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Comment by ransom1538 | Hacker News Reader

A person in our family is a specialized nurse. Two years of school, then some more training. $60hr any hour they "wish" to work. Saturdays/Sundays are $90hr, so is any hour after 8 hours. The demand is so high he just rejects work. If he wants to work in American Samoa or Miami: hired. I hired a person to install a garage door. $900 for an hour of work. My plumber wont show up for a 30 minute $300 job. I will call again, tomorrow fingers crossed. Get your brakes replaced - look at that bill. Try outsourcing that.

Everyone I meet that works at starbucks has a masters AND 90k in student debt. Bankruptcy doesn't make student loans go away.

I think things are about to start swinging in the "non-college" direction.

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You need some better contractors. I have multiple plumbers with same day service for $95 service calls. My garage door was installed for $400 and it took an afternoon.

Obviously prices vary.

I can make a living with a trade skill, but data shows I’m more likely to make a lot more with a college degree. You have billionaire dropouts and baristas with phds. But on average, degree nets you a lot of lifetime income.

Maybe that will change.

I would argue averaging across all degrees is makes no sense. STEM degrees do pay off. Liberal arts degrees can pay if you want to boost a specific skill and have a solid plan for using it. E.g. getting an English degree to become a more persuasive speaker while promoting your otherwise sound and solidly executed startup.

Aside from those 2 examples there are plenty of colleges with a business model of selling overpriced useless degrees to people who can't be bothered to do some due diligence before getting a loan. Those degrees won't pay off and despite sharing the "college" name, I wouldn't average between the 2 groups.

Does STEM actually pay off, or does engineering/technology pay off?

I've got a few friends who work in science, and it seems to be a pretty poorly paying field, with a real lack of job prospects, unless you secure a job at a government research department.

30 years ago, I was trying to decide what to study. I wanted to go to medical school and my parents said that I should study electrical engineering. The reason, if I decided not to go to medical school a biology BS degree was almost useless and it was just as easy to get into medical school with an engineering degree as a biology degree.

I ended up getting a microbiology degree and an EE, went to medical school (MD PhD) but dropped out. I was able to get a great job doing programming, so Im relatively sure they were right.

With my kids Im using the same approach.

With regards to grad school, my parents' philosophy was if you could not get grad school funded by an RA or TA, then you had no business going.

I have friends with stem phds who aren’t making tons of money. But, I think in general, stem degrees pay well.

I try to use reliable data sets [0] to help understand because anecdotes are hard for me to make decisions. The data are almost always a few years old so they aren’t perfect and could miss a new trend. But it’s the best I know how to use.

[0] figure 4 shows stem 3rd highest after health and management https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...

Fair enough. When it comes to career advice, I prefer anecdotes to large data sets, because there are far too many variables, and it's too easy to torture numbers.

I take it you didn’t go the STEM route then. ;)

More seriously, anecdotes are terrible when giving advice to fresh high school seniors on their way to graduation. When people think of degrees in certain fields, they gravitate to the successful people (“I’ll study acting and make millions like the famous actors I know”, etc). They don’t think of and aren’t even aware of how many people get those degrees and fail hard.

That’s why they need to see the placement and salary stats to understand what their up against. Once they understand a French Comparative Literature degree has approximately no economic value, then they can make that decision knowingly. Papering over that by pointing out the one leader that happens to have that degree does more harm than good.

Correct - I didn't study a STEM subject, but I've done ok for myself despite that.

I think there's a world of difference between "I want to study acting and I'll end up successful like Brad Pitt" and "Hmm, my cousin is in marketing, and seems to have created a great career there, I should talk to them about that."

Anecdotes about people you don't know, and career stories you don't fully understand aren't helpful, but frankly I don't think massive data sets on how much the average graduate earns within two years of graduation (for example) are all that helpful either, except as a broad way to compare yourself. It's such a large number of people, you don't really anything particularly useful at an individual level (even though there are plenty of good uses for data like that).

If that friend is himself an actor, or someone else who can influence hiring decisions, then I would say go for it!

At the end of the day, people hire you. Not data. After all, who says that a teenager can tell apart badly interpreted data any better than poor anecdotes?

At the end of the day, data reflects what all those people hiring people do. Anecdotes are randomly useful for predicting because maybe you luck out and find the right person, but probably you won’t.

Teenagers should be able to understand data by the time they pick a college or career.

