leftist, because you view this entirely backwards. Tax cuts do not cause anything. Tax cuts are not a thing anymore than letting your foot off the brake in your car is a thing. Taxes are the force in question. In your scenario, the degree of taxation will influence whether or not a factory can be built, because it impacts the ability for capital to be accumulated and therefore the cost of capital in the borrowing or equity market place.
> Money goes where money is, like gravity. If it's not broken up and dispersed from time to time the gears will eventually grind to a halt.
You are making an assertion, not an argument.
Their purpose is not to be virtuous. Their purpose it to be profitable. Jobs do not ever get created except in the scenario where a rich man is trying to become richer.
I wouldn't trust a human to decide. We need more research and let computers decide. My point is rampant "unfair" wages will eventually fix themselves with a crash.
It turns out when people get paid too much, their performance goes down. So that could be used as one indication. You're better off under-paying someone than over-paying. People are optimal when they get paid enough money to handle what life throws at them and spend time with their family. Too much more and their performance goes down. People should get paid enough to be "content".
Emotion based outrage, increase in crime rates, riots, and eventually violent revolution are the -predictable- effects of growing relative income inequality and loss of social mobility. And, as in the past, the powerful and elite are digging in their heels -which actually makes the situation worse.
The basic finding of this analysis is that relative income mobility is approximately the same in the last 10 years as it was in the previous decade. And I would point out that that report does discus Bradbury and Katz' original claim of widening inequality, and the noise-in-the-data level of significance of their findings regarding decreasing mobility.
The idea of "decreasing mobility" counts as nothing more than Progressive FUD - Spurring those at the bottom end of the spectrum (and a bottom end will always exists, just a fact of basic statistics) toward acrimony and, I would dare say, exactly the sort of hatred and bitching you would deny exist.
OWS. SF-vs-Google. The 99% vs the 1%. Deny it all you want, but the poor don't just hate the rich, they hate everyone above them, whether by silver spoon or bootstraps or just a sore back. And as for whether or not anyone "teaches" this behavior - Did you bring enough to share with everyone?
Indoctrination works best when started young.
I'm not sure where you got your economics knowledge, because it sure wasn't from a class in school.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Thanks for the link, I bookmarked it for later.
I'm not denying that resentment (acrimony, hatred, w/e) exists. I'm denying that it's a generational/cultural phenomenon, or initiated by a propaganda campaign.
People are realizing that the construction job that paid $20/hr 30 years ago STILL pays $20/hr. And the "justifications" given for the situation aren't believed --people seeing our economic system as intentionally rigged, and they're not happy with that realization.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Mostly products that were directly attributable to capitalism and technology. What did liberal democracy have to do with any of that? Did somebody vote the steam engine into existence?
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
You posted a list of assertions that accuse me of making assertions, where all of your arguments are simply counter-assertions.
*Technological advances continue to increase land that is arable...
--right, so land is not a finite resource anymore. good to know.
*Currency is only a measurement...blah blah blah,
--which is why it is effectively fixed for christs sake.
*Tax cuts do not cause anything...
--EXACTLY! so let's not use the promise of new factories to justify tax cuts anymore.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
For an urgent crisis, I would propose food aid from other regions which is laced with birth control.
There would be no need for killing. It would severely limit the population in crisis from getting worse and over time. The region will have its population reduced to the point where aid is no longer needed.
With no aid needed, a sustainable population level will have been reached.
The real problem is that wealth makes people act like spoiled children and having a bunch of spoiled children move into your town is the shits. Rich people feel more entitled, have less empathy, are less generous and often are just arseholes. There have been numerous studies to back this up as well and the more the spread between the wealthy and the poor grows, the worse things will become. Perhaps it'll lead to successful revolts or perhaps it'll be like the peasant revolts that started in the 14th century and had zero successes.
One article, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
sorry if i dont understand, but a man buying a home, and wanting to live in it *THE HORROR!!!* rather than rent it out, goes out of his way to pay double what is allowed by law, and gives them a full year instead of 3 months as required by law.... and this man is being attacked by the people of san fran. The only thing he did was buy a house, legally, and want to live it it, legally.
the only people I see acting like spoiled brats are those who find an issue with the statement i just made, AKA people from san fran
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
As a matter of fact it WAS in class at school, maybe your school sucks? Here, this will get you started.
https://www.google.com/webhp?c...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
oh ok, i got you now. apologies for coming off like a dick
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
and there is nothing wrong with that
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
So, you said, "The amount of currency in the world is effectively fixed even in a fractional reserve system"
That's about the dumbest economic statement I've heard in a while. Currency of all things is not fixed.............
