The Next President is...

[Negatory]

3 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

I hope your anger keeps you warm this winter.

Is this how you cop out when someone points out fallacious arguments or mistruths in almost every one of your points? I mean, this is the mentality you have to have to make O-6 in the Air Force, so let’s not say I’m surprised.

And I’ll just remind you that you’re the one who created an itemized list of reasons why I shouldn’t be glad we have Biden over Trump, and then you got offended when I provided any support of that list. Projection is a cruel thing, buddy.

Address the points or agree to disagree.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Negatory

[Negatory]

5 hours ago, brabus said:

Not that I disagree with your literal statement, but I do disagree that such a situation is unavoidable for adults (at least it is far more unavoidable than the Dems like to make it seem). A couple local examples:

1. I have several friends who own their businesses (builder, excavation, roofing); they have vacancies paying $25/hr (and if we’re honest, there’s a lot of “under the table” paying going on). They also pay a lot more than that to many of their employees who have been with them for a while/acquired new skills while on the job. It’s hard for them to find people, let alone keep them.

2. Local area power companies (the 2 I have personal connection two) are begging for lineman. They are offering to pay $25-30k for the training/certs, and within 4 years that person is making 6 figures. Blew my mind, but it’s true. 
 

What do I see scattered all over street corners the past 6-9 mo? Abled-body men under 40 begging for money (while also getting Covid handouts I bet). They’re not disheveled, sitting in wheel chairs, etc. Many of them look like they probably work out at a local gym daily and are pretty healthy. I’ve heard every excuse in the book about these people, but when it comes down to it, they can swing a fucking hammer, they’re just too lazy to do it…they want easy money they don’t have to put effort towards. 
 

The point: Min wage is a bit of a smoke and mirrors discussion, the RC is not $15/hr (plenty for the HS kid), because we haven’t asked/answered the question why there are so many jobs out there that pay well above Min wage/offer substantially more than “that McDs job,” yet people walk right past them complaining about the “rich folk holding me down!” Barring significant medical problems preventing work, I believe the RC for these situations is our society rewards laziness while breeding ungratefulness and a weak work ethic/sense of personal responsibility. 

Your point is that easily acquired, skilled blue collar labor jobs exist. I disagree with your overarching point that there are an abundance of these opportunities. It’s not as easy as existing to actually just get into one of these pipelines. I used to think this myself until I had personal family try to make it happen. My brother tried for years to get into the electrician mafia in our hometown - turns out it’s more about who you know than anything else. Also, most of these jobs are at will contracting with totally unreliable hours, no insurance, no benefits, and significant stress on your body. Hopefully your friends are running their businesses differently.

My additional counterpoint to this is one example that highlights a million others. You almost assuredly partake in restaurants, right? Therefore, you want those jobs to exist. Therefore, you want people working in the restaurant industry. I assume you know there is absolutely no way that the restaurant industry can staff from just high schoolers. Also, that shouldn’t be the expectation. High schoolers should be doing school if you want to compete with China.

But the dissonance in your logic is that while you simultaneously believe the restaurant industry exists and therefore should employ people on an ongoing basis, you believe that almost none of these jobs should be permanent. Why? Why should someone who provides you with a service you agree on and enjoy under market conditions not be paid long term a living wage? It’s because these jobs have been relegated to second tier sorts of positions. Even though it’s something you would pay for regularly.

Now, we’d all say, “well restaurant workers/retail workers/etc can work on themselves in their time off.” Throw a kid, a needy parent, a health problem, or a multitude of other unfortunate situations into the mix, and it quickly becomes a gigantic uphill battle for people’s economic lives to improve. This is the cycle of suffering. And I’ve seen it in my own siblings.

My position is that the level of economic prosperity that existed in 1950s-1990s America is no longer possible for anyone but the rich. No longer can you pay for your child and better yourself. No longer can you purchase a house on a union job. No longer can you support your family on one salary.

