tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post8141100519510762516..comments2024-03-27T23:28:20.274-04:00Comments on Face to Face: Sanders supporters, the new populism, and the higher ed bubbleagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-68557821534297688112016-02-21T00:04:14.401-05:002016-02-21T00:04:14.401-05:00"Overqualified" only if you think having..."Overqualified" only if you think having a meaningless bachelor's degree qualifies you for anything.<br /><br />They are not even overqualified to be stocking the shelves at a supermarket. That would be if they had done that job inside and out as teenagers, and should have moved up to a more managerial position at the supermarket, or higher as a regional manager, etc.<br /><br />This isn't a pointless nitpick about semantics. We have to remind ourselves that most kids are graduating from college with absolutely nothing worth anything to any employer.<br /><br />If their degree is from an elite school, that's marketable per se. But then most kids aren't going to elite schools. No employer is impressed by the degree mill name on their bachelor's (and most state schools, including "flagship" schools, are de facto degree mills nowadays).<br /><br />They major in pointless crap on top of it.<br /><br />And they picked up no domain-general and transferable skills -- they still don't know basic tasks in Excel, they can't use online databases, and their only skills with word processors are adjusting the margins and spacing to hit a page count, and bullshitting a last-minute paper.<br /><br />They get an A on that paper due to grade inflation, but they pat themselves on the back for their excellent BS-ing skills. A real-world employer reads a report like that and concludes that they're braindead, clueless, lying, or shamelessly self-promoting.<br /><br />If we're going to burst the higher ed bubble, we need to drive home how UNDER-qualified it leaves the kids when they're done with it.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-40988942984869969932016-02-20T20:36:20.371-05:002016-02-20T20:36:20.371-05:00The underemployment rate (measuring those working ...The underemployment rate (measuring those working a job for which they’re overqualified and underpaid) for young adults below age 30 is 60%Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-53880561052911996502016-02-12T22:28:01.207-05:002016-02-12T22:28:01.207-05:00Social conservatives have been screaming for years...Social conservatives have been screaming for years that the decline of the family and its replacement by the educational system would ruin the latter institution, too. Schools are now a place for socialization for the state's interest, not the students' interests. There aren't enough married moms and dads around anymore to make the schools compete based on future opportunities for their graduates instead of the immediate value of daycare.<br /><br />Secularist strivers took the wrong road a long time ago, generations before the education bubble became a consequence of their decision. They are only "populists" because they failed to be elites, or rather what they imagined the elites to be. They never had a political ideology in the first place, because their status/identity is in fact their ideology. This has become such an important phenomenon to Democrats that the Republicans cannot help but react to it, and look ugly because it's still the 60's to the establishment trapped in a time warp.<br /><br />They won't ever listen to the religious pro-family conservatives who predicted all of this even in the Victorian era, when women were being granted political power. Most of them haven't even read Brave New World, published in 1932, so even the old left remnant is alien to them. They just like "feel the Bern" and they think he'll open up the next round of gibsmedats because he's a self-proclaimed socialist. Sure.<br /><br />They're hopeless. Growing up without a healthy family background does this to people, and all of it has happened because of state policy!Scaldnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-50103276058690279262016-02-12T15:49:21.000-05:002016-02-12T15:49:21.000-05:00Interesting comment section. I will look at my gen...Interesting comment section. I will look at my general experience from somewhere near the top of the higher ed perch and from somewhere that is getting sucked into the bubble:<br /><br />I went to one of the elite East Coast universities (US News top 10) where there were a good number of people majoring in some form of basket weaving. Ironically, these elite schools are definitively cheaper to attend for poor people due to their absurdly hedge fund like endowments and financial aid. Fortunately, for a good number of these basket weavers, they are much more able to get jobs in the more glamorous form of sales at companies like Google or IBM (like the client has been found, you just tell them what they need). The smart basketweavers can nail some case interviews and suddenly find themselves working for a Goldman or a McKinsey. That doesn't even take into account the opportunities at more available at start-ups due to significant alumni presences in Silicon Valley and Boston. The dirty secret for a lot of companies is how little they care in what you majored and moreso how you can prove your intelligence...provided you went to an acceptable school.