The Employment to Population Ratio

I applaud your desire to educate your fellow man. You might want to get involved with Khan Academy or start a similar free service.

 

Yet @BleedingHeadKen's criticism of you is justified. You advocate putting people in cages for no other reason than that, say, they didn't pay an employee what you think they should be paid. You're not an economist, you're just an authoritarian.

 

You seem to have confused yourself. You made **** up and pretended it was my argument. That is a strawman. I have not used one.

 

This is a debate-forum and you should be on a Message Board.

Learn to read - your one-liner sarcasm is childish ...

 

So what if there are slight inequalities...the fact remains the US provides lots of opportunities for it's people to achieve their potential. It is disingenuous if you believe all those who fail to achieve their potential did so because of a flawed economic system...

 

What is preventing anyone from obtaining more skills, more education? We have a million colleges and universities and trade schools in the USA as well as student loans and scholarships, etc.

Just because university studies might be subsidized does not mean more people will take advantage of furthering their education...

 

We're not talking about slight inequalities though are we? We're talking about inequalities worse than Dickensian times, with social immobility on a par with the British class system. That the US is in its current position, and other countries aren't, informs us the stupidity of 'blame the individual'

As you already know, phenomena such as low skilled equilibria (where there is an over-reliance on low wage labour and higher risk of working poverty) are not supply-side orientated. Supply-side economics fails to explain it. Of course, supply-side economics is really just the handkerchief crust from a right wing sneeze

 

And that's a problem with the current system, it's grown to large and difficult to quantify, assuming government really wanted to quantify waste, fraud and corruption of its own making.
While I might agree that you cannot 'force' people to obtain reasonable employment, you very well 'can' cut assistance to those who are found to misuse the system.

 

A moralist do-gooder who measures his righteousness in how much he advocates that others pay for his "good" deeds.

 

The problem is that you only have your sense of righteousness. You have no means to combine it with economics in order to integrate that sense of right/wrong with credible comment.

Its that impotence which arguably makes you strike out. Have you thought about Economics evening classes?

 

I don't understand why you wrote what you did. You said that you think educating people is important, so I suggested that you look into ways that you could educate people.

 

And yet you, the self-proclaimed economist, advocate putting people in cages for no other reason than that, say, they didn't pay an employee what you think they should be paid. You're not an economist, you're just an authoritarian.

 

The cost. See here:

And if you think student-loans are the solution, then you'd better read here:
Why the Student Loan Crisis Is Even Worse Than People Think.

Mind boggling! Please do explain why if subsidized they would not be more. The barrier to Tertiary Education in the US is the cost. (I sent my kids to university here in France where tuition is less than $1K a year! Total cost including room-'n-board, $2K!)

The statistics regarding the worth of Tertiary-level education across the OECD-countries (mostly all developed or developing) is found here.


Note that the US is very well placed in terms of total age-group (25/64) percentages of post-secondary (tertiary) level education. But, is it good enough? Because the above number represents the results of those who obtain Tertiary-level Qualifications.(And they are not that many! Moreover, comparing results with Europe is not on. Europe was devastated after WW2 and took 15/20 years to recuperate economically.)

Moreover, with 14% of the American population (more than 40 million) living below the Poverty Threshold and despite the above infographic, something is very wrong in the US. One of the richest countries on earth cannot educate all of its people up to the post-secondary level?

The same reasons apply when it took America 20/30 years for a government to impose the requirement that the states be responsible for primary/secondary education.

Will we take another 30 years to convince Americans that post-secondary education MUST BE SUBSIDIZED AS WELL.

PS: And that we just shot our collective selves in the foot in the last presidential election fiasco. Hillary had agreed to add to her election platform Bernie's proposition of free tertiary-education for all families earning less than the median wage of $50K per year.
PPS: But we preferred a dork who watches Fox News until three o'clock in the morning ...

 

Then subsidise it.
What is stopping you.

I paid for my further education.
In my country we have ended subsidised further education and switched to student loans.
Which are working out excellently.

The kids who go to university are coming out with little to no debt, because they are working, and they are choosing their courses more carefully to get ones that train them for work opportunities. And they are not just going to university for a few years of dossing around on other peoples bills any more.

Meanwhile the poor and stupid are no longer paying extra for smarter people to become richer than them. Social injustice has been corrected.
Personal responsibility has been taught and universities are thriving.

Student loans = big success.
Subsidy = total crap.

