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Comment by mitchpron | Hacker News Reader

Education. It's what Obama was emphasizing his entire presidency. Those jobs are never coming back, and even more are going to be automated. The education gap between rich and poor (and white and minority) is getting larger because of hoodlum-fearing mothers who support segregated neighborhoods and schools. Plus the poor-parent schools stay poor and the rich-parent schools stay rich.

All of these factors together (which Democrats are actually interested in addressing) are growing an underclass of under-educated, unconnected people who can't make it in the world of the middle and upper class, so violence may become more frequent and jails will fill up. I doubt that the Trump administration and Congress have a plan that could come close to fixing this.

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You know, I used to think the same way --education. But Europe, Germany in particular, stresses education, and that has not saved them from having overqualified people and too few jobs for them. It also minimizes the fact that not all people have the aptitude to learn and obtain higher degrees. It's a race to the top and in that race there will always be people below who feel left out. So education can only offer so much --not all.

To add, educated people without a job feel even worse than undereducated people who don't have a job because they believed education would insulate them from these issues when it might not.

As someone on the employer side of the table I see two frequent problems with university educated candidates that generally don't land the job:

1) irrelevant or (professionally) useless degrees. These would be fine but because they have a degree these candidates generally think they deserve a higher wage which I can't afford (before you say "but general knowledge is valuable as well" remember that self-taught candidates with similarly well-rounded knowledge generally demand less despite often having actual job experience)

2) complete lack of practical knowledge or skills. Even if a degree is job-related that doesn't mean they are capable of doing the job or have the frame of mind required to do the job properly. This is especially a problem with people who picked their majors based on what industry currently provides the best salaries rather than what they are actually interested in doing.

These are especially problems for people who went into university without knowing what they want to do professionally. TINSTAAFL but even if you just get a degree to orient yourself and pass time until you have figured out what you actually want to do with your life that can affect your employability.

As someone on the employer side of the table I see two frequent problems with university educated candidates that generally don't land the job

As someone who has sat on both sides of this table, let me point out that pathologies in hiring are very, very hard for a company to spot. After all, who is going to advocate the contrarian position? The ones not hired aren't there. Observers who are there often don't have anything immediate to gain and lots of political capital to potentially lose.

complete lack of practical knowledge or skills.

If those skills are valuable and hard to find, then it's an advantage to be able to impart those, for both a company and a country.

> If those skills are valuable and hard to find, then it's an advantage to be able to impart those, for both a company and a country.

Sure, but as a small company we can't afford to pay someone a "graduate level" salary when the best we can they need "unskilled level" training before becoming productive at all.

I'm not speaking of a Fortune 500 company or a AAA-level VC-funded startup. We have tight profit margins yet we try to take paid interns and students (which is a net loss for us because we actually train them rather than simply abusing them as cheap labour) because that's the right thing to do.

I'm also speaking from my experience of working closely with people running similar companies (let's say up to ~10 permanent employees) in Germany.

That said, in many cases someone with 3 years of actual job experience is more productive (in the short-to-mid term) than a recent graduate with 3 years of university (with no practice). Yet the graduate will often cost you more in Germany because of inflated salary expectations (partially caused by people reading about US startups and thinking the numbers transfer 1-to-1).

So advertise an /entry level/ job and disclose the range of pay you're willing to negotiate within as part of it's description.

I am talking about entry level jobs. And I'm not even talking about my own company in particular. I've seen this in enough other companies and heard it from enough other people to be certain this is more than purely anecdotal.

There is a false impression in Germany that a university degree increases the chance of finding a job. But it's neither necessary (depending on the industry) nor sufficient.

The kind of companies that can and are willing to pay inflated salaries for graduates with no practical experience or useless degrees are oversaturated and the rest just can't afford them because it's not profitable.

Another way this problem manifests itself is students thinking they can or should specialise in niches when the only jobs that don't require experience require them to be generalists (because if you're going to specifically hire a one-trick pony you probably want a good one).

I've literally seen a fresh graduate apply to become a "colour consultant" in a full-service marketing agency. Sure, they might need someone who really knows their colour theory well but the scale at which a company can justify making that task a full-time job AND giving that job to a fresh graduate with no hands-on experience is pretty implausible.

Germany, the Bundesbank and their FinMin have a very flawed view of macroeconomics. They seem to have a hard time understanding how money recycling works or there is more than pure economics at play.

The German political class has been keeping wages lower then they should be on purpose. While export corporations have boosted their profits the last 15 years, wages have been kept much lower than they ought to be, killing the competition elsewhere and destroying a sort-of natural recycling mechanism which should protect the other members of their Eurozone: A worker in Germany should be paid 4 to 5 times more than a worker in Portugal.