<br /><br />On the other end of things, I am now wrapping up medical school at a place that 10 years ago got attached to a garbage state school, some place that can only retain 70% of its freshmen with an on-time graduation rate somewhere less than 25%. Looking from a distance, these undergrads at best get to go to job fairs with more regional companies and a bunch of some form of insurance sales. The attached graduate schools, unless they are Medicine or Pharmacy, do not exactly pump out inspiring people either. What I see is an extremely real higher education bubble for people who were never college material filling into school that should not have 20K enrollment.Angry Midwesternerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02284513805871450485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-15478579449320759492016-02-12T15:23:27.523-05:002016-02-12T15:23:27.523-05:00Also think of the lost income from going to colleg...Also think of the lost income from going to college vs. working straight out of high school. You earn nothing by going to college.<br /><br />Say they would have gotten a crummy $10/hr job, but still working 40 hours per week (across however-many crummy jobs they may have). At 50 weeks a year, that's $20K, and accumulated over 4 to 5 years, that's $80K to $100K of lost income, merely from attending college rather than working.<br /><br />And that's not even factoring in if they put it in something that would begin earning interest from such an early age.<br /><br />They also avoid a further $80K to $100K in loan debt -- not even to mention interest -- by working crummy jobs instead of going to college.<br /><br />So the full difference that the college grads have to make up is between $150K and $200K.<br /><br />For those who are part of the bubble, that's beyond hope. Even if those who don't belong in college, and who got worthless degrees, still eked out an extra $5k per year over no-college peers, they would only pay off that extra $200K by the time they retired in their 60s.<br /><br />Hardly the bonus they were promised.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-61519377561333358692016-02-12T15:04:04.442-05:002016-02-12T15:04:04.442-05:00"So you're saying college is still benefi..."So you're saying college is still beneficial, just not as beneficial as it was for Boomers?"<br /><br />We shouldn't think of "college education" as a fungible bunch of stuff, or "college grads" as monolithic.<br /><br />If the Millennials are college material and go to a good school, then they'll benefit from it. That is not the bubble.<br /><br />The bubble is more and more kids from farther to the left on the intelligence curve going to college, and to lower and lower-quality colleges.<br /><br />They aren't going to get anything from higher ed, and they'll be saddled with huge loans on top of it. Big net loss.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-18709678208987763882016-02-12T15:00:07.657-05:002016-02-12T15:00:07.657-05:00Something obvious that we haven't talked about...Something obvious that we haven't talked about is student loans that are in various degrees of delinquency and default. If the return to degrees was so great, there should be no such phenomenon.<br /><br />Instead, not only does it exist, it is getting worse and worse over time.<br /><br />And it's not because their incomes are great, but they're choosing to spend on luxuries rather than repaying their loans. They live at home or with roommates, they drive a beater, "dining out" means Panera, and so on.<br /><br />Conclusion: their incomes are too low to pay back the loans.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-69698593097757388722016-02-12T14:55:37.084-05:002016-02-12T14:55:37.084-05:00"As we've established, unless you're ..."As we've established, unless you're going into the trades, you need a bachelor's degree to get a career type job."<br /><br />Right, but even with the piece of paper from Degree Mill University, they won't get a real job -- meaning full-time, decent pay, decent benefits.<br /><br />It's really more like gambling -- you need to buy a stack of chips in order to play at the roulette table. But most people aren't going to get anything back. Actually worse than that -- as if the other roulette players could crowd you out of betting on a given number, and you're desperate to play your chips wherever there's an open space.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-9145061956943285332016-02-12T14:52:55.799-05:002016-02-12T14:52:55.799-05:00"When Millennials get into their 50s, the one...<i>"When Millennials get into their 50s, the ones who went to college will not have been very "college material" types, plus they're not ambitious, plus the Boomers will have clogged up the career advancement anyway. So they'll see a lot less of a return on their college education."