US College Grads See Slim-to-Nothing Wage Gains Since Recession (bloomberg.com)

The worth of a college degree is losing its luster in the US job market. From a report on Bloomberg: Wages for college graduates across many majors have fallen since the 2007-09 recession, according to an analysis by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce in Washington using Census bureau figures. Young job-seekers appear to be the biggest losers. What you study matters for your salary, the data show. Chemical and computer engineering majors have held down some of the best earnings of at least $60,000 a year for entry level positions since the recession, while business and science graduates's paychecks have fallen. A biology major at the start of their career earned $31,000 on an annual average in 2015, down $4,000 from five years earlier. "It has been like this for the past five, six years now," said Ban Cheah, a research professor at Georgetown who compiled the data. "It's a little depressing."

Comments

Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Maritz]

Keep the next generation impoverished so they don't get too uppity/powerful.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Nidi62]

Keep the next generation impoverished so they don't get too uppity/powerful.

It's really more "How do I keep my gravy train rolling so I can live the lifestyle I'm accustomed to" rather than "Screw the next guy". The early baby boomers pissed away the Social Security surplus through wasteful spending, while the rest of the generation have so much money tied up in stocks/401k/retirement that the only way to keep their money is to keep the stock market going up and up. In order to do this wages have to go down so that profits can go up (since other costs can only be reduced so much, and prices can only be raised so much), leaving new workers (younger generations) holding the bag.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Anonymous Coward]

The baby boomers have too much political power, and are greedy. When they went to college, you could easily earn enough working a summer job to pay for tuition & room & board at any state university. They demanded high salaries. Now they are staying working, and denying jobs to younger generations, while planning to cut social security and Medicaid to following generations, leaving it only to themselves. The greatest generation was followed by the greediest.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[fluffernutter]

To be fair, the baby boomers were led to believe in the American Dream and that they lived in a country with much opportunity, and that would afford them a comfortable lifestyle. There was never any implication that it would cost others anything. They took advantage of that. Only now is it looking like maybe the American Dream was a sham all along. The problem is that no one called out it was a sham before it was all sold out.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because Democrats are known to want to keep wages low, and Republicans fight day and night to raise the earnings of the little guy... The bubble you live in must be incredibly opaque.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[tysonedwards]

Social Security has always been a premise of "collect money today from taxes based on promise of population growth and the assumption that those people too will pay taxes". The model breaks down when there isn't a steady stream of people, such as a large segment of the population simultaneously exits the job market (retiring).

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[AmiMoJo]

While you are correct that Boomers probably didn't realize what they were doing at the time, it's their actions now that are the real problem. They demand good pensions, paid for by the workers they are screwing by sitting on property and keeping prices high. They have a massive sense of entitlement, entitlement at other's expense.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Nidi62]

That's true, but in the beginning it ran on a fairly significant surplus. Rather than holding on to that surplus (or even taking some of that surplus and converting it to interest-earning instruments) it was earmarked as funding for other projects and policies. It could have remained solvent for much longer, but at this point it's turned into little more than a government run Ponzi scheme. The initial investors (boomers) get their promised returns and their money back while the newest investors (my generation) won't get anything out of it.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[fluffernutter]

But their companies promised them those pensions!

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[AmiMoJo]

Not just companies, the government in the UK has put a "triple lock" on their pensions that keep them increasing well above the rate that wages do.

Anyway, those companies have to deal with their promises, not the younger generations.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Touvan]

In capitalism, there are two important classes - employer/owner and employee/worker. In the US we have only 2 viable political parties (and really only one that can effectively set policy) - both represent different sets of owners/employers. It should be no surprise then that in a country with no working class political party, workers (and that includes workers with advanced degrees) get left behind or even worse, exploited.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Touvan]

Social security insurance is just an insurance pool. The specific numbers written down are always meant to deal with the math of the time (and try to project forward), but they need to be updated once in a while. The system has been stable for over 80 years, and with only a small amount of effort can be stable for the next 80. It's not a complex system, though it would be nice if politicians (mostly Republicans) would stop messing with it for ideological reasons.

Stable insurance systems are all about scale, and no one scales better than government. The fed is actually quite good at insurance.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Nidi62]

But their companies promised them those pensions!

What's depressing to me that, of the 5 other people in my immediate workgroup, who do the exact same job that I do(all of them also 20-30 years older than me), 4 of them have company pensions and will get to draw Social Security plus whatever whatever they've saved for retirement. The other will get his retirement and social security. I will probably just get my 401k.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[Touvan]

The American dream worked quite well for baby boomers, and the post WWII generation. The only reason it doesn't work any more is because the systems we need in place to make it a real possibility for people have been systematically attacked and removed, because that system requires that we collectively pay for it. In a system geared toward the concentration of wealth (like all market driven economies), it starts to feel like a small group (people who are good at getting money into their pockets) are being picked on, and have to pay more than their fair share, and other forms of whining. In reality, the whole system has to work for any part to be stable. Keynes knew that, but modern neoliberals just want to believe they don't have to pay for a nice society - or they are just callous pricks who don't care. Either way, the American dream seems like a sham to those under 40 today, but it hasn't always been that way, and it doesn't always have to be that way. We just need to correct the system, just like we routinely have to do (check your older history books).

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[fluffernutter]

Yeah my dad went to one company and got a job and worked there for his entire life, and in return he gets a pension for the rest of his life. As a kid I just kind of watched what my parents were doing and assumed this is what life was like in my country and pretty much expected if I trained myself and did the right things I would get he same benefit. How different things ended up being for me.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[fluffernutter]

What needs to happen is to have the people with the money spend it as much as possible, period. This goes for companies as well. Apple has a huge chunk of global wealth sitting and doing nothing and I"m sure a lot of other corporations do. There are too many places for wealth to sit doing nothing.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[smugfunt]

Social Security works by the government creating money and giving it to people. As long as the resources that people want to buy with that money are available the model will endure.

Greenspan kind of lays it out here.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[jbengt]

Rather than holding on to that surplus (or even taking some of that surplus and converting it to interest-earning instruments) it was earmarked as funding for other projects and policies.

That's just not true.
In the 80s, SS income and distributions were adjusted, and the surplus was invested for the day (now) when retirees would become more numerous. Except for minor adjustments needed because of retirees' expected lifes being a little longer than expected, Social Security, per se, is solvent. The real problem is that congress required SS to invest in US Treasury bonds only, so that while SS has the money on the books, we, the people (a.k.a. the US government) will have to pay SS back, and we are broke.

Re:Sounds like it's working as intended.

[jbengt]

When they went to college, you could easily earn enough working a summer job to pay for tuition & room & board at any state university.

That is incorrect.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[LynnwoodRooster]

The Social Security Administration says that in 20 years it's out of money and can only pay about 76% of benefits promised. And that either a 16% benefit cut immediately, or a 16% raise in taxes, is required to stave off this problem. That's not a minor adjustment, and if it was a private pension the Federal Government would declare it insolvent.

Re: Sounds like it's working as intended.

[EmeraldBot]

Wait a moment, I thought we were complaining because too many people don't have visas. Has the narrative changed again?

Blame the old people

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, lets blame the baby boomers for this. It's ALWAYS their fault. Just look at the dumbass from their age group they elected.

Re:Blame the old people

[Captain Splendid]

Pff, boomers been doing it for decades. They went hard for Reagan both times and never looked back.

Re:Blame the old people

[aardvarkjoe]

Seriously, lets blame the baby boomers for this. It's ALWAYS their fault. Just look at the dumbass from their age group they elected.

But don't they get credit for the dumbass from their age group that they didn't elect?

Re:Blame the old people

[jeff4747]

Yeah, if only I had run a voter registration drive in my kindergarten class. That would totally have swung the 1980 election the other way.

Boomers get the blame because they were the ones with the power to set us on this course, or set us on a different course. Due to the small size of GenX, they have stayed the ones in power until the Millennials came of age.

This is of no surprise

[H3lldr0p]

Wage stagnation has taken the earnings of the middle class since the 70s. About the only thing keeping wages going up in that time has been union action and increases in the minimum wage. Since the min wage certainly has not been keeping up with inflation _and_ unions are at an all time low, none of this is a surprise.

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work. Because the ideas you've espoused so far have failed. Profits as an end goal only promote avarice and greed as valued traits. This is where such thinking has lead us.

Re:This is of no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

But... but... but... Capitalism! Invisible Hand! Free Market! It will all right itself, you'll see. One day we'll all wake up in a paradise of high pay and a clean world. You just gotta believe!

Until then get back to work, slave.

Re:This is of no surprise

[bill_mcgonigle]

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to

First thing to do when something doesn't work is to stop doing that. We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"

start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work.

Do you want to just say that or do you want to put in the time to read Man, Economy, and State, The Road to Serfdom, On Human Action, Economics in One Lesson, and I, Pencil (in reverse order) to understand the arguments of people who do not believe that the status quo will ever bring widespread wealth among the population?

The newest of those is forty years old and they're all available for free, so there's no real reason to not at least understand this alternate system that the vast majorith of people (including many former communists and socialists) never go back from after understanding.

Re:This is of no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Wage stagnation has taken the earnings of the middle class since the 70s. About the only thing keeping wages going up in that time has been union action and increases in the minimum wage. Since the min wage certainly has not been keeping up with inflation _and_ unions are at an all time low, none of this is a surprise.