Even in the engineering field, pay is massively different for different types of engineers. Civil and mechanical engineers generally aren't making anywhere near what software engineers make in top markets, for example. Similar story with chemists working in biotech vs. physicists doing fundamental research.

“Software engineering” is not a recognized engineering discipline.

Who cares, though. It's known what is meant by that phrase.

Kinda? What exactly is the difference between software engineering and programming?

IEEE would disagree.

http://www.cs-tcse.org/

Not a single jurisdiction in the US licenses software engineers.

Did Texas recently secede from the US? Because it looks like they offer PE licensing for Software Engineering.

https://engineers.texas.gov/downloads/eb17.htm

the NCEES is discontinuing Software PE exams https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...

Fair enough, I didn't know that.

It's really just the engineering degrees that pay off.

The sciences degrees are only obviously worth it if you then go on to become a doctor, but that's more schooling and the undergrad degree isn't a strict requirement anyway.

Most of my friends with degrees in math, physics, etc., just ended up being software engineers anyway. So the degree "paid off" for them in the same way a CS degree would, but they would've been better served just going CS.

Former government research scientist here. It also does not pay well.

In fact, funding for scientific research was cut by the Obama administration, leading to the closure of all but two of our branches and displacing dozen of workers amidst a recession.

When I transferred to academia, I took on an underpaying role, and found that the same shenanigans were afoot there. Now, we are approaching the end of the 2000s population boom, and in five years, universities will have many fewer prospective applicants for the following decade at least. The ripples of the contraction caused by the gambling of a few spoiled bankers will be felt again in another 20 years with a much smaller and resource-constrained workforce, still reeling from the burdens of loan debt and overpriced housing.

Unless Sanders gets his way, that is.

It's probably best I plan my exit in advance this go-round.

I think large demographic averages are still useful, but certainly you can look at more specific lifetime earnings for specific degrees. I’m just aware of general “all bachelor” data that’s from reputable sources like the US SSA [0].

I’m talking about averages as there are certainly schools that suck. I would take my statement to mean that every single college is a net benefit. But as a general guidance, no other information available, a degree will net me more money over my lifetime.

If I were giving advice to someone thinking about schools, I would have them review the particular school, keep costs low, and study with a particular career in mind, stem/medicine a good target.

[0] https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education...

Interesting that billionaire dropouts often send their children to college & donate heavily to public education

Their kids aren't going to have the same motivation to work as hard as the previous generation moving from whatever class they were in to the elite.

Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives. Lots of people who come from money do something that doesn’t pay that well, like working in acting or the arts. Others don’t, and work as executives or found their own businesses even though there’s no danger of running out of money.

> Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives.

What do you mean by that? Zuckerberg and Gates are indisputably elite because they're two of the richest people in the world.

But I wouldn't call them elite beforehand, and definitely not if they didn't work a day in their lives. Their parents' money seems to come from being a lawyer, a dentist, and a psychiatrist. That's not "elite", that's something any family can achieve in two generations.

Gates' family was in banking, Zuckerberg attended Phillips Exeter. Neither were hardly "Middle Class".

I didn't call them "Middle Class". I said they weren't elite. While elite people are in banking and elite people go to Phillips Exeter, it doesn't follow that everyone who does those things is elite.

You could argue a much lower threshold for elite, which is fine, but then it's quite a bait and switch to lead with Zuckerberg and Gates for that category.

I will just link to this.

https://philip.greenspun.com/bg/

Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives.

Perhaps it's just me, but in the Zuckerberg case specifically, I'd think quite a bit of luck and timing had to do with it. If Zuckerberg had been born 10 years later after the obvious social network ideas were already created? Or if he had gone to a no-name college (or none whatsoever) and Facebook had never taken off the way it did at Harvard?

Or maybe you meant they were born elite, in which case, I don't know anything about that.

The point is that Zuck and Gates had capacity to take on risk. There’s no guarantee that their risk would have paid off, but the other side of the coin wasn’t starvation and destitution. They basically had a heads I win tails I don’t lose type of situation.

This is the big idea here - being born in the right situation gives you the ability to bear risk where a lower middle class kid can’t bear that risk because if things don’t work out, that kid is going to be homeless. When you can take a lot of risk with little downside, it almost always pays off in the long run.

