Low skill jobs pay less every year (adjusted to inflation) (taxes, financing)

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by mpyne

Of course clueless Obama's resolution: Go to community college? This will help boost the economy?????

So everyone with bachelor degrees etc.. Thats your problem you went to school too long. Or maybe everyone can become nurses?

Anyone who says that taking on more training at your own expense will improve your economic standing is a complete dult.

The only thing it does is subsidize employers by outsourcing training to your bank account, while you work for the same wage or less.

[wheelsup]

Originally Posted by Randomdude

Anyone who says that taking on more training at your own expense will improve your economic standing is a complete dult.

The only thing it does is subsidize employers by outsourcing training to your bank account, while you work for the same wage or less.

OK man you've gone off the deep end now.

There are many situations that going back to school will improve your money flow. In my case studying for around 2 weeks on my own and taking a $90 test allowed me to upgrade and with that a $30k pay increase. I guess I was stupid, maybe I should've demanded my employer pay me for the time I spent studying on my own and to be reimbursed my $90?

Naa, I'm good.

[hindsight2020]

Originally Posted by wheelsup

OK man you've gone off the deep end now.

There are many situations that going back to school will improve your money flow. In my case studying for around 2 weeks on my own and taking a $90 test allowed me to upgrade and with that a $30k pay increase. I guess I was stupid, maybe I should've demanded my employer pay me for the time I spent studying on my own and to be reimbursed my $90?

Naa, I'm good.

I hope you're not referring to getting your ATP as part of an upgrade to Captain at a scheduled/non-scheduled airline operation. If so I hope you're joking. You know that's not what randomdude is referring to. That's a given, you're EXPECTED to have those ratings to sit on that seat. There was nothing voluntary about it.

He's referring to the people that keep touting go to college and when you find jack for work, go to grad school on your own dime again, and all of the sudden that's going to create demand for your skillset and a higher wage. That's the bunk argument that randomdude is highlighting. FAA licenses are certifications that are required to perform the job, there was nothing "it's be nice to have" about those. Now, having a college degree is not required to fly an airplane and what do you know? Every gear swinger out there in McAirport Wage land has one too. Now THAT's a negative return on investment.

Just tempering the discussion, when you apply the right context, that argument is hardly off the reservation.

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by wheelsup

OK man you've gone off the deep end now.

There are many situations that going back to school will improve your money flow. In my case studying for around 2 weeks on my own and taking a $90 test allowed me to upgrade and with that a $30k pay increase. I guess I was stupid, maybe I should've demanded my employer pay me for the time I spent studying on my own and to be reimbursed my $90?

Naa, I'm good.

First thing, you didnt "go back to school" to be trained in something else, you just took some license exam. This is equivalent of an accountant getting a CPA or a Financial Analyst a CFA.


With many people going to school, one of the following things happened when they graduated, or at some point during their career.

1. The skill they paid 20k for became obsolete or outsourced
2. The skill they paid 20k for was unemployable
3. The skill they paid 20k for fell out of demand during or shortly after graduating
4. The skill they paid 20k for became flooded, driving the wage to a point where it would literally take decades to catch up to the wage they would have made taking an unskilled job.

This made their education pretty much a waste of time and money. Its not a matter of them taking one class, or some licensing test.

Those towing the "improve yourself" line, would suggest going to school and going in to even more economic duress, so they can roll the dice at the exact same thing happening again. Thats great.

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by hindsight2020

I hope you're not referring to getting your ATP as part of an upgrade to Captain at a scheduled/non-scheduled airline operation. If so I hope you're joking. You know that's not what randomdude is referring to. That's a given, you're EXPECTED to have those ratings to sit on that seat. There was nothing voluntary about it.

He's referring to the people that keep touting go to college and when you find jack for work, go to grad school on your own dime again, and all of the sudden that's going to create demand for your skillset and a higher wage. That's the bunk argument that randomdude is highlighting. FAA licenses are certifications that are required to perform the job, there was nothing "it's be nice to have" about those. Now, having a college degree is not required to fly an airplane and what do you know? Every gear swinger out there in McAirport Wage land has one too. Now THAT's a negative return on investment.