Indeed the current German surplus is a major problem in EU's economy. Y. Varoufakis, M. Draghi and B. Bernanke have spoken about this openly time and again (see links).

By definition in a monetary union, your surplus[3] is someone else's deficit, but if you take a look at the rhetoric PIIGS are to blame for their poor financial track-record. Someone is simply having his cake and eating it, but not for long.

It's funny that with a 12.1B in surplus the AfD (right-wing nazi-friendly political party) is on the raise in Germany, isn't it?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/24/germany-sur...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2015/04/03/germa...

[3] http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-achieves-histo...

Education can mean vocational training too, not just university degrees.

A plumber or electrician in Seattle can pull in 100k/year and they are booked out for weeks to months.

That's partly because there's no mass, free vocational training for plumbers.

If you tried to scale this up in practice, you'd quickly find that you don't need 3x the number of plumbers that exist now.

Definitely. The trades only make as money as they do because the supply of skilled tradesmen is intentionally limited by selective apprenticeships being the barrier to entry. Today, one can not become an electrician or plumber without said apprenticeship.

Increase the number of electricians or plumbers 10-fold and their wages would plummet.

You assume the pie is static and that more mouths mean less pie for all.

If there were twice the plumbers, the rate per hour would not be halved. There's demand that can't afford these services at the current rate.

I'm sure that's true, but it still doesn't solve your employment issues, and you are just hurting wages for all existing plumbers. There are only about half a million plumbers in the US [1]. Even if you managed to triple the number, you're not making much of a dent in overall employment.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers-...

>Even if you managed to triple the number, you're not making much of a dent in overall employment.

But you don't just offer training for a single vocation as that would be silly.

Sure, my point was just that if vocational jobs are naturally X% of the US economy, you're (largely) not 'creating jobs' just by making it easier for people to get trained for those vocations, you're just creating more competition within that sector and driving down wages of existing workers in the process.

That said, it might still be a worthwhile policy to pursue, since vocational education has been neglected for decades in favor of 'college for all', which IMO is misguided.

Vocational training is certainly part of your toolkit to increase jobs prospects for unemployed underemployed people who are willing to work, but it's not the whole toolkit. It helps, but you need more than that.

Those are also highly rigorous jobs that can put a toll on the human body. Not many people really want to retire with pain. That being said, I'm not sure what the alternative for some individuals are. Maybe being on your feet a lot increases your overall well being, I'm not the expert on that.

This is a key conceit - trades don't mean one is less intelligent. A great plumber is easily as intelligent as a great software dev. The left behind are the people who could provide value before, but now can't, and no amount of reeducation will solve that.

Why can't they provide value any longer?

I feel that it is very easy to get trapped in the mindset that I am owed something based on my prior experience. Reluctance to think beyond past experience, fear of leaving behind what I worked hard to learn, or fear of failure in a new area are all things that have held me back in my own life.

I would disagree that people can not provide value beyond what they did before. Except in cases of physical or mental disability, it's more likely a self-imposed barrier.

> [...] and that has not saved them from having overqualified people and too few jobs for them.

They had labour market inefficiencies and weak demand.

The US labour market is a bit more flexible. And since they are issuing their own currency, they can always print more to stoke demand. (Ideally, the Fed would target nominal GDP.)

Good news: the Germans are having a much lower unemployment rate these days than in the late 90s.

It's even worse in places where government, either directly or through unions, set the base salaries for people with certain education levels. Then you have higher education, no job, and are unable to be hired doing less education demanding jobs because otherwise they would be forced to pay you an absurd salary for your position.

You're basically fucked. But then government comes to the rescue again giving handouts! Yay... thanks for temporarily solving a problem that you shouldn't have created in the first place.

This should be required watching for everyone in this thread. Related to the education point: https://youtu.be/TGLGKghQlgY?t=425

Education and welfare are the only reasonable solutions.

> The education gap between rich and poor (and white and minority) is getting larger because of hoodlum-fearing mothers who support segregated neighborhoods and schools.

I see this brought up a lot, as if those mothers are pearl clutching villains. Are you of the impression that hoodlums don't exist, or that they're not more common in poor communities? Or do you just take exception with people wanting what is best for their own children, at the expense of others? What argument would you make to those mothers that would convince them it is in their, or their children's, best interest to not seclude themselves away from poorer populations?

Just to make it a bit clearer, this smacks of the exact same kind of thinking that was just dealt a blow in the election. Selfishness is human nature, and shaming people over it might make them quiet, but it won't make them agree with you.