They seems obvious to you now but they weren't at that time. Not that I am a Zuck fan at all but he deserve credit for that and that probably demonstrate some creativity and vision from him. No ?

MySpace existed. Facebook didn’t really add much beyond that to think that others wouldn’t have come up with the same idea in Zuck’s absence. In fact, the lawsuits from the Winklevos twins would seem to imply just that.

I would have said the same thing.

I think the main value add - looking back on how I perceived FB when it came out and why a lot of us started using it - was branding and a cleaner, fresh design. And the newsfeed was a new concept...

The point is that even without Facebook, he would have access to a significant amount of wealth.

Because he was a Harvard student from a likely well-off family?

"with same day service for $95 service calls"

That means they show up for $95. No work right? When they actually do something there is another charge right? Where you are? So confused.

The plumber is not making $95 an hour even if he owns the business. I worked for a contracting company and we charged $118 an hour for most service calls, our technicians ranged from $20 to $35 per hour. That looks like robbery but you factor in taxes, management, logistics, vehicle maintenance and management, rent, benefits, office staff to take calls, and you get up to that $118 very quickly. Unfortunately that’s just the nature of business in the trades.

The Guys doing the work make a fraction of the hourly rate, anywhere from 15 to 35 percent (not counting benefits). The rest goes to the house.

A service call is either something simple. For example, to unclog a toilet is just the fee. If it goes over an hour it costs extra. I had to have a 80 foot line snaked out and a camera run to see what the problem was and that was $180.

Right! I need actual work done. I understand it is $95 - to flush a toilet. But like, actual work, with tools, actually doing a job for 30 minutes. It is very expensive.

> My plumber wont show up for a 30 minute $300 job.

You brought up a 30 minute job. So I shared what it costs for me for a 30 minute (or more) job. And that it’s easy to get someone to come quickly for such a job.

I’m saying that if the problem can be solved in an hour, it’s $95. This is called a “service call.” Basically coming out and fixing what can be fixed without buying parts.

Any extra labor would cost more. This is a much better situation than yours since you can’t even get a plumber to help you flush a toilet for $300. That’s unfortunate.

Thus my suggestion from me that you could get better contractors. I think it’s reasonable that you should be able to pay $100 for a 30 minute job and be satisfied. Rather than be willing to pay $300 and being unsatisfied.

You are right. I can't get home depot to throw something off the truck for less than $200 broken. (And deny it showed up). So, where you are, where you live, I envy it. I imagine a world of nice plumbers and helper people. Canada????

Don't use services with a "name" and multiple trucks that have a bunch of employees doing work under their umbrella along with a staffed office. Search for independent contractors who do their own work. And don't do what other people in this thread are doing by assuming that plumbers and other tradesmen are making big bucks because your bill is large. The umbrella companies charge a fortune and the actual workers make jack. The workers do it so they don't have to be bothered with the business end of things. I use independent contractors who know what they're doing, don't do more work than what is needed, and charge reasonable fees. I live in an average small town in the US. And yes: our main contractor is a nice young guy who actually loves helping old people who've been shafted by those big companies.

I’m in one of the top 10 metro areas. But I guess I’m just lucky. I do avoid the marketplace services (I think Home Depot’s used to be called RedBeacon) and go for independent operators as I think they have more experience and more money goes in their pocket.

I live in a smaller town and I had a very nice plumber show up in like 10 minutes for a simple job for $150.

$60 or even $90/hour isn’t that great if its all 1099 income. It isn’t bad either, but the extra payroll taxes and the need to buy an individual plan (if your partner doesn’t get you into a group plan) make it pretty normal.

Suddenly makes you feel very bad for all the people out there making $15-20ish an hour.

Not sure you understand. 1099 income means they aren’t an employee. That’s not the arrangement for people making $15-20. Those folks are regular employees so they receive that income after benefits, payroll taxes, etc.

As a 1099 employee you need to be clearing at least double the equivalent employee hourly wage because there is so much overhead. Remember, a contractor doesn’t get a single day of paid vacation.

No, I understand perfectly fine and I’ve been in both situations. I’m just saying, it sucks to be a contractor with overhead and make a decent amount without accounting for the additional expense, but it REALLY sucks to be at the bottom of the income totem pole and make peanuts (in an expensive American city).

benefits only run about 30%. So a contractor wage should be about 130% of a salaried employees wage.

This does not count when a salaried employee works more than 40 hours.

