I see, a thought exercise is proof that we are becoming a third world nation. I wonder how long it will take under this standard to prove that the speed of light can be exceeded.
Heh. Ironic that thought experiments first led to the idea that the speed of light is a constant and can't be exceeded. Thought experiments are not proof, just useful and potentially enlightening.
Thought experiments can be used to prove almost anything. There are thought experiments that disprove the speed limit of light, and ones that prove it. My point is that merely claiming that one should imagine this situation copied a million times is no evidence at all. It's not even good rhetoric. It should be lent no more credence than would be lent to the thousands of people each year who post on forums their disproof of special relativity.
If you think it's not social failure for highly literate, qualified people to be doing menial work, then you, sir, are a mean-spirited and unpleasant person.
Again, I don't really see the connection between my opinion on this subject and my mean-spiritedness or unpleasantness. It sounds to me like you have an emotional stake in this situation and you are letting it cloud your judgment.
She's qualified, but not for anything that anyone needs doing. Do you think a highly qualified one-foot-balancer deserves employment in that pursuit and that it's a shame if he has to wash dishes because no one will pay him $50k a year to balance on one foot all day? I don't see that as a tragedy, and it's an analogue to this situation. Admittedly it's not perfect because there are _no_ jobs in one-foot-balancing and merely few in editing, but it's the same type of thing.
Since you insulted me, I'll allow myself a stylistic criticism. The "you, sir" thing is lame. Drop it.
What you say holds in a micro sense but not in a macro sense. No individual has a right to a certain type of employment. It is no great tragedy if an individual does not find work doing what they love doing. However, if too many people are unable to find work doing what they like doing (or are content doing) then this is bad for society.
Before the present fiscal crisis a friend of mine justified the validity of liar loans on the basis that they are an agreement between two consenting parties. Of course an individual has the right to make a bad decision and of course 20 million bad decisions can affect the entire nation.
Would you make the same argument that you made if the underemployment rate for Ph.D.s in electrical engineering was 25%? There is a point where this becomes a big deal. I'm not saying we are at this point but the existence of such a point should not be denied.
It would be a very bad thing for this country if, in general, advanced degrees required too high an opportunity cost.
> if the underemployment rate for Ph.D.s in electrical engineering was 25%
Probably. I'd say that too many people were getting PhDs in electrical engineering. If possible, we should address the root cause of that.
For example, I suspect there are too many people getting Masters degrees in computer science today. It doesn't show as much because they just go back to the same jobs they had before, but I think it's a big problem that so many people are doing things that don't benefit them and I'd like to see that change. Mandatory outcome reporting in educational institutions might be a good way to combat the problem.
I know absolutely nothing about you, but embracing any political or economic ideology that allows people qualified to be editors to end up cleaning apartments qualifies as mean-spirited.
One-foot-balancing is obviously different, in that it doesn't provide anything of value to society. On the other hand, the arts and literature do. There are people who want to provide value to the world in these fields and they can't.
Don't we strive as a society for "highly literate" to describe most (if not all) of the population? Also 'qualified' doesn't mean much unless it's qualified with a job-type or skill set. "Qualified" people could be construction workers which would fall under 'menial work.'
This is because unscrupulous universities mint more degrees than there are jobs for. That should be stopped. The talented people get in, and those who don't have the talent don't. Right now, because everyone can get in to some kind of grad school, it dilutes the value of such degrees to almost zero.
So it's society's fault for not taking care of her and the University's fault for giving her a degree in a field where there aren't enough jobs but not her fault for getting a degree in a field that is in rapid decline? Yea, that makes sense.
Well, don't you find it a little unethical for Universities to be pushing programs based on their perceived value even though they have little actual value for their participants? In general, the last couple of generations have been sold the idea that getting a university degree is the only way to 'get ahead in life' so that you don't end up 'flipping burgers' for a living by the previous generations, all while the previous generations complained that the newer generations don't "understand the value of hard work."
Sure people need to take responsibility for their own actions, but if someone is trained from birth to believe something, casting that belief aside isn't the same as dropping a piece of trash in the trash can. And those that trained that person to hold that belief share a bit of responsibility. Blaming 'society' as a whole is meaningless, though.
