[iknowexactly]

(12-21-2016 05:50 AM)ball dont lie Wrote:  

One issue with this kind of bar graph and median salary is that the USA/the west has become incredibly bi-modal.

As Tyler Cowen says (hes right on this) Average is Over! Its winners and losers. Bi-modal. Average means nothing anymore.

I am totally on board with the idea that income differences are tolerated too much ( CEOs making 300X what the workers do) which is part of what your cited author is against I believe. (See chart at bottom.)

I think there is bimodality in incomes and he and you are right.

One way to avoid this is if you get into a profession with a protective guild-- sometimes the libertarian-hated "unions".

I have a license with such a profession, and unemployment in the profession is essentially zero.

But you need a real skill. For instance, if you just worked on an assembly line and you were replaced by a robot, your union membership might not help a lot, although you'd likely get a better severance package.

But at the same time--

Average means "nothing"?! This is not very good critical thinking, and I addressed that in my initial post. Real data rarely means nothing-- it may be off my 20-30% -- who knows, sometimes it's TOTALLY falsified-- but all-or-nothing thinking most of the time is just not reflective of reality.

But thanks for the reference. I'm sure he has a point in some cases, but he's trying to sell a book-- and "in some cases" doesn't make a compelling sales hook.

At least you have some DATA -- this author-- But you're holding up the research of Tyler Cowen, who is an Economics Professor (Presumably PhD) at an established university and was educated at George Mason University AND Harvard University, as an argument that education with all other things being equal is not good for one's future?

Also his education I'm guessing was economics and IDK if that passed the hard science "STEM" label favored in most posts here. I mean "demand" is a fuzzy concept, right?

We would never have ever HEARD of dude if he wasn't highly educated.

Forbes magazine has a negative review of his predictions here:
( login wall)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrick...65e28445a6
======

Now, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen is making a splash with his new book Average Is Over. The book is a nonfiction prediction of an American society comprised of 10 to 15 percent highly prosperous achievers and a “permanent underclass” dwelling in shantytowns and subsisting on beans. With all due respect to the highly erudite Cowen, this is not the natural evolutionary future of market economies.

Let me emphasize that this is not a review of Cowen’s book, but an attempt to show why his gloomy vision is flawed in its very conception. This may be the gloomiest pronouncement by an economist since the Malthusian/Ricardian “iron law of wages” mistakenly posited that laborers would inexorably have to settle for subsistence wages.
=======
My point is you have to look at the data. The logical fallacy of "poisoning the well" because there is some irregularities in a distribution curve-- the bimodality you assert-- doesn't totally invalidate the averages in most cases.

"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics" is funny, and Mark Twain was a genius, but that quip is an example of exaggerating to make a point.


I'm the male cat lady.

[ball dont lie]

Again, you are not talking about averages, you are talking about winners.

Your example was professional degrees and how you don't have any unemployment. Is the right course of action for 50,000 more people to get that professional degree? That's what a lot of lawyers thought, especially the last 15 years, and it hasn't gone very well. Especially for the bottom 50%.

There are winners and losers. You keep touting winners and saying, look, the data means something.

If we know that the top 10% of the professional degree holders are making 200-300k to 3-4 million a year and the average salary is X, lets say 75k, there are a lot of losers to balance that median out. Those people also have all the debt from the education. Even more to the point, real unemployment numbers are around 20% if we count people who are not working and want to, not the made up numbers that only count people still receiving unemployment benefits (Thank Bill Clinton for that way to hide numbers). I doubt the bar graph you are show (which must mean something) is taking into account the tens of millions of people with zero income.

If an economy doesn't work for the bottom 50% its a failed economy. That's the USA now. Winners are certainly winning, but the losers are losing their shirts. Its how Trump won.

It has nothing to do with "all else being equal, getting more education is a good thing". If everyone studied for your professional degree would they all make a lot of money? Of course not, since there will be winners and losers along with a finite demand for different skills. If the economy cant find jobs for people willing to work that pay a living wage, "all else being equal" doesn't work.

[ball dont lie]

Belgrano from the Trump thread had an interesting piece of news that shows the idea of winners and losers.

news

Quote:

Investing.com -- A new study by economists from Harvard and Princeton indicates that 94% of the 10 million new jobs created during the Obama era were temporary positions.

