When a low-paying job requires a college degree (political thread)
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I was inspired to make this thread by shop-teacher's non-political thread in main oppo, but nevertheless, people will undoubtedly have something political to say about it, so I made this thread in case anyone wants to say the political shit about it.
John Delaney was the only 2020 presidential candidate to explicitly say that there is no skill shortage, only a pay shortage.
In regards to shop-teacher's specific topic of teacher's salaries, those are set by the state or by the school district. In most places, the board of education consists of members that are elected. Board of education meetings and city council meetings are open to the public.
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There is not so much a pay shortage as there is an obscene money abundance. Especially since last year when the unemployment stimulus kicked in and people are getting paid the equivalent of $15-18/hour to sit at home and do nothing. Hyperinflation is real and it's here. Just wait for all forms of taxes to increase come 2022, along with everything else. You know all these supply shortages and goods being out of stock? That is because their prices are being kept low compared to all the extra free money that millions upon millions of people are getting, thus causing the demand to outstrip supply. Between the free money unemployment stimulus and the unending eviction moratorium, you have millions of literal leeches on society who are not only taking the stimulus and staying unemployed to keep collecting, but they are using it to buy stuff they don't need and shirk their actual financial responsibilities like, you know, rent. This artificial demand placed on all manner of goods does one of two things: either drives up the price, OR as we are still seeing, outstrips demand so that everything is out of stock.
Government jobs have so much red tape involved in salary negotiations and starting wage positions that they are lagging behind on offering meaningful compensation to anyone who actually wants to work instead of freeload off the system. And once they do start to increase wages, that means increased property taxes for everyone to pay for the increased wages, which in turn will cause cost of living to increase further, causing more people to drop into effective poverty.
End the stimulus, end the eviction moratorium, and we can begin to dig ourselves out of this pit we've been digging.
All things are possible with the power of sidewall
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@dogisbadob If Delaney won
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@atfsgeoff said in When a low-paying job requires a college degree (political thread):
Hyperinflation is real and it's here
It is real, but it is definitely not here. 2-4% inflation is completely normal in a functioning and growing economy and we're only running barely hotter than that.
There are spots that are higher (like lumber was) but most will level out when the supply and demand normalizes (like lumber did).
Hyper-inflation is what happens when inflation hits 20% and then keeps running away and we are nowhere near that. A restart of a stopped economy will cause inflation in the same way that stopping it caused deflation and GDP shrinkage.
The jury is still out on the impact that stimulus has on depressing employment with most bits of data showing it had no meaningful impact. Most states that stopped it early actually saw slower increases in hiring than states that kept it. Now causation is not correlation but it just points out this is a much more complicated issue.
The fact that the stimulus and expanded benefits kept so many from going hungry or losing a place to live means it counts as a success in my book. There was some waste and fraud yes, but again the bigger picture and it did a lot of good.
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@dogisbadob I disagree with Delaney. What we have is a population that is "over-degreed". How many times have you heard the phrase "it's just a piece of paper" when referring to a college diploma? That's because, in most cases, it's worthless - but not for the reasons you think.
People learn so freaking little in college these days, it's amazing. When I talk to fresh grads, they aren't at all ready for taking a job. They're basically unhirable. That includes people with some pretty amazing sounding degrees like "Bachelor of Science in Aerospace". They graduate wanting to be told what to do, trained on the job, and have their hands held. I'm sorry, but if you're 20+ years old and need someone to train you on the job, what have you spent the last 4 years doing?
When I'm hiring someone, I hire for trajectory. If you left high school, got your GED, started a business or non-profit (even if you failed), demonstrate that you can learn new skills without someone telling you to, then I'm way more interested in hiring you than someone who graduates from some of mid-range private college and hasn't done a lick of work outside of a couple internships.
Quite frankly, the only thing wrong with those low-wage jobs is that they're requiring a college degree. In my opinion, a large number of people graduating college these days aren't any better than someone who sat on their couch for the last 4 years.
(My experience encompasses several hundred interviews over the past 9 years)
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@atfsgeoff said in When a low-paying job requires a college degree (political thread):
There is not so much a pay shortage as there is an obscene money abundance. Especially since last year when the unemployment stimulus kicked in and people are getting paid the equivalent of $15-18/hour to sit at home and do nothing. Hyperinflation is real and it's here. Just wait for all forms of taxes to increase come 2022, along with everything else. You know all these supply shortages and goods being out of stock? That is because their prices are being kept low compared to all the extra free money that millions upon millions of people are getting, thus causing the demand to outstrip supply. Between the free money unemployment stimulus and the unending eviction moratorium, you have millions of literal leeches on society who are not only taking the stimulus and staying unemployed to keep collecting, but they are using it to buy stuff they don't need and shirk their actual financial responsibilities like, you know, rent. This artificial demand placed on all manner of goods does one of two things: either drives up the price, OR as we are still seeing, outstrips demand so that everything is out of stock.
Government jobs have so much red tape involved in salary negotiations and starting wage positions that they are lagging behind on offering meaningful compensation to anyone who actually wants to work instead of freeload off the system. And once they do start to increase wages, that means increased property taxes for everyone to pay for the increased wages, which in turn will cause cost of living to increase further, causing more people to drop into effective poverty.