My plumber charges 150/hour.

Contractors around here bill by the job. I had bids for $5000 for a 1 day job for 2 people when incorporated into a GC bid. The GC was getting 25% on top of the 5000.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few things, but 30% doesn’t begin to cover the costs that are normally borne by a larger company and factor into the “house” premium.

You have to factor in not only benefits, but also:

* federal-level taxes (there’s no employer to pay the other half, so the contractor bears the whole portion)

* tools (you buy your own tools, stock your own spares, do your own maintenance on your dime — non-billable)

* learning and mandated certifications (same as above — non-billable)

* liability insurance (non-billable)

* vehicle maintenance, taxes, tolls, and fees (non-billable)

* transit time to and from not only contracted job sites, but also estimates that may ultimately result in no revenue (non-billable)

* marketing/lead generation (Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor are free to you, not to contractors — non-billable)

* material storage (you have the keep the customer’s plywood dry if the weather changes, or if the customer has a family emergency and needs to reschedule)

In this specific case, hospitals do tend to offer good health care plans.

Further I don't believe it is possible for a hospital with all its specialized equipment to 1099 its nurses (doesn't pass the IRS '20 questions' test on contracting).

Look up agency nurses [0]. When they're paid hourly being begged for work (as OP mentioned), it's usually for a nurse who has specialized skills that can hop between hospitals/ER/offices. Essentially, they're contractors of the agency, and the hospital pays the agency. Can't recall if they're W2 or 1099 though

[0] https://allnurses.com/what-quot-agency-nursing-quot-t441525/

> The demand is so high he just rejects work.

I think as we advance in the information age, maybe degrees are less about helping you actually get the job done, and more about serving as a mean for companies (and countries) to roughly filter high surplus of candidates. Add the fact its easier today to apply for job posts, its very hard for recruiters to filter intelligently at reasonable time. My guess is if everyone would have first degree, the recruiters will require a second degree.

This has less weight on jobs short in candidates (i.e specialized nurse, plumber, welder, proven AI expert, or whatever is hot right now).

There is a reason there is a shortage of nurses. Not everyone finds excitement in dealing with sick people all day. Also, most highly paid nurses do have a B.S. in Nursing.

Nursing is also a field which is infamously feast or famine for demand and willingness to pay.

>I hired a person to install a garage door. $900 for an hour of work. My plumber wont show up for a 30 minute $300 job.

For those prices just do it yourself. Is this hyperbole or did you really pay $900 for an hour job? How complicated could it have been if it only took an hour?

It seems doubtful that your guy spends 40 hrs/wk installing garage doors.

Skilled manual work. Cannot be outsourced.

> Skilled manual work. Cannot be outsourced.

But it can be dramatically diluted through lenient immigration policies (and that's exactly what happened).

Bottom line, you have to be clever stay on your toes to make it in today's economy, and even then you need lots of luck and excellent health. UBI would result in a much more just society.

UBI would just feed directly into rents because that's how prices are set.

UBI would require land value tax to ensure the public value is capture for public spending. UBI alone is a land speculator wet dream and Yang is totally wrong to be pushing it without LVT. Yes in the middle of nowhere it can help, but most people are in cities and rents will rise there to current rent + UBI amount.

Yang is willing to adjust policy positions if the data supports it. If property prices are being raised due to UBI, then I'm sure he'd support something like LVT.

That's the difference with Yang. He's the most data-driven politician I've ever seen.

Other politicians seem mostly ideological, and I don't think they'd adjust their policies even in the face of overwhelming data it's not working. Like if Warren used Antitrust law to break up Amazon and it didn't change any relevant metrics, I think she would still call the policy a success. Ideological politicians like that are way more dangerous than someone who wants to try new ideas and is willing to adjust if they don't work.

Holding onto UBI at this point is ideological for him. There is no evidence that $10k/year is near enough to alleviate people from having to take terrible jobs. $10k/year is about the equivalent of making $5/hr full time, which is below minimum wage and way into poverty.

At this point his proposal is just a really expensive handout for people that already have jobs. And what critical social services are going to be cut to foot that bill?

I can't know how Warren would adapt her beliefs in the face of contradictory data in the future, but she's done that in the past [0]. She believed in a self-correcting and fair market that would be harmed by many regulations, but then she did a study of bankruptcy claims. The results contradicted what she expected to find, and she changed her beliefs instead of her interpretation of the data.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2019/12/10/786314251/elizabeth-warrens-j...