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work. Because the ideas you've espoused so far have failed. Profits as an end goal only promote avarice and greed as valued traits. This is where such thinking has lead us.

Riiiight.

It's a failure of the free market as wages stagnated while government share of the GDP has increased from 10% of GDP to 40+%.

It must be a problem with free markets - and the only fix is EVEN MOAH GUBMINT!!!

You keep telling yourself that.

PS - What color is the sky on your planet? Because it sure a shit ain't blue.

Re:This is of no surprise

[Coisiche]

I'm sure those gaining as the inequality grows already think the world is better. And there are enough other people who are not gaining and never will gain but believe with an almost religious fervor that they are just one break from their hard work and inherent talent enabling them to leap the gap and they dream of that moment when they will be able to turn round and say "Fuck you, I'm alright now" to those left behind. And that's what will make the world a better place for them and they're happy with a world in which they think that will happen, because obviously it definitely will for them. Eventually. Don't expect any change until enough of them realize it's a false hope.

Re:This is of no surprise

[pnutjam]

I see your suggestions and raise you these books by Frederick Lewis Allen; Only Yesterday, Since Yesterday, and The Big Change. All free on Gutenburg (Australia).

I also enjoyed "The Rise of the One Percent", although it's still under copyright.

Re:This is of no surprise

[cayenne8]

Wage stagnation has taken the earnings of the middle class since the 70s. About the only thing keeping wages going up in that time has been union action and increases in the minimum wage.

Middle class folks are NOT minimum wage earners.

Pretty much by definition a middle class worker is waaaaaay above minimum wage.

Re:This is of no surprise

[Salgak1]

Tell me about it. I haven't had a raise even close to the OFFICIAL Inflation Rate since the turn of the century: the only real bumps to pay came from changing jobs. And even then, bonuses are a thing of the past, last one I got was in December 2008. . .

And I'm a senior guy, by income, at about the "4%" level. When I was young, I would have thought myself rich. Now ? Upper middle-class at best, and only treading water. . .

Re:This is of no surprise

[Kjella]

Do you want to just say that or do you want to put in the time to read Man, Economy, and State, The Road to Serfdom, On Human Action, Economics in One Lesson, and I, Pencil

When your first link is to a 1500 page treatise on economic principles with no clear reference you remind me of the nutters who link to two hour long YouTube videos and anyone who doesn't watch it lose the argument.

Inflation is not really the problem, if you get paid good money convert it to gold, property or other item of real value. The problem is that many people don't get a fair value for their work. But what's the solution? You can let the free market handle it, but the buyers aren't interested in giving you a fair value, they want it as cheap as possible. Or you can try to let society decide through some form of socialism, but in practice that leads to some being more equal than others. Or we can go back to self-sufficiency, losing all advantages of scale and complex economic ecosystems. Or go UBI and decide that what you do isn't important, have some free money anyway.

Re:This is of no surprise

[mx b]

We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"

Have you read about eras such as the Gilded Age in the US? Unregulated markets, brought on mostly by quickly changing technology that simply didn't have rules on it, lead to the concentration of wealth into monopolies. Businessmen ruthlessly cut their competition out of the market, then performed hostile takeovers and shut them down to keep the prices/profits high once there was no competition. Once there was no competition, there was no incentive to do right for workers, so they shut down factories, laid off workers, and paid low wages with no benefits in hazardous conditions. This kept this going because they were able to pay off politicians and bribe government to stop regulations that would have kept the market open (they used their money to bribe politicians, and spread propaganda against unions and third parties like the Populist Party that were beginning to form to oppose monopolies; politicians then used local police forces as private armies to quell union protests for higher wages, and blamed the loss of jobs on European immigrants when in reality corporations were transitioning jobs overseas for huge profit margins -- any of this sound familiar?). It took sometimes violent union strikes and the era of "trust busting" politicians that stood up to corruption to break up industrial monopolies and restore the balance by putting reasonable regulations on business and the markets to prevent monopolies from controlling the economy and the government. Good regulations actually keep the market open to competition; without it, we'd go back to monopolistic behavior (and in fact we see the resurgence of mergers and effective monopolies lately as we continue a path of deregulation, particularly in banking.)

Unfortunately, we seem to have lost that lesson. Are you so afraid of government tyranny that you will settle for corporate tyranny? Don't get me wrong, government tyranny is a real concern and we should limit government power as needed to head that off. However, my concern is that government is not the *only* way tyranny can arise, and we are missing this important point. With government and publicly-run organizations, we at least have the ability to vote and try to influence our representatives (of course, money as speech inhibits this, which is why it's such a problem), the power is spread out among many people that should in generally rotate in and out of office regularly; with private organizations, we have no legal authority to do anything other than hope the CEO does the right thing, and the CEO can own the company his whole life. Which structure seems more democratic and free to you? I choose democracy, despite its imperfections, for anything important.

Let me also address your points more directly:

• Government issues paper money and controls inflation because it turns out during the 1800s when we insisted on the gold standard as business preferred, our economy was *way* too variable. Our money would drastically change in value quickly depending on local and international production of gold, leading to someone with a "good" job suddenly unable to pay for basic necessities or even their home. There was fierce debate, and we eventually settled on paper money as a way to stabilize the economy and allow workers to plan for the future. Big business of course likes gold, because they have enough money to withstand the volatility long enough to capitalize on the next bubble, but again, that's not in the average American's best interests. I know the refrain is that it's bad for the government to "print free money", but that is not a fair characterization, and there are very specific historical and economic reasons we do so.
• Yes, government regulates markets to some deg

Re:This is of no surprise

[drinkypoo]

Or go UBI and decide that what you do isn't important, have some free money anyway.

UBI is paying people not to riot. Which, frankly, is a pretty good investment; if that's all it takes, then I don't see why they wouldn't be happy to pour on the cash. Especially since it's a really easy way to keep tabs on a lot of the population. If you implement it the same way we implement AFDC these days, you'll get a lot of data back when they use their benefits card. It's the next-best thing to killing cash without actually killing cash, because the poorest people will have the least access to paper currency. It seems like a win-win for ye olde TPTB

Re:This is of no surprise

[Moof123]

UBI is paying hungry people not to eat the rich.

Walking Dead is really a metaphor for the minimum wage zombies an unemployed who cannot afford to pay rent and eat. The 1% better watch their brains...

Re:This is of no surprise

[scatbomb]

Minimum wage increases helped? Yeah, they certainly helped kiosks to take over the jobs of teenagers at McDonalds, Wendy's, etc.

Wages have stagnated because the economy quit growing. The economy quit growing because CEOs have figured out a sweet deal: borrow free money and use it to buyback stocks! No need to invest in your companies infrastructure, just inflate the stock with buybacks. Investing in infrasctructure would increase productivity, earnings, and salaries, but nobody's doing it anymore. Stocks are up 20x and over the same period earnings are up... 5%? It's the Fed. The problem is the Fed's free money and rampant stock buybacks.

Re:This is of no surprise

[LynnwoodRooster]

Inflation is not really the problem, if you get paid good money convert it to gold, property or other item of real value.

Inflation is a problem (it's been chronically understated compared to how it was calculated in 1980 and 1990), and it is awfully hard to eat gold or dirt...

Re:This is of no surprise

[EmeraldBot]

I normally don't do this, but seeing as I am all out of mod points, this is all I can do to help. This is a really, really insightful comment, and effectively distills why people should be more wary of large corporations. Government can cause tyranny, but it's not the only form of tyranny, and at least in our country you can vote for your government officials. When people remember the good old days of the 50's, they are not remembering the lawless era of the gilded age, when there truly was very little government involvement for business; instead, they remember a more socialist time period the US - when taxes were high, the government ran an extensive set of public welfare programs from the depression era, we invested massively into infrastructure at the taxpayer's expense, and the difference between our richest and poorest was much, much lower. That simply isn't possible without regulation, because companies have no reason to want it - their job is to make themselves richer, and ensuring a middle class lifestyle for most is antithetical to that goal. Furthermore, in the rush to dismantle social programs so people can save a little more on their monthly paycheck, the Reagan and Bush eras massively destabilized our society, with the former encouraging profits at all costs while the latter encouraged as little oversight as possible at all costs. What we have now is an era where even many formerly middle class people can no longer effectively compete, and as our new president rushes to further cut restrictions and to further encourage more wealth and power to the top 1%, we are going to witness these problems become even more intense.

A mixture of both is what it takes to run a successful society, and a true mixture of both; moderates in the US, are not moderates on the scale in general. I think it's little surprise why most European countries enjoy a much better standard of living, and the reason for that is a much more balanced approach to the power of government vs corporations. Thank you for your insightful comment, and I hope somebody else is able to mod you up to the level you deserve to be at.

Re:This is of no surprise

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

About the only thing the invisible hand is doing is jerking us off ;)

Re:This is of no surprise

[dywolf]

Mises Institute: Economic Bullshit for the Ignorant

Re:This is of no surprise

[learn2vestor]

Wage stagnation has been kind of a constant theme that I think stretches much further back that the great recession. If you're a recent college grad, I'd perhaps recommend checking out Wages on sites like Glassdoor - https://www.glassdoor.com/Revi... - IE tab over to "Wages."

