After America, over-education and perpetual adolescence

[RoseMorninStar]

I'm not quite sure it fits into this conversation, but what bothers me is that (in theory) jobs went overseas to make them 'cheaper' and I am sure to some extent this is true. But we don't really see cheaper goods. I read about people making next to nothing/living in company dormitories 8 to a room in China getting paid .35 cents an hour, and yet that 'made in China' pair of jeans might sell for $65, or gloves, or pair of shoes isn't really 'cheap'. Oh, you can find some cheap goods.. but even the goods in pricey stores are 'made in China'. And they aren't cheap. Someone is making money off of those goods, more than what they used to, and it isn't the laborers.

[SirDennis]

I'm not quite sure it fits into this conversation, but what bothers me is that (in theory) jobs went overseas to make them 'cheaper' and I am sure to some extent this is true. But we don't really see cheaper goods. I read about people making next to nothing/living in company dormitories 8 to a room in China getting paid .35 cents an hour, and yet that 'made in China' pair of jeans might sell for $65, or gloves, or pair of shoes isn't really 'cheap'. Oh, you can find some cheap goods.. but even the goods in pricey stores are 'made in China'. And they aren't cheap. Someone is making money off of those goods, more than what they used to, and it isn't the laborers.

A good observation. This is where I was going with the prices fixed to income point. Another obvious place to see this phenomenon is comparing prices across borders. For instance a car, even one made in Canada (though by a US company) is sold for more in Canada than in the US even though our money is at or close to par. Another good example is book prices.

"They" say prices are set by the size of the market, and by tariffs and such. But that is all BS. It is what the market will bear. When you take into account income disparity -- especially as averages are made higher by a relatively small number of extremely wealthy people, as well as the tendency to rely on credit rather than delay gratification -- it really hurts. Especially on the lower end of the income scale where people just starting out often find themselves. (Incidentally, at the other end of life, seniors on fixed incomes are not faring so well either.)

Conversely in low wage countries, the products aren't even sold there, not to the people who make them anyway (depending on the product, access to electricity and other infrastructure plays a role as well). But there are some products available everywhere that are sold for what the average income can afford in a given region. A market basket approach is usually used when comparing price across borders -- which btw is not very useful when trying to address income disparity and poverty rates inside a given country.

[River]

My father and his male cousins were the first men in that family to make it past the sixth grade. Prior to that, the men were pulled out of school to work the land. The women though, were expected to stay in school as long as it took to get nursing or teaching qualifications or something that would allow them to support themselves. It was not a wealthy family. They couldn't afford to just have idle women hanging around waiting for a suitor to show up. Nor could the women safely assume their husbands would keep the ends tied up. That's a very nice middle and upper class assumption.

Getting back to education and so on, in the US, you can't erase your student debt by declaring bankruptcy. The lenders, therefore, knowing they'll get their money back, toss out loans like candy and that's played a role in tuition rates rising faster than inflation. The students buy into the marketing and take out these loans to pay for degrees that, while they might fulfill a passion, don't turn into a career path. Or into a career path that makes paying off the loan quick or easy. And so the former students end up using money they could be saving or spending on themselves to pay down their debt and thus they're set up for a life time of what amounts to indentured servitude. Unless something happens, that's not going to change. So, what to do?

Some possibilities:
1) Transform our education system into something more akin to the European one. The types that need to go to college go to something akin to gymnasium. The types that would be better served on a vocational track go to the vocational high schools. This has numerous disadvantages I'm too lazy to write up right now, but one of the big ones is it is very difficult to change tracks once you're on one and so kids have to decide their fates at the age of 14. Which isn't to say it's impossible. It's just hard. And kids sometimes make utterly boneheaded decisions about which high school to go to because that's where all their friends are going. Also, there's no guarantee of a job at the other end, or guarantee of flexibility if there's no job to go with your training.
2) Make college free. No tuition and room and board = no need for loans. If we put education ahead of the military-industrial complex, we could probably afford it. But since this is the US we're talking about, forget I even mentioned it.
3) Require lenders to only lend money to students in fields of study that are employable. When you get a mortage or car loan, the lenders demand proof that you can pay it back. AFAIK (I'm one of the lucky fraction that does not have any student loans) the student lenders don't do this. That needs to stop. No more BFAs carrying >$60K in debt. You want that money, you need to work to a degree that will earn. Which probably means that the bankruptcy laws need to be changed so that student debts can be canceled along with everything else when someone declares. Without that, the lenders have no reason to comply with this scheme. This one's probably the most realistic. It sticks in my craw a bit, allowing someone to tell someone else what they can and can't do because they're the ones holding the purse strings. But I'm not sure if there's any other workable way to restore sanity to the student loan system. That said, I'd be happy to hear why it's a bad idea.