The study shows that the jobs were temporary, contract positions, or part-time "gig" jobs in a variety of fields.

Female workers suffered most heavily in this economy, as work in traditionally feminine fields, like education and medicine, declined during the era.

The research by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that the proportion of workers throughout the U.S., during the Obama era, who were working in these kinds of temporary jobs, increased from 10.7% of the population to 15.8%.

Krueger, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was surprised by the finding.

The disappearance of conventional full-time work, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work, has hit every demographic. “Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost,” said Krueger.

Under Obama, 1 million fewer workers, overall, are working than before the beginning of the Great Recession.

The outgoing president believes his administration was a net positive for workers, however.

"Since I signed Obamacare into law (in 2010), our businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs," said Obama, during his farewell press conference last Friday, covered by Investing.com.

There are some winners, but the losers so vastly outnumber the winners that the idea of an "average" doesn't mean anything.

[fiasco360]

I'm in this bracket. I graduated with a masters degree in engineering above 3.0 and worked at a well known company as a contractor while I was in school. I've been hustling for years networking at events, flying across country for giant career fairs and cold calling companies on occasion.

A girl I dated years ago actually recently connected me with a family member of hers that works in the industry I want to break into. My uncle worked as an engineer for a large city in California and told me that they probably can't pick me up because they have a 30% diversity quota and I don't meet the criteria.

Not really complaining, I know something will come through soon but student loan anxiety hangs over me.

[Neo]

Definitely some BS going on in this article, living in SF, mostly unemployed for 7 years, but I'll bite. I feel for the unemployed/underemployed and I've been there. A few years after college I attempted to go into a business and went busto, it sucked, but I got back up and fought again. Now, I'm doing better than ever before, and the past 5 years have been a clear upward trend.

However the bottom line is, if this guy is telling the truth, he just isn't that good plain and simple.

By 47 he hasn't seemed to have figured out several things:

1) Living below your means. (Apparently lives in Silicon valley, is constantly unemployed, and probably mooching off the wife.)
2) Networking (Sending out 100s of job applications online, instead of making some phone calls to people who can vouch for him.)
3) Likeability and game (He seems whiny and weak from his writing.)
4) Doesn't take action (Seems to like whining about it more.)

This is basic stuff guys on the forum have been talking about for years.

I understand that in certain situations things happen, and it could happen to any of us. One of us could get very sick and have to wipe out our savings with medical bills. Hyperinflation can hit and our hard money is worth nothing, etc. etc. Some thing's are out of our control, no point in worrying about them.

But from reading this article he's clearly contributing to his own issues. By that age he should have a gigantic rolodex of people he could call on at the drop of a hat, he should have proven results for 25 years.

Clearly he has close to no game because game isn't only applied to getting women, it's applied to life. Being 'likeable' is a large percentage of getting and staying in a job. Not everyone is going to like you of course, but the decision makers have to constantly be gamed, the interviewers have to be gamed, the HR girls have to be gamed (politically).

Another thing he can lose is ego. When I was in a tough spot a job came along that wasn't that great, not the best pay. But I always take the attitude that I will prove myself, which I believe is the correct attitude instead of entitlement. Growing up I used to love the jobs people thought were 'beneath them', always cash in my pocket. If things got super bad I'd still do them now.

Guy seriously needs a year of intense study on RVF.

[[email protected]]

It's hard to judge him based on the limited data. SF is just another rat race city where the competition for jobs is intense. The best play in these situations, as correctly pointed out by other members is to walk away. I walked away from Toronto's shit-tier job market. Roosh walked away from Washington. What makes it tough is he is married with kids and his wife has a job. I'd probably pull a Kevin Spacey while upskilling myself.

[262]

IMO winners winning more while losers lose more simply reflects the slowly but surely increasing efficiency of the market in the long-term.

Politics might be able to shake it up short-term, such as the span of a generation, but long-term, there's no stopping folks from buying and selling whatever is better and cheaper.