But the rich are getting richer faster than ever before. This is trickle down economics - take from the poor and give to the rich.

Oh, and don’t forget to have the middle class sneer when the poor want their dark blue line to follow their light blue one.

[Negatory]

23 hours ago, ViperMan said:

You write a lot of words, and have some decent ideas. The core problem with your argument is that it doesn't effectively address people without skin in the game. No matter how much money we print, we will never be able to print enough to deal with a never ending stream of handouts.

re: the "wealth" issues you address - the value of labor has declined tremendously over the past number of decades. Or perhaps a better way to couch it is the value of different labor has become wickedly differentiated. Reasons include - globalization, technology, and women entering the work force. No one wants people suffering, but there's also the reality that our country has created plenty of industries and jobs that were never designed to be able to push someone's standard of living beyond the boundaries of their parents' basements (i.e. fast food, Walmart greeter, etc). These jobs are important because they provide avenues to join the labor force that certain groups otherwise would not have. Pour onto that a massive increase in the number of people who can compete for jobs, and what you get is a decrease in the value of the commodity you provide (i.e. labor). That has nothing to do with communism, socialism, or capitalism - it is pure, uncontaminated, economic fact. Note: I don't have a great solution to this problem.

There is already widespread agreement about the rich paying more than the poor - it's baked into the core of our system. See, 10% of more is greater than 10% of less. The "graduated" rates we pay as we move up are only incentives to corrupt the system. And I think we can all agree that is what we have. Forcing people to pay their actual "fair" share is a way to ensure no one is getting a free ride. And when we look at the fact that the bottom 50% of "taxpayers" in this country pay about 3% of the taxes that is where the unfairness lies and that is where the distortion is. It ain't fair that there are this many people in the country who extract vastly more than they contribute.

As my favorite example of distortion, take a look at the effects of California's prop 13 - the law enacted that protects people's original tax rates back in the 1970s. It has created a class of gilded land owners who can pass their 'heritance down to their heirs. It's fucked up, no matter how you look at it (https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.43748019180391,-122.1928891539574,19). There's a zoom on a random neighbor hood of SF for you. Some people pay upwards of $90,000/yr in property taxes, while their neighbors pay less than $100/yr. I'm pretty right-leaning, but I think even people on the left would think this is wildly unjust. The left's notion that all the "extraction" of value is happening at the top is complete and total bullshit.

But hey, I'm sure it'll all get better as we rush to collapse our monetary system - I know of many historical precedents wherein global powers have decided to just print their way to prosperity, eat the rich, and destroy their middle class. Works every time, really.

I agree with most of what you’re saying. I think the actual RC is we create blanket policy that shouldn’t be applied across the US. For example, I would support minimum wage in Arkansas to be closer to $8 an hour, but I would want minimum wage in LA to be $20 an hour.

Your point that 10% of 10M is more than 10% of $50k doesn’t resonate with me. The $5k the family now making $45k has to pay will orders of magnitude more affect their ability to have a basic quality of like than the $1M dollars the person now making $9M dollars will have to pay. In fact, that rich dude could be taxed at 50%, make $5M dollars, and still make over 100 times what a blue collar salary is. Would you argue the economy isn’t being “fair” enough to the guy who made $5M dollars? Is it impacting them, really?

Your point about distortion I don’t exactly understand where you’re going. I agree rent control and utility control are bad for everyone.

Both parties are pumping money into equities to hold up the facade. The only real solution is a more tightly controlled economy that favors the worker - a la 1950-1980.

My overarching position is that progressive taxes are good for society. As I’ve said, there is scant evidence trickle down economics improves the average American’s life.

On a side note, extremely happy about the global tax that will disincentive American companies from basing in islands or Ireland. I do wonder what type of propaganda is being thrown right now to convince the average conservative voter that tax shelters and loopholes are good for them.

[HeloDude]

I’m sure bringing in even more unskilled labor into the US via illegal immigration will help raise wages of other unskilled American workers…

Supply vs Demand…or something.