Trump failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump has failed his promise to the middle class. Where are all the jobs? Where are the wages? Why aren't computer programmers being sought for mining jobs? Why aren't miners building skyscrapers? Why hasn't Mexico paid for the wall, and why hasn't the wall been built by the Teachers' Union?

chemical engineer graduates

[avandesande]

were pulling in 60K a year in the early 90s

Aging demographic and the growing wealth gap are deflationary it's going to hurt when it happens

Re:chemical engineer graduates

[crgrace]

Marky Mark reference?

Re:chemical engineer graduates

[Touvan]

All we need to do is democratically make policy to solve these problems. Aging demographic is harder, and is usually taken care of through immigration, but the wealth gap is easier. We have simple models to follow from the 1940s. Tax the crap out of the wealthiest, and hand out the money. FDR had to use a public works program, but the actual mechanism you use to distribute wealth is actually less important.

The missing part is a political movement that feels empowered to make these demands. After WWII it was an easier justification - countrymen sent their kids off to war, and they felt they deserved something in return. I don't feel the need to go to war, but we do need some similar justification to make the demand palatable. This damned right wing market ideology that is so effectively propagated is making this a hard nut to crack though - the free market religion has been very effective at conscripting folks to advocate against their own interests.

Re: To funny...

[Midnight Thunder]

In the meantime the rich get richer and the poor seem to want the rich to become richer too!?

To be educated middle class and realising they are fucked by those who don't want an education and those who have too much money to care.

New American Dream

[Nidi62]

Everyone knows that these days you don't make money actually working in a job. If you want to make money you have to invest. If they paid workers decent wages then all these companies wouldn't be able to post perpetually increasing profits which means that their stock value tanks. And if stock values tank, how are all those decent, hardworking, real Americans going to take care of their families if they can't get money from the stock markets? Because they certainly can't make any money working in a real job. Companies no longer exist to provide services for customers and jobs for employees. They exist to drive income to shareholders through dividends or profits derived from stock trading. That's why you have all these unicorns and tech companies with massive valuations with no clear plan to profitability or long-term stability: that's not their purpose. They just need to keep the stocks flowing and the Dow going up.

Re:New American Dream

[m00sh]

Everyone knows that these days you don't make money actually working in a job. If you want to make money you have to invest. If they paid workers decent wages then all these companies wouldn't be able to post perpetually increasing profits which means that their stock value tanks. And if stock values tank, how are all those decent, hardworking, real Americans going to take care of their families if they can't get money from the stock markets? Because they certainly can't make any money working in a real job. Companies no longer exist to provide services for customers and jobs for employees. They exist to drive income to shareholders through dividends or profits derived from stock trading. That's why you have all these unicorns and tech companies with massive valuations with no clear plan to profitability or long-term stability: that's not their purpose. They just need to keep the stocks flowing and the Dow going up.

When did companies exist to provide jobs for employees?

Anyways, investment has replaced pension and retirement. If you don't invest, then you're working till the day you die. Instead of letting the company or city handle the investment, you handle it yourself now. So, the burden of investment is now on you.

On the other hand, unicorns and massive valuations are great because they need employees to create new products which creates competition for employees and rising wages. If big established companies dominated everything there would be stagnation. They would offer the same services and do rent-seeking, and wouldn't need employees to create new products and ideas.

Re:New American Dream

[fluffernutter]

The problem is that you don't make money by investing unless you can control your risk and make decisions from an understanding of how businesses work. This is a very specific skill set that is as complicated as programming. If you have someone else make the decisions for you, you are not getting a very big piece of the pie. If we are down to investing as truly the only way to profit, then the whole concept of 'having a career in a field' is gone. You might as well tell a developer to go mine some gold, as they are likely to have just as much luck finding a good vein in the earth.

Re:New American Dream

[Nidi62]

Everyone knows that these days you don't make money actually working in a job. If you want to make money you have to invest. If they paid workers decent wages then all these companies wouldn't be able to post perpetually increasing profits which means that their stock value tanks. And if stock values tank, how are all those decent, hardworking, real Americans going to take care of their families if they can't get money from the stock markets? Because they certainly can't make any money working in a real job. Companies no longer exist to provide services for customers and jobs for employees. They exist to drive income to shareholders through dividends or profits derived from stock trading. That's why you have all these unicorns and tech companies with massive valuations with no clear plan to profitability or long-term stability: that's not their purpose. They just need to keep the stocks flowing and the Dow going up.

When did companies exist to provide jobs for employees?

Anyways, investment has replaced pension and retirement. If you don't invest, then you're working till the day you die. Instead of letting the company or city handle the investment, you handle it yourself now. So, the burden of investment is now on you.

I have 15% going to a 401k (it includes matching from my company) but, even in a dual-income household, with mortgage and student loan payments we can't afford to put anything more towards retirement. We put a little bit into savings each month but that's it. And the sad thing is, with the combined income of me and my wife (and including overtime, profit sharing, bonuses, etc) we will make almost $100k this year. My wife brought over a decent amount of savings when we got married, but I'm afraid to invest any of if because I know that this giant stack of Jenga blocks we call a stock market is going to come crashing down sooner rather than later (when it does I'll shift funds to index stocks and ride the recovery). The marketing and advertising bubble will pop. The Twitter sale debacle is a harbinger of what's to come as people realize that marketing data and ad revenue aren't enough to keep a business afloat (hear the rumblings about Twitter adding paid subscriptions?) As incomes remain at best stagnant, disposable income drops as cost of living increases, meaning that marketing data gets less and less valuable. One of the pillars the stock market is built upon is confidence. As these large, popular companies go further and further in the red, people will start to panic. Wall Street might want to look into licensing those FoxConn suicide nets, or at least hand out free hardhats to pedestrians walking below.

Re:New American Dream

[cellocgw]

When did companies exist to provide jobs for employees?

Roughly speaking, from the time unions started to spring up until Dodge v. Ford .

But otherwise, a solid belief in slavery (including sweatshops and company towns) and/or a choice of short-term greed and riches over long-term economic growth have dominated.

Re:New American Dream

[Nidi62]

The problem is that you don't make money by investing unless you can control your risk and make decisions from an understanding of how businesses work. This is a very specific skill set that is as complicated as programming. If you have someone else make the decisions for you, you are not getting a very big piece of the pie.

There are 2 easy ways to make big money investing. 1 is HFT. The market on that is kind of locked down, the little guy doesn't really stand a chance to get in on that unless you buy stock in HFT firms. The second is to just put enough in so that your small piece of the pie(to use your metaphor) is still a pretty big piece. That's kind of my point: unless you are smart enough (in the right way, there are plenty of smart/intelligent people that can't play the market) or are lucky enough (get in on an IPO, fall into the right job, chose the right parents), you get stuck working a job not "creating" them, and therefore don't even really get the chance to play the game.

Re:New American Dream

[m00sh]

Everyone knows that these days you don't make money actually working in a job. If you want to make money you have to invest. If they paid workers decent wages then all these companies wouldn't be able to post perpetually increasing profits which means that their stock value tanks. And if stock values tank, how are all those decent, hardworking, real Americans going to take care of their families if they can't get money from the stock markets? Because they certainly can't make any money working in a real job. Companies no longer exist to provide services for customers and jobs for employees. They exist to drive income to shareholders through dividends or profits derived from stock trading. That's why you have all these unicorns and tech companies with massive valuations with no clear plan to profitability or long-term stability: that's not their purpose. They just need to keep the stocks flowing and the Dow going up.

When did companies exist to provide jobs for employees?

Anyways, investment has replaced pension and retirement. If you don't invest, then you're working till the day you die. Instead of letting the company or city handle the investment, you handle it yourself now. So, the burden of investment is now on you.

I have 15% going to a 401k (it includes matching from my company) but, even in a dual-income household, with mortgage and student loan payments we can't afford to put anything more towards retirement. We put a little bit into savings each month but that's it. And the sad thing is, with the combined income of me and my wife (and including overtime, profit sharing, bonuses, etc) we will make almost $100k this year. My wife brought over a decent amount of savings when we got married, but I'm afraid to invest any of if because I know that this giant stack of Jenga blocks we call a stock market is going to come crashing down sooner rather than later (when it does I'll shift funds to index stocks and ride the recovery). The marketing and advertising bubble will pop. The Twitter sale debacle is a harbinger of what's to come as people realize that marketing data and ad revenue aren't enough to keep a business afloat (hear the rumblings about Twitter adding paid subscriptions?) As incomes remain at best stagnant, disposable income drops as cost of living increases, meaning that marketing data gets less and less valuable. One of the pillars the stock market is built upon is confidence. As these large, popular companies go further and further in the red, people will start to panic. Wall Street might want to look into licensing those FoxConn suicide nets, or at least hand out free hardhats to pedestrians walking below.

The interesting statistic that I read recently was that the largest increase in the stock market happens right before the crash.

So, you're missing out on a lot of gains waiting for the crash.

Plus, as they say, timing the market is a fool's errand. Just buy now and ride out the bumps. On a long enough term, you'll mostly always come out good (except for a few occasions in history).

Re:New American Dream

[Nidi62]

The interesting statistic that I read recently was that the largest increase in the stock market happens right before the crash.

So, you're missing out on a lot of gains waiting for the crash.

Sure, you make all those gains, but, since like you say, timing the market is a fool's errand, unless you get lucky and pull out at the right time, you lose those gains along with everyone else.