 

Oh, but yes it does! Read about this issue here. Excerpt:

Financing is the single most reason students do not terminate post-secondary education. And the rate of retention is not that very high (from here):


What's the reason completion rates are so low (around 35%)?

Itz all aboud da muney ...

 

This is complete cobblers. Loans aren't working at all. We're seeing worsening factors regarding the widening participation agenda (which will help maintain inefficient inequalities). Particular disciplines are seeing significant negative consequences (such as nursing suffering from the recent shift to loans).

Student debt is over £100 billion (average is around £60,000 per graduate). Interest charges are 6%, considerably higher than the base rate. When the salary threshold for repayment is met, effective marginal tax rates increase to over 40%.

The system couldn't be more disastrous!

 

It's not just potential, unless you mean the "will to change things".

Which Americans certainly do not have enough courage to accomplish. So we are saddled with an antiquate political system that has been manipulated over the years by Vested Interests.

And who are these Vested Interests? In fact, it is a societal phenomenon by which the Accumulation of Wealth is accepted as the central-piece of anyone's existence. As if wealth were the only real measure of one's worth.

Wrong and dead wrong. Yes, socialism that decried the rip-off as early as the end of the 19th century did not get it right by insisting that the means of production must be owned by the state and all income must be "uniform" (that is, no great excess).

That system undermines human-nature that strives always to better one's condition. But unlimited freedom, which the RightWing Dorks promote is not the real answer either. It simply ends with the atrocious Income Disparity that now afflicts America. From the NYTimes here.

That chart of Income Sharing is not viewable here (thank you, the NYT!) but what it is saying is prominent. The chart is demonstrating Income Growth vs Income Percentile. Which largely means who gets more money historically versus where they are in terms of Income Percentile (the percentage of total Income that becomes theirs and translates (after taxation) into Wealth. (And then from Wealth minus Debt into Net Worth).

The above linked chart is simply substantiating what Picketty & Co (Saez at the UofCal) have also demonstrated in terms of Income Sharing. Moreover, the initial work regarding Income and Wealth in America was proposed by Prof. Domhoff (also of the UofCal) more than two decades ago - which he described in simple pie-charts as shown here:


What more need be said? The stark truth of the matter of Income Disparity has been obvious for all to see for quite some time.

But nobody really 'n truly cares in America ...

 

Or anywhere else.

 

What is complete cobblers and who insists that it is!?!

Will you please learn how to quote the individual AND what they argue when you rebut! (The quotation button is the one on the upper-right that appears at first glance like the American flag.)

It's a simple, unstipulated rule and helps immensely to further debate by showing the "discussion thread".

Of course, you could always go to a Message Board where there are no rules and discourse is all over the place. Some call that "freedom of speech". It's actually "freedom of nonsense".

And others that it is just useless drivel expressed between primates ...

 

In your effort to attack, you do have a tendency of making yourself look ridiculous. The comment wasn't difficult to comprehend. Exercise your reading skills for a change:

Loans aren't working at all. We're seeing worsening factors regarding the widening participation agenda (which will help maintain inefficient inequalities). Particular disciplines are seeing significant negative consequences (such as nursing suffering from the recent shift to loans). Student debt is over £100 billion (average is around £60,000 per graduate). Interest charges are 6%, considerably higher than the base rate. When the salary threshold for repayment is met, effective marginal tax rates increase to over 40%. The system couldn't be more disastrous!

 

do you want to end income disparity by taxing the rich a giving more welfare to the poor?

 

This is all nonsense...the opportunities exist for all Americans to achieve more...whether one person must work harder than another person is just a fact of life...each person decides their future...

 

You're barking up the wrong tree...all people violate laws...when violations can be quantified and these quantities are large enough to spend the time and money to fix then it will happen very very slowly. Why don't we do something about everyone who exceeds the speed limits when driving? I'm sure people every day are being terminated from government programs for myriad reasons so there is a process in place. This won't change unless there can be a win-win solution for everyone...

 

You're chasing your own tail! If these opportunities existed then the US would have higher social mobility rates. Instead those rates are pitiful and on a par with the class ridden limeys

 

You can't even get more than 50% of our kids to excel in high school so how will you force them to attend college and obtain a marketable degree? And who are we talking about here...the 50% who excel in public school or the 50% who fail? You actually believe you can force the 50% failures who drop out of public school or learn almost nothing to suddenly attend college?