[ViperMan]

1 hour ago, Negatory said:

I agree with most of what you’re saying. I think the actual RC is we create blanket policy that shouldn’t be applied across the US. For example, I would support minimum wage in Arkansas to be closer to $8 an hour, but I would want minimum wage in LA to be $20 an hour.

Your point that 10% of 10M is more than 10% of $50k doesn’t resonate with me. The $5k the family now making $45k has to pay will orders of magnitude more affect their ability to have a basic quality of like than the $1M dollars the person now making $9M dollars will have to pay. In fact, that rich dude could be taxed at 50%, make $5M dollars, and still make over 100 times what a blue collar salary is. Would you argue the economy isn’t being “fair” enough to the guy who made $5M dollars? Is it impacting them, really?

Your point about distortion I don’t exactly understand where you’re going. I agree rent control and utility control are bad for everyone.

Both parties are pumping money into equities to hold up the facade. The only real solution is a more tightly controlled economy that favors the worker - a la 1950-1980.

My overarching position is that progressive taxes are good for society. As I’ve said, there is scant evidence trickle down economics improves the average American’s life.

On a side note, extremely happy about the global tax that will disincentive American companies from basing in islands or Ireland. I do wonder what type of propaganda is being thrown right now to convince the average conservative voter that tax shelters and loopholes are good for them.

Yeah, I didn't go into it in enough detail really. My point re: distortion in the system is that many people believe that there is a simple fix to the "pay your fair share" meme that has taken over our (financial) political discourse. Pointing towards the distorting effect that prop 13 has on individuals' relative property tax rates is a way to point at something that is, direct, real, and present which results in a massive differential tax rate between neighbors, but that few people see or understand. I think with as complex as our tax code is, that there are other instances like this that are replete throughout the system. Point being, I don't think it's as simple as just increasing the upper end of the tax rates to compensate for budget shortfalls and shitty planning.

It's fine if that doesn't resonate with you. It does with me. My fundamental belief is that our government is the "thing" that we ALL share and participate in which helps to direct and guide our mutual lives. The problem now, is that there are massive and increasing numbers of people who only take. i.e. they participate in it, but they don't share in it. They have no skin in the game, and their only votes are for more stuff for themselves. That is not a path to a sustainable system - I don't care what philosophy says that it is - it just ain't. Plus, if we really believed that these social programs were working, why not just blanket increase taxes across the board, and then would it even matter? I mean they're paying more, but they're getting more, right? Something tells me there's more to it than that, though...

Eventually, I'm concerned we will reach a breaking point, where the value of your dollar becomes so diminished that it motivates "capital" to find a different system to participate in - why do you think crypto is such a thing all of a sudden? We need to be very concerned about unwittingly destroying the thing that keeps this whole train rollin'.

[Guardian]

The top 1% of earners pay 40% of the taxes taken in.

[ClearedHot]

3 hours ago, Negatory said:

Is this how you cop out when someone points out fallacious arguments or mistruths in almost every one of your points? I mean, this is the mentality you have to have to make O-6 in the Air Force, so let’s not say I’m surprised.

And I’ll just remind you that you’re the one who created an itemized list of reasons why I shouldn’t be glad we have Biden over Trump, and then you got offended when I provided any support of that list. Projection is a cruel thing, buddy.

Address the points or agree to disagree.

Very simple, when you start dropping insults...just like your passive aggressive comment above...the "discussion" is over.  Your reply is riddled with anger rather than logic so I see no real point is going back and forth. 

[Guest]

@Negatory

[ClearedHot]

1 hour ago, Guardian said:

The top 1% of earners pay 40% of the taxes taken in.

And it is still not enough according to some!

Even if everyone paid the same rate (and I am not saying it should be that way), if I made 10 times as much I would pay ten times as much...but that is not enough.  Under the current progressive tax structure I pay 36.5 times as much...but I am greedy?  Make ZERO sense. 