Plus, as they say, timing the market is a fool's errand. Just buy now and ride out the bumps. On a long enough term, you'll mostly always come out good (except for a few occasions in history).

If you play long enough, the house always wins. When you play craps there's no problem riding a hot shooter, but if you are joining the game late in the streak, you might be better off just playing the pass line until he craps out. You won't win big, but you won't lose big either. Better to save your money for the next shooter.

Re:New American Dream

[fluffernutter]

So basically if you are rich already you can invest and make money. I thought that went without saying.

Re:New American Dream

[Touvan]

Everyone doesn't know that - in fact, schools seem to go out of their way to avoid teaching that. Ownership of the means of production is the way you turn 1 dollar into 2, in a capitalist society. Working for a living is for suckers, and public schools mostly train suckers.

Re:New American Dream

[Nidi62]

So basically if you are rich already you can invest and make money. I thought that went without saying.

Rich or, as I said, lucky. These days you don't get rich or make a lot of money just working. You can make enough to be comfortable (which I readily admit I am in this camp), but you have no real way to actually make money. I'm a reasonably intelligent person (and have been acknowledged as such both throughout school and by my coworkers), but my intelligence is geared more towards the acquisition and application of information. I'm not wired for inventive or entrepreneurial endeavors, which is just about how you get wealthy these days. There are other careers I could have chosen which would have led towards wealth and which, had I known I could have done, I would have pursued. But unfortunately we go through life with incomplete information. Those who are my age that happened to choose that path are just now entering the possibility of real wealth. Honestly, my goal in life now is to make enough money so that my wife can be a stay at home (or at least work part time) mom without affecting our quality of life and try to save up enough for retirement (what will help is that my grandparents have a decent amount of land and assets that my parents will inherit that will be further passed down to my sister and I). But again, that last part is luck. If I was really lucky, my grandparents would have bought $1000 worth Apple stock back in the 80s (and then forgot about because Apple went without paying dividends for so long) instead of only $100. Would have turned that $20k payout (since the stocks split a couple times) into $200k. They probably would have paid off my student loans from that, with plenty to spare.

Re:New American Dream

[cayenne8]

I have 15% going to a 401k (it includes matching from my company) but, even in a dual-income household, with mortgage and student loan payments we can't afford to put anything more towards retirement.

Is she putting 15% of her income into a 401K or IRA too?

If so, then you're not doing too badly if starting out this young.

Re:New American Dream

[fluffernutter]

But then how does a middle class family rise up? No middle class family has enough money for ownership? Heck, you might as well say people should just buy their houses outright instead of having a mortgage, some people can do it but not many.

Re:New American Dream

[Nidi62]

I have 15% going to a 401k (it includes matching from my company) but, even in a dual-income household, with mortgage and student loan payments we can't afford to put anything more towards retirement.

Is she putting 15% of her income into a 401K or IRA too?

If so, then you're not doing too badly if starting out this young.

No. Her old job gave her a Roth, but she left that job for another one that paid a little less, but was closer to our house and actually offered a week of paid vacation. Every couple months she will put a couple hundred dollars into savings but that's it. I do all the 401k investment. Her paychecks are mostly earmarked for the mortgage.

As productivity raises

[rsilvergun]

Demand for workers falls. Why is it people treat supply and demand as a never-ending cornucopia of benefit. Raw, unfettered capitalism has a downside. Who knew?

Re:As productivity raises

[alvinrod]

You're missing the backside that as productivity increases, so does supply which reduces costs. You could certainly have a government that gives everyone a job, whether they want it or not, but that typically means doing so by limiting productivity or creating jobs which do nothing productive. Work for the sake of work is pointless.

Also, we have to look at the rest of the world as globalization trends continue. China has seen massive growth of the middle class since moving to a mixed economy, but naturally that's going to come at our expense. The U.S. owes a lot of its success in the 50's to escaping from WWII with its infrastructure unscathed while other western nations had to rebuild along with the isolationist Communist bloc not competing against the American economy.

Europe has been able to fully rebuild and reduce barriers to doing business to become a major economic powerhouse and the former Communist states have either ditched it or moved towards mixed economies that have allowed them to become far more prosperous. When we have to compete with the rest of the world, it's little wonder that we don't look as strong relative to decades past.

Re:As productivity raises

[Anonymous Coward]

You could certainly have a government that gives everyone a job, whether they want it or not, but that typically means doing so by limiting productivity or creating jobs which do nothing productive. Work for the sake of work is pointless.

Yes. However, in this case it would be "work = wage = reason to give people money." While make-work is bad in terms of productivity, it is a socially acceptable excuse to effectively give people resources. It is meant to resolve the problem of "with automation, a single person can produce far more than they consume, so what do you do with the remaining 60% of the population when 40% can produce enough stuff for the entire world?"

Another potential solution would be a Universal Basic Income (which has numerous benefits, but numerous detriments as well).

China has seen massive growth of the middle class since moving to a mixed economy, but naturally that's going to come at our expense.

Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. You may not remember, but there was a lot of talk in the 1970s and 1980s about how the zaibatsus in Japan were unbeatable, and how the "private companies with public resources" were a better way than the semi-free-market... that was true until they collapsed and we had the lost generation (and still ongoing).

China/etc could have found a new and better way, or it could be another bubble waiting to pop. It's looking increasingly like they are here-to-stay, but bubbles always look great until they explode.

Re:As productivity raises

[Touvan]

Well then you are missing the way way back side. If productivity increases, and reduces the need for workers, fewer people have money to buy goods - even when they are cheaper (though that doesn't happen due to price stickiness and profit motive/greed). This causes a downward spiral that we've been living in for decades.

I'm so tired of market fundamentalism. It is a soulless religion.

China has seen an increase in their middle class because they use policy to build it. In the 40s through the 60s in the US rich people paid huge percentages of their income in taxes (and only the top 5% at first paid that), which was directly redistributed back to workers through public works and other programs. Wages and salaries were controlled with both floors and caps. This even lead directly to employer benefits such as health insurance - they couldn't pay more, so they needed to offer something else - and the economy was so good from these policies that there was a lot of demand for everything.

Europe and Japan acheived similar wonders with similar policy. We can look at those places today to see the countries where those redistributive policies are stronger, are weathering the shit-storm market fundamentalism brought us over the last decade, better than the free market states.

Re:As productivity raises

[Waccoon]

You're missing the backside that as productivity increases, so does supply which reduces costs.

To a point. People love to assume this graph is a straight line.

Re:As productivity raises

[radarskiy]

"as productivity increases, so does supply which reduces costs"

This is a problem only if you assume that everyone already is getting everything they need or want, otherwise this means that standards of living increase.

"that typically means doing so by limiting productivity or creating jobs which do nothing productive."

This is true only if you assume that all useful work is already being done. Are all the potholes being filled in ass soon as they open up? Is all the food being distributed and cooked as soon as it is grown? Are all possible book and movies and paintings already in production? Are all houses people could live in already in production?

Basically, you have presented a position that depends on rejecting capitalism in favor of mercantilism.

Re:I refuse to believe it

[Archtech]

"Without the ZIRP rates, the mortgages they lure people into, and the housing bubbles this creates, the amount of money circulating in our economies would shrink so much and so fast the whole shebang would fall to bits.
"That’s right: the survival of our economies today depends [on] the existence of housing bubbles. No bubble means no money creation means no functioning economy".
https://www.theautomaticearth....

"The US owes the world 453,000 tonnes of gold which is almost 3 times all the gold ever produced in history".
https://goldswitzerland.com/th...

Skillsets.

[0100010001010011]

I feel like this boils down to what skillsets you have and how willing you are to move to use them.

1. If you ignored the EVERYONE HAS TO COLLEGE advice of the 2000s and learned a skilled trade instead you'd be doing rather well right now. We have such a shortage of CNC operators that local companies have teamed up with the VocTech highschool to offer an adult education class. You earn your GED and CNC/welding certifications in 8 weeks (going 2 days a week) and walk out earning $50k/year. CNC have billboards everywhere. $25/hr with 401k, medical, dental and vision.

Even within engineering there are winners and losers. I just got poached on linked in for a 30% raise in another state. If you have the right words on your resume companies are looking. Just talking about my niche: Simulink, dSpace (Hardware-in-the loop), embedded, RTOS, etc are all doing very well across automotive and aerospace.

"Biology" is a great starter degree for pre-med or other advanced degree. A BS Bio on its own qualifies you to earn $31k a year.

2. Fewer Americans Moved Last Year Than At Any Time On Census Bureau Record. Since we followed food out of Africa humans have been migrating to earn a life. I see job postings around here that can't be filled because my college peers insist on living in location X. "I don't want to leave Seattle. It's so wonderful. I can't afford to go out. Live with 2 roommates but I'm 'living my dream'".

Re:Skillsets.

[fluffernutter]

Not to mention 'anyone can do anything'. Not everyone is reasonably happy doing a trade. Or must we abandon work satisfaction now?

Re:Skillsets.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is bad advice. I have one of those CNC Machining certificates (and more). $25/hour is shitty pay for the work, and nobody is going to pay you $25/hr unless you have 2-3 years experience anyway.

I was eventually put in the drafting room doing the same work as engineers making $70K+ a year for $50K. Why would I willingly take a $20K-$60K/year salary haircut for the rest of my working life, when I could forego $200,000 in wages, and recover the opportunity cost in 10 years by getting a Bachelor's degree? Even if you take into consideration the time-value of money and inflation, this decision is a no-brainer.

