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I don't think it's fair to categorize everyone who lacks an education or job as "lacking ambition".

Why are we all not millionaire successful entrepreneurs? On this site, I don't think it's because we lack ambition. I think it's more that there's a path toward success (or technically, several paths), but it's really easy to step off that path, and most of us have never been there before, don't have a guide, and only have the fuzziest of maps.

It's the same with people lower down on the socioeconomic spectrum. Most don't personally know anyone that has successfully jumped classes; they have no idea what this looks like, or what's entailed, or if anything they do is on the right track. And so they make very subtle mistakes.

You can see this a lot with the choice of institutions they go to and the fields they study. Popular articles - like the one posted here - simply say "Go to college and you'll get a job." So what many poor people do is they go to University of Phoenix and study Sports Medicine or something, and take on $200K of debt to do so.

You and I know this is stupid - but that information never filters down to the people who need it. The mainstream articles just say "Go to college and you'll get a job", they never say which college, or what to study, or how to study, or what it feels like when you just don't understand a concept but need to pass the final to graduate. I can give you a list of a couple dozen top colleges off the top of my head - but that's because I've worked in elite institutions, and I know which schools my coworkers went to, and I have lots of friends in that social circle. For the average person, that list is "Harvard. MIT. Stanford", and then if they don't get into one of those, they have no idea what to choose.

It's really easy to forget just how much we know simply by being part of a community that's "made it". Much of this stuff is not obvious at all until you see someone do it, and if everyone you know is in similarly dire straits, you have nobody to teach you.

I think we lack ambition as a civilization more than as individuals.

Being more efficient means that we have to do more. When agriculture was mechanized, we went from a population that was half farmers (or more!) to one where less than 1% of the population farms. The remaining 49% of the population was not unemployed for the next century, nor did they all get work building mechanized farm equipment or drilling oil. They did other stuff, like build internets and go to the Moon.

Being ambitious as individuals is not enough; we need an ambitious civilization which is constantly trying to do more than it was before, and is endlessly hungry for more workers. Or else we are doomed.

It wasn't half farmers, it was like 95% farmers. And despite nearly everyone engaged in food production, people were only one bad year away from mass starvation.

> It wasn't half farmers, it was like 95% farmers.

Yeah... no. The first US Census, in 1790, already recorded an urban population of over 5%.

By the mid-19th century, urban population had climbed over 15%, and by 1910 (last census before the Fordson Tractor, the first really popular tractor in the US) it had already exceeded 45%

In praise of idleness: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

"You and I know this is stupid - but that information never filters down to the people who need it."

How exactly is it that this works? Do people go around to all the nice neighbourhoods and explain to the kids there that shit schools give shit degrees that nobody wants? It seems like this is just common sense, hardly something that needs to be taught.

No, I don't think being poor initially has very much to do with it. Rich kids can waste their time at party schools just as easily as poor kids can waste their time at degree mills. Similarly smart poor kids will try to get themselves real degrees (or make it on their own), as will smart rich kids. (Of course the rich kids will have an easier time of this, but that's because... they're rich.)

I don't think being poor initially has very much to do with it.

Is that just your hunch? What if you're wrong? Do you care?

Yes, that is my opinion/hunch/suspicion/whatever. If I'm wrong... nothing is going to happen. I'm not a policy maker, nobody really cares what I think and what I do has no real effect. I've certainly been wrong many times in my life before, I don't think I'll get too worked up if I'm wrong this time too.

Common sense is nothing more or less than tacit knowledge that you learn implicitly through observing your peers within a culture. If there's nobody in your peer group with that knowledge, that sense won't be very common.

Here's an example from the startup world. Imagine that you have this great idea and you're desperate for funding. You're approached by a key investor, and they ask you "Is anybody else interested in your startup? Have you been talking to other investors?" Nobody else has expressed interest, and you haven't been talking to any other investors. How do you respond?

If you spend any amount of time with successful entrepreneurs, the answer is common sense: you lie and say "Oh yes, we're talking to a bunch of people and everyone's pretty excited." This is the answer the investor expects you to give: it shows that you know how to drum up interest in your product from nothing, and if you can't do that with him, you probably can't do it with anyone and you've just disqualified yourself in his eyes.

But if you grew up with a typical middle-class upbringing, this advice will seem very strange, even evil. Because you're lying. And more than that, you're lying to a powerful person about a business deal that directly concerns him. What would your mother think?

It's even more complicated because there're specific, unwritten rules about what you can lie about, and nobody ever explains this. If a journalist asks you "Are you working on X?" and you are, you're perfectly within your rights to lie and flat out say "No." If you lie about how interested people are in your product, that's fine, and people even expect that. But if you fudge the numbers in a due diligence audit, you're guilty of securities fraud and can go to jail for that. It's an awfully fine tight-rope with no clear guidebook.