No other country in the world offers so much opportunity.  In this great country the only thing standing between you and wealth is hard work. 

[Prozac]

9 minutes ago, dogfish78 said:

@Negatory

Surprise! 

[brabus]

8 hours ago, Negatory said:

Your point is that easily acquired, skilled blue collar labor jobs exist

They literally do, though I’m not speaking for the entire US, but in my state, they’re everywhere. Maybe not where you are, and I’ll take your word for it. Though I’m also guessing we’re not the only state in the union with employers other than min wage fast food looking for workers.

 

8 hours ago, Negatory said:

No longer can you pay for your child and better yourself. No longer can you purchase a house on a union job. No longer can you support your family on one salary.

Hyperbole and false. Hard work can get you very far in this country. I’m not saying shitty circumstances don’t exist or people can’t have bad timing/a run of bad luck. This is victim mentality at its finest and serves no positive purpose. 

[Sua Sponte]

On 10/9/2021 at 4:26 PM, Prosuper said:

Been reading all these comments, I wonder if it was like this for officers before the Civil War given orders to march to their home states. LT Col Robert E Lee USA being offered command of all Union Armies just to turn it down knowing that he would have been ordered to kill Rebel Virginians. Myself being retired and USAF civil service, being just given a ultimatum to comply  with the covid shot, I took it way back in Feb BTW but it was my choice and I am scared of what my long term health prospects are. I believe our Federal Govt leaders are corrupt to the core and pray the states call a convention of states just to start over. I'm just hoping I can make it to my Colorado cabin in a year and half and live out my days being left alone.

Left alone in Colorado? Apparently you haven’t seen the massive amount of Californians and Texans who have moved here in the past 10 years.

[M2]

26 minutes ago, Sua Sponte said:

Left alone in Colorado? Apparently you haven’t seen the massive amount of Californians and Texans who have moved here in the past 10 years.

Well, to be fair, about a third of Colorado, over half of New Mexico and even some of Kansas, Oklahoma and Wyoming were Texas at one point; so we're just taking back territory...

[Sua Sponte]

32 minutes ago, M2 said:

Well, to be fair, about a third of Colorado, over half of New Mexico and even some of Kansas, Oklahoma and Wyoming were Texas at one point; so we're just taking back territory...

Can’t take over anything if you’re always in in the ditch of I-25/I-70 in the winter 🤣

[jazzdude]

No other country in the world offers so much opportunity.  In this great country the only thing standing between you and wealth is hard work. 

I'll add that it's not just hard work. Just like in an AF career, luck and timing are also important, if not more so, and can significantly change your outcome in life.

[jazzdude]

Yes, hard work is important, and having a good work ethic can open some doors. But luck and timing are important as well and often ignored, and good luck and good timing are often attributed to just working hard and being rewarded for that hard work. But there's also a lot of other factors at play, which may limit the opportunities a person can take depending on their tolerance for risk(aka how lucky do they feel).

Wages haven't kept up with increases productivity. Minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation.

Another problem is a generation has been sold on college debt: having a college degree, any degree, would open doors to better pay and jobs. That might have been true when degrees were rare, but now the market is flooded with degrees and lessened their value. (This is why college for all would fail, and why I don't agree with calls to make college "free" for everyone. Plus most of the information can be learned for free online out with library resources, so it's not a access to knowledge problem) Unfortunately for the individual, they become saddled with debt they can't discharge via bankruptcy, and can drive getting stuck in a bad job because they can't afford to take a pay cut to transition to a better field of work or to restart in a new trade. That debt and need to meet basic necessities may mean they also don't have the means to save for their future goals, whether it's retirement, a house, etc.

Also related is that healthcare is tired to jobs in the US, so medical needs may cause someone to remain in a job because they can't risk losing medical coverage.