[SirDennis]

Why am I reminded of the chorus from a Fred Eaglesmith song just now:

He died on the tractor, holdin his end down
40 acres left to plant and 40 in the ground
(but) He never had a chance, is what they're sayin now
The bank was gonna walk in any day, any how
Sunflowers

Some possibilities:
1) Transform our education system into something more akin to the European one. The types that need to go to college go to something akin to gymnasium. The types that would be better served on a vocational track go to the vocational high schools. This has numerous disadvantages I'm too lazy to write up right now, but one of the big ones is it is very difficult to change tracks once you're on one and so kids have to decide their fates at the age of 14. Which isn't to say it's impossible. It's just hard. And kids sometimes make utterly boneheaded decisions about which high school to go to because that's where all their friends are going. Also, there's no guarantee of a job at the other end, or guarantee of flexibility if there's no job to go with your training.
2) Make college free. No tuition and room and board = no need for loans. If we put education ahead of the military-industrial complex, we could probably afford it. But since this is the US we're talking about, forget I even mentioned it.
3) Require lenders to only lend money to students in fields of study that are employable. When you get a mortage or car loan, the lenders demand proof that you can pay it back. AFAIK (I'm one of the lucky fraction that does not have any student loans) the student lenders don't do this. That needs to stop. No more BFAs carrying >$60K in debt. You want that money, you need to work to a degree that will earn. Which probably means that the bankruptcy laws need to be changed so that student debts can be canceled along with everything else when someone declares. Without that, the lenders have no reason to comply with this scheme. This one's probably the most realistic. It sticks in my craw a bit, allowing someone to tell someone else what they can and can't do because they're the ones holding the purse strings. But I'm not sure if there's any other workable way to restore sanity to the student loan system. That said, I'd be happy to hear why it's a bad idea.

These are all excellent suggestions, especially the middle one. If it wasn't that the military was such a large employer (no longer of last resort though), I favour the European model of mandatory military service after high school, in place of maintaining a standing army.

Your first suggestion makes me wonder why we are stuck on the notion of getting school out of the way before making a start in the world. Why shouldn't 14 year olds (many of whom work anyway) enter the workforce to do service sector jobs and non hazardous manual labour until an age when completion of high school then higher education is more palatable to them (ie when more mature)?

Something like: go to grade school to age 14; then work at jobs not requiring specialized training or education until age 20ish; then do high school; then work for another 5-10 years at jobs requiring at least some education; then at age 35 either continue on or go to university, entering a suitable career (one not requiring youth or stamina for very long) around age 40? Obviously a huge obstacle (for many) to getting anything out of school is youth itself.

Your critique leading to your last suggestion is a very insightful, and an excellent change that should (but for greed) be a no brainer... especially in light of the indentured servitude that the current system produces. I would temper it by not singling out artists who do add value to society. But I agree in principle perhaps that university is not a great model for producing artists. Those whose trade is more akin to production process (movies etc) probably are better served at vocational schools.

[River]

SirDennis: I cited BFAs because they were on my mind. My youngest sister got one...and is now re-training to be a nurse. Couldn't get a job as an artist. Although I realize I'm not really being fair to BFAs in general because my youngest sister is actually a prime example of someone who should not have gone to college. Or, at least, not gone straight out of high school. Graduating in May 2009 didn't help her much (not that she had much choice; she'd met the degree requirements and that's that), but she also made some decisions that would have made it almost impossible to get a job even in a time of full employment. The fact that she's the only person on this planet who can make me look organized didn't work in her favor either.

That said, I believe that in the past artists trained as apprentices. Maybe they should still. Apprenticing is rough (as a grad student, I pretty much was one), but you earn a little as you train and you don't pay tuition.

ETA: in the US, the minimum age for non-farm labor is 16. 14 year-olds who work are typically running their own little business for pocket change. And many of them have no idea what they want to be when they grow-up. Precious few even know who they are well enough to resist peer and/or family pressure. Is it really fair to demand that they make an almost irrevocable choice? My husband grew up in that kind of system. Always one to march to his own drum, he opted to go to the trade school for electrical engineers while most of his elementary school classmates went to the one for agriculture. And then, the year he was finishing, he decided that he'd like to go to the university. Except he hadn't spent the past four years prepping for the entrance exams like the people he'd be competing with so his family had to get a tutor for him. Being smart and motivated, he scored well enough on the exam to win a slot, but what if he wasn't so stubborn? How many people are that willing to swim upstream?