Many of the rules for jumping from the working poor to the middle class are like that. Sure, everyone tells people to go to college and you'll get a good job. But which college? How are they supposed to know that University of Phoenix is nowhere near as good as, say, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor? Or that there's a big difference between a UC-Berkeley degree and a UC-Santa Cruz one. Who tells them that they should study software engineering rather than sports medicine? Or maybe they miraculously find Proggit or Hacker News and hear that you should study software engineering, but don't realize that when it comes down to the actual degree program, you're often better off with Computer Science rather than Software Engineering. Or they do all that right, get great grades, but nobody tells them that GPA doesn't matter so much and they really need to have been doing internships and helping their professor with his research to actually be qualified.

If you've studied academic sociology, there's a lot written about this under the general category of "cultural capital", particularly the work of Pierre Bourdieu. It's all the little advantages we have simply by growing up in a peer group that's successful. Usually you can't put your finger on these if you have them, but you very much feel their lack if you don't.

Fantastic writeup on social and cultural capital. So good, in fact, I'm going to link it next time I have to argue with people about the cultural and social advantages being born wealthy privileges them, even if they don't inherit a dime of actual capital.

This is a very well thought out and well worded answer. Thank you! I've always had trouble expressing this.

But which college? How are they supposed to know that University of Phoenix is nowhere near as good as, say, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

Who tells them that they should study software engineering rather than sports medicine?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

How do they know to look? That advertising works for expensive items is a good clue as to how much research people are inclined to do.

I'm admittedly rather ignorant on the topic, but before I commit a few days to researching this I thought I'd ask here: do job losses due to technological transformations often happen during economic shocks, or is this just a one-off coincidence?

The 2008 economic shock was triggered by (depending on your perspective, I suppose) lending large amounts of money to people who did not have the means to repay the loans, as well as the collateralization and sale of these debts in tranches of risk that were inaccurately calibrated. Is part of your thesis that this is somehow related to the emergence of the new economy? Is this an orthogonal but necessary trigger of job loss that causes the evaporation of old-economy jobs? Or is this unnecessary and merely coincidental?

It's a coincidence.

In the past decade or so we've witnessed a few industries lost to technology advancement - travel agencies, consumer electronics retail, newspapers. The way things are headed it's a matter of few years before titles such as 'real estate agent' or 'car salesman' are carrier around by significantly fewer people.

Number-wise the real estate bubble provided plenty of jobs to people involved in construction, mortgage financing, mortgage brokerage, mortgage repurchasing, real estate sales, etc. Without the housing bubble we would've seen slow but steady drops in employment, with housing bubble we're just seeing the same effect in a more abrupt manner.

Lost to technology advancement? Last time I checked, there were shitloads of travel agencies, retail outlets for consumer electronics, and newstands all over the city.

Everybody does not shop on Amazon and use AirBnB.

I realize that 'shitloads' is a imprecise measure but there are significantly fewer travel agencies today than there were 10 years ago (as an example). If you were to break it down into 'single propieter' / 'corporate agency' you would find that single proprietor agencies have been reduced dramatically.

For me the argument is convincing when technology changes the growth rate of a particular industry (in terms of jobs provided) to be negative.

Employment as a news stand operator != employment in newspaper industry.

On retail - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_retailers_of_th... do you honestly see more people selling HDTVs and BluRay players today than in 2001?

If you recall, Circuit City vanished a few years ago after a several decades as a leading nationwide retailer. Part of this was surely caused by direct retail competition by Best Buy, Target, WalMart, but it would be reasonable to presume that at least a part of this was caused by technological advancement as well (it certainly couldn't have helped circuit city to have to compete with NewEgg and Amazon)

DIVX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX) was another important catalyst that helped Circuit City to fail. If you're interested read the link but the short of it was that it cost Circuit City over $100 million not to mention that anyone that was into home theater basically refused to shop there after this fiasco.

The sad thing is that there is tons of work that the idle resources of the construction industry could be doing, such as fixing America's deteriorating infrastructure. But our elites have decided that it's better for them to stay idle.

Why, I can personally attest that this is true. I went to a meeting of our elites and someone said, "Hey, you want to put the idle resources of the construction industry to work on fixing America's deteriorating infrastructure?" and some other guy was like, "Nah, it's more evil if we just have them stay unemployed" and then there was a lot of chuckling. That's totally how the world works.

</lies>

who was it that decided that there would be no more spending on infrastructure? It wasn't the common voter.

I don't know whom you mean by "the elites," but I suspect they could care less about the activity or lack thereof of construction guys. I suspect "how do we pay for x" has higher priority.

>>Technology has always disrupted the low end of the workforce.

I'm not sure that's true.