I'm far from a Trump supporter, but this kind of constant holier-than-thou thinking has to end or there will never be any semblance of unity in this country.

Education helps the young, at least as our systems are built.

The people vocalizing their opinion by voting for Trump are beyond the age where education can be the key (old dogs and new tricks, etc.). There isn't a will to go to an educational program. There is a will to work and support yourself, but no work for them to do...

/because we can't get our shit together and fund infrastructure programs

//Not bitter.

> The people vocalizing their opinion by voting for Trump are beyond the age where education can be the key

I hate seeing this meme. It is ageist and makes older people less likely to be hired for even their same jobs.

Old people can still learn to do new things. The problem I see is that a lot of older people do not want to learn new things. Also, old people tend to have obligations such as family/child expenses, residence costs, etc. that they want to be compensated for even at an entry level.

Rural conservatism has a lot to do with preserving tradition, that is, making sure things don't change from the old status quo you loved before.

I didn't mean to imply that older people are incapable of learning.

However, there are substantial barriers to that demographic to return to an education program precisely because it is a "return". Those barriers are far more social than anything else, yet they remain.

Economic ones too. Going to college after high school nets you 40 years of increased wages. Doing that at 40 only gets you 20.

I'm not sure which meme is more offensive. That old people can't learn or that old people don't want to learn.

The real problem is that for many old people it's certain they'll never be able to get back to the status (financial, social and professional) they have now if they have to start all over again. As long as there is any promise of them being able to keep doing what they have experience in, that's what they'll aim for.

I speak from anecdote here from my time traveling around middle America, not from an armchair, but I agree that the statement was probably a little too broad.

> As long as there is any promise of them being able to keep doing what they have experience in, that's what they'll aim for.

That's the real education that needs to happen. That job is gone and they're not going to get there. It's gone because the world has changed, the economy has changed. Holding out hope is holding that person back. I had to learn this early in my life, and now I live in two different countries depending on where I'm finding work.

The biggest tragedy in all this is that technological advance harms those it help the most by eliminating unnecessary work. For humankind it is progress, for individual humans it is ruin.

>old people tend to have obligations such as family/child expenses, residence costs, etc. that they want to be compensated for even at an entry level.

That is also ageist. I see it here on HN all the time - "companies don't want to hire older people because they want too much money".

i've heard them say themselves in west virginia that they're too old to learn and that many of the coal miners couldn't even read.

I'm German. My grandfather was a professional photographer. Pictures he shot covered the front pages of major magazines in my country. He wasn't a celebrity but he worked with several who were.

At the peak of his career he realized technology would kill the industry with the quality of amateur photography improving and technical skills becoming less important, he would often compete with people with barely any talent and be undercut on price. It was still sustainable at the time but he was sure better cameras, film and postproduction processes would kill his business.

He went back to school and became a homeopathy practitioner. My personal opinions of homeopathy aside, I have to acknowledge he was an expert at what he was doing and he was even regularly invited to give lectures. He kept doing that until the day he died, almost twenty years ago.

It's never to late to switch career paths. The bigger problem in the US seems to be that it is amazingly hard to do so unless you've built up a fortune to cover the cost of doing so.

Even someone approaching retirement age can start over and be productive if they have the chance, financial means, mental health and determination to do it.

> The bigger problem in the US seems to be that it is amazingly hard to do so unless you've built up a fortune to cover the cost of doing so.

That's... really just not true at all. US labor mobility is higher than in pretty much any other developed country by pretty much whatever metric you want to pick. Measures like those in Germany (or whatever else you pick) would help at the margins but they would not do much to change the labor demographics of the midwest working class white community, which by broad historical standards are fairly good already.

Fundamentally this was an election about identity. Nate Cohn said it best in a tweet last night when he pointed out that working class whites (and not their minority compatriots who share the same economic problems) had suddenly started behaving like a minority group and skewed hard for one candidate from their historical positions.

It's about racism, and social change, and fear, and maybe sexism. "Economic Anxiety" is a myth that needs to die.

Trump lost support slightly among whites relative to Romney. In the northern and midwestern working class areas where Trump made big gains, Obama did well and won many areas that HRC lost. Obama won non college educated whites in Iowa by a substantial margin. Those people didn't vote for Trump this time around because they're now racists.

Does that take into account turnout?

What about the angle that sexism is actually a stronger driver of all this than sexist? It would certainly make the Obama->Trump conversion more explainable.

You are persistently trying to come up with a narrative that tars nearly half the voters in a democratic election as stupid and evil.

If rayiner proves it cannot be racism then possibly it is sexism...

Talk about spreading hate.

