You are assuming once you are in a class, you stay there and can't get out. It's kinda like saying, a basketball player gets contract for $100M and you will always be a millionaire. From JuanValdez's link. People move up in income classes through the years, except the top income class in which their income tends to drop. " the study found that nearly 58 percent of the households that were in the lowest income quintile (the lowest 20 percent) in 1996 moved to a higher income quintile by 2005. Similarly, nearly 50 percent of the households in the second-lowest quintile in 1996 moved to a higher income quintile by 2005. Even a significant number of households in the third- and fourth-lowest income quintiles in 1996 moved to a higher quintile in 2005. The Treasury study also documented falls in household income between 1996 and 2005. This is most interesting when considering the richest households. As shown in Figure 1B, more than 57 percent of the richest 1 percent of households in 1996 fell out of that category by 2005. Similarly, more than 45 percent of the households that ranked in the top 5 percent of income in 1996 fell out of that category by 2005."
In my own experience people who primarily have focused on math, engineering and science often cannot look at issues from multiple viewpoints as their training is often focused on understanding the math without understanding the concepts. In graduate school as an architecture student I took a steels class in the civil engineering department. The professor was so fed up with how little the students understood the concepts, even though they could do the math very well, that he made them write an essay for the midterm to see if they could verbalize the principles rather than just problem solve math equations. I'm saying this not as someone trying to dump on engineers and in my own field I have criticized what I consider the dumbing down of architectural education (many schools have reduced the amount of math and science needed for architecture degrees and almost throughout the US an undergrad Arch. degree is basically a liberal arts degree.) That said you are making a pretty sweeping generalization regarding science degrees and liberal arts degrees.
So since my wife and I have sacrificed some things in our lives and have been extremely educated and have specialized in high income areas and have taken on big risks which have led to big rewards: we are pushing into "wealthy" territory. When are you going to come take my wealth and perhaps more? I need to schedule this in since I'm so busy building even more wealth.
The reign of the 1 percenters http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6470 Interesting article. It does raise the question: what percentage of what the investment branch of banks does actually benefits society.
My brief thoughts on the "useful degrees" side argument: if a liberal arts degree really was useless, the market would punish those people. They wouldn't make any more than workers with a high school diploma. But, they do. The market says those degrees are worth something.
One requires math, and the other one doesn't. One is backwards compatible, and the other one isn't (meaning that science majors can take arts classes, but arts majors cannot take science classes). Are there unbalanced individuals who only know how to solve math problems? Sure. But they have the choice to do philosophy/sociology etc. and learn critical thinking. Arts majors simply are not given the choice to comprehend math, statistics, or science (at least not on an advanced level), unless they want to completely re-do their curriculum. With that said, all things equal, businesses, governments, institutions everywhere are looking for people that can crunch the numbers, so even people who can only problem solve are more functionally viable than people who can only think critically. This isn't just a vocational thing either. Take any problem out there---how can you solve world hunger without understanding how high-yield crops, and genetics work? How can you solve income inequality without understanding how to derive optimal tax rates? How can you do anything with machinery without understanding coding? That's not a sweeping generalization, it's just a fact. Arts majors tend to lead to lower salaries. They are limiting in that you cannot be exposed to many subjects, and therefore you never have the full view of any issue. The biggest lie in America right now is that a good education of any kind will lead you anywhere---which just isn't true anymore. It's leading to really f**ked up things, like America slipping in science and technology competitiveness, overcrowded law schools below the T-14 and arts doctorate programs that lead to indebted students with much diminished job prospects and etc. If you're in education just to be intrinsically satisfied, so be it. Maybe you're poor and you've never been, or you're rich, and you can afford to stick around. Pell Grants exist for that first reason, and I'm not advocating their repeal (far from it), because any education is better than no education. If you're in education because you want to be well-balanced, and be able to attack issues of significance with both mathematical and critical analysis, then I highly recommend you go through a science/math/engineering/economics degree, and I ardently believe that the more people go through these degrees, the better-off society will be. Which is why I think government funding of those programs, and scholarships, should reflect that.