</i><br /><br />So you're saying college is still beneficial, just not as beneficial as it was for Boomers? I agree. Boomers hit the motherload in just about every facet of life. But, that still doesn't mean college isn't worth it for people not going into the trades.JVnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-50113196374429264722016-02-12T14:49:26.051-05:002016-02-12T14:49:26.051-05:00"Esp if the costs for real estate, cars and c..."Esp if the costs for real estate, cars and childcare have all outpaced the kind of inflation measures the conrinc variable is based on (and I think they often do)."<br /><br />Right, one of the main effects of higher-ed uber alles, which is almost impossible to reverse, is the emptying out of small-to-medium towns and rural areas. There are no colleges there, certainly not the ones that someone would go to merely in order to make more money.<br /><br />College-seekers are ratcheted toward geographic locations where there is a higher and higher concentration of residents, and in particular of wealthy or striver residents, all of which sends their real estate costs through the roof, compared to if they and their parents had stayed where their family was originally from.<br /><br />The Greatest Gen college grad might have temporarily left his small/medium town to get a bachelor's degree, and then returned to manage a local or regional manufacturing plant, serve as a small-town lawyer / doctor / engineer, and so on.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-32201580178602207062016-02-12T14:44:43.529-05:002016-02-12T14:44:43.529-05:00"it doesn't look so much like the older, ..."it doesn't look so much like the older, career end group were getting a higher premium to education back in 1974-1985 compared against their equivalents in the Millennial era, when education is more crowded. Instead they have more advantage if anything."<br /><br />Well remember a 50-something in the '70s, college-educated or not, was a Greatest Gen. Not part of the careerist Silents and especially Boomers. Those Greatest Gen members who did go to college were college material, but didn't try to leverage their degrees into world domination -- more like stewardship of a company, keeping their home town operating smoothly, and so on.<br /><br />The 50-somethings of today are careerist Boomers, who used their degrees in a no-holds-barred contest to the top -- and for them, there's no upper limit on where the top is.<br /><br />When Millennials get into their 50s, the ones who went to college will not have been very "college material" types, plus they're not ambitious, plus the Boomers will have clogged up the career advancement anyway. So they'll see a lot less of a return on their college education.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-22876215146840136892016-02-12T14:36:00.361-05:002016-02-12T14:36:00.361-05:00"So education (or, possibly more likely, what..."So education (or, possibly more likely, what education is a proxy for) takes time to accumulate income returns."<br /><br />Or, you're seeing a cohort effect -- 50-somethings in the '70s were Greatest Gen, who came of age before the higher ed bubble. 50-somethings in the 21st century, when the gains are much greater, are Boomers, who timed the higher-ed bubble perfectly.<br /><br />With the boost to post-high-school education already shrinking among 20-somethings nowadays, I doubt it will look much rosier for them as they go through middle age.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-69889991208862815242016-02-12T14:25:23.533-05:002016-02-12T14:25:23.533-05:00"Not much of an educational premium to a bach..."Not much of an educational premium to a bachelor's, quite a bit of one to an graduate degree"<br /><br />Again let's look at EDUC for years of education rather than highest degree. Still 22-30 year-olds. Comparing only those with 0-12 vs. 13-16 years of education (doctorates, professional degrees, etc. -- they're college material, getting higher-quality degrees). And looking over time in 5-year periods.<br /><br />For income, we can't use mean since there's a long tail. Rather than get fine-grained, I'll just look at who makes from $30K-70K, roughly middle to upper-middle class. (It doesn't say which year these dollars represent, so may be a more upper-middle class compared to today's dollars.)<br /><br />In 1970-74, this middle-class income was found among 5% vs. 7% of no-college vs. some-college people.<br /><br />Gradually, this difference widens toward a maximum in the late '80s. In 1985-89, the middle-class income was 12% vs. 24% of no-college vs. some-college people. Someone who was in their 20s during that time was a late Boomer -- therefore, ignore all advice about higher ed from late Boomers. They struck the mother lode, and there's less and less available for young people today.<br /><br />Gradually the gap *narrows*, so that by 2010-14, the middle-class income was 6% vs. 15% of no-college vs. some-college people.<br /><br />So, good incomes are less common for no-college and some-college types, because the economy today has primarily benefited those at the top. But even worse, the boost of college education has shrunken.