[The Beast1]

(12-22-2016 12:56 AM)[email protected] Wrote:  

It's hard to judge him based on the limited data. SF is just another rat race city where the competition for jobs is intense. The best play in these situations, as correctly pointed out by other members is to walk away. I walked away from Toronto's shit-tier job market. Roosh walked away from Washington. What makes it tough is he is married with kids and his wife has a job. I'd probably pull a Kevin Spacey while upskilling myself.

This stuff hits close to home for me as I watched my team of guys in their 30s with kids and homes get laid off.

Honestly, I sympathize with him because i've worked in the exact same area of IT for a stupid long time.

The thing is this, IT support is technically an entry level job in the IT world. Anyone can do it and it doesn't take a genius to learn how to fix something whether it's a car or a computer. Heck, a mechanic could easily switch to IT and vice versa (assuming the IT guy is strong enough).

Hell, I recommend these jobs as good career change jobs. Pay is decent, never great but it's a decent foot in the door for those who aren't sure of what they want yet.

The problem is he got comfortable being a cog. Support generally pays really well (~55k)and he got comfortable since his wife probably makes $100k anyway (she's the real breadwinner).

His naval gazing and reading up on pointless crap on the internet are what ultimately did him in.

At my old job, in every performance review I said out loud that I wanted to get out of support at every chance I could get. Eventually I did, but with only a year of experience. That singular year was really my key to escaping the IT support experience hole.

If anything, he could very easily go out and get some stupid BA certificiations or PMP classes under his belt and then push his boss at his current job to give him some project to manage. Or better yet, BS something up in an interview.

Others have said it more succintly before me. He wants to be a cog floating through life. He should move out of San Francisco if that's the case.There are hundreds of small town businesses out there that would hire him for life.

[Silver_Tube]

I work as an IT cog in a small town (for a bank), can confirm.

I hate it but it is semi comfortable. It does not pay enough to get me out of student debt. Life feels like it is stuck in a holding pattern, a purgatory state. Its hard to self-improve my way out of it with dad and the constant oncall situations breaking up my studying time. I live with my father, who is freshly divorced. He's pretty cool about disappearing if I want to bring a girl home, but I feel obligated to hang out and watch tv and stuff with him when I need to be working on my programming portfolio. And even if I do get a girl home we aren't going to the master bedroom, but the basement.

I'd like to move to Alabama and program for the aerospace industry down there. Maybe meet a conservative southern girl and start a family. I have no useful connections that could get me there.

[philosophical_recovery]

(12-22-2016 12:30 PM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  

I work as an IT cog in a small town (for a bank), can confirm.

I hate it but it is semi comfortable. It does not pay enough to get me out of student debt. Life feels like it is stuck in a holding pattern, a purgatory state. Its hard to self-improve my way out of it with dad and the constant oncall situations breaking up my studying time. I live with my father, who is freshly divorced. He's pretty cool about disappearing if I want to bring a girl home, but I feel obligated to hang out and watch tv and stuff with him when I need to be working on my programming portfolio. And even if I do get a girl home we aren't going to the master bedroom, but the basement.

I'd like to move to Alabama and program for the aerospace industry down there. Maybe meet a conservative southern girl and start a family. I have no useful connections that could get me there.

Start searching businesses in the area. Look for a skills match. If you have it, apply. If not, learn.

Keep your eyes peeled for bloggers that work at certain companies. Contact them tactfully, directly, telling them you want an entry level position and are willing to work hard.

This got me a job out of college with no experience and included a 2000 mile move. I knew nobody.

[jj90]

It's not so easy to switch out of IT into development. I did it but I saw it coming(non-IT field) and preempted the switch. I'm also not that old.

There is a very clear age preference in programming, and at older ages you'd better have years of experience if looking for a new position. Else, you are better off hustling as an independent or fucking off and working at walmart.

[nigerian]

Here is the solution to this:

Be ok with being a "stay at home dad".
Be her sexy jacked husband with a ton of cool stuff going on in his life. Women dont mind working 40 hours a week if they get to come home to a high SMV man who always is working on a fun exciting project who also can cook and raise children.

inb4 haha pajama boy cant even support your family such a pathetic beta male.

have fun unplugging toilets and digging holes while your wife is at home getting pumped by tyrone the drug dealer/pick up artist.

its the current year boys.