first off, sorry to you for derailing off of your ideas, most are quite good. I picked a bone about one, and I guess it just flew off. (sorry to B-Bob too) My own thoughts on the original topic can be summed up by shock at these charts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/income-inequality/ With that said, obviously college degrees of any kind are worth more than high school degrees. A college education of any kind is better than no college education. However, think of it in terms of cost/benefit---and comparative worth. Everyone is paying about the same for their degree, but some are going to end up with only slightly more empowering, and better-paying jobs than high school students. That's just wrong. If you're thinking of the market wage as a gauge of capacity to contribute to society---well--- http://finance.yahoo.com/college-ed...tive-college-degrees.html?mod=edu-collegeprep
It sounds like if you were the GM for a basketball team, you would sign nothing but centers and power forwards, reasoning that bigs tend to have better shooting percentages and lower turnover rates. And, you can always play some of your 4s out of position because you can teach a power forward to dribble and pass, but you can't teach a point guard to be tall and strong. For proof, you can see the bigs get paid more than wings and guards too. Our economy is intercomplementary. We have a vast array of fields and some demand and develop different sets of skills than the others. You're going to need all of them (in some ratio) to be successful. To get to the larger point, regardless of what sorts of edcuation you want to promote, our current education industry is putting a divisive pressure on class, where people have to incur large debts to get the degrees neeed for high-paying jobs. Those without money are more likely to be dissuaded from taking the debt (even if after-college earning power would be the same). Plus, those without money would be less likely to be able to leverage that degree to get as good a job, because they don't have the right culture or know the right people. Radically equalizing the personal cost of education will remove the calculus of whether it is worth the risk of borrowing.
The point is the ratio is out of whack. Using your own analogy, America is full of point guards who can't shoot. They can pass to shooters, but the problem is most of the shooters are being imported from other countries with H1B visas, and they're starting to go back to their homelands. Also, while shooters can learn how to pass, if we are to follow the analogy through, passers cannot learn how to shoot. An engineering major can take a MBA, but an arts major can not take a masters in science. So eventually, you end up with a team of passers, but precious few people who can shoot, and almost none who can shoot, and pass.
Can you give an example of a liberal arts degree program that doesn't require math? Demonstrably false. Sweeping generalization #1. What the **** does "functionally viable" mean? Is that some weird way of setting up a normative social Darwinism to support your poorly-reasoned position? By the way, you don't have a problem to solve until someone thinks critically about a situation. The act of framing an experience in problematic terms necessarily involves processing of raw linguistic and representational information into a set of coherent inputs. Only then can your beloved number cruncher sit down and return an output that anybody cares about. As I sit here furiously pounding on these little buttons with letters printed on them, a notification pops up on my screen letting me know that my grandmother has sent me a Facebook message. I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that my grandmother doesn't understand coding (at least no more than any other lay person), but somehow she manages to do something with a highly complex machine with the help of a network of millions of other highly complex machines. Amazing! Granted, I don't think my grandmother will solve world hunger or income inequality any time soon, but who has? They're still problems, right? And who's to say that all those math nerds will give a **** about those issues when they're taking home those fat salaries shown in the chart you posted? There is not a single person on this planet that understands how every component works in a modern toaster, much less a computer. Having experts in specialized fields is no doubt critical to accomplishing certain goals, but how much good did all those Chinese engineers do once the Great Wall was finished? Do you know what "liberal arts" means? Sweeping generalization #2. Biggest lie in America? Really ****ed up things? Seriously? Your argument is really flying off the handle. I will just again suggest that you take some more "structured classes" on how to form an opinion, because this opinion is really poorly formed. Sweeping generalization #3 #4 Gee, thanks for the recommendation. I might have taken it seriously if it wasn't so laden with faulty assumptions and fallacious logic. Honestly, dude, you have no idea what the **** you're talking about. Not saying that I do, but, thanks to extensive training in critical thinking, I quite well know bull**** when I smell it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug "Faulty assumptions, sweeping generalizations and fallacious logic." "Number crunchers" are obviously deficient in all other qualities. They are smelly, clammy, cannot think for themselves, and get about as much p***y as the Pope. There's no way they can't think of a problem themselves, and then go out and solve them. They need arts majors out in Silicon Valley, they need them in the halls of Goldman Sachs, because verily, a problem cannot exist until an arts major defines it. mhmm. Anyways, I'm not saying there's no role for arts, just that there are WAY too many arts students in comparison to students with extensive math skills, and that the government should act accordingly (yay for being a New Keynesian). Also, in general, science degrees