I'm no big fan of Trump but I have reason to be thankful for Americans.

And if Americans who live with American politicians year after year decides Trump is their best hope then A) it must be pretty bad IMO B) it is their choice and I respect it.

My claim is that racism and sexism played a very big part in this election. All the news are full of it. All the twitters are full of it. rayiner did not conclusively prove otherwise. Dismissing the issue as 'tarring' half the electorate as racist or sexist is not very useful. It's like saying 'it can't be true that so many people are sexist or racist' when the swing vote between people who always vote republican no matter what and the democrats who stayed at home because they're pissed is actually not that big.

Honestly I find it very strange how strongly people on hacker news are pushing against this idea, how deeply they are insulted by the idea that Trump has brought open sexism into the mainstream.

>Fundamentally this was an election about identity. Nate Cohn said it best in a tweet last night when he pointed out that working class whites (and not their minority compatriots who share the same economic problems)

I'm not sold on that. I think the main difference is that those economic problems have been felt by minorities their entire lives. Not that it's fair, but that's been the reality for them. So it's not any bigger of an issue this election than any other. But the economic pains felt in the white working class haven't been felt since pre-WWII. They were the middle class of this country but now they are feeling the declines. Even if working class whites are now on somewhat equal footing with other minorities, they've been in decline in comparison to what they had. And that definitely leads to "Economic Anxiety".

How did you get from "whites behaving like a minority group" to "racism, social change, fear, and sexism"? Are these whites racist for "behaving like a minority group"? Or are whites "behaving like a minority group" because they're the victims of someone else's racism? Or is the "behaving like a minority group" a red herring, and it's merely racist to vote against the folks who are constantly demonizing people who look like you?

The problem is it's hard to explain the resistance in the United States to safety net programs in the US without bringing that up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

And that's one problem I'm struggling with. Ultimately a lot of the suggestions I see to help the "left behind" in this thread might fail due to this very sort of politics alone. So many of the social help programs in the US have been demonized in the past by focusing on this in coded terms. Think "welfare queens" and the negative reaction to just the "Obamacare" nickname for some of the most direct and obvoius examples.

"Racism, social change, fear, sexism"... that can be overcome. The real problem is how these emotions are used as a political weapon now. No attempted solution will work if an opposition that hates it can transform it into some sort of identity politics battle. Especially now that we've found out that identity politics through a megaphone is actually more effective than "dog whispers".

It is possible for Donald Trump to surprise me, and one way he could surprise me is if he actually is more friendly to a stronger government with the goal of helping these people out. Donald Trump dose not make the laws, however, Congress does. So I expect no change.

As a side note, in a way, it was a shame it wasn't Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump for that reason. It would have been fascinating to see if economic policy really could out-trounce the Southern Strategy this time...

The resistance to safety nets is easy to understand: they are not optional (like an insurance, let's say) and usually the same people are paying for the same other people that are receiving. It is not a safety net, it is a transfer of wealth imposed by law.

The irony is that if he was not able to so easily change careers, a few of his ardent fans might have gotten real medical advice instead and had their lives saved (hypothetically).

Luckily the German healthcare system is solid enough that it's exceedingly rare for people to end up in life-threatening situations because of quack doctors. And in his defence, he did send people to real doctors if they had real medical issues.

Look, I grew up with this nonsense. My grandparents even believed in new age non-sense like "earth rays" and astrology. If you just want to get out some witticisms about how pseudoscience is obviously pseudoscience that's fine by me. But I'm not sure you're adding anything to the conversation by ragging on my dead grandfather.

If you want to be outraged about something, how about being outraged that social public healthcare in Germany actually pays for homeopathic "medicine" (i.e. products with no active ingredients and no valid studies) and that pharmacies are allowed to claim these so-called remedies can actually alleviate specific symptoms.

That's interesting, but coming from the art side, I would argue that while the bottom would continue to fall, the middle & top-end still would need a professional. Running a photography business isn't just about taking the photos. The pre-production, post-production and business/marketing involved is what is necessary for a sustainable photography business.

I think this challenge of the race to the bottom exists in virtually every industry.

Oh, sure. There are still professional photographers but the industry is nothing like it was when my grandfather started in his late teens (post-war Germany, a period of massive growth). And we're talking about a freelancer (with an assistant), not someone working for a large agency. The industry changed a lot for people like him.

That nearly every industry developed like that is precisely on point: that your job is currently a safe bet doesn't mean it's something you'll be able to do all your life, no matter how good you are. There may never be a "Bitrot Belt" but the job market simply isn't static and never has been.