Better question: why would I stop with a Bachelor's degree when I could stay in school for another 1-2 years, and recover the $300,000 opportunity cost in 8 years with the ~$30K-70K salary bump(30 right out of school, and 70 at peak earning potential)?

If you're a sought after Machinist (one of the best in the area) you can swing maybe $30-$35 working for someone else, but for the same level of effort: you can get into any school in the country and graduate with high honors.

Re:Skillsets.

[Areyoukiddingme]

We have such a shortage of CNC operators that local companies have teamed up with the VocTech highschool to offer an adult education class. You earn your GED and CNC/welding certifications in 8 weeks (going 2 days a week) and walk out earning $50k/year. CNC have billboards everywhere. $25/hr with 401k, medical, dental and vision.

What's a CNC operator? As I understand it, a CNC operator is just the person who loads the blank into the machine, starts the machine, removes the work product when it's done, and cleans up the mess. They're not the CNC programmer. As such, that sounds like a job that's incredibly easy to automate. As in, there are already off-the-shelf robotics that can do that without issue for weeks at a time.

Blanks are metal and extremely regular, meaning that a manipulator from the '80s has no problem gripping, moving, and placing them accurately without damage. Even if you want flexibility and the ability for a given machine to produce three different work product types from three different blanks in the same day, it's still not even remotely difficult. Clamping the blank into place means tightening a screw clamp, something machines have excelled at since the '70s. Removing a completed piece from the machine means gripping the finished part somewhere, but since the shape of the finished part is perfectly predictable, programming a robot to grip it is no harder than producing the CNC program. No fancy neural net machine vision required. The only hard part would be cleaning up the scraps, and I bet you could retrofit the CNC machine with ramps and chutes that would take care of 90% of the scrap with gravity alone.

McDonald's claims that $15/hr is the threshold where automating away the job makes sense. $25/hr with 401k, medical, dental, and vision? That's $150k/year. That pays for the robot in 2 years, and pays for the installation and programming in another year. CNC operator sounds like a doomed trade to get into, sooner rather than later.

Re:Skillsets.

[Whorhay]

I guess it would depend on the shop, but from what I've seen operators usually are responsible for making alterations to the program to get the part to fit the requirements. There is a lot of knowledge that goes into the process. I had an uncle that was a CNC operator and there was a lot more to it than baby sitting a machine that cost more than my house. Yes, a lot of what my uncle did could be automated but how expensive and adaptable is that going to be. With a perfect program your CNC machine might put out perfect parts for the first few runs. Eventually though the tools start to wear and replacing them outright is cost prohibitive, so the program has to be altered to produce parts that will pass QC while using the same tool. That might mean altering the cutting speed, pathing of the cutting head, or maybe both. Perhaps the blanks aren't actually of identical hardness, they might be lose enough to meet the customers requirements but off by enough to change the output product if the program isn't altered.

All of that is obviously automated away when the production run is going to be large enough. I would wager that most CNC Operators are employed in smaller shops where they are producing custom parts made for specific orders in quantities ranging from 1 to thousands.

Thanks Obama!

[Anonymous Coward]

8 fucking years of "recovery"?

And you wonder how Trump won....

Re:My crushing debt

[__aaclcg7560]

If you can't parlay a liberal arts degree into a tech job, you're doing it wrong.

Suckers!

[p51d007]

Don't forget to pay back the 20,30,40 THOUSANDS of dollars in college debt, for your worthless degree that pays 20-50,000 per year, while finding an apartment, transportation, food, mandatory health care, trying to have a social life. Trade schools are "worth" more than a liberal arts degree, but no one wants to have a discussion on the high price of "big college"...paying presidents, deans, sports coaches hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and some professors only working a few days a month. Nope, don't talk about that...just continue to rail on CEO's of big oil, big pharma etc.

Re: To funny...

[Archangel Michael]

Class warfare sure worked for Obama! Targeting the rich made it impossible for the middle class. And that is how Venezuela is the envy of Bernie Sanders, where everyone is dirt poor because the "rich don't pay their fair share". Eventually the rich leave (because they can) and take their money with them.

Oh I know, the solution to this is World Tax System!!!!

Fight for 15

[tomhath]

Making those wages in a comfy office sure doesn't beat flipping burgers for a living.

Re:Fight for 15

[butchersong]

Burger flipping is healthier than sitting in an office all day if you ignore the additional stress of lower wage. Rather than choose the lowest possible wage job though, I'd suggest instead electrician, carpenter / framer, plumber, welder, oil field pumper etc.

Not just college grads

[nehumanuscrede]

For the most part, wages have been stagnant across the board for pretty much everyone in the middle class and below for quite some time.

http://www.epi.org/publication...

It isn't just limited to those with a college degree.

In addition, the price increase of a degree has far, Far, FAR outpaced wages and will eventually reach a point that you'll have to consider if getting a degree ( and the enormous amount of debt that will come with it ) will be worth it or not in the future job markets.

Re:Not just college grads

[fluffernutter]

Wages have been stagnant since the 70's, roughly around the time companies could start purchasing technology to replace people.

Word of advice...

[bobbied]

Be willing to change, locations and careers as necessary. Be flexible.

There ARE places and jobs in the grand old USA where wages are going up. If you don't get that raise you want where you are, start looking for a location and career that is in demand and JUMP. Sooner rather than later.

I've lived in 4 different states in my long career and I am willing to pull up the tent stakes and move if it means more money. I've also had multiple kinds of jobs, from Electronic Engineering to Network engineering to Software Development.... And last year I got one of the biggest raises of my life by changing jobs...

Re:Word of advice...

[fluffernutter]

That's terrible for kids.

Re:Word of advice...

[bobbied]

Who's kids?

There are many children who grow up moving a lot. My wife was a preacher's kid and she moved every couple of years as a child. I know military brats that moved every 9 months or so. Yea, it may be a hard thing, but it's not an impossible thing, and sometimes the adversity of one's life builds character.

IF your kids stability is more important to you than salary increases, that's fine, just be honest about it with yourself. It's not your job that's holding your back.

Like I said.. I've changed jobs and locations multiple times. One of those changes was for family reasons and I knowingly moved to a location that I KNEW wasn't great for my career or advancing my salary. I didn't complain about how much money I was or wasn't making at that time, but as soon as the reason for the move went away, I picked up the family and moved to a location that better enabled me to provide for my family. You need to do what's right for you..

Re:Word of advice...

[fluffernutter]

Yes I know there are anecdotal examples of kids that move and are fine. I also know a lot of kids that moved and had social issues. The question is whether that population of kids would have less social issues if they didn't move. I can't say I've ever known 'keep everything unstable as much as you can' to be part of good child-rearing practice. I know as a kid I wouldn't have handled it will at all. My parents moved once and it was very difficult on me.

Re:Word of advice...

[bobbied]

Still... IF you are locked in place because of the kids and that location doesn't see the salary increases available in other locations, it's not the job that's holding you back, but the location you desire to live that's holding you back. Just be honest with yourself about this and I'm fine...

Personally, I think that a lot of parents are inclined to coddle their offspring a bit too much anyway, which can also cause adjustment issues as they become adults. But hey, you got to do what you think is best for you and yours and I'm not going to question your choices. I do however take exception to using kids as an excuse for not being able to do something like move to get a better paying job then complaining about it.

Re:Word of advice...

[fluffernutter]

This is a much more complicated issue than you are letting on. First of all, I'm not entirely sure if there is any place in the US that it truly benefits a person to move to. I have computer skills and I know I could make a bigger salary in Silicon Valley but from the sounds of it, you sell your soul with regards to housing costs and commute time. So am I willing to make that move? No, because despite the bigger salary I would be losing quality of life. Everything I have heard about living in Silicon Valley is bad, as is most other places where salary is higher.

The simplistic way to look at it is that moving to a place with higher salaries will make your life generally better but if I move I want a better life, not just more money. It is the better life that seems to be alluding the middle class.

Re:Word of advice...

[bobbied]

Oh sure, it's not simple, but there are websites that sort all this Cost of Living stuff out for you if you google a bit and the quality of life is something only you can determine for yourself.

I don't know where you are, but here in Texas there is a huge boom and they are starting to get desperate for software types and related fields. As one of my friends put it "It's a seller's market" for technical skills right now. The standards of living are not bad, though will admit that housing prices and commute times are a factor to consider before moving here but it's nothing like Silicon Valley... Yet....

The quality of life thing is for you to decide for yourself. Texas is big into Cowboy boots and blue jeans for the most part, but there ARE places a whole lot more cosmopolitan if you prefer such things. The weather is obviously warm and I wouldn't live here if Air Conditioning had not been invented, but weather is but a minor annoyance for most of us anyway. All in all, works out great for me and my family, but the kids got raised here so they don't know anything else.

I like it here and wages are taking a turn for the better, but your mileage may vary..

Re:Word of advice...

[fluffernutter]

If I can live 1/2 hour away from work I'm good. I have heard good things about Austin but I'm not sure if I could live there.

Re:Word of advice...

[dywolf]

"i had it easy, why cant you???"

Re:Word of advice...