Just tempering the discussion, when you apply the right context, that argument is hardly off the reservation.

Thanks, this is exactly what I tried to spell out in my follow up post to his.

[Rei]

The fact of the matter is that no matter how special you think you are, there are simply too many graduates each year than the jobs they all aspire to attain. Period. I have degrees in engineering, professional pilot certifications as well as post-graduate degrees and experience teaching at the college level.

Engineering should be relatively more stable field because in some eng field, you need a PE to practice. Actually... any career that requires a certification such as CPA, CFA, law, medicine, etc is relatively more stable because not everyone can break the barrier and enter the field. Once it gets too saturated, just up the requirements for entering the field (eg. NCEES trying to up the requirements that people need to have an MS to sit in for PE).

Also, investment in education can be smart if you know where to invest it in (invest in tangible skills and knowledge, where your education drives invention and innovation, and as a result drives production and economy). Even in engineering, average engineers contribute almost nothing to the economy. It's the geniuses that everyday invents a biomedical breakthrough and the likes, that constribute...

[subsound]

Originally Posted by Randomdude

Anyone who says that taking on more training at your own expense will improve your economic standing is a complete dult.

I guess you can call me worse then that, I paid my way through a masters program and doubled my income on graduation. It was so amazingly stupid to do I'm not sure why I did it now, considering the yearly income is more then 3x what my education cost for the 48 graduate credits.

Doh doh doh.

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by subsound

I guess you can call me worse then that, I paid my way through a masters program and doubled my income on graduation. It was so amazingly stupid to do I'm not sure why I did it now, considering the yearly income is more then 3x what my education cost for the 48 graduate credits.

Doh doh doh.

Maybe you should go on a speaking tour. You can talk to everyone who has a degree who is, unemployed, underemployed in their field of study or not employed at all in their field of study. You can also talk to the many who cant move out of their parents house or must live with several roommates because they are buckling under the combination of miniscule pay and huge student debt.

All of them were fed the same line about how a degree was going to do so much for them.

Doh doh doh

[subsound]

Originally Posted by Randomdude

Maybe you should go on a speaking tour. You can talk to everyone who has a degree who is, unemployed, underemployed in their field of study or not employed at all in their field of study. You can also talk to the many who cant move out of their parents house or must live with several roommates because they are buckling under the combination of miniscule pay and huge student debt.

All of them were fed the same line about how a degree was going to do so much for them.

Doh doh doh

Sounds like a great idea! I can take people's money and generalize so much about education that I lump structural engineers, philosophy students, computer science majors, and communication students...then tell them all how they are tens of thousands in debt useless their degrees are in making a living wage because they are all the same. If they know it or not.

With your analysis people who choose useless fields of studies and overload on debt are lumped with those who were smart about both, and apply the same general brush of the most negative aspects to all. Life doesn't work that way to me, correlation of higher education does not equal great amounts of debt and the same pay they would have had without it.

I'm my own example of that! My wife will be her own example soon to, we can pay off her degree with the extra cash from my job...and she has people talking to her about internships to hire already.

Doh doh doh. I guess we are educated dummies.

[hindsight2020]

Originally Posted by subsound

Sounds like a great idea! I can take people's money and generalize so much about education that I lump structural engineers, philosophy students, computer science majors, and communication students...then tell them all how they are tens of thousands in debt useless their degrees are in making a living wage because they are all the same. If they know it or not.

With your analysis people who choose useless fields of studies and overload on debt are lumped with those who were smart about both, and apply the same general brush of the most negative aspects to all. Life doesn't work that way to me, correlation of higher education does not equal great amounts of debt and the same pay they would have had without it.

I'm my own example of that! My wife will be her own example soon to, we can pay off her degree with the extra cash from my job...and she has people talking to her about internships to hire already.

Doh doh doh. I guess we are educated dummies.

Educated fool? I could go there but there's no point in making this discussion personal. In general, yes, the majority of college graduates are educated fools.