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
> land is not a finite resource
Land is relatively finite, but that's not what you said. You said arable land, and you did that intentionally because you know that arable land is what is relevant for wealth. Arable land is not at all finite, as I explained. You are right that I did not offer citation, but I also did not think I needed to. Obviously natural factors change the amount of arable land all the time. Some sources of this are: deforestation, pest population changes, crop disease/fungus or competitive plant life, water sources changing course or becoming salinated or drying up, desertification, terracing, urban sprawl. Then technological advances in agriculture also changes the amount of arable land. Some sources of this: irrigation, aquaculture, indoor farming, genetic modification of crops, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc.
> which is why it is effectively fixed for christs sake.
It has no relevance to the discussion of wealth stagnation or growth, and I am pretty sure you still don't understand that... or else you would have never brought it up.
I put the qualifier effectively in that sentence for a reason. Go play Gotcha with someone else.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
good points.
I can only counter that the shoe factory in Vietnam exists to serve a demand in the U.S. If this is a global economy without real trade barriers, then my assertion still holds.
Your choice of Ethiopia as a comparison country is interesting in that people in Ethiopia are measurably happier than people in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
I'm just saying that relative wealth matters.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
of course
This is probably where I should call you out on arable being not at all finite, but I'll just ask you this: Do you have point of your own to make here? Besides calling me a raving leftist that is...
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Yes, and it was a retarded thing to say, even with a qualifier. Actually, this is the more stupid thing you said,
"Money goes where money is, like gravity. If it's not broken up and dispersed from time to time the gears will eventually grind to a halt"
Sometimes that happens, but sometimes it doesn't. You'd be more interesting if you investigated why sometimes it does, and why sometimes it doesn't. (See also Piketty, whose book would be more accurate and more interesting if he had investigated when inequality causes problems, and when it doesn't. Because it doesn't always cause problems).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
so in other words, we built a factory in a 3rd world country, and gave people with no money, money, and there is a problem with this???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What I want to know, why are people modding up such an opinionated piece of drivel from an anon coward? This so called debate is old and sad. People choose to learn what they think is important. Most employers seem to think getting the work done FAST and not blowing things up is important. I have worked for employers for 20 years now and taught myself what I needed to know. I also went to school and took calc, chem, physics, have read constantly for my whole life, whatever, it didn't have a damn thing to do with what I work on now or my approach to learning. That started from when I was young, not college. So this talk of making a big distinction between those who go to college/university and those who do not, is "uneducated" and a false start to any conversation.
Good lord. You still don't understand why arable land is not finite? Incredible.
My point is that your point was bunk, and I did my best to show you why. I'm cool if you want to have a worldview that doesn't at all match reality, but you will only hurt yourself. Everyone makes decisions on a daily basis by looking through the lens of their world view, and if the way the world works doesn't match how you think it works, then you will make the wrong decisions. If your own stubbornness keeps you from fixing that, you are (probably) the only one who will be harmed
Funny...as someone doing the hiring and firing for my company and another for the last 20 years....the top developers we've had have by and large been self taught programmers(many with degrees in something unrelated, like business or biology, or none at all). We get way too many guys with MS in CS who can't fucking use source control properly or talk to their fellow man. Sorry, the software development labs that have sprung up in my alma mater and CS departments around the nation to teach software engineering practices vs. just cs knowledge are little more than the zealotry/whims of the professors/ta's running them. And they can't teach what is really needed....self learning and getting things done.
If you are hiring good people they will know when an optimization is needed and when it isn't and design/build accordingly. Maybe you're hiring practices are the problem?
Also, the most stark difference i see between reality out there and your statement is the DB knowledge. Hands down, CS graduates...the higher the GPA..the more shit they are at any type of real DB implementation. Never understood that, but your statement just reminded me of that.
First, go back to top of this thread and re-read it. Really read it you lunatic. Notice that where I say 'arable land' I also say 'tenement buildings'. My bad mixing arable and livable in the same sentence. Douche.
Second, realize that -I- am trying to make an on-topic point, relevant to the OP. You, you have no point other than to do battle on the internet with 'raving leftists'.