[Screemingdead]

A LOT of people my age need to get off their high horse and leave their low paying cubicle jobs and start diving in for the trades. I've been in the construction business since highschool and I've never been out of work. There are no other Canadians working with me, so the government starts importing Portuguese over here to do the jobs of young Canadian men.

[Lunostrelki]

I recently read an answer on Quora complaining that there were too many jobs that only pay $9 an hour (about 18K a year) and are therefore somehow unlivable. I was like "that's funny cause my household's combined income is probably about that amount and I am getting by even living in NYC" when I read the guy's list of expenses and saw that he was trying to pay for Obamacare and a bunch of other useless stuff. Dude was probably a pampered liberal who posted on My Little Pony fansites instead of making himself marketable and complained when his parents kicked him out for being gay.

[Jack Of All Trades]

(12-22-2016 01:32 PM)Screemingdead Wrote:  

A LOT of people my age need to get off their high horse and leave their low paying cubicle jobs and start diving in for the trades. I've been in the construction business since highschool and I've never been out of work. There are no other Canadians working with me, so the government starts importing Portuguese over here to do the jobs of young Canadian men.

There's a ton of young men that are conditioned by their parents to work a "good" corporate job and sold the dream to go to college and a steady career. That wasn't the case, also the trades aren't so simple either. If your older say 30-40, it's going to be hard on you and the starting wages for 1st years isn't so good, not only that the first 3 years are going to be really shitty as you won't be on the shortlist for work. Then again I'm a union man now so I don't know about how the other guys do it. You won't make bad $$$, just starting out pretty low for a few years at around 15$/h before you hit that 34$/h journeyman rate.

[dallasguy]

Plan for the future. Don't plan on manual labor when you're 60.

[dallasguy]

IT support is a dead end job. Once you make over $60k they will outsource and get rid of you. I was in IT support at fortune 100 companies with a Microsoft cert and never made more than $72k. Everyone I worked with was outsourced or laid off.

My last two years there I used their tuition program to pay for a masters in accounting and became a CPA. I'm still a cube jockey but I make more money and can start my own business if I want. Knowledge is power whether you're a cube jockey or in the trades.

IMO the worst field is IT whether support or programming. You're over the hill by age 40. Nobody will hire you unless you have Silicon Valley or Seattle on your resume. They don't value experience, so putting 15 years of work on your resume is a negative. You basically have to be top 5% and make a shitload by the time you're 30 and start your own business as a consultant after that. The other option is to take temp gigs until you're 55 then start working at Home Depot or Walmart.

[HOD]

(12-22-2016 11:27 PM)dallasguy Wrote:  

IT support is a dead end job. Once you make over $60k they will outsource and get rid of you. I was in IT support at fortune 100 companies with a Microsoft cert and never made more than $72k. Everyone I worked with was outsourced or laid off.

My last two years there I used their tuition program to pay for a masters in accounting and became a CPA. I'm still a cube jockey but I make more money and can start my own business if I want. Knowledge is power whether you're a cube jockey or in the trades.

IMO the worst field is IT whether support or programming. You're over the hill by age 40. Nobody will hire you unless you have Silicon Valley or Seattle on your resume. They don't value experience, so putting 15 years of work on your resume is a negative. You basically have to be top 5% and make a shitload by the time you're 30 and start your own business as a consultant after that. The other option is to take temp gigs until you're 55 then start working at Home Depot or Walmart.

That's because Facebook and other corps push for H1B1 leading to your high skill jobs being outsourced to India.

The liberals wanted this, they never gave a shit about the working American or middle class, they only want to fight useless gender wars.

Now California is plague with IRT's running around.

[jj90]

(12-22-2016 11:27 PM)dallasguy Wrote:  

IMO the worst field is IT whether support or programming. You're over the hill by age 40. Nobody will hire you unless you have Silicon Valley or Seattle on your resume. They don't value experience, so putting 15 years of work on your resume is a negative. You basically have to be top 5% and make a shitload by the time you're 30 and start your own business as a consultant after that.

I agree with the ageism in tech and support being redundant, but I disagree about the experience/time spent at least from a developer standing.

1)I don't know what job market you are in, on the West Coast where I'm at a guy who has multiple years of experience across many stacks and deep knowledge in niches get snapped up rapidly. If you are in buttfuck nowhere Kansas, yeah get to the coast or get a remote position.