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-68375326979494375692016-02-12T13:49:48.476-05:002016-02-12T13:49:48.476-05:00College enrollments (count, but per capita will sh...College enrollments (count, but per capita will show a similar rise since population is not increasing exponentially):<br /><br />http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z3IIJQrNlnA/TSNXqFlUOZI/AAAAAAAAAIY/IGwq5R1WOQA/s1600/College%2BEnrollment.jpg<br /><br />The higher ed bubble begins during the 1960s, probably the later part of the decade.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-41903521275590581552016-02-12T13:47:56.164-05:002016-02-12T13:47:56.164-05:00"OTOH the younger set (age 22-30) doesn't..."OTOH the younger set (age 22-30) doesn't change too much in educational levels from 1974-2010"<br /><br />There's data through 2014. Having no more than a high school diploma among 22-30 year-olds fell from 81% to 66%, from 1972 to 2014.<br /><br />But that only looks at what degree you have -- you can attend college and not get a degree (more likely if you're not college material, and are part of the malinvestment bubble).<br /><br />The variable EDUC measures how many years of education you've had. Looking at this across the years, for 22-30 year-olds, having 0-12 years of education (no more than high school) fell from 57% to 36%, from 1972 to 2014.<br /><br />Much bigger change, because some of those in the first look at degrees still have only a high school diploma as their highest degree, but now also several years of college, but with no degree to show for it.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-62543948249563070642016-02-12T13:39:58.189-05:002016-02-12T13:39:58.189-05:00"OK, but it wasn't a meteor from outer sp...<i>"OK, but it wasn't a meteor from outer space that blew up those parts of the school budgets. It was parents, administrators, politicians -- all adults responsible for raising the next generation -- who decided that shop class for guys, and home ec for girls, was just too backward and embarrassing. In the future, all children will score above 1300 on the SAT and get wonderful managerial jobs -- so there goes the funding for shop, home ec, and the rest."</i><br /><br />People don't vote to defund public schools because of specific programs, they do so out of misplaced animosity towards teachers and administrators stemming from the tiresome pretend fight against "big government." But you're right, it is the fault the voters and politicians, and to some extent, school administrators, although they can only work with the budget they get. <br /><br /><i>"The vast bulk of those kids will go to college, acquire no useful knowledge or skills, be saddled with $50K and up of debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy court, and have to take crummy jobs and live with their parents or roommates."</i><br /><br />I'd like to see some data on that claim. It's true that crushing student debt deflates people's real income years after graduating, but without a degree and without interest in / aptitude for a trade, a person will ultimately earn far less. I think instead of discouraging people, even those who may not have gone to college in previous generations, from getting a degree, we should be emphasizing degrees in fields with growth potential. When we're hiring, it can take us a few months to fill some positions because there aren't enough qualified candidates. As I stated earlier, mid-level tech jobs are the new manufacturing jobs. These jobs ain't rocket science, but they do require some education and training, so anyone who would have worked on an assembly line in previous generations can easily learn to code well enough to get hired. <br /><br /><i>"You can't be even remotely invested in the repair, maintenance, and improvement of your country and not be disgusted by the fraud and exploitation that's going on with the colleges, and sadly with the striver parents who ought to know better but are blinded by visions of "every child a doctorate"."</i><br /><br />It's not about "every child a doctorate," it's about every job requiring a degree. As we've established, unless you're going into the trades, you need a bachelor's degree to get a career type job. Parents sending their kids to college are merely equipping them for the MINIMUM requirement. Sure, if they hang around grad school, that's different.JVnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-84080940604582776402016-02-12T12:56:54.343-05:002016-02-12T12:56:54.343-05:00Looking at earnings alone, it doesn't look to ...Looking at earnings alone, it doesn't look to much to me like young people in the US today get a lower income out of college than 30 years ago, but of course there is the question of higher debts, and whether a lot of big costs are increasing above inflation (housing, and having a family).<br /> <br />A few GSS graphs on the question of educational returns<br /><br />1. http://i.imgur.com/GWknOkW.png - Educational level of different age groupings across the years of the GSS. You can see that across the cohort I've bracked as older (aged 45-60) there's a huge change, with relatively few highly educated in 1974 and many more in 2010. OTOH the younger set (age 22-30) doesn't change too much in educational levels from 1974-2010, with a little expansion in junior college and bachelors and less high school only (but less change overall than the older group).