Anyways, back to the point. The accusation you raised about people making generalizations about education makes you equally guilty. You cite your personal example as a purposed proof positive against the fact that the majority of graduate degree holders are NOT beneficiaries of income "doubling upon graduation". You just generalized yourself. The condition you cite is, and Im taking it at face value, a statistical outlier condition. Furthermore, marginal returns on investment dictates that if your scheme was such a win-win, everybody would flood your field of work doing the exact same thing and your salary would go down down down. Again, nobody is that special. You may think you're special enough to have broken through the academic barriers of "hacking it on your field" but I know one too many perfect SAT scores and phd-post doc in their 30s making 30K after more than a decade of schooling to know, you are not Lebron James and your field too can become saturated to even price you out of it.

Furthermore, to further debunk this blanket advice of "do your research",which is really a copout when you're always attempting to lead-aim a target condition 4-5 years into the future, and by the time you are one year out you're financially committed to that degree, as changing gears would cost you even more money and time. The reality of the matter is that in all these fields, there are more graduates than jobs all these graduates desire. Engineering is ridiculously flooded, I know this for a fact. Remember, what the TV doesn't tell you is that there is actually enough jobs for Americans in this country, just not enough Americans willing to do them for the wages they pay. Big understatement that little factoid is.

People are not going to stoically accept a 40% underpricing of the skillset they pursued college for on the expectation of 100% of their target salary. Those who can afford to become boomerang kids, and there are many, do so before taking a paycut. Heck, plenty of examples in the more pampered upper middle class where it doesn't pay to take the job for that money, when by living at home your quality of life would be higher than trying to do it alone with a non-existent savings rate and ramen noodles for the better part of a decade. One much rather sit at home with no bills, accruing the savings rate and disposable income the job was supposed to provide you in the first place. That's evidence of a subsidized non-solvent economy, technically called UNDEREMPLOYMENT, which most people don't even know how to quantify, the govt sure doesn't touch it.

I could go take a 35K engineering job and call it a day, but I could do the same without a college degree at the local Taco Bell for assistant manager, and the work would be easier, not to mention I would have 4 years of income on the engineering graduate. As to PE licenses, hardly barriers to entry. Engineering is one big haze, once you get through college, the rest is stuff a high school graduate with a natural inclination towards math and a year of shadowing you do your job, could do. Hardly the exemplification of an iron-clad job. It'll keep you fed, but it sure as heck does not justify the personal and financial expense of going to college for 5 years. If I had a quarter for every engineer planning on getting an MBA to jump the fence to management because they are outright dissatisfied with the income plateau in engineering (70-80K with furloughs every 7 years in aggregate) and want to make the money they thought they were going to make as engineers, I'd be a rich man already. If you ask privately many engineers would confess their disatisfaction with that career, the reason the majority pursued it was because it was the most technical option offered by the boomer mantra of "doctor, lawyer, engineer", which is expired advice in the new economy. That's it. Otherwise, drudge work galore and the pay ain't there anymore.

Of course, this whole mantra of everybody go pay for an MBA is exactly what people like randomdude are highlighting. It's the cattle call solution, go fork out another six figures on an MBA and all is well. As the economy proves, that's a myth. Essentially, the adivce that people need to "research their options" is a hedge at best. Primarily because humans are not commodities, therefore everybody can't be made to have an inclination towards the vocation of the month in this craponomy, people are different and their desires most often do not materialize to vocations they can make a living out of. Which is why people then chase the money, and the effect that creates is a low tide/high tide effect in labor, where people "flood" careers that appear to have the compensation Americans see as necessary to fulfill their material desires and that justify the expense of college. The aggregate effect that in turn has is that it dilutes wages in said sector. Classic gold rush dynamics. Simple boundary condition math dictates that everybody CAN"T be better off by simply "going to college for what makes money yesterday".

About the only thing I agree with you is NOT divulging the nature of your work on a public forum, as doing so may trigger the aforemetioned dilution of the salary you so proudly boast. Rent-seeking my friend, we're all guilty of it.