The entire point of the anecdote was that he had a successful career doing one thing well past his thirties, things changed, and he switched to a completely unrelated career and was pretty good at that too. The details are just flavouring because it's a personal story.

If you want something more blue collar: my father-in-law had a long career as truck driver, then changed paths to work in logistics/manufacturing. Plus I think he worked as a mechanic at some point. Sure it's mostly centred around working with vehicles but those are still three different jobs before he reached retiring age.

The bigger problem in the US though might be location. The Rust Belt is dead because the jobs went away and there are not enough new jobs in the region to replace them. People actually have to uproot and relocate to find a new job and a new home -- that can be jarring.

Yeah. I expected the populist insurgency to come in the form of a progressive agenda, but this is the way it went instead.

The problem is, people who used to make a livelihood don't want a minimum wage job, no matter how high the minimum wage. They're adults used to providing for themselves and possibly a family, for god's sake! They don't want some elementary retraining program to make them barely capable of doing a modern job. They want to feel productive and useful on their own, like most of us.

do they not bear any responsibility for failing to gain useful skills or education? white people just feel entitled to the past where they could do nothing and be lazy and refuse to learn and still have a nice life.

because we can't get our shit together and fund infrastructure programs

In Trump's acceptance speech he explicitly mentions this:

We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.

I'm just hoping the government becomes more efficient at completing those infrastructure projects. Here in (western) Massachusetts we have simple projects like replacing a 30' concrete bridge over a creek that take 9 to 12 months to complete. They setup Jersey barriers that funnel traffic down to one lane, rip up the barricaded side and then do no work on it. In the 1930's they were able to start and finish a 782' three span iron bridge in one year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_King_Bridge).

And his plan for doing it requires widespread privatization.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/11/04/donald_trump_...

Ask the residents of Central Texas about what happened when they privatized the toll system. Personal data leaks, false charges sent to collections, terrible customer service. It was only after widespread outcry for government oversight(!) by Republicans that anything got done about it.

I'll hold my breath :P

Considering he's a businessman with background in construction his self interest is visible.

There is never an age where education can't help you. It might not lead you into a new career, but it can broaden and deepen your understanding of the situation to help you make better choices. At it's, education could help the blue collar worker understand why his job is not coming back, and that he does need to do something else. Right now, those people believe Trump will someone bring those jobs back.

While I agree with the principle, I wonder if a harder economic calculation of ROI on rapidly inflating student tuitions bears that out. Higher education wouldn't seem to work out as it's already at the point that students at the beginning of their lives have a difficult time working off the debts acquired in their education - and certainly not in a way that doesn't dampen their finances in a serious way. Slicing time off the returns doesn't improve that calculation any. So you're left with occupational education - and I think that's a lot less clear ROI and employers very unwilling to actually train people.

That's a very idealized view of "education". The value of spending 40 hours in any given class is highly variable based on the subject matter, teacher, and perhaps most of all the other students. Online Ed is trying to change this dynamic but there are many worthless classes one can take that cost more than they are worth. And I would guess the free community classes rank on the low-end of the subject matter/teacher/student spectrum.

Right, but these people need jobs, not a better understanding of the world. Understanding the world doesn't put food on your table.

Today, for the first time I've heard someone speak about education being the key to Democrats trying to take over. Most young educated voters are left leaning - and I was told today that apparently it's because of the education brainwashing students to become government dependent...has anyone else heard about this before?

A little late, but yes, this is a common complaint among conservatives. Most colleges teach things like science, diversity, and critical thinking, which are at odds with the Christian nationalism that pervades conservatism.

Education, educated IS work, and profitable, but apparently not the kind of preferred work. Just wondering aloud, how will Mr Trump satisfy the wealthy, wall street, and the fiscally conservative to do prevailing-wage infrastructure? The skilled trades were always ready and could have been doing this all along if it was valued by congress. How has anything changed?

I believe in education, but it's not a panacea. No amount of education will help someone who just isn't cut out for a white-collar job.

We're not just talking about white collar jobs. We're also talking about skilled blue collar jobs.

Elitism like this is part of the reason democrats lost this political cycle.

How do you know? Where's your evidence? Relate how you tried to "prove the null hypothesis."

That is not what that population was voting for. They want their previous jobs back.

Oversaturation through education isn't even the solution. We're looking at a future with not enough jobs.

Cutting the working week to 30 hours, on the other hand...

That's not the case. Unemployment has been steadily dropping in recent years. The problem is that the new jobs require an education:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-r...

http://www.businessinsider.com/gap-between-unemployment-amon...

Unemployment has been steadily dropping, because more and more people are dropping out of the working economy - or entering the service industry. Those jobs offer little stability and poor pay.

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