<br /><br />The conrinc variable is income adjusted for general inflation measure.<br /><br />2. http://i.imgur.com/z6Ixeuh.png - what the young group today is making for different educational levels, today (2000-2015, Millennial era), in constant dollars. Not much of an educational premium to a bachelor's, quite a bit of one to an graduate degree (but grad degree holders are also older than bachelor's).<br /><br />3. http://i.imgur.com/BF5nPzA.png - Equivalent for the older 45-60 year old group. A much larger magnitude of change for each group, and a big advantage to the bachelor's. So education (or, possibly more likely, what education is a proxy for) takes time to accumulate income returns.<br /><br />4. http://i.imgur.com/CFEkSbj.png- Young group in 1974-1990<br /><br />5. http://i.imgur.com/nVWIHag.png- Old group in 1974-1990<br /><br />Comparing the older groups, if the conrinc variable is valid (big if), it doesn't look so much like the older, career end group were getting a higher premium to education back in 1974-1985 compared against their equivalents in the Millennial era, when education is more crowded. Instead they have more advantage if anything.<br /><br />At least for those periods and age groups, it looks like more educated didn't mean that the highly educated were thrown into competition and had reduced incomes.<br /><br />Comparing the younger groups, to me it looks like the educational premium is about the same as it was, except that graduate students have really taken off and left less educated behind.<br /><br />This doesn't mean that it's not correct that the market for education has become saturated, and that there won't be different associations for income and education in 20-30 years time, compared to how it is for old in 2000-2010 and old in 1975-1990.<br /><br />It also doesn't mean that for younger people today, everything is just as good, if the cost of education (debt) has increased, while the return stays the same (that's less wealth in their pocket, moved to finance and the education industry and they'll be feeling it). Esp if the costs for real estate, cars and childcare have all outpaced the kind of inflation measures the conrinc variable is based on (and I think they often do).<br /><br />Re: employment status among the young, the transformations across the years, that have happened looks like the strongest trend is displacement of housewives into part time and full time employment (50% of young women housewives in 1974, 10-15% 2014), while male employment looks to have displaced a little to accommodate (but possibly there may be more of a change in terms of male wages?) - GSS : http://i.imgur.com/Ih60AKB.png. Young male full time employment looks like it's at the worst it's been at least since the 1970s though, for sure.Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-81835997804601282732016-02-12T12:40:21.690-05:002016-02-12T12:40:21.690-05:00Running a forum would take way more time and atten...Running a forum would take way more time and attention than it would be worth.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-63705626940934263342016-02-12T09:23:26.821-05:002016-02-12T09:23:26.821-05:00"Wow, didn't expect this many comments. I..."Wow, didn't expect this many comments. I'll have to post more on Bern-arino. To much to respond to, won't rehash anything I've already covered."<br />Have you considered starting a forum? Many thought criminals have been quitting social media recently due to censorship, so there could be a niche.Marcusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-65110129113985216302016-02-12T02:15:31.291-05:002016-02-12T02:15:31.291-05:00Aside from the direct benefit to our economy and g...Aside from the direct benefit to our economy and government, the best thing about the Trump phenomenon is delighting in all these cuckservative glibertarians waving their limp magic wands, trying to make reality and the march of history go away.<br /><br />To hear them tell it, the laissez-faire hegemony of the Gilded Age was never broken, there was no McKinley tariff or further tariffs, no closing of the immigration gates, no New Deal, and no golden age of the American economy and government.<br /><br />The best part is that changes move so long in one direction that these cucks won't see even the beginning of any reversal back toward libertarianism within their own lifetimes. They're going to be feebly cursing Trump and his successors until they drop dead.<br /><br />It's going to be hilarious and righteous. Keep it up fellas, you couldn't be making us happier.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-34428342822459999042016-02-12T02:09:04.660-05:002016-02-12T02:09:04.660-05:00Chagal: doubting the Trump army's power can be...Chagal: doubting the Trump army's power can be pardoned as cuckist defeatism, but for actively calling for the great big Asian termite mound to replace good American jobs, we're going to have to hog-tie you and throw you to the unemployed termites for use as a waifu pillow. Hope you like the smell of rice rotting your rectum.