[bobbied]

I lived in Austin and had a 15 min commute, but it was way back in the 90's. Made a killing by flipping my house too. Austin was a nice place to live, a bit to crazy for me, but I know folks who like "Austin Weird" (tm). The city has grown quite a bit in 2 decades, so I really cannot give you any information about commune times or affordable real-estate.

Lets look at the reasons

[randomErr]

When I see an article like this these are the things that come to mind as the real reasons for stagnation:

• Cooperate Taxes - Why stay here when you can go overseas for cheaper labor
• Insurance / Obamacare - If you get beyond a certain size you either have to cut everyone hours so you don't have pay their insurance. Or you pay a penalty in the form of taxes on insurance to help pay the Affordable Care Act.
• H1B1 VISA Contractor - Why use expensive local labor when you can bring in an external entity to do it cheaper
• Work Ethics - Its just hard to find young people who will work like their older counter parts
• Automation - We've seen article here about robotics and AI. The menial tasks are slowly getting replaced reducing the labor pool
• Lack of Education - Colleges need to show that their graduating about 80% of their students to get state and federal funds. So they're dumbing down the courses.

Re:Lets look at the reasons

[Whorhay]

I have a hard time believing the work ethic complaint. Ever since I entered the job market in the 90's the mantra has perpetually been "do more with less!" I have an in-law uncle that apparently started working as a dishwasher in a national chain restaurant, and within 8 years was a vice president of the same chain. That was back in the 70's and 80's, I can't even fathom how that would have been possible without him being the one extremely hard worker and everyone else around him being perpetual slackers.

Give Peace a Chance

[AlleyTrotte]

Probably one of the best reasons I've heard to say: Let's give Trump a chance. flame suit on. AlleyTrotter

It's not just college grads, it's most people.

[hey!]

In general people earning at the median income (roughly 56k) have not seen their incomes recover past their pre-recession levels, and people at the first and second quintile (from the bottom, roughly 33k) have not recovered to their pre-recession incomes. Fresh out of school, the average college graduate makes about $50.5K.

So what recent college grads are experiencing is representative of what at about half of the people in the country are experiencing -- namely those with average to below average income. That bio grad making $31K is roughly as far below what he'd have been making pre-recession as anyone else making that amount is.

Some of this divergence is natural, in that the wealthy tend to have more volatile incomes; those incomes are more likely to be based on the performance of asset markets. However it's striking to see such robust sustained income growth for the top 5% with stagnation for the median and below. Whatever they're putting their money into, it's not trickling down.

Re:It's not just college grads, it's most people.

[Pfhorrest]

You seem to be mixing personal and household incomes here. The median personal income is closer to $25k. The median household income is around twice that, in the $50k-ish range, because the median household has about two-ish people. So your median income figure must be household income, or else it's off by an order of magnitude. But your college graduate income figure has to be personal income, because households don't go to college, individuals do.

Either that or you meant mean personal income, not median? Which is also around twice the median personal income, near the median household income, because the distribution curve is so top-heavy that the mean is around the 75th percentile.

Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[Anonymous Coward]

The worth of a college degree is losing its luster in the US job market.

Good. College graduates rarely have the skill sets someone who has actually been working in the field an equivalent amount of time has. Education that is up to date is always more readily available on the net than it is in a stale college course. An autodidact is almost always far more valuable than someone who followed a canned path. This is not only because they've done more but because they have developed, and broadly demonstrate, the critical quality of self-motivation.

You know what most college degrees really say? That you were willing to let people waste your time on irrelevancies when you could have been out deep-diving into something. Or even worse, that you aren't capable of deep-diving into something.

I'm talking about degrees in useful subjects when I allow that some college graduates do manage to become useful during, and because of, college. Degrees in soft subjects aren't that. They're completely worthless. Not that history, philosophy and so forth are absolutely worthless; just that degrees in them are. You want to learn history (and you should) or dig into philosophy, just start reading.

You're almost always better off learning how to think for yourself than you are thinking the way someone else tells you to. Serious problem solving is not compatible with camp-following.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[gtall]

It is good to see the Enlightenment hasn't left a mark on you.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[Gorobei]

It's pretty damn simple:

Most college degrees show that you are basically employable in a white-collar or pink-collar job entry-level job paying $40K/year or so: you have proven you can show up, follow simple instructions, get work done on time, understand written material, write a page of text that sort of makes sense, do basic arithmetic, etc.

That's about it for 99% of college graduates. Congrats, you get to sit in a chair at work, and we know you can do the simple job we need filled. Hell, do well, and we'll even promote you to where you can earn more and actually add more value.

You went to MIT or did STEM? Great, we figure you are smart, hard-working, and have an analytical mind. That's worth $80K. We really don't care what you majored in or what courses you took. It's still a fucking entry-level job.

20 year old autodidact? Sorry, just too much uncertainty. Come back when you have a track record or a Github repository that we like.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[DRichardHipp]

Well written, Anonymous. On this much we agree: A college diploma is neither necessary nor sufficient to obtain useful skills. However, I think you overstate your case. College does not guarantee that you will become a problem solver, but if becoming a problem solver is your goal then college can be an effective method of achieving it.

Self-motivation and self-study are important, but not sufficient. In a functional college environment, you will be serendipitously exposed to ideas that you would not otherwise encounter, and would not know that you need to dig into. If you are motivated and want to learn, college is a great place to do that.

On the other hand, my thesis presumes a "functional" college environment. If you want to argue that many colleges these days are dysfunctional, I won't contradict you. It is entirely possible to get a college degree, even an advanced degree, and not learn anything useful. But just because it is possible to waste years and countless thousands of dollars on worthless degree programs does not mean that all college is worthless. You will get out of college in proportion to what you put in. I think even soft subjects, properly done, have value, though I agree with you that the soft subjects are not often properly done nowadays.

Society seems to have conflated the concepts of "credentials" and "capabilities" and assumes that having the first bestows the second. You cannot deny that the two are at least correlated, but the correlation is imperfect and even if it were perfect it would not imply causality. It would be good if more people, and especially policy makers, recognized this.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[David_Hart]

The worth of a college degree is losing its luster in the US job market.

Good. College graduates rarely have the skill sets someone who has actually been working in the field an equivalent amount of time has. Education that is up to date is always more readily available on the net than it is in a stale college course. An autodidact is almost always far more valuable than someone who followed a canned path. This is not only because they've done more but because they have developed, and broadly demonstrate, the critical quality of self-motivation.

You know what most college degrees really say? That you were willing to let people waste your time on irrelevancies when you could have been out deep-diving into something. Or even worse, that you aren't capable of deep-diving into something.

I'm talking about degrees in useful subjects when I allow that some college graduates do manage to become useful during, and because of, college. Degrees in soft subjects aren't that. They're completely worthless. Not that history, philosophy and so forth are absolutely worthless; just that degrees in them are. You want to learn history (and you should) or dig into philosophy, just start reading.

You're almost always better off learning how to think for yourself than you are thinking the way someone else tells you to. Serious problem solving is not compatible with camp-following.

Bullcrap.... College/University is first about learning how to gain new knowledge and then learning how to apply that knowledge to a wide range of situations. It's not about teaching you how to think, it's about teaching you how to learn. Even the humanities degrees require the students to learn, set deadlines, work in teams, and accomplish goals. In many ways it gets students ready for the business world. As for self-motivation, professors could care less if you pass or not, so you have to have at least a minimal level of self-motivation to get a degree.

The paper college/university where you can skate by probably exists, but the majority requires real work and effort by the students.

An argument could be made that college/university is too expensive and the cost/benefit ratio has reached a point where its not worth it for certain jobs and/or industries. The fact that HR requires it for practically any job is one of the factors that's contributing to the rising cost.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[__aaclcg7560]

So we need to cover stupid shit that people should already know. "This is how you turn on your computer"

When I was on the Google IT help desk, I had to walk a Stanford CS graduate student through the process of turning on his workstation because the computer labs always had someone standing around to turn the workstations on.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[aaarrrgggh]

Good points!

My (professional) engineering role only uses information from ~20% of my ~200 credit-hour curriculum, and just 6 specific credits would make most people reasonably capable at an entry level position. As we (sadly) move more to process-based engineering rather than relying on intelligent candidates, this becomes even more true.

As for salary stagnation specifically, the cause is really the broader economy. Margins are shrinking in most industries as friction is reduced. Hard to imagine how it will get better. (Also, I thought ChemE's made $60k starting 20-25 years ago!)

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[__aaclcg7560]

It's not about teaching you how to think, it's about teaching you how to learn.

Most students fail to become life-long learners and stop learning after leaving school. That's the kiss of death in a technical career. I had friends who threw away being software engineers because they were unwilling to learn new technologies after the dot com bust and settled for being drug store clerks.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[__aaclcg7560]

It is entirely possible to get a college degree, even an advanced degree, and not learn anything useful.

I had a roommate who took automotive design on the West Coast in the 1990's, had no interest in getting a job at the Big Three in Detroit, and racked up $25K in student loans because he was interested in cars. Fortunately, he worked in a grocery store warehouse for six years when he got married to a college guidance counselor. His wife got him into warehouse logistics for the higher paying jobs to pay off the student debt.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[nomadic]

"College graduates rarely have the skill sets someone who has actually been working in the field an equivalent amount of time has"

http://www.theonion.com/blogpo...