The reason is underemployment[1]. when technology disrupts the jobs of educated people, they have options to find jobs that require lower education , or take a job with lower salary , because of their prestige, education and experience.

People with less skills usually have much less options , so instead of becoming underemployed , they become unemployed.

As an example , see the table at [2].

[1]there are two definition for underemployed. the official is a people with part time job looking for full time job. the other is a person looking for a job below his skills.

[2] http://collegeaffordability.blogspot.com/2010/10/underemploy...

There might also be an effect of continuous education hiding unemployment or rather, to put it bluntly, some people who would otherwise be unemployed, hiding in the education system.

Many of those with high school diploma who are not unemployed are not employed either but are taking part in further education. Similarly, many of those with an undergrad degree are currently in grad school, etc.

It would be interesting to compare the employment rates of the various groups as well.

Education level is more likey to be an effect than a cause. Those from not poor families have better education levels. Education level is influenced by ethnicity, age, gender and host of other factors (mental health, assertiveness, "drive", etc).

I'd believe those other factors have huge influence on employment. It's not so simple as get education -> job & life of ease.

It's not so simple as get education -> job & life of ease.

Of course it's not that simple, but it's definitely important to realize that unemployment numbers are not the same for everyone. Recognizing that a lot of the unemployment falls within groups that have little education means that a tech startup is going to do very little to address unemployment. It's not a bad or good thing with a tech startup, just a fact.

What the numbers show is that we need more jobs that require less education.

That's an odd angle to look at this considering this is an industry which requires no formal education or accreditation.

Yes, by international comparisons, the United States has been doing poorly in education. Chapter 1: "International Student Achievement in Mathematics" from the TIMSS 2007 study of mathematics achievement in many different countries includes, in Exhibit 1.1 (pages 34 and 35)

http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf

a chart of mathematics achievement levels in various countries. Although the United States is above the international average score among the countries surveyed, as we would expect from the level of economic development in the United States, the United States is well below the top country listed, which is Singapore. An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore.

A thoughtful article from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society

http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

identifies some of the problems with United States education that hold back full expression of the learning potential of many Americans. Professor Hung-hsi Wu of Berkeley has devoted much of the last decade to writing important articles about what needs to be reformed in United States mathematics education.

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_4.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NCTM2010.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NoticesAMS2011.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CommonCoreIV.pdf

Other mathematicians who have written interesting articles about mathematics education reform in the United States include Richard Askey,

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/amed1.pdf

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf

Roger E. Howe,

http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf

and

James Milgram.

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/milgram-msri.pdf

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html

All those mathematicians think that the United States could do much better than it does in teaching elementary mathematics in the public school system. I think so too after living in Taiwan twice in my adult life (January 1982 through February 1985, and December 1998 through July 2001). Taiwan is not the only place where elementary mathematics instruction is better than it is in the United States. I'm trying to do my part to fix the problem of United States elementary mathematics education by offering supplementary classes in elementary mathematics on weekends through my start-up, a nonprofit organization. My colleagues and I are gratified to have clients commute in for the classes from eight different counties. The client children have parents who grew up in the United States and also Ghana, Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and other countries. All the families want to make sure that their children have a chance to succeed in the next generation.

I'll just point out to you, yet again, that the gap between the US and Singapore is almost completely explained by ethnicity. Asian Americans have test scores only marginally worse than Asian Singaporians.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-...

In terms of test score ranking, the best test scores come from Asian Americans in CT, closely followed by Asians in NY and TX. (As one might expect, CA underperforms the US and Singapore.)

Similarly, Americans of European descent rank #6 among Europeans of European descent.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

I don't know why you refuse to acknowledge this.

The methodology of the blog post you point to repeatedly is laughable. The main objection is that the cross-sectional correlation the author claims is completely incompetent to show causation.

I'm confused - using TIMSS data to compare Asian Americans to Asian Singaporeans (what Sanandaji did) is laughable, but using TIMSS data to compare Americans to Singaporeans (what you did) is not?

I'm also not sure what causation you believe Sanandaji is attempting to show. Could you explain?

The divide isn't between SV and the unemployed, but between the educated and uneducated.

And educational status is strongly predicted by IQ in the U.S. EDIT: And since IQ is strongly influenced by genetics, this latest data suggests the U.S. is creating a genetic underclass. Taken far enough, this is the death of the republic.

Under IQ 90, 40% drop out of high school. Above IQ 110, less than 1% drop out of high school.

  Percent with bachelor's 
  degree by IQ (ignoring
  family wealth)

  IQ     %
  ---    --
  85     2
  100    10
  115    30
  130    75

Family wealth has a modest effect. For IQ 100, coming from a super-wealthy family boosts bachelor's degree attainment to 30%.

