What doesn't necessarily cure poverty

[Tom Sawyer]

You're seriously going to argue that those poverty level college educated people in the OP chart are just interns?

No, I'm seriously going to not argue anything of the sort and actually argue the exact opposite. There were four short sentences in that post and I don't see why it was so hard to read all of them instead of stopping after the first three.

The reason that we can be picky about who we're going to take on as a free intern is because there is a lack of other viable options for the people in our pool of interns. If they could get a decent job which would pay them a decent salary and start them out in a decent career, that is what they would do and we would be left hiring the idiots who didn't realize that. Those options aren't out there, however, and they're kind of stuck with the bullshit choice we're screwing them with or something crappy which doesn't have a potential upside somewhere down the line.

 

[ksen]

Right, so it's not education that's the problem, it's horrible employers.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Right, so it's not education that's the problem, it's horrible employers.

Ya, the education is as fine as its ever been. It's what one can do with the education which is leading to the increased levels of poverty amongst the educated. Having a high school diploma or even, increasingly, a bachelor's degree doesn't make you as valuable a commodity to potential employers as it used to. This allows them to fuck over potential recruits to a much greater degree than they used to be able to and still get the same quality of new hires as they used to be able to get by offering higher salaries and benefits.

 

[ksen]

Ok, we're on the same page. I was worried there for second buddy!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Education

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/30/8308607/education-poverty

People in poverty are much more educated than they were 30-40 years ago . . . and they're still in poverty.

What does cure poverty? More income.

Shocking, I know.

The biggest effect is from the hours worked rather than the pay rate.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Education

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/30/8308607/education-poverty

People in poverty are much more educated than they were 30-40 years ago . . . and they're still in poverty.

What does cure poverty? More income.

Shocking, I know.

The biggest effect is from the hours worked rather than the pay rate.

Nuh uh. There... two equally valid and unsubstantiated claims.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ok, we're on the same page. I was worried there for second buddy!

I think where we differ is that I don't believe that this is a situation that's going to be changing for the better and young people need to realize and accept that. If they don't take the time in school to target their education towards what employers are going to want, they are going to be left behind and won't even make it into the group that companies are willing to fuck over.

 

[Bronzeage]

Didn't you start a thread about how educational level doesn't get one out of poverty as easily? A point about which majors pay back the cost of getting them would seem to be right on target.

I think first you'd have to demonstrate that the degrees people in poverty are seeking are the "wrong" kinds of degrees.

Besides, we're often sold by the Right that education is the answer. Well, no, education itself isn't the answer. As demonstrated by the chart in the OP.

The right to education is the answer. Sometimes the question is wrong, and the question is usually, "What do you want to do?"

Liberal Arts degrees were never intended to provide a person with a living income. There was a time when a college's main purpose was to provide clergymen. The liberal arts curriculum was created to prevent the children of the wealthy from becoming ignorant twits with no awareness of the world. They never had to worry about making a living.

There is always value in education, even if it's only to gain an eye for the aesthetics of a clay pot. That value does not translate into money. As far as I know, the only use for an advanced degree in English is to teach people who want an advanced degree in English. It seems like some sort of pyramid scheme.

The education which gives one the skills for which people will pay require more than college tuition. For most children who live in poverty, it's just too late. A STEM degree requires a person show up as a college freshman prepared with the needed math, chemistry, and physics training. It helps if they can read and write, also. All the scholarships, Federal grants, and student loans in the world will not make up for a deficient elementary and secondary education.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think of a line from The Simpsons, where he said when designing the new car, that all cars should have a ball atop the antenna so it was easier for people to find their cars.

College education doesn't become an automatic solution for unemployment because you saturate the market with degrees. You need more jobs available in order for all for the college grads to move into employment in their degree related field. And of course, you'd have to love pain if you want to go into the field of education to teach children.

 

[ksen]

Ok, we're on the same page. I was worried there for second buddy!

I think where we differ is that I don't believe that this is a situation that's going to be changing for the better and young people need to realize and accept that. If they don't take the time in school to target their education towards what employers are going to want, they are going to be left behind and won't even make it into the group that companies are willing to fuck over.

And that's a very unrealistic thing to ask of incoming college freshmen. I mean no one who studies this for a living really knows what skills are going to be in demand four years from now so how is an 18 year old fresh out of high school supposed to be able to figure it out?

Companies used to do this thing called "training" or something which is where company specific skills would be learned. That's been thrown out the window.

So I think the point of my OP stands in that education is not THE answer to someone's poverty problem.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Well there is some responsibility for the student to target a viable career path if they are in school to do that. But as someone who deals with students and these questions on a daily basis there are only a few majors that will guarantee a job at graduation and the jobs that most will be entry level and few will be career track.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think where we differ is that I don't believe that this is a situation that's going to be changing for the better and young people need to realize and accept that. If they don't take the time in school to target their education towards what employers are going to want, they are going to be left behind and won't even make it into the group that companies are willing to fuck over.