2)A developer should not be grunt developing at 40. You either move up or out. If you are still an entry level code monkey, yeah your expendable.

[Jack Of All Trades]

Bottom line is a lot has changed and the world's gotten a lot more competitive and the world is getting flatter. If you want a good career find something others don't know about or know how to do or refuse to do.

[Kid Twist]

I also love the idea that because there are a lot of "job postings" that by definition means that they can't find "anyone qualified."

If no one is qualified, due to demand and the supposed supply as well, the jobs would be paying 2-3 times as much. But we all know, they aren't actively trying to fill the job, let alone pay someone more for something they claim to need so badly.

It's impossible to get straight answers in this day and age.

[DevilsMoJo]

Typical Retarded Employer Nowadays: I Want A Godlike Employee Willing To Work For Peanuts

Surprisingly none can be found

So said retard whines about it and the globalist media eat it up

As a result people who have been made redundant due to employer disloyalty are forced to work for free.

[Travesty]

Offhand thoughts:

Work sucks in general in the form we have it. It just does for the most part.

People as a collective will not work harder than a certain point once basics are met.

Basics are easier than ever to get.

If you told 1,000 random people. You get $30k a year and never have to have a job for rest of your life. I think a surprisingly high amount of people would take it.

It cannot be afforded yet, trust me when it can be people will jump all over that.

I think this is all human paychology of people sitting at their desks seeing the amount of hard work through sometimes 18 years+ of school to get and the deal even with $100k salary with a stressful job is much too much time to trade for 3 BR and 2 car garage.

Most people want to experience life everyday outside work.

I believe society's collective thoughts push in this direction until it is possible. There is too much FOMO out there for most humans to handle. The societal status value reward of being a hard worker wanes by the day.

[The Lizard of Oz]

Travesty, you should look at this extremely exhaustive Gallup survey which asks many questions about work satisfaction in the US. The results might surprise you:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1720/work-work-place.aspx

Among the highlights:

-- 54% of all survey respondents are completely satisfied with their job (that's the highest percentage since they started asking in 1989). Another 37% are somewhat satisfied. That means that more than 90% of all people surveyed are basically satisfied with work, and the majority are "completely satisfied". The level of satisfaction is increasing, not decreasing.

-- When asked more detailed questions, significant majorities of survey respondents are at least somewhat satisfied with their job security, vacation time, amount of stress, amount of work required, chances of promotion, flexibility of hours, health insurance benefits, retirement plan, recognition of their accomplishments, amount of money they earn, their boss or supervisor, physical safety, and relations with coworkers. In some of these cases the majority are not just satisfied but "completely satisfied".

-- Most people are not worried about being laid off, their hours being cut back, their wages being reduced, their benefits being reduced, and their job being moved overseas.

-- The great majority feel a strong sense of loyalty to their company or organization (87%). More than half feel that their job is part of their sense of identity and not merely what they do.

-- Strong majorities also feel that the company is loyal to them. Huge majorities feel they have not been passed up for a promotion or denied a raise because of their gender. Of those that have a preference, most people prefer to have a male, rather than a female boss (this is true of both men and women). However, about half say it makes no difference to them.

-- 68% of respondents say that if they won $10 million in a lottery, they would keep working, either in their current job or a different one. Less than 1 in 3 would stop working after having won a lottery.

*******************

In short, the reality of work in the US is quite different from what you say. Most normal people enjoy their work, like their bosses and co-workers, feel some loyalty to their employer, and derive a sense of identity from what they do. They feel that they would want to keep working even if they could afford not to. Do not confuse the disgruntlement of men who write on the Internet -- a very particular type, and generally not the happiest or most balanced one -- with the attitudes of the general population. The reality is that Americans have been basically satisfied with their work for quite a long time already, and are only becoming more so as time goes on.

[TooFineAPoint]

(12-21-2016 06:08 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

My point is no one WANTS to pay you a lot, they only do it if they HAVE TO for some reason.

And that comes from YOU KNOWING SOMETHING VALUABLE THEY DON'T.

Too true.

But does that stats chart offer further breakdowns into public and private sector earnings?