End the stimulus, end the eviction moratorium, and we can begin to dig ourselves out of this pit we've been digging.
The problem isn't the unemployment pays more than some jobs. The problem is that some jobs pay less than unemployment.
Too many low-paying jobs like the restaurant industry where people are treated poorly, and most of them are very hard jobs, working harder than what people refer to as "real jobs" and they've had ENOUGH
The real leeches are Jeff Bezos and other billionaires (and other non-billionaire rich people) that pay no taxes yet thousands of their employees are on public assistance (even before the pandemic)
The issues predate the pandemic, though they have become even worse due to it.
Also, so many high-earners, 50-60k and up, lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and they're looking for a job that pays around what they made before losing their job. For example, someone making $30 per hour at their last job might get $18 on UE plus any boost ($300, was $600)
It is almost always better to wait for a job that pays near what you got before. If you were making $30 before, then took a $15/hr job, how do you convince future employers that you're worth $30 again?
The real solution is to raise the pay, offer REAL benefits, health insurance, 401k with a match, paid vacation days, paid holidays, and a steady schedule of consistent, full-time hours.
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@dogisbadob Raise minimum wage to $25 an hour. See what happens.
Billionaires are not leeches on society, quite the opposite: They accrue their billions based on what the rest of society sees as a net beneficial contribution to society. Nobody is forcing you to shop at amazon; they simply followed the ideal formula to maximize late stage American consumerism by not only offering the cheapest goods at the lowest prices possible with an easily browsed web (and later phone app) interface, but also delivering it to your doorstep for zero-effort consumption. Jeff Bezos is not a leech; American society is just cheap and lazy, and he successfully capitalized on it.
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@nickhasanexocet said in When a low-paying job requires a college degree (political thread):
@dogisbadob I disagree with Delaney. What we have is a population that is "over-degreed". How many times have you heard the phrase "it's just a piece of paper" when referring to a college diploma? That's because, in most cases, it's worthless - but not for the reasons you think.
People learn so freaking little in college these days, it's amazing. When I talk to fresh grads, they aren't at all ready for taking a job. They're basically unhirable. That includes people with some pretty amazing sounding degrees like "Bachelor of Science in Aerospace". They graduate wanting to be told what to do, trained on the job, and have their hands held. I'm sorry, but if you're 20+ years old and need someone to train you on the job, what have you spent the last 4 years doing?
When I'm hiring someone, I hire for trajectory. If you left high school, got your GED, started a business or non-profit (even if you failed), demonstrate that you can learn new skills without someone telling you to, then I'm way more interested in hiring you than someone who graduates from some of mid-range private college and hasn't done a lick of work outside of a couple internships.
Quite frankly, the only thing wrong with those low-wage jobs is that they're requiring a college degree. In my opinion, a large number of people graduating college these days aren't any better than someone who sat on their couch for the last 4 years.
(My experience encompasses several hundred interviews over the past 9 years)
Teachers definitely do deserve more money, and their jobs require a college degree. It is hard work, dealing with kids, parents, etc.
Another place the problem manifests is so-called "entry level" jobs that require 3-5 years of experience.
And yes, practically all jobs require some kind of training. The ones that don't, typically very senior roles, are very expensive high-dollar jobs.
Regarding what they learn in college, I found this site where most colleges are evaluated based on what their students are required to learn in school.
What kind of jobs do you hire for?
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@dogisbadob I wish we could pay teachers by how good they are and not how long they've been teaching. Frankly, the teachers union has itself to blame. A former teacher of mine, and someone that I now I call a friend, got run out of a school by a principal who didn't appreciate his teaching style. He didn't conform and as a result, many students learned more from him about how to succeed than any other teacher.
Entry level jobs that require experience are telling you that you wasted your college years. I started a company 2nd year of college. For a while I also had the company that I started when I was 14 on my resume (Web Design & Computer Repair business). I think most teachers are far too concerned with 1) themselves 2) the curriculum and 3) politics to teach students the life skills that they're going to need like being a self-starter, learning when you're required to learn, and acting autonomously / taking initiative. The right wing will complain that teachers are teaching compliance, but I just don't think they're teaching at all. They're puppeting what they're given because that's job security.
Training should be for things like proprietary systems that you can't be expected to know, procedures that differ from the norm, and mentorship. If I have to teach you how to use an Oxford comma (or type in complete sentences), communicate with coworkers over email, use the functions of photoshop, check code into Github, etc, then I don't have any use for you. The number of college graduates with a computer science degree that can't check code into Github is astounding. Use collaborative version control is a basic function of every company with software devs. Professors get so hung up on teaching polymorphism and various theories because they don't have a clue what's actually going on in the industry that people come out with the skills to contribute.
I've interviewed for software development, hardware development, business development, sales, marketing, public relations, executive positions, interns, office management, design, recruiting, HR, and finance. Maybe more - can't remember
Hiring for a technical content strategist soon. -
@atfsgeoff End deceptive right wing trickle down lies, and we can dig ourselves out of the hole we've been digging.