And that's a very unrealistic thing to ask of incoming college freshmen. I mean no one who studies this for a living really knows what skills are going to be in demand four years from now so how is an 18 year old fresh out of high school supposed to be able to figure it out?

Companies used to do this thing called "training" or something which is where company specific skills would be learned. That's been thrown out the window.

So I think the point of my OP stands in that education is not THE answer to someone's poverty problem.

Yes, that's what it was like when I left college. Having a bachelor's degree was seen to mean that you had shown that you were an intelligent person who was able to commit and focus and therefore were somebody worth investing in. The specifics of the degree were somewhat secondary because they would take the time and effort to train you in what they needed you to do. That's not the case anymore.

However, education is still the only answer - just not education "in general". If you don't have a basic education, then you are fucked. Full stop. There's going to be the odd Bill Gates and the odd person who'll be able to somehow make money blogging and posting on YouTube, but for the most part you're fucked. There's no potential answer which does not focus almost entirely on education.

Also, we do know what skills are going to be in demand four years from now. STEM careers aren't going anywhere. Old people aren't going to stop needing nurses. The US isn't going to suddenly decide to stop invading defenseless third world countries and not need drone pilots to blow up brown people and workers to build tanks that they won't ever use. Rather than just going to university because "it's the thing to do after high school", they need to figure out why it is that they're going to university and how they can spend their time there working towards that. If they don't, there's a much better chance that they'll be the ones who get left behind and just have a large debt which wasn't an investment in anything.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

What gets you out of poverty is not paying to go to school but getting paid a decent wage for working.

There has been a fundamental shift is the valuing of work and workers and a general acceptence of the capture and hording of wealth by a new aristocracy.

Money works best when it circulates, and that happens when it allowed in the hands of the greater number of people (the 99% as opposed to the 1%)

 

[Bronzeage]

I think where we differ is that I don't believe that this is a situation that's going to be changing for the better and young people need to realize and accept that. If they don't take the time in school to target their education towards what employers are going to want, they are going to be left behind and won't even make it into the group that companies are willing to fuck over.

And that's a very unrealistic thing to ask of incoming college freshmen. I mean no one who studies this for a living really knows what skills are going to be in demand four years from now so how is an 18 year old fresh out of high school supposed to be able to figure it out?

Companies used to do this thing called "training" or something which is where company specific skills would be learned. That's been thrown out the window.

So I think the point of my OP stands in that education is not THE answer to someone's poverty problem.

What, pray tell, is THE answer?

if education is THE answer to poverty, it presupposes ignorance is the cause of poverty. As far as I know, no one has ever spoken in favor of ignorance, at least not as a tool of economic development.

If education is not the answer to poverty, does this mean there is no solution to poverty? Are we doomed to always have the poor with us?

 

[ksen]

There is no THE answer to poverty.

Poverty comes with a multitude of problems that need addressing of which education is only one.

 

[Bronzeage]

There is no THE answer to poverty.

Poverty comes with a multitude of problems that need addressing of which education is only one.

If we assume that adequate food, shelter, and medical care, make up the top three, in some order or another, where does education fit into the top 10?

 

[ksen]

You shouldn't need a college degree just to keep food on the table, a roof over your head and occasional trips to the doctor's office.

 

[Bronzeage]

You shouldn't need a college degree just to keep food on the table, a roof over your head and occasional trips to the doctor's office.

Would it be a hinderance?

What if a person graduated high school with the requisite education which had prepared them for a college education, but chose another path? Could their elementary and secondary education be a deciding factor in whether they lived above the poverty line?

 

[Derec]

Oh, and the entire list at trausti's link, all 129 majors, have starting salaries above poverty level. So I guess trausti is arguing that the people in poverty with post-high school education mostly studied things not on that list of 129 majors?

They have starting salaries above poverty level (for a single person?) if they manage to get a full time job in their field. If the only use your philosophy degree gets you is asking "why do you want fries with that" than these figures do not really apply.

 

[Derec]

How does their income compare with 30 or 40 years ago? How does the number of people in poverty compare?

Also: how does the percentage of people in these educational categories compare. It's one thing to say 6% of people in poverty had college degree then and 15% have college degree now, but that statistic is pretty meaningless unless we know what percentage of population had college degree (or some college, or high school diploma) then and now.
What is really relevant is percentage of people in poverty who have degrees (or some college or HS diploma) compared to all people in these educational categories.
This chart shows that educational levels increased substantially since the early 70s.

If the share of higher educational levels among population as a whole for 24-35 year olds increased as much or more than their share of poverty population (measured in your chart) it would refute the point of the chart.

Without those figures, it's pretty pointless trying to draw any conclusion from that diagram.

It's a pretty meaningless diagram any way you slice it. Almost as bad as the one that purported to "prove" that whites are more likely to be on welfare than blacks.