are better than arts ones IN MY OPINION before you fly off the handle. If our entire society was built around technocrats who could not think critically, well, I might think differently, but the fact is I believe we are on the opposite side of that extreme these days, and thus my bias against the arts stands. Btw, if you don't believe this is an important issue, just look at the cash cows that for example, law schools (often the only escape for an arts major) have become. Look at burgeoning student debt for degrees that yield almost nothing in value-added pay. This is an important issue that, tying back to the topic, will ensure that the middle class children who do not have the connections to get into a T-14, or the support necessary to maintain the near-destitute lifestyle of arts academia, will be poorer through no fault of their own. I still maintain that this is the biggest delusion in America these days---and that professors and colleges who are mass-herding an overwhelming ratio of kids through these easier arts degrees are doing society harm. Not all education is equal. Government money should reflect that. Hell, societal views should reflect that. http://dailyinfographic.com/the-law-school-bubble-infographic http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937/ http://life.salon.com/2011/06/19/time_to_kill_liberal_arts/ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/business/economy/19grads.html?_r=1
Northside, aside from hijacking my thread (and my attempt to once and for all change the nation by stirring a sweeping movement for justice to life, *sigh*), I think you are oversimplifying a great deal. And I have pursued physics, happily so. 1. Some of these majors make so much money because you can't find many of them. If you forced the system to create droves of, say, chemical engineers, they would of course become less valuable. 2. There just aren't that many people with the right skill sets to finish the degrees you list. I teach college classes, and I've seen thousands of students now, and a lot of science majors should probably pursue other work, never mind the non-science majors. 3. (minor, gray area point) I work with lots of alumni too, and some of the most successful, wealthy, and entrepreneurial, bar none, are English majors. I'm specific because it's that specific. So I'm sympathetic to your notions, but I think something like this would be more practical: The government could promote more science and math at the college level by requiring grant recipients to take (for example) at least three courses at college: one math, one basic science (Bio, Chem, or Physics), and one programming-related course. That would automatically raise the ambient level of education, without forcing people who can't do basic algebra to try to become computer scientists.
Yeah, sorry for the hijacking, it just kinda blew up. I do think you bring a really good point. I owe you a beer (and a rather good one too). That said, my point reflects yours. The ratio is out of whack. If arts students were lacking, I'd posit that more government support should go in that direction. With that said, my opinion is that there should be more science-oriented people anyways---you can all bring examples of arts students running the world, I'll just bring examples of engineering, economics, math and physics students doing their thing---think Stiglitz, HeliBen, the scions of Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc, never mind my abstract examples. I could live with a 1.5 engineering/math/science to 1 arts student ratio. In America, the ratio is currently around 4 arts students to 1 math-oriented major. Government money should flow to subsidize math majors, subsidize K-12 math/science educations, tilt scholarships and grants to math/science, increase funding to science/engineering organizations. I don't want to cut education funding for liberal arts, but a hell of a lot more funding should be focused ONLY on math/science education to correct the imbalances. I refuse to believe that people just "cannot" learn math. You just need the right incentives in there. To tie it to the original point again, if you want to correct income imbalances, making sure that people graduate with the right skill sets would go a long way.
It can be argued that the financial biz provides some worthwhile contributions to society, They now drain off about twice as much of the GDP as they did say 30 years ago. No argument can be made to support this ncreased diversion of resources from the productive economy. Time to reign them in. Occupy Wall Street. Something a super majority of Americans can agree on.
The average American family would be making$12,500 per yr more if the uppper 1% was still taking the same share of the pie as they did before Reaganomics. ********* According to Paul Buchheit, a professor with City Colleges of Chicago and founder of fightingpoverty.org, “if middle- and upper-middle-class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year.” The size of our economy, he wrote, “has quintupled since 1980, and we all contributed to that success. But our contributions have earned us nothing. While total income has also quintupled, percentage-wise almost all the gains went to the richest 1 percent.” This upward redistribution of wealth “translates into a trillion extra dollars of income every year for the richest 1 percent.” Other interesting factoids from the article, which is well worth reading is that in 1979 the top 1% had http://www.alternet.org/economy/152...e_making_thousands_of_dollars_more_right_now/
Addendum from same article in previous post. ********** There are two things that are vitally important to understand about this. First, those at the top of the ladder aren't any more virtuous, intelligent or hardworking than they were 30 years ago, and this didn't happen by accident. Some part of it may well have resulted from technological innovations, but the lion's share of that shift resulted from specific policy changes that the corporate Right fought hard to enact.