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[nomadic]

"An autodidact is almost always far more valuable than someone who followed a canned path" And yet the people who really innovate these days almost always followed a "canned path" of formal education.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[nomadic]

"When I was on the Google IT help desk, I had to walk a Stanford CS graduate student through the process of turning on his workstation because the computer labs always had someone standing around to turn the workstations on."

Man, imagine how hard Google would have failed if it had been founded by Stanford CS students.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[__aaclcg7560]

Man, imagine how hard Google would have failed if it had been founded by Stanford CS students.

During the early years of Google, the two founders vetted all job candidates and reportedly refused to interview any Stanford University CS graduates. My incident took place in 2008 when Google was hiring 300+ people per week.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[butchersong]

If you don't know how to learn by the time you're 18-20 and in college (excluding a few low income / opportunity cases) you probably won't benefit much from college...

Re: Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[Gorobei]

It tends to be for those autodidacts and other weird cases (like young college dropouts or philosophy PhDs looking to write code.)

Then again, I am usually interviewing for $200K-$800K developers, so our experiences may differ.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[__aaclcg7560]

If you don't know how to learn by the time you're 18-20 and in college (excluding a few low income / opportunity cases) you probably won't benefit much from college...

I went to community college twice. Once as a young person trying to figure out my place in the world, exiting with an A.A. degree in General Education and mediocre grades. A decade later as an adult working 80 hours per week and taking two classes per semester for five years, exiting with A.S. in Computer Programming and a 4.0GPA in my major. Going back to school as an adult was a lot easier than as a young person. Some people aren't ready for college when they're young.

Re:Degrees are primarily HR tick marks

[dywolf]

no education is worthless.
the purpose of education is not work.
its purpose is itself.

Re:I refuse to believe it

[pnutjam]

Wait..
Trump says that real estate companies are paragons of efficiency, just like all corporate America.

Peter Thiel was right ...

[Qbertino]

The housing bubble has moved to an education bubble.

He said 8 years before that the dotcom bubble had moved to a real-estate bubble. ...

To his credit, he's actually paying people to leave college and start companies.

Carts and Horses (in various orientations)

[Slugster]

Could it be that economic prosperity is not caused by college graduates... could it be the other way around perhaps?
Could it be that instead of attacking fundamental problems in national economics, politicians instead decided to hand out even more money that wasn't there... ?

"We must be doing better, cause we all got papers now saying how smart we are"

No surprise: US still in recession

[bradley13]

Salaries suck, because the US is still in a recession. With real unemployment well over 20%, comparable to economic powerhouses like Greece, Croatia and Botswana, it's no surprise that salaries are declining. Add in inflation, and they are declining even faster.

There is one overriding reason for the continuing recession: debt. Federal debt in the US is out of control - plus up to $200 trillion of unfunded obligations that everyone is carefully ignoring. If we also ignore those invisible (but inevitable) obligations, the US is still one of the top 20 most indebted nations.

Keynesian economics have been thoroughly debunked. Actually, there was never any evidence that they might be correct. But politicians love them, because they provide an excuse to buy votes by spending other people's money. All of this debt has been built up with promises that never would be fulfilled. But the politicians making those promises are now mostly millionaires, so that's ok.

What cannot go on forever will stop. Debt cannot be infinitely piled on, and countries like the US are reaching the limits of their ability to sell more debt. When this stops, the stopping is likely to be abrupt and unpleasant.

Re:No surprise: US still in recession

[dywolf]

-the recession ended in Sept 2009
-"real unemployment" is not over 20%
-federal debt is meaningless when the fed also prints the money
-Keynesian Econ is well established fact and has not been debunked other than in the minds of ignored tools

come back when youre interested in rejoining reality

Entry level jobs are going away

[ErichTheRed]

I think most of the stagnation is due to the fact that most college graduates are having to take lower-paying jobs. In the past, large companies were happy to take in new college graduates for entry-level jobs. Big companies paid relatively big salaries, and the recipient of that entry level job could either use it to rise in that company, or put it on their resume and move on to another.

These days, there's just not a lot of entry level work that pays well. Big companies are outsourcing and offshoring the stuff that new grads used to do, and the jobs that remain onshore are with service providers. Those providers squeeze every single penny out of every outsourcing deal they make, and one of the ways they do that is to pay workers less and give them crappy benefits. For those who aren't lucky enough to get one of these jobs, yes, Starbucks awaits. The early 90s had a similar problem -- large companies had just killed huge swaths of their employees because computers were starting to automate processes that would require tons of manual work. College grads who would have gotten some faceless cubicle job a generation prior and used it as a stepping stone to prosperity all of a sudden didn't have that option. I'm pretty sure that's where the word McJob came from -- educated people forced to take low-paying, low-skill work because there wasn't a demand for educated people.

I'm foolishly hoping that one day MBA schools will start teaching students that it's better overall to have everything done in-house with employees you control. Accounting rules and tax laws would have to change to incentivize hiring large staffs, but I definitely think everyone, including executives on down to the lowest level employee, were happier when everyone who made the investment in education had the chance to earn a good wage.

Re:Entry level jobs are going away

[fluffernutter]

These days, new workers are begging for free internships in a lot of industries with a slim chance of getting hired.

Re:Entry level jobs are going away

[JustNiz]

Yeah this is the real problem: new workers participating in a race to the bottom.
If somehow everyone could just agree to not take those jobs, employers would have to up their offer to survive.

Re:It finally dawned upon /. after the last 20 yea

[AvitarX]

You're arguing that people have had consistently less since 1890?

Re:My crushing debt

[kilodelta]

In my case a Computer Sci degree morphed into an Information Science degree and it's done me well so far. I've worked in many a shop where other I.T. and security folk got degrees in oceanography, semiotics, etc. I've been the only one in many with a a pure I.S. degree.

Re:Health Insurance Costs

[fluffernutter]

Also in my experience you can become a contractor and you will get paid more but not enough more to cover decent health coverage for yourself. So it becomes a losing proposition unless you are comfortable with that arrangement.

CashFloatsUp

[sdinfoserv]

Like every single industry since 1987 - all the revenue generated from efficiency is going strait to the top; this includes years since the recession:
Adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 since the recession.
Yet everyone else fights for table scraps... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
.

Re:My crushing debt

[__aaclcg7560]

In my case a Computer Sci degree morphed into an Information Science degree and it's done me well so far.

I never went to high school but I went to community college. My General Education A.A. degree got me into software testing. A decade later I went back to school and my Computer Programming A.S. degree got me into IT support.

Re:It finally dawned upon /. after the last 20 yea

[roman_mir]

Less freedom, yes. Every new law, every new tax, every new subsidy, every new department, every new war, all of this takes away individual freedom and is another step towards destroying the economy.

I wrote exactly what I am arguing in that comment, I am not arguing what is not written there. My point is that without all of the things that I mentioned in that comment the USA economy today would have been stellar, something that we cannot really imagine because of all the damage that was done that prevented that economy from happening.

Re:"Since recession"

[jeff4747]

"Recession" has a clear technical definition. The recession that started in 2008 ended in 2009.

"The economy is shitty" is entirely based around perception. That ended (or didn't end) based on your personal situation.

Increasing Economic Stagnation - Much wider issue

[mattmarlowe]

As I've watched American prosperity and society change over the last 30-40 years, I've come to believe the following are the cause of the economic stagnation/depression that just gets worse each decade:

- Americans went gung ho into promoting cultural and ethnic diversity wiping away the uniformity of the 50's/60's replacing it with gigantic mess where no one talks to each other any more because they have nothing in common. Many recent research studies suggest that culturally/ethnically diverse societies find it much more difficult to unify or agree on common values or solutions to national problems. Is diversity good? Yes.... Was it in the long run good for America, maybe not.

- Education became politicized and focused on test scores and indoctrinating rather than teaching thinking and self sufficiency, partly this is a result of the widespread adoption of public schools and the removal of educational choice for families...local communities used to determine educational standards and parents used to have the primary responsibility for teaching their kids, not lowest common denominator schools that politicians manipulate the educational standards to ensure future generations will be one gigantic monolothic low paid workforce that can't provide for itself and yet will continue to vote for the polticians ruining the education of their kids.

- Lawyers -- there is a reason everyone hates them, but 40-50 years ago there were much fewer of them....legal crap everywhere began to spread in the 80's and now nearly anyone in power has a law degree, a degree which trains them to think not as engineers/doers but in terms of win/lose where one's only responsibility is to take care of oneself and his/her client.

- population growth -- yes, there are many states in the country that are underpopulated...but the areas where everyone wants to live are vastly overcrowded and the resources/environment are suffering greatly....it's not healthy for the mind or body...constant stress and overworking. Back when things were much more rural and there was a smaller population, people naturally cooperated with each other more.

- Public Debt -- whatever you think about the threat of future fiscal collapse, every $ removed from the economy for debt or interest payments is one less $ that goes into the broader economy to stimulate business or invest in infrastructure. We're on collapsing spiral here on way or another.

So, short of everyone suddenly deciding to handle all these big issues much differently than we have the last 40 years, I don't have much hope of any significant improvement. Technology and productivity increases help...but we've been relying on them for too long and if the pace of technological improvement slows down - our economy will get much worse.

Recession, yeah we've heard of it

[thunderclees]

And yet executive compensation has skyrocketed.

Re:My crushing debt

[nomadic]

"When did this site become a cesspool of fucking assholes?"