[Túrin Turambar]

2) Make college free. No tuition and room and board = no need for loans. If we put education ahead of the military-industrial complex, we could probably afford it. But since this is the US we're talking about, forget I even mentioned it.

We tried this in the 70s, and it didn't really do all that much good. Higher education became a refuge for the work-shy - people were spending eight years doing arts degrees. At the same time, students had no grounds to demand any sort of quality service from their universities (you get what you pay for) and in the end it was a huge wealth re-distribution from workers to the kids of the middle classes, who hardly need it.

[Dave_LF]

Things have NOT got more expensive, except for housing in some areas - like in Vancouver and I daresay in Toronto.

"Things" are not what's breaking people's budgets, though. It's fixed costs like housing and especially health insurance that are doing that, and those things have gotten much more expensive. Do you get more in return? Probably. But try telling child services that you're choosing not to buy insurance because you're comfortable accepting the same risks humans have lived with throughout history and see what happens.

[Dave_LF]

But also, and I know you don't intend to go there either, such ideas are a precursor to calls for genocide.

And there it is. The single biggest challenge facing us, the root of virtually all the other challenges hanging over our heads, and we can't even talk about it. Half the people tell you it's against their religion, the other half tell you it's politically incorrect. But it's there just the same.

I saw some DOE guy on TV a while ago talking about how we need to hunt deer because the natural checks on their populations are gone and if we don't, they'll multiply out of control and ruin the environment. All I can think is, as a member of H. sapiens, do you really want to be advancing that argument?

[axordil]

Advertising: the cause of - and solution to - all of life's problems.

All right, Homer.

[axordil]

Just remember, if it happens because of inaction, or generations's worth of actions no one noticed, it's not genocide, it's a tragedy, suitable for a benefit concert.

Sorry, Tuesdays are my cynical mornings.

[vison]

Things have NOT got more expensive, except for housing in some areas - like in Vancouver and I daresay in Toronto.

"Things" are not what's breaking people's budgets, though. It's fixed costs like housing and especially health insurance that are doing that, and those things have gotten much more expensive. Do you get more in return? Probably. But try telling child services that you're choosing not to buy insurance because you're comfortable accepting the same risks humans have lived with throughout history and see what happens.

I partly agree. I keep forgetting that Americans have that health insurance issue that we don't have.

However, except for that and housing, in terms of hours worked to buy something, most of what we actually need is cheaper than it was in 1970.

When you realize that 1/2 (and maybe more) of the money spent on food in the US is spent on eating away from home - that's an eyeopener. More money spent on food, all right, but eating at McDonald's? That's what it comes down to.

As for "stuff". Well, most kids nowadays have a LOT of stuff. Look in their bedrooms. Not just toys, but closets full of clothes. For many families, it's a conundrum, what do we get the kids for Christmas or their birthdays? They have everything.

I know a few families with stay-at-home mums. These families have made a decision that it's worth sacrificing that second income in order to live the way they want. There are no child care costs, for one thing. They don't eat at fast food places. They don't have "everything", but they live well.

I realize it's not possible for everyone, nor even desirable. But our culture has a terrible time distinguishing a want from a need.

[Frelga]

I don't know how anyone can say it's things that are stretching our budgets. 20 years ago (and it terrifies me that I remember that far back) a 2-bedroom in San Francisco on the edge of GG park and the edge of good neighborhood cost $850. $400 bought a month of very frugal groceries for four people - fresh food, using every trick of sales and coupon. Health insurance at a small company was almost free for me and the hubby and the copayment was $5. And gas was between $1-2. I remember, because once those costs were paid, we had nothing left over.

All of these costs doubled since then, except health costs, which ballooned. And while our income grew as our careers progressed, the pay for the kind of jobs we started out with hardly changed. And the only reason we got as far as we did was because we started out with our free Soviet education behind us. It was a damn good one, as I have since found over and over (constant complaint of Russian parents about American schools can get quite comical).

Because what good education does is not train you how to do things. It builds bookshelves in your mind and you learn to fill them up as you to through life. I myself trained a guy to do coding, who started out with the dreaded BFA or something. It was easy, because he knew how to learn, and coding is just another kind of creative writing, really. But the bookshelves have to be there first.