I totally agree UBI would just be a way to transfer money to landlords. Heck you could consider SV wages as UBI; salaries are high but that income is often spent on rent or mortgages. Stock money is spent on real estate.

I agree that a significant LVT would be extremely welcome. Perhaps even more so than UBI.

I'm open to suggestions, but we've passed the point we were in from 1950 to 2000 where any mediocre person could work hard and be guaranteed a middle-class life. And that's wrong, not to mention very threatening to our democracy.

I'm sure that by some economic measurement, any mediocre person today could still work hard and earn enough to afford the same standard of living as the middle class of 1950. The main problem is that this isn't actually possible to pull off, since it costs 10x as much for things like housing and medicine that aren't necessarily 10x better. There just isn't the option to buy the crappy version from 70 years ago.

Medicine from 70 years ago can be superior to modern medicine. Which would you prefer if you couldn't breathe on your own, an iron lung or a tube jammed down your throat?

By what authority and rationale do you feel so strongly about intubation, I wonder? Could it be that the entire medical profession is wrong and you are right?

There are obvious reasons that have nothing to do with quality of care.

Iron lungs are physically large and heavy. They are expensive and difficult to move. Health insurance doesn't want to pay extra for your comfort.

With an iron lung you can talk and eat. There is minimal difficulty; simply time your sentences or swallows to match the action of the iron lung. There is also no danger of tubes damaging your vocal cords.

The choice of technology is obvious, depending on how much patient comfort is valued. It is clear that the modern system doesn't give a damn if patients are miserable.

>from 1950 to 2000 where any mediocre person could work hard and be guaranteed a middle-class life.

This is a fantasy.

I personally know a lot of mediocre hard working people, mostly baby boomers. None had or have a "guaranteed" middle class lifestyle, and many don't have a middle class lifestyle at all, even now. One moved to a retirement community to "retire" and had to get a job. Another is currently without heat.

I always wondered about that. I used to rent in a city with a relatively tight supply of rentals and thought that a UBI would fall right through to the landlords. Any good links to read about the land value tax component?

From your reply you are obviously not stuck at the "rents are the cost to the landlord + 10%". Good!

Have a look at this 10 minute video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_dZvPwAj0

The rent thing is a bad argument against UBI, because you can make the same argument about any program that benefits the poor - even if all the UBI money goes back into rent, UBI would equalise housing spend along the way, from rich to poor and from worker to non-worker, vastly reducing poverty.

Even for people not in poverty it would help even out their income over their life cycle - more money when they have kids, find themselves temporarily unemployed, or in retirement.

Certainly land rents are totally unjust and a huge problem, and land value tax/public housing/public land ownership would be great, but the case for UBI is compelling even without any of that.

> because you can make the same argument about any program that benefits the poor

Yes, I think many things go straight back into land.

The UK has 'housing benefit'. It's 'landlord benefit', because it subsidises unpayable rents.

> even if all the UBI money goes back into rent, UBI would equalise housing spend along the way, from rich to poor and from worker to non-worker, vastly reducing poverty

How would that be? If your rent goes up $1000 regardless of what you're paying now, someone who earns $0 and can't afford a $600 apartment now collects $1000 and can't afford a $1600 apartment while the guy who could afford the $600 apartment by earning $1500 now has a monthly income of $2500 and a $1600 apartment.

For the poor person on $0, they can now afford to share a place or be less stress on their family financially.

For the person on the margin of affordability they can now afford an apartment.

Those on the highest incomes don't gain in a raw sense because they pay in more than they get, but still benefit from income smoothing.

I think UBI is a step too far. What we really need (in my opinion, obviously) is dramatic restructuring of the healthcare system. There is absolutely no reason that the single largest expense in my life should be insuring against the possibility that my family catches some terrible illness.

> But it can be dramatically diluted through lenient immigration policies (and that's exactly what happened

In the US ? Where you can’t immigrate legally as a skilled manual worker ?

What prevents the MSc baristas from picking up a trade? Then they'd be highly educated and making some money.

Pride I'd guess. Or possibly coming from a background where they don't realize that skilled labor is an option. Many people seem to think that doing physical labor is "below" them. Nevermind the fact that being a barista / waiting tables / etc. is no walk in the park either.

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