Become?

"clear technical"

[SuperKendall]

"Recession" has a clear technical definition.

Based on easily manipulable data
.

You statists are so cute when you're at your most utterly naive and gullible!

Re:"clear technical"

[gumbi west]

FYI, this article is a mix of horse shit and real points.

Re:"clear technical"

[SuperKendall]

this article is a mix of horse shit and real points.

Yes, just like government provided data about the economy.

That's how you lie with statistics.

Re:"clear technical"

[gumbi west]

Uh, no, the government provided statistics are made incredibly carefully and with an incredible amount of thought. The article is correct where it points out that e.g. some of GDP growth is due to population growth, it's pretty breathless text and makes many horse shit points like that the chain weighted inflation isn't right. Even chain weighted is too fast and doesn't account for e.g. the fact that cell phones didn't even exist.

Re:"clear technical"

[gumbi west]

Here's an example that side steps deflators by looking at real changes in consumption http://www.nber.org/papers/w23...

Its basic economics

[JustNiz]

What pay employers will offer is a direct function of supply and demand.
All the big companies are complaining about a shortage of STEM workers, but the reality has to be that its just not the case, otherwise there would be more competition for thos workers which would directly translate into higher wages offered.
Clearly the complaints are a baseless dog-and-pony show, probably just to keep the H1Bs flowing, which is also presumably where most of the supply is coming from that is actually surpessing the demand (and therefore wages) for local talent.

You're missing Apple Computer

[rsilvergun]

What's scary about Apple isn't that they over charge, it's that they've shown that a company can be the most profitable company in history (even outpacing some of the Robber Barrons adjusted for inflation) while selling relatively little product. Apple shows that the rich can abandon not just the poor but the working class and still do just fine.

As for those Communists... well they weren't. At no point in the history of the USSR were the spoils of economic output distributed "From each according to his ability to each according to his need". Stalin et al weren't communists, they were Fascists who borrowed Marx's book for rhetoric. And no, this isn't a 'No True Scottsman' argument. People can lie about their motives and facts will show they're lying. Yelling 'No True Scottsman' doesn't change that.

Common threads that bind us together

[bussdriver]

It is not a matter of diversity itself as much as having common threads shared by all which bind the society together enough to properly function. That has been lost and community does not exist anymore. I do not even know what it is because I had no exposure to it - only what I was told about and some tried to create and / or save.

We went TOO far fighting against the evils of conformity and uniformity of the 50s-60s but the fight was necessary. It just went too far.

While local communities and parents HAD more input into education in the past, there was a lot of uniformity in other ways.
Uniform public education is a safe way to create common threads --- even the private schools were more uniform in the past (despite marketing to justify the added expense.) Every child; ethics used to be taught; civics used to be taught to everybody; the constitution actually studied instead of a little history around it and memorize the preamble. Everybody should read 1984 too. Certain books at certain grades for EVERBODY even private schools. Other counties doing better do this. Hell, some force kids to read books over the summer-- classical books. We used to ALLOW children to fail now we screw up the whole system because of them... parents are getting too much input ; the WRONG kind of input. Parents who neglect their kids in the important ways are right there to demand and blame the schools and force changes that make everything worse. In the past parents were involved differently with education but had to accept their brat was failing and take some responsibility... maybe actually punish the kid. Parenting of kids is the BIGGEST influence and that isn't done much today in between both parents working. "Success" also means different things today as well. If we as a society valued community if we could figure out what that even is.... we would consider success as including a common experience in education. So everybody had the basics.... but even that is a problem today where basic facts and reality can't even be shared in common.

- ZONING - we don't have diversity in our communities. A small town had drunks, poor, rich, etc. they would interact to some degree -- sure racial boundaries were stronger but you still had communities within those boundaries. Now we don't even have a community within the groups we identify with.

-LAWYERS - it should be as shameful as a prostitute and as likely to be elected to office.

REALITY: WE CAN NOT GROW FOREVER. Human intelligence has severe limitations we dare not admit. Resources are limited. You can not birth your way to success. Necessary jobs are extremely limited; that is why we created consumerism and promote fashion and those too are limited (at best growth until resource limits are reached, some are logically capped, such as popular art.) A.I. will eventually remove ALL necessary jobs, but far before that point it will remove most jobs. A.I. will also remove the need for cheap labor; so the idea of a large peasant class is out dated; they will need to be culled significantly. (I don't think nice solutions to this will prevail when sociopaths are so well rewarded in our societies.)

We need chapter 11 and 7 for student loans

[Joe_Dragon]

We need chapter 11 and 7 for student loans

Re: To funny...

[LynnwoodRooster]

What tax load should there be on "the rich"? What level should be set to determine someone is "rich"?

Re:We still have 2% inflation

[LynnwoodRooster]

No we don't. Inflation is only "low" because the Government has decided that when it used to price out a pound of beef, it can now use 12 ounces, and that when it used to determine energy to keep your house at 70 degrees it now decides that 67 degrees is good enough. Inflation statistics are highly skewed, and real inflation is running a lot worse (try to find a half gallon of ice cream any more - that old standard in the pre-1990s is now impossible to find, they are all 1.5 to 1.75 quarts, yet the Government only calculates inflation based on the increase per package, not the change in the size of the package).

Re:no recovery; no growth

[gumbi west]

Just like the last depression, Republicans got us into it by completely deregulating everything and lowering taxes.

Re:colleges are now bloated

[manu0601]

I wonder where all that tuition money goes these days.

I do not know for US, but in many countries, raising tuition are there because public funding from taxpayer's money has been cut.

Re:It finally dawned upon /. after the last 20 yea

[AvitarX]

I'm trying to figure out by what metric the economy has been going downhill since 1890.

You lost me there, and I'm trying to understand.

Re:It finally dawned upon /. after the last 20 yea

[roman_mir]

By the metric of USA being a major creditor nation in 1890 and today it is the biggest debtor in history of histories.

By the metric of USA running trade surpluses in 1890 for the last 25 years or so USA has been running about 500 BILLION USD / year in trade deficits, so USA is *not paying for its consumption*, it's been subsidised by the productive world.

By the metric of being on real money in 1890 and today USD is nothing but a ghost.

By the metric of new business formation, by the metric of *not having to pay income, payroll, property taxes* to the government, by the metric of government not being anywhere close to what it is today in terms of power and size, by the metric of all the wars, which seem to be the most profitable business in today's America - murdering people around the world.

By the metric of people not coming to USA for individual freedom anymore at all.

Blame the doctors

[Bruce66423]

The problem is that we're all living a LOT longer because those clever doctors have cured the things that used to kill us off. Therefore pension benefits have to fall, pensionable age rise, or both. Add in the collapse of negotiating power of labour as globalisation and automation destroys jobs, and you will inevitably get what's happening today.

Millenials aren't worth employing

[Bruce66423]

The snowflake effect!

http://www.independent.co.uk/l...

Re:Millenials aren't worth employing

[__aaclcg7560]

The snowflake effect!

As a Gen X'er, that ain't news. That probably got started with the Baby Boomers.

get over it

[softwarek]

You can have unfettered immigration an think pay scale will go up.there is always someone that will due your job for less.you cant have loopside trade deal and think wages will go up. if they pay a guy in china a dollar a hour and US workers want 10.00 and you arent extra 9 dollars for the product wages dont go up.I Miss the days when you we ashamed to buy something not made in the USA, Than there the work ethics of alot of today youth.if i wanted a good paycheck i knew my boss want my best.I didnt run around all day complaining that he wanted me to due my job and i didnt think he should take less pay to give me more .i strive to have what they had but didn't hate them because they lived in the better zip code or could drive a better car than me it was either luck of the gene pool or they better educated or they decided to study while i choose to spend time hacking and phone freaking i was first in many miles to have 3300 baud modem tells you how old iam). It is called life. I feel sorry for my grand kids because i know there going to have to make the choices every generation before them blew off because it was taboo. number one issue everyone needs to start talking about is population control. we need one child for every two poeple for at least two generations than one per person.almost every problem like this can be trace back to one issue there are 2 many poeple. to many for environment,too many for job market and on and on. stop blaming the rich or government take some personal responsibility

Re:get over it

[softwarek]

You can have unfettered immigration an think pay scale will go up.there is always someone that will due your job for less.you cant have loopside trade deal and think wages will go up. if they pay a guy in china a dollar a hour and US workers want 10.00 and you arent extra 9 dollars for the product wages dont go up.I Miss the days when you we ashamed to buy something not made in the USA, Than there the work ethics of alot of today youth.if i wanted a good paycheck i knew my boss want my best.I didnt run around all day complaining that he wanted me to due my job and i didnt think he should take less pay to give me more .i strive to have what they had but didn't hate them because they lived in the better zip code or could drive a better car than me it was either luck of the gene pool or they better educated or they decided to study while i choose to spend time hacking and phone freaking i was first in many miles to have 3300 baud modem tells you how old iam). It is called life. I feel sorry for my grand kids because i know there going to have to make the choices every generation before them blew off because it was taboo. number one issue everyone needs to start talking about is population control. we need one child for every two poeple for at least two generations than one per person.almost every problem like this can be trace back to one issue there are 2 many poeple. to many for environment,too many for job market and on and on. stop blaming the rich or government take some personal responsibility

sorry it suppposed to be CANT in first line