[Dave_LF]

People may often spend more than they need to on food and toys (though from experience, I can tell you that a lot of those toys come from well-meaning friends and relations who don't have to deal with having them clutter up their houses). But even with the extras, those things cost so little in comparison to housing, insurance, and debt payments that they almost don't matter. Who cares about saving 50 bucks a month on food when you're paying a couple thousand for your house, a thousand more for health insurance, and x hundred for student loans?

[Primula Baggins]

We're paying almost $1500 per month for health insurance, for a policy that covers nothing but the Obamacare-mandated preventive care until we hit very high deductibles. COBRA ends October 1, and we will presumably have to enter the state high-risk pool, which offers less coverage and similar high deductibles for about $1600 per month.

Both amounts are significantly more than our mortgage payment.

[vison]

We're paying almost $1500 per month for health insurance, for a policy that covers nothing but the Obamacare-mandated preventive care until we hit very high deductibles. COBRA ends October 1, and we will presumably have to enter the state high-risk pool, which offers less coverage and similar high deductibles for about $1600 per month.

Both amounts are significantly more than our mortgage payment.

I just can't express in civil terms what I think about that.

[axordil]

The last several posts nudged something in my head that I think has been brewing the duration of the thread.

The issue for young people is not only that the essentials cost significantly more now, especially in places that are desirable (and often they ARE desirable because they actually might have jobs). It's also not that there are so many cool things that fall shy of being essential that people (young people in particular) THINK are essential. But both of those factor in. So does student debt for college grads.

Right now, you get out of school, and unless you are absolutely the best and brightest or lucky or well-connected, you're going to get a meh job that will allow you to do two of the following: live on your own, service your debt, or maintain the lifestyle you had as a teenager and college student. Servicing the debt is legally required, so really the choice is between independence and lifestyle.

And kids are picking lifestyle. Again I ask why?

I think it's because as a consumer-based society, we're very good at pushing the value of a lifestyle, and execrable at pushing the value of independence. Lifestyles line the pockets of the people who run the show. Independence is a little more revenue-neutral, in the short run...and these people are physically incapable of thinking more than two fiscal quarters ahead, as a rule.

That's my theory du jour, anyway.

[yovargas]

We're paying almost $1500 per month for health insurance, for a policy that covers nothing but the Obamacare-mandated preventive care until we hit very high deductibles. COBRA ends October 1, and we will presumably have to enter the state high-risk pool, which offers less coverage and similar high deductibles for about $1600 per month.

But, while I'm not going to argue that this is reasonable or right or couldn't be better or whatever else, I also can't help but think that 50 years ago, no amount of money could've gotten you (or vison!) through your cancer ordeals. So this is a case where we definitely can't really compare apples to apples in terms of health care costs then and now. So much of the health care we're paying for now didn't even exist when I was born.

[Primula Baggins]

But 30% to 40% of the premiums we're paying now goes to pay people working at the insurance company (or their stockholders). That's mandated to drop to 20% because of Obamacare, this year I believe, with rebate checks sent to policyholders next January. But by then we'll be on a state plan.

In 2014 there will be tax credits that cover a significant chunk of insurance payments for people earning up to 400% of the poverty line. We're hanging on with our fingernails until then.

Unless, of course, Obama loses this election and Obamacare is repealed so we go back to how it was a few years ago. My kids would all be dropped from our plan, and the expensive insurance would cover even less (no mammograms, no yearly physicals, no subsidies for basic lifesaving drugs). Back to yearly and lifetime limits on coverage, exclusion of anything the insurance company feels like excluding, and getting dropped when you get sick. And no help with premiums, naturally.

But the return to a free-market paradise in health care would be worth it.

[Frelga]

What, precisely, is the value of independence? How do you measure it? Or define it?

[axordil]

What, precisely, is the value of independence? How do you measure it? Or define it?

More importantly, how do you market it?

It used to be a societal expectation that adult children stayed with or near the family, whether because the farm would absorb the work, or the extended family needed the income/care for the elderly. At some point in the past century in the US the expectation changed, and the definition of what it meant to be a successful young adult came to include living in one's own home. Part of that was the shift to a mobile workforce during and after the Great Depression and WWII, part the GI Bill and following housing boom, part the depiction of normative families in media (and all of those are tied together, too).

But if you asked a teenager in the 50s, 60s or 70s, even the 80s, what they most looked forward to? Not living at home. So they valued the perception of independence a LOT.

So we're spiraling back to an earlier model, in a way.