On the flip side, lots of jobs now want to see a 4 year degree in their applicants, even when it has no bearing on the job itself. This perpetuates the notion that you "need" a 4 year degree. For example, registered nurses. You can become an RN with a 2 year degree. Except most "good" nursing jobs want a 4 year degree in nursing (BSN). However, there's is nothing a BSN can do that an RN can't do, they hold the same professional certification as RN. You could argue they want the soft skills associated with a bachelors degree, but you'd be wrong, they ignore other degrees in hiring.

There's also lots of assumptions built into our way of life, such as transportation.

Housing is cheaper the further you get from desirable areas (and one of the reasons why we have suburban sprawl). This includes places of work, and generally drives people to require transportation to/from work. In a large city with a decent public transportation system, a person could get by without a car (which saves on several costs, including insurance, gas, and parking). But in smaller cities and towns, cars become more important, because they buy you time. A 15 minute commute by car could be an hour via public transportation, if it exists. Shortening the commute to something walkable/bikeable isn't usually feasible (ref. housing costs near desirable locations), so that's typically out. This could drive other hidden costs, like increased child care costs due to the extra time needed to commute to work.

None of these are easy problems to solve. But "work harder" is a gross oversimplification of the problem. (I think it's about as bad as telling AF pilots they should be happy in their job and don't need a bonus, and shouldn't complain about the ops tempo because it's what they signed up to do).

[ClearedHot]

Sorry but all I hear is a lot of excuses. 

Is there risk, absolutely but there are many thousands of millionaires and hundreds of billionaires that started with nothing.  Immigrants who arrived with $100 in their pocket and they somehow overcame all the drag of no college degree, low wages, housing and poor transportation. 

 

[jazzdude]

Sorry but all I hear is a lot of excuses. 
Is there risk, absolutely but there are many thousands of millionaires and hundreds of billionaires that started with nothing.  Immigrants who arrived with $100 in their pocket and they somehow overcame all the drag of no college degree, low wages, housing and poor transportation. 
 

And there are many more who just don't make it, or just get by, but their stories aren't ones that books get written about.

Those aren't excuses, just obstacles that need to be overcome. Sometimes they can be overcome by hard work alone, sometimes it requires some fortunate timing and a little luck to overcome those obstacles. And no one likes to talk about what happens when risks are realized, it's much easier to celebrate taking a chance and winning.

But you are right in that our country offers great opportunity, and probably the most economic mobility.

At the same time, businesses need to work harder too. If they have staffing shortfalls, stop complaining and do the work to invest in recruiting and retaining talent. If people don't want to do the job you have open, you're probably not paying enough to deal with the job. And if you can't afford to pay what the workers are demanding, well, your business model probably has flawed assumptions and you're on the path to failure.

[busdriver]

About 6-9 months ago I was curious about this debate and dug into average annual pay on manual labor jobs in 1969 compared to the 2007.  Those years didn't have any real significance, other than having data that was easy to grab.

The average annual pay of all manual labor jobs had risen very slightly in real terms (43k to 44.5k).

The average cost of healthcare had risen 5.5% to 22% of that annual pay.  

The median home value had risen from about 400% to 3500%.

An average college degree has gone from 22% to about 100%.

Average car cost had gone from 60 to 69%.

Everything else stayed the same cost or got cheaper.

 

So there is a real something in medical costs, home costs, and college costs.  Any discussion about addressing those needs to actually look into the root cause of why the cost went up.  Throwing government money around doesn't inherently do that.

 

[Lord Ratner]

2 minutes ago, jazzdude said:

 

 

And there are many more who just don't make it, or just get by, but their stories aren't ones that books get written about.

Those aren't excuses, just obstacles that need to be overcome. Sometimes they can be overcome by hard work alone, sometimes it requires some fortunate timing and a little luck to overcome those obstacles. And no one likes to talk about what happens when risks are realized, it's much easier to celebrate taking a chance and winning.

But you are right in that our country offers great opportunity, and probably the most economic mobility.