Pay has lagged so many COL factors for decades. If federal minimum wage had paced even the most rudimentary CPI caiculation, it would be 50% more than the current ridiculous number. Average incomes haven't fared much better related to the costs of housing, healthcare, education, transport, etc. But we have cheap TVs and cellphones, and lots of shit household goods from China, so I guess it all evens out.
Supply issues in lumber, imported furniture, some foodstuffs, etc, are all because some of those on the lower rungs of the economic spectrum didn't pay rent or got some extra unemployment bennies? What percentage of the population received extra unemployment? What percentage is taking advantage of the eviction moratorium? Guess I'd need to see more data.
American economic mobility and the overall socio-economic gap show a much deeper problem than misguided stimulus (and the wealthy got their share of it, too, not to mention trash like project veritas).
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@fintail I will reiterate to you then: Raise minimum wage to $25/hour. See what happens.
All things are possible with the power of sidewall
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@atfsgeoff I never advocated such, not sure where that red herring came from, but like most dead fish, it smells
However, I do know that $7.25 is criminal and regressive even for the backwards parts of this lovely devolving country.
Oh yeah, we are also not in anything near hyperinflation.
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@fintail Funny how the feds can throw a trillion dollars into the stock market, which nearly immediately disappears, and no one bats eye. Increase unemployment benefits, after state governments literally force people’s businesses to close for a once in a lifetime event, and certain people throw a fit. And the most fraud we saw over the last year was from people lying about relief payments for their companies, not workers trying to scam the government.
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@nickhasanexocet said in When a low-paying job requires a college degree (political thread):
How many times have you heard the phrase "it's just a piece of paper" when referring to a college diploma? That's because, in most cases, it's worthless
As a recent college grad with that piece of paper, I couldn't agree more. College is one of the biggest scams I ever threw money towards, with half the stuff I learned easily accessible on the internet and LinkedIn Learning, most times the teachers just pointed us in the right direction.
And yes, I agree that the things you do beyond college are more important than the things you do in college. That's the reason I have the job I do now.
That said, if colleges weren't so commercial, not overcharging so that students are forced to get jobs to pay off loans for the rest of their lives, and not underpaying teachers (horsecrap there's a money shortage. If you can't afford a good teacher, you're not a good school), or skimping on curriculum once the kids are in the door, then we'd see a lot better grads.
But our education system is flawed across the board, from early education to college. Public schools don't get enough depending on where they're located/local taxes, and colleges just suck the money out of you because, let's be real, it's a business. Everything's a business. And everything about that sucks.
Some journalist told me about this site. Now I own three cars.
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It's a tough one because it seems like both minimum wage and most wages in general have stagnated. Even jobs constantly in demand don't seem to increase their pay/benefits to make them more desirable.
One of the greatest issues we do have is that high school in particular is being geared to be collage and university prep but it does a piss poor job of actually determining for a student what they should do for a career and what take in collage or university. Making that life choice of what you want to do for a living at 16-17 when most people are still a raving idiot generally doesn't go well. How many students actually search to see if their chosen career path is actually in demand or has an applicable prospect at the end of post secondary? I know I sure as shit didn't, because at the time I was a 20yo idiot and not nearly smart enough to think like that.
If you go straight from High School to Post Secondary and Graduate without a Co-Op or Apprenticeship you're basically unqualified for work in your field because you have zero work experience. That shit is real chicken and the egg and it would be kind of funny if it wasn't so widespread; You want X years of field experience for the position but people can't get X years of field experience because they can't be hired because they don't have X years of field experience. My brother in law has a Masters in Biology and couldn't find a position for that exact reason. He is making a career in Revenue and I honestly don't think he's going to do anything in the field of Biology for the rest of his life.
I see a lot of people trying to chase easy money these days with careers. There seems to be a big push with the youth trying to gamble time into pursuing relatively high paying but low effort jobs.
Perhaps this will come off slightly boorish but I would steer my child to post secondary for Medical/Medicine, Law, Engineering, Business, Trades. Chances are there's an applicable and decent paying job for you right after the grad ceremony if not already lined up within the program. From what I've seen, arts has become a total write off (basically a scam) and even a lot of general Science is saturated with papers.
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@taylor-martin said in When a low-paying job requires a college degree (political thread):
As a recent college grad with that piece of paper, I couldn't agree more. College is one of the biggest scams I ever threw money towards, with half the stuff I learned easily accessible on the internet and LinkedIn Learning, most times the teachers just pointed us in the right direction.
As someone with a MechE degree, I can't agree with that sentiment.
It is true that most of the stuff I learned in college isn't going to be used again, but it also helped me define where exactly in the massive field of Mechanical Engineering I wanted to work. Plus, the introduction and explanation of several concepts is a huge help. Instead of starting from scratch to learn how to apply something I rarely use, I have a starting point of at least knowing the names for the concepts and a rough memory of how they should work.
For me, the most difficult thing to learn is that a specific task can be done. Once I know it is possible, then it's down to learning the method to accomplish it. It's fairly easy to learn online, it's even easier to re-learn a topic from a text book you already own, but it's almost impossible to learn something that you never knew existed.
