education and economy

calberto

calberto

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Calberto
My economics teacher was talking about how the percentage of poor people has increased and middle class has shrunk. He asked, "Does anyone have a problem with this?" I raised my hand and said yes, but I have a BIGGER problem with how we try to solve this.

The problem is not that rich people make money. Putting restrictions and higher taxes on rich folk will not do anything except maybe get the federal government more tax dollars to waste. These people are rich. Either they are smart enough to get around tax barriers or are rich enough to pay someone to figure it out. Once a new tax law is put into effect the rich are not going to say, "Oh, shoot, you got me. I give up. All the holes in the ship are sealed."

The real problem is that this country has embraced a culture of outsider validation. People have to ask permission from another source in order to have value. One must go through high school and get validation to say that he/she is valuable. In order to be successful, one must go through college and receive their validation via a degree.

In order to be worth more than $8/hr, one must receive validation from the government. People have become so ingrained to this thought of outsider validation, that they have to ask permission from the government to have any value.

Instead of teaching kids that Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean to find the edge of the world (which is wrong), we need to be teaching kids how to teach themselves and have self value.

As a contractor I make $40/hr developing websites for people. I didn't learn how to make websites from a school. I haven't even graduated college. I taught myself. I'm not the best developer in the world, but I am learning. I'm getting better. The only proof people needed was past experience and confidence.

The point: there are opportunities outside of $8/hr. In order to do better than $8/hr you have to have confidence in yourself and disregard what others say you are worth. You dictate your worth and impact on the world, not the education system, not the federal government, and not I. The education system and government should teach people how to find new opportunities-- they shouldn't dictate people how much they are worth.

After this little rant in my class, I was asked to give a presentation about it. Idk if I'll do it or not.

What are your thoughts?
 
Agree 100%. Artificially creating a society where everyone is middle class requires a closed, isolated, and government controlled economy, and price fixing (e.g. strict, by the book Marxism.) Otherwise you hurt the people you are trying to help even worse than you hurt everyone else in doing so.
 
calberto said:
After this little rant in my class, I was asked to give a presentation about it. Idk if I'll do it or not.

What are your thoughts?
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My thoughts are that your econ teacher gave you that assignment as a learning exercise. If you take the assignment seriously, you'll find in the course of your investigation that your core assertions don't hold water.
 
Thought 1: Your econ teacher isn't teaching econ, he's trying to teach(indoctrinate?) a socialist, POV while stigmatizing private enterprise, and individual gain. Econ should stick to deciphering the micro and macro events of various markets, and how to best identify, and extrapolate trends, and movements in the market so you aren't caught flat footed(economically speaking)

Thought 2: He's a typical low-rent academic douche who should be put strongly in his place. If he asked you to give a presentation I would so massively bury him in private enterprise, the engine of competition, efficiency markets working better than managed markets, and the case of economic victimization as a failed remedy to what he perceives as a 'problem'.

Thought 3: As part of the presentation, I would make sure to point out that for the most part, economists report, and study the markets, and economies, and do not or rarely make any changes or movements in them. Trump, Jobs, Carnegie, Frank Phillips, Koch bros, and a few others make markets move. This is the proof that success succeeds. The predicates that if you want to succeed, do not be a market watcher, but a market player, and once learned about economics, apply that by going out into the real economy, and make a real difference, with real money, making real goods or services that the public wants.

<YMMV, don't try this at home, objects in mirror, and may cause anal leakage>
 
172andyou said:
My thoughts are that your econ teacher gave you that assignment as a learning exercise. If you take the assignment seriously, you'll find in the course of your investigation that your core assertions don't hold water.
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I don't know. I might want to discuss his theory of outside validation a little bit more, but I thought that most of his assertions were pretty tight.
 
172andyou said:
My thoughts are that your econ teacher gave you that assignment as a learning exercise. If you take the assignment seriously, you'll find in the course of your investigation that your core assertions don't hold water.
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I agree. If one cares to investigate the G.I. Bill , they will discover that it changed the middle class dramatically! government funding of this bill was critical to its success and it was a home run for the middle class.
 
docmirror said:
Thought 1: Your econ teacher isn't teaching econ, he's trying to teach(indoctrinate?) a socialist, POV while stigmatizing private enterprise, and individual gain.

Thought 2: He's a typical low-rent academic douche who should be put strongly in his place.

Thought 3: Trump, Jobs, Carnegie, Frank Phillips, Koch bros, and a few others make markets move.
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The entirety of what you know about the prof is:

My economics teacher was talking about how the percentage of poor people has increased and middle class has shrunk. He asked, "Does anyone have a problem with this?"

And from that you decided he was a socialist stooge?

But the OP should do most of what you say. Analyze the hell out of those market movers you seem to admire so much. Figure out what made them successful, there is a wide diversity in that group. Some worth admiring, some worth scorn.

He should take a very close look at the failed experiment the GOP has been running in Kansas for the past few years too.
 
I agree with you, only thing I'd nite is how few people can think for themselves, the majority successful self made, successful self employed people I know are the ones who also had the least amount of formal education.

For a long time school has been more about making employees than developing minds.
 
The left wing theory will say that the only reason a person has skills like being able to a web page is privilege. You probably were exposed to an environment growing up where you had the opportunity to learn these things and were later in a position to know how to do it and make money. No, you didn't get a degree or any certifications but you learned it somewhere. The people at the lowest end of things probably don't have influences around them to help them learn useful skills.