At the same time, businesses need to work harder too. If they have staffing shortfalls, stop complaining and do the work to invest in recruiting and retaining talent. If people don't want to do the job you have open, you're probably not paying enough to deal with the job. And if you can't afford to pay what the workers are demanding, well, your business model probably has flawed assumptions and you're on the path to failure.

 

Another fallacy in this line of reasoning is that all bottoms are equal. If you lack the timing and luck that are allegedly required to succeed in america, you still end up in a vastly better position than if you lack the timing or luck required in another country. And if you take one step up from the absolute bottom, you see an even bigger disparity. The second from the bottom quintile in America lead dramatically wealthier and more opportunistic lives than the second to the bottom quintile in European countries. And whereas our citizens in that quintile pay no taxes effectively, European lower and middle class workers pay quite a bit of taxes.

 

So while this system isn't perfect when compared to a non-existent perfect system, it is thoroughly more beneficial to those at the bottom than other systems that do exist.

 

There are only two valid comparisons. That which exists in other countries today, and that which existed in our country in the past. By both metrics, our citizens come out way ahead. Add in the opportunities for upward mobility, and the competition isn't even close.

 

I do agree with the problems regarding college debt, housing prices, and wage stagnation. But the boom times of the 1950s did not come remotely close to the level of regulation and interference we have today. College debt can be directly traced to government backing student loans. That seemingly well-intentioned policy completely decimated a lot of millennial and gen z lives with astronomical debt as teenagers. And we effectively derailed the progress black Americans were making with a series of well-intentioned but ultimately catastrophic programs such as affirmative action. Decades of progress making up for a true evil, completely lost. And now no one on either side has a solution for the glaring racial problem that everyone sees but is uncomfortable verbalizing.

 

The disconnect is that liberals generally see conservative resistance as some sort of lack of compassion. Incorrect. It's generally a realization that second and third order effects of seemingly innocuous (to liberals) government action can have quite devastating effects.

[ClearedHot]

Just now, jazzdude said:

At the same time, businesses need to work harder too. If they have staffing shortfalls, stop complaining and do the work to invest in recruiting and retaining talent. If people don't want to do the job you have open, you're probably not paying enough to deal with the job.

 

Do you have any idea how hard this is?  Maddening brother!

It is so easy to just wave a hand and say "just pay more" or "fix your business model."  Not trying to insult you but have you ever run a business? 

First, you have the federal government telling you who you can and can't hire and crawling up your ass if the employee population is not a perfect reflection of society.  I have seen companies go to extraordinary lengths to meet these government quotas but fall short and be punished when the reason the goal can't be achieved is there simply were no qualified applicants. 

Second, American kids are far more enamored with a liberal arts degree from Berkley that allows them the time to "find themselves" and identify social injustice rather than investing in the hard sciences and technical degrees.

For the record we have invested in recruiting and retaining talent.  We have gone to HBCs, opened paid internships ($23-$25 an hour for College Juniors), and offered to hire 30-40% of those interns.  We offer free lunch on site via catering and food trucks, tuition assistance, excellent benefits, box seats to sporting events and concerts.  In certain jobs we give $30K spot bonuses to keep talent and we still can't keep up. 

35 minutes ago, jazzdude said:

 And if you can't afford to pay what the workers are demanding, well, your business model probably has flawed assumptions and you're on the path to failure.

 

Simply not true...absolutely not true.  The government dictates many business models and I am sorry but I can't waive my hand and have a Berkley female studies major perform the same duties as a C++ or C Sharp Dev.  And, while I pay many new college grads 6+ figures eventually I run into the brickwall of the government telling me what my profit can and can't be.

[jazzdude]

It's straight supply and demand. If you want engineers, you have to attract them, whether it's based on mission, location, or compensation, or a combination of the three. And there are many large companies competing for the same talent, on the software side places like Amazon/Google/Facebook/etc. Just like any other limited resource, the scarcer it gets the more it costs. And it's not like the US is producing less engineers with bachelor's degrees than in the past, just that there's more competition for them. Or you have people with engineering degrees exiting the field to go do something else (like fly military jets...)