<br /><br />Don't comment anymore. Banned.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-60916995250628490522016-02-12T02:00:20.600-05:002016-02-12T02:00:20.600-05:00"I totally agree college tuitions are out of ..."I totally agree college tuitions are out of whack, outside of CA. (That's one thing CA is getting right, for now). This can be traced directly to policies that continue to strip away state funding for education, placing more and more of the burden on the individual."<br /><br />No, the main cause of higher costs is soaring demand. Exponentially more kids attend college now compared to 40 years ago. Supply cannot keep up because the existing stock of colleges was meant to accommodate the 15% who are college material, and founding entirely new colleges is not easy or persuasive -- "Come get your degree from Fly By Night University, only $99,999 -- ask about our financial aid packages!"<br /><br />It's no different with the prices of real estate -- soaring demand, from immigrants, from transplants descending on desirable locations, from whatever else.<br /><br />When people stayed where they came from -- social station and geographic location -- prices were a lot lower and more stable. And the status-strivers and transplants didn't bury themselves under debt by jumping on the higher ed / big city bandwagon.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-64449187256591176082016-02-12T01:50:29.544-05:002016-02-12T01:50:29.544-05:00"I don't want to emphasize the trades too..."I don't want to emphasize the trades too much, though. When all those off-shored sectors come back during Trump's first administration, it will bring back all sorts of managerial jobs too -- but ones that you have to rise through the ranks to get, not just land from out of nowhere with an MBA."<br /><br />Yeah, Trump is just going to go against the tidal wave of prevailing economics wisdom, the entire business establishment and upset the global order to bring back the 1960's rust belt so that that he can satisfy some loud cranky lower middle class losers who are scared of competing with Asians for jobs. It's just not going to happen.chagalnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-86510303716516272902016-02-12T01:48:28.770-05:002016-02-12T01:48:28.770-05:00"The economic analysis finds that Millennial ..."The economic analysis finds that Millennial college graduates ages 25 to 32 <b><i>who are working full time</i></b> earn more annually—about $17,500 more—than employed young adults holding only a high school diploma."<br /><br />I emphasized the qualifier of all qualifiers -- assuming that a college-educated Millennial is actually working full-time... big assumption.<br /><br />In reality, the majority of them are employed part-time, perhaps at several part-time jobs (by definition crummy jobs), or not employed at all. Labor force participation it at historic lows, and is far worse among Millennials. I'm too lazy to look up exactly how bad it is, but wouldn't be surprised if working 10 hours or less per week accounts for nearly half of Millennial 20-somethings.<br /><br />And remember that college-educated Millennials who are working full-time, includes the 10-15-20% who are college material, and do not fall under my trashing of the higher ed scam.<br /><br />And that doesn't include the comparison at the other end -- if you're unemployed or underemployed, then going to college is a huge negative because you're not earning anything, but still have a giant student loan debt accruing more and more interest.<br /><br />For the cases I'm talking about, it's obviously a net loss. Otherwise Bernie Sanders wouldn't have caught on so much among Millennials. Just like if there were so many good blue-collar jobs, Trump would not have caught on with the working class.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-48773103820078387552016-02-12T01:38:04.849-05:002016-02-12T01:38:04.849-05:00Anyone who thinks Trump is going to impose a tax o...Anyone who thinks Trump is going to impose a tax on offshoring such that megacorps are going to repatriate manufacturing to the tune of millions of jobs is dreaming. Trump is a trumpet for the malcontented lower middle class whites who have to compete with desperate Vietnamese making iphones for $5 a day, but that's all he is. Even if he were to get into office, he'd just tweak things around the edges like every president does, and spin it using his talent for bullshit. Minor tweaks and predestined inevitabilities dressed up fantastic opportunities, amazing plans, and basically, "WINNING". Trump's shtick is literally as retarded as Charlie Sheen's. He's got a 5 word vocabulary. Does anyone really think things are going to change because a lot of whiners are whining?<br /><br />Better stop listening to people on internet, go to college, get a degree in engineering or at the very least a millwright ticket, and stop fucking around. Trump ain't going to change your life, loser.chagalnoreply@blogger.com