Actually, it is a university's fault to some extent. For instance there are way too many Ph.D. in math and physics for the available work. University's have a moral obligation to inform their students about this. There are serious problems with the current graduate school system. Most people coming into it have no idea what they are getting themselves into.
People should be free to do whatever they want. If a lot of people want to go to grad school that's fine, it means we have people with more training. If that training can help them earn more, then more power to them if not well that's life.
This contradicts your argument that society hasn't failed this woman. I'm pretty sure that cleaning up rental apartments is not what she wanted to do with her life.
In other words, they can't do what they want with their lives; they have only token freedom.
We need to restructure the economy and society so that culture rules, so that the resources are made available to pay for culture and the arts-- so we can stop being an artistic and philosophical backwater-- and the uncultured profit-ideologists who've currently infected this country with their adolescent ideology and bankrupt values are utterly disempowered, instead of running the show as they are now.
I think the US is diverging into two camps: a well-educated, well-off elite, and a permanent underclass. This story is about somebody who always thought of herself as the former, and then found out she was the latter.
I disagree with that view. That is not what America set out to be nor will any American settle for that. Mobility of all sorts has been inculcated into us for decades (one could argue since the foundation of the nation itself). This is different than many countries, where "duty" is upheld over personal fulfillment and improvement. It's our belief in possibilities that drives America and makes it unique among nations. And I don't say this in a cheerleading manner. This is why people come here. It's not just the money. It's the freedom to do things.
Many people come here for find that the brochures were misleading. I remember reading the a lot of the Indians came here on H1B visas bringing over their wives only to find out that the middle class in America, is not like the middle class in India (i.e. we don't have a caste-system that allows middle-class families to have servants). The article/comment I remember reading seemed to imply that it was the women being brought over as the spouses of the visa-holders that were disappointed that they had to do things for themselves even though they were middle-class (and who then pushed for the both of them to move back to India).
I would agree. Only I would add well-connected to the list of characteristics of the elite class.
My Significant Other just got done creating a plan for the lay-offs of about 5000 highly educated Health Care workers. Outplacement services, severance packages ONLY where legally obligated, others will need approval case by case, flights back to home countries, movers, obtaining extra security etc etc etc. She had to keep a lid on it until recently. AND . . . this is the creamy frosting on the cake . . . they had her include herself.
I think the underclass of the future will probably be just as well educated as the elite. But they probably won't know the right people. It will be very much a sort of 'work from layoff to layoff' kind of existence.
I think the underclass of the future will probably be just as well educated as the elite. But they probably won't know the right people. It will be very much a sort of 'work from layoff to layoff' kind of existence.
The well-educated paupers will launch a much-needed revolt. Happily, it can be done none-violently with cyberattacks and property damage-- the people involved will be smart enough-- so we can have French Revolution-style pwnage of the upper crust and Glorious Revolution bloodlessness together.
With that definition it makes the term first/second/third world nearly meaningless. "A is A because it is". I prefer the definition that implies that "A is A because [INSERT REASONS]" and "A is A but can become B if..."
The definitions are from the Cold War: industrialized capitalist nations in the West, communist nations in the East, and none of the above, where the proxy wars were fought. So the definition is fixed by history, and also somewhat obsolete.
Note the amusing parallel between assuming the US is turning into a "third world" country, since the gaps in industrialization worldwide are closing, and the article's original assumption that an educated middle-class girl would never have to do the same work as a Spanish-speaking working-class woman.
> original assumption that an educated middle-class girl would never have to do the same work as a Spanish-speaking working-class woman.
Maybe you read a different article, but she was doing the same job as a Spanish-speaking working-class woman. The assumption is that it was just a stepping-stone to bigger and better things, while the 'Spanish-speaking working-class woman' works the job to make ends meet. She may have had some assumptions that as a middle-class girl she wouldn't end up working a waitress job to make ends meet, but there is a large portion of the population that gets sold the promise of "go to school, get educated, get a better job." This isn't just about 4-year degrees from a major university. It's the same with trade-schools, community colleges, 2-year degree programs, online universities, etc. The idea that a 'better job' will necessarily just follow from 'getting an education' is sold all over the place.
It's not "the recession". This could just have easily been written in 2006. The US is in rapid decline.