I have issues with that theory, but it isn't entirely invalid and that's their basic argument. You might want to try to handle that somehow.

The biggest hole I see policy wise in what the left wants to do is that they're very vague on how taking more money from the rich would benefit the poor. Eg.. how does money taken away from Uncle Pennybags make it's way down to Joe the Hobo? More likely it ends up with some defense contractor or an office remodel for a senator. It also would be worthwhile to take all the income of the top 1% and divide it out among the 99%... or even say the bottom 50%. I think running the numbers you'll find the money won't go as far as all those infographics imply.

I think what you talk about with credentials is an issue, but you're able to do your work and get paid for it so... it can obviously be overcome. I would suggest the bigger thing is efficiency. We don't have as much of a need for large numbers of unskilled laborers that we used to, employers need people who know how to do things.

That said, with 1,000 applicants for 5 positions and limited time is an employer going to take a risk on someone who says "I promise I know how to do this." or are they going to hire one of hundreds who apply with a degree saying "I have proof that I've been trained to do this.". That employer knows some of the no-degree/no certification people in that stack of applicants may be great but it's a gamble. The certified degree holder is almost guaranteed to at least have a clue.

While I'm ranting... back in the good old days, supposedly, you could walk into a business and approach the boss/owner and talk to him. You could pitch your skills and attitude and get a job that way. While it still can happen, it rarely does. Organizations are too big now, hiring had to be farmed out to HR departments. Departments that can create a process to go through applicants... and comply with anti discrimination laws. A small business with a dozen or so employees is made up of people making decisions. A large corporate is a system made up of procedures, documentation, checklists, and more documentation. You're not a person dealing with people anymore, you're a profile being processed. Many of the problems with modern day big government are part of a similar pattern.

Might be an interesting question to pose to an economics expert- what if we went back to many small organizations instead of few large ones in some industries? We'd loose some efficiency of scale but might that redistribute some wealth in and of it's self?
 
172andyou said:
My thoughts are that your econ teacher gave you that assignment as a learning exercise. If you take the assignment seriously, you'll find in the course of your investigation that your core assertions don't hold water.
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Correct. Especially the parts where education is of no value.
 
calberto said:
My economics teacher was talking about how the percentage of poor people has increased and middle class has shrunk. He asked, "Does anyone have a problem with this?" I raised my hand and said yes, but I have a BIGGER problem with how we try to solve this.

The problem is not...
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Sounds like you built up a straw-man. I would have liked to hear the prof's explanation.
 
172andyou said:
The entirety of what you know about the prof is:

My economics teacher was talking about how the percentage of poor people has increased and middle class has shrunk. He asked, "Does anyone have a problem with this?"

And from that you decided he was a socialist stooge?
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Yes, it's dogma straight out of the Occupy/we are 99% playbook. Funny you didn't recognize it. Or, were you being intentionally obtuse?
 
Well the presentation was just something that they wanted me to do for fun. It wasn't a class mandated presentation. The professor agreed with me wholeheartedly after I talked to him.

Honestly, I have no idea what his political tendencies are. He keeps very neutral. Sticks to hard stats typically.
 
cowman said:
The left wing theory will say that the only reason a person has skills like being able to a web page is privilege. You probably were exposed to an environment growing up where you had the opportunity to learn these things and were later in a position to know how to do it and make money. No, you didn't get a degree or any certifications but you learned it somewhere. The people at the lowest end of things probably don't have influences around them to help them learn useful skills.
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It definitely did take some great people to make me realize that I could do what I could do. It took a lot of influence. I want our education system to be more like that. More influential on the person.

I'm not saying tear down the entire system, but something needs to change.
 
James331 said:
For a long time school has been more about making employees than developing minds.
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:yeahthat:

The current system has been manipulated and conditioned to produce task attendees as opposed to problem solvers.
 
calberto said:
Instead of teaching kids that Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean to find the edge of the world (which is wrong), we need to be teaching kids how to teach themselves and have self value.
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I was never taught that about Columbus. Is that what they say now?
 
I think you are a smart man who will do well. The validation angle is an interesting one, I'm sure it happens, but IMHO I think the problem is more an entitlement/opportunity issue. Some people feel they are entitled to a living and don't have to work for it. Others understand the potential of being gainfully employed but lack the opportunity to work in this economy or maybe more accurately, work to their potential. I feel confiscatory taxes are driving jobs overseas, fix the tax code, more directly, the tax code that affects manufacturing companies and the jobs will come back. I could go on for a few more paragraphs, but I think you can see where I am headed.

Regardless of what I think, I think you are going to do well and you may very well be right, keep that mind working.
 
docmirror said:
Yes, it's dogma straight out of the Occupy/we are 99% playbook. Funny you didn't recognize it. Or, were you being intentionally obtuse?
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Sounds like a perfectly reasonable question from an economics professor depending on the topic they were discussing that day. The economy is, or should be, a huge part of the discussion around who holds wealth and who doesn't. Can an economy continue to function and grow without a large middle class? Can a small number of super wealthy people keep an economy functioning and creating jobs? Maybe, maybe not, I have my personal thoughts on the matter but I'm not an economist. If you're in an economics class I think it's a valid question to bring up to your students, admittedly he could have phrased it better. Maybe something like 'what are the economic effects of a shrinking middle class and growing class of working poor?'. It gets them thinking, similar to the OP, which is what you really want students doing in school.
 
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Tell him that he is part of the next bubble that will pop! Tell him that if everyone has an education that no one is educated!
 
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