Source: NLSY project, early 1980s, as analyzed in The Bell Curve in the mid 1990s.

And the kind of education that offers real financial benefit is often technical or mathematical in nature.

So there is something I wonder about: is there an IQ "floor" below which very few people will be able to benefit from or even complete this sort of education? What percentage of the population falls under this floor? And what will they be doing in the future as both the "service" and manual labor sectors, the traditional absorbers of people with no degrees or impractical "soft" degrees, dwindle in the number of people employed?

We already have examples of this. What happens to people with Down syndrome? Where do chronically brain-damaged folks work? Where can senior citizens who have fallen prey to dementia get jobs?

Indeed. Note that there is a huge chunk of population in the gap between special programs for the severely brain-disabled and those who are just barely low-IQ enough to not finish high school. These people are being squeezed to death between the minimum wage and the export of manual labor to other countries.

And who is doing the political squeezing? A cognitive elite that are being efficiently skimmed off and segregated by IQ in late childhood. This bodes poorly for the stability of the nation.

Of course, this all depends on how much you trust the entire concept of nations... Maybe that era is starting it's final days, and the next force is going to be global companies that hire the elite across the old national boundaries and the the lower classes are stuck for a long time until the world catches up.

I don't trust global corporations much, though. Maybe it's time to get the king to stop favoring the East India Tea Company so much.

One of the local Carl's Jr fast food restaurants has several employees with Down Syndrome. They bring trays to tables and mop the floor. I think it's great that the management gives them the opportunity to do some productive work.

I think that's really really nice of him but it's not economically relevant. If anything it proves the rule.

The NLSY doesn't include a test of IQ. It includes an AFQT test. That stands for Armed Forces Qualification Test. The NLSY tracks young people who are between 14-22 in 1979 through time. Therefore, they take the AFQT test when they are at least 14 and often older. The AFQT test isn't designed to measure intelligence per se. Your argument is pretty much that students who score well on standardized tests in high school and college are much more likely to graduate (or to have graduated) from high school. There are all sorts of correlation/causation problems there.

The AFQT test isn't designed to measure intelligence per se.

Yes, but as the source explains, the AFQT has several sub-tests, and most of them are highly correlated to IQ. (A few, like the automotive knowledge test, are uncorrelated with IQ.) They claim that appropriate analysis of results on the sub-tests allows a reasonably accurate measurement of IQ to be made.

EDIT: Re-checking the source, they mention that in 1989 the armed forces rescored the AFQT to make it more g-loaded and repeatable. The first draft of the book used the 1980 scoring, but they redid it all using the 1989 scoring because it was superior.

And educational status is strongly predicted by IQ in the U.S. EDIT: And since IQ is strongly influenced by genetics, this latest data suggests the U.S. is creating a genetic underclass. Taken far enough, this is the death of the republic.

You're leaping across logical gaps here. IQ can be predicted by a number of factors (parental wealth, IQ, and education are a few), and research on intelligence is fraught with identification problems. It's hard to believe claims of a "genetic underclass."

It's hard to believe claims of a "genetic underclass."

There have been several large studies of identical twins separated at birth. For a given twin, the strongest correlate of IQ is the other twin's IQ. Likewise, the non-identical but biologically-related siblings do have moderately correlated IQs. However, there is barely any correlation between a twin and their adoptive parents or siblings. This suggests that genetics and prenatal environment determine most of IQ.

There is also strong evidence from gene sequencing that genetics directly affects IQ. Genes that affect sphingolipids, chemicals important in the brain, are known to affect IQ. A variation in the SNAP-25 gene has been found to increase intelligence by an average of 3 IQ points.

I believe there are genetic determinants of IQ. But I think IQ measures only one very specific kind of intelligence. Using IQ as a measure for intelligence is like using guitar skills as a measure of musical ability. There are other instruments too.

Identical twins studies are often flawed, because the environment difference between twins is far from random for obvious reasons. For example, in one of the (often used) minesota studies about IQ and twins, the average IQ of the father was 120, whereas the state average was 105 (see http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/125/4/392/).

And while it has become a cliche, it is still true that correlation is not causation: coming up with correlation is easy, but solid scientific works need to prove that the correlation is not spurious. Most studies don't (this is sadly not specific to discussions about IQ, and is a plague of many studies in too many areas - good statistics are hard).

There have been several large studies of identical twins separated at birth.

Yes, and I am closely acquainted, through attending their graduate student "journal club,"

http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall10/psy8935/default.htm

with most of the researchers who have conducted the best of those studies. An earlier reply of mine here on HN

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2696680

corrects (with citations to current research publications) some of the overstatements seen in popular literature about what twin studies show. There is also not any single gene variant that has large effect on IQ, in the view of those researchers about what the most up-to-date gene association studies show.