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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

I personally disagree that college is the solution. Some people lack the financial stability required to excel in what is essentially a long, expensive vacation learning things that won't directly impact their earnings. I vehemently believe in liberal arts and the importance of people studying philosophy/literature/etc., but studying impractical things is a luxury.

Other countries have robust retraining programs, so the bolt turner could become something else when bolt turning isn't useful anymore. This works in tandem with trade schools, which are also better-supported by governments outside the US.

(And I also am a huge fan of the concept of universal basic income!)

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Totally agree, especially with the concept of universal basic income.

Over the past couple years I've come closer to the conclusion that the middle class is pretty much doomed, and it will take a big change in our economic system to cope. A middle class fundamentally requires a large number of well-paying "repetitive" or "algorithmic" jobs. Doesn't matter if they are blue collar or white collar, but there need to be a lot of jobs where the output is relatively standard - e.g. the widget was made properly, the car ended up at the right destination, the audit was completed, etc. In these jobs, there isn't really that much of a difference between a good product and great product - it's just a job that needs to be completed.

Contrast that with "creative" or "competitive" type jobs: actor, writer, graphic designer, etc. Those jobs can never support a large middle class, because by definition there is such a huge valuation difference between the best performers and everyone else - there will always be a huge amount of inequality in these professions because the best can command a much higher salary than those even slightly down the ladder.

The problem, of course, is that automation and software will eventually take away the vast majority of the repetitive jobs. If all you are left with are the creative/competitive type jobs, you are guaranteed to have a huge amount of inequality.

There's another element to this too which multiplies the problem: whether the competition is on a local or a global scale.

Consider being a chef vs being a filmmaker. If you're the best chef in a city, you'll be in considerable demand. See, for example, Tom Kitchin in Edinburgh, who is justifiably rather famous and whose restaurant is booked out months in advance.

If you're the best filmmaker in a city, by contrast, no-one really cares. What matters there is if you're the best - or one of the best 10 or so - in the world.

(Or at least, within a specific language.)

Why? Because you can copy films and sell them all over the world without additional labour. You can do neither with food.

So whilst the two are "creative" jobs, the output's transportability and replicability make a huge difference in just how good you have to be to be the best.

(Not that I'm saying being a chef or running a restaurant isn't competitive. It's very competitive. And bloody hard work in other ways. Say what you like about being a filmmaker, it doesn't involve 14-hour days 360 days of the year to stay afloat.)

Completely agree, and that's also a reason why the internet is making it hugely difficult for large swaths of society to compete - what used to be many smaller markets, each with room for its own winner, is now a single giant market (for the most part) that can only support one winner (or very few) in total.

I also hate to add this to the conversation, but not everyone has the drive and inclination to do anything but bolt turning.

So when bolt turning peters out, they won't suddenly find their higher calling in advanced application and design of bolts and fasteners.

What they will do instead is hard to know, welfare, unemployment, early retirement they probably can't afford.

Maybe a foray into boutique bolt turning, charging excess for manually turned bolts. Machines don't turn bolts like they were turned in the good ol' days after all.

> not everyone has the drive and inclination to do anything but bolt turning

I think one of your implications is that some people are just too lazy to work at a skilled job.

I'd guess that this problem is much rarer than people suppose. Financial stability is a very strong motivation to work hard. It's also true that low-paying jobs almost never allow people to be lazy! It's absolutely exhausting and miserable to work in restaurants, production lines, cleaning, etc.

The key is mobility. Some of those bored, disengaged bolt turners might make enthusiastic, happy electricians. But transitioning from bolt turner to electrician is expensive, and usually turning bolts won't pay for that.

That's where society comes in: governments, nonprofits, and perhaps some corporations lubricate the labor market by making it easier for workers to switch into positions that suit them better. That lubrication comes in the form of subsidized education and/or temporary living expenses.

That was part of the implication but not necessarily all of it, they may very well try to find another labour intensive but low skilled job, so not lazy. But there are many who are simply quite happy to work hard and go home.

Not everyone is out for intellectual progression or even a better wage. I can tell you this first hand from living in country towns, where there aren't many high skilled jobs, but plenty of happy people who just like that lifestyle.

There can only be so many electricians in a 2000 person town once the bolt turning factory shuts down, for example. So for them it would mean skilling up in an area they may not be happy about, because it is what is available, or moving town to somewhere with similar work to what they had before.

I agree with what you are saying though, at that point it is up to institutions to support and retrain them if they are to continue being useful to society as a unit, but they may very well lose a lifestyle they were quite content with.

I'm glad Basic Income was brought up. If we continue to see automation and outsourcing grow, and as a result corporate profits soar, then as a country we need to plan for the loss of a host of "traditional' jobs.

> I personally disagree that college is the solution. Some people lack the financial stability required to excel in what is essentially a long, expensive vacation learning things that won't directly impact their earnings.

Which is why like I said, it needs to be greatly reduced or preferably free.

Let me clarify that excellence in college is expensive, even if tuition is waived, at least the way it's currently structured.

It's very, very hard to get good grades while working enough hours to support yourself, especially if you have no skills (and even affluent college students rarely have marketable skills).

That's because the way it's structured sucks. It's more or less a requirement now (or will be very soon) to earn a decent living, it shouldn't cost you half of your lifetime income to attend. You can't make something that important to a life and then charge such asinine amounts for it, especially when there's ample precedent showing that college grads on the whole improve our society by stimulating more economic activity and adding to the white collar workforce.

As romantic as it is to tell tales of how we bootstrapped ourselves through college, working off hours and earning our way, it's stupid to demand the next generation do it out of some misguided sense of tradition. We have the capability to make it better for our kids, why the hell aren't we?

Hm. Depends upon your area of study I guess. My middle son is now earning more per year than his entire education cost. However, he's a (CMU) CS/EE grad working at a startup in Silicon Valley.

"Let me clarify that excellence in college is expensive, even if tuition is waived, at least the way it's currently structured."

Not really.

"Tuition will be $51,196 for entering undergraduates and for others who arrived in fall 2015, 2014 and 2013, and $50,690 for those who entered in fall 2012, the email stated.

Room and board is set at $7,780 for a standard double room and $5,490 for a standard first-year meal plan, Mr. Murphy’s note stated."

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2016/01/14/CMU-wi...

So $13,270 for living expenses, at the presumably inflated prices CMU is charging.

Over 4 years, comes to $202,760 for tuition, vs. $53,080 for living expenses.

Point being, with tuition hyper-inflation, costs to support yourself while studying are relatively much, much less expensive. The student-loan debt crisis would rapidly become a non-issue if tuition was free.

The problem is that if it's free, the standards for admission will need to be much higher. Free and open to anyone won't work.

I submit that even a hipster learning about the French Revolution or Feminists Studies is going to have more to add to the world than a burger flipper, even if it isn't directly economically beneficial in the short term.

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