Third, is there an infinite amount of arable land on this planet or is there a finite amount of land on this planet? Or have you invented some kind of boolean loophole?
Fourth, YOU are the one who sees people as leftist or not, I don't have such view and do not self-identify with any kind of 'ism, because I fucking know better. So go question your own 'world view' ideologue.
Done.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
I have to preface this by saying I don't currently have the position that any place needs population controls like this right now, so you don't lump me in with this. But your arguments are wild.
... and I thought Hitler died a long time ago.
Not really. He sterilized "undesirables" and hoped to do it before they had one child, so it wasn't so nondiscriminatory as this proposal.
He was after eugenics -- in many cases, using non-heritable criteria -- not population control.
In some ways this is like going after somebody who killed in self-defense in court by saying "you know who else killed people? HITLER!".
Is there any violation of personal freedom greater than dictating whether or not someone can reproduce?
Uhh, yeah. For instance, you can be locked in a cage. Or killed. Or enslaved.
Disallowing reproduction is definitely on the list, but it's not at the top.
Who the fuck gave you or anyone else the authority to decide whether or not the earth was overpopulated or who should "be allowed" to have children?
Reality may give us that authority.
We might not be there yet, but his hypothetical had, as its premise, the notion that the region *could not sustain those numbers*. That means you don't have kids, or you kill people, or you export people. If there's a third option, that means you could sustain those numbers and the premise is contradicted.
That's real big of you, you murderous prick.
Now you're making shit up. He did not advocate murder.
is to encourage economic growth by reducing government interference in people's lives
There are a lot of places with weak governments and poor economies. The idea that government interference causes babies is novel.
Education on birth control and unrestricted access to birth control -- both of which are typically, though not necessarily, provided by governments -- have the most consistent record or stabilizing population sizes. General population wealth and low infant & childhood mortality rates is also significant, but people have lots of funny contradictory ideas about how to improve that.
What you describe is exactly racism. Being judged on what family you were born into and now on your own qualifications. How do you not see that?
Even if mobility rate didn't change, it's still one of the lowest among developed countries.
Notice that where I say 'arable land' I also say 'tenement buildings'.
Neither of which are fixed at any given time. You also specifically said arable land was fixed. Consistently denying that might be what earned you the "raving" label. Arable and livable land may have an upper limit on Earth but it would be pretty bold to assert that we have reached that limit.
It doesn't matter what you thought your brilliant point was if it was false on basic principals. Correcting your incorrect assertions isn't "no point but to battle".
Make bold assertion, act incredulous and attempt to play victim when called on it, stamp feet and say "done". You certainly come off as a raving leftist whether or not you want self-identify as one.
Only the most motivated people are going to go through all the hassle and work that it takes to actually get here, so of course they are more likely to be successful once they do.
Jewish immigrants after WWII came here because they had nowhere else to go, not because they wanted the hassle of moving to a country on the other side of the world where they didn't speak the language, didn't know anybody, etc. Their homes had been taken when they were transferred to death camps, and very few countries were willing to take them in. They seem to have turned out OK, though.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Seriously, you think the term 1%er is a term of endearment?
You seem to think that currency has something to do with wealth. In a given society, currency will indicate the wealthier individuals, but it doesn't matter on a societal level.
What makes me more or less wealthy is not the size of the numbers on my paychecks or investments. What makes me more or less wealthy is what I can buy with my currency. If we had more or less currency, it would affect prices, and we'd wind up as wealthy as before. (There would be other effects; for example, given inflation, old mortgages will be cheap and people's dollar-denominated savings would be worth less, but that doesn't reflect overall societal wealth.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Self-employment is also a way to go broke without health benefits. Starting a business may be the best way to get rich, but most businesses will fail within five years. You tend to hear the success stories, which present at best a slanted picture.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
He didn't correct a goddamn thing! Neither have I denied writing anything even once. He made a bunch of assertions that ARE NOT TRUE, and importantly do not alter the points being made. Also, calling me a raving leftist was Step One(tm). And you, you're picking sentences apart trying to find a way to say I'm wrong, and you fail. As if you don't understand what you're reading.
The topic is SCARCITY. I'll simplify it for you:
OP=Shit is not scarce.
MP=Shit is scarce!
MW=The amount of shit in the world can change! You raving leftist.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.