Plus, I'd wager that many software development jobs don't actually require a comp sci degree, and that a lot of coding can be successfully be done by someone who's self taught. The trouble is it's hard to measure/gauge the abilities of someone that doesn't have a formal degree. I know when I interned at a major defense contractor that most of the work I did don't really have anything to do with my (EE) degree, outside of a few classes where we happened to use C and Java. But there's no vocational equivalent for software development, and unless you're needing to develop better methods of sorting data, a comp sci degree is probably overkill.

Plus there's a lot of other drags on business. Look at USERRA protections-great for manning the reserves (and I think we can all agree good for the country as a whole), and protecting a traditional reservist's primary civilian job helps ensure participation with their unit. But it's a cost that the business has to bear. Oh, and not hiring someone because of their reservist status is also illegal.

You point out going to Berkeley and getting a soft degree; it's a free country, individuals can study whatever they want (though some degrees have better returns on investment with less risk than others). And most engineering programs are competitive, with more applicants than seats available, so the pool of applicants is still strong. Yes, it would be great for our country to produce more engineers, but the incentives aren't there for colleges to rapidly expand their engineering programs, and the federal government can't really mandate colleges produce more engineers. And any federal incentives would cost money aka tax revenue, so that's got to come from somewhere.

Also, reaching kids in k-12 to encourage studying math and science is important, as well as teaching those subjects in k-12. Because if that educational background isn't built then, it limits the pool of students qualified to begin technical field of study. So investment in primary/secondary education is important, and funded through tax revenue (though at the local/state level). And students generally are only as good as their teachers.

[ClearedHot]

32 minutes ago, jazzdude said:

You point out going to Berkeley and getting a soft degree; it's a free country, individuals can study whatever they want (though some degrees have better returns on investment with less risk than others).

100% agree, but don't expect a living wage this choice.  As you said, supply and demand and there is very little high paying demand for the overwhelming pool of soft degrees.

[ViperMan]

1 hour ago, jazzdude said:

You point out going to Berkeley and getting a soft degree; it's a free country, individuals can study whatever they want (though some degrees have better returns on investment with less risk than others). And most engineering programs are competitive, with more applicants than seats available, so the pool of applicants is still strong. Yes, it would be great for our country to produce more engineers, but the incentives aren't there for colleges to rapidly expand their engineering programs, and the federal government can't really mandate colleges produce more engineers. And any federal incentives would cost money aka tax revenue, so that's got to come from somewhere.

Also, reaching kids in k-12 to encourage studying math and science is important, as well as teaching those subjects in k-12. Because if that educational background isn't built then, it limits the pool of students qualified to begin technical field of study. So investment in primary/secondary education is important, and funded through tax revenue (though at the local/state level). And students generally are only as good as their teachers.

Your perspective is interesting, because I think the incentives are there. The incentives and consequences are showing up in our massive and mounting student debt crisis. That *is* the signal. It's a signal our government is sending by virtue of providing effectively unlimited student loan debt for degrees that provide no meaningful ability to receive a higher standard of living. Individuals who attain degrees that provide massive remuneration (CS, engineering, etc) are not having a hard time paying off their student loans. The solution is to get the government out of distorting the market for these other worthless degrees. There is that there is no market for much of what colleges produce. The *only* reason these colleges get away with it is because the government provides a funding stream for what is otherwise valueless.

So you're right, while the government can't *mandate* a school produce more engineers, they can certainly shape the incentive structure that these schools inherit.

[ViperMan]

6 hours ago, busdriver said:

The average cost of healthcare had risen 5.5% to 22% of that annual pay.

I'd be interested to see more complete data, but I think our (American) average waistlines have increased by a similar proportion. Expect the cost of healthcare to continue to increase in proportion to how unhealthy we continue to become: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-29220000