American Politics

[Larks2242 251]

 

 

Handing untraceable cash to welfare clients generally results in it being spent on booze and smokes.  They then resort to food banks.  If you think this is untrue, you haven't been around much.

 

Not to mention tax free, haven't paid any tax on tobacco, saved a bundle like car insurance.

 

Do we need to say that all these benefits are paid for by everyone else who pay taxes?

 

 

Well personally I'd rather overpay for things then pay taxes on them, I feel like I'm just enabling the mentality by adding to it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Taxes are the price of government.  If taxes are too high, could one say that there is too much government?

[CapTon 592]

Well, Ben Carson's run was announced. Made me very happy yesterday. Now if only Donald Trump would run... the more candidates I like, the more likely someone I like gets put into office.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

California water board shuts down the tap on green lawns.

 

 

Getting rid of grass will be a huge lifestyle shift for many, but it is the biggest single measure that individual Californians could take to ease the crisis, according to Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist with Nasa.

 

"Drought tolerant native landscape is beautiful - we just have to get over this grass thing," he explains.  "We live in an arid and semi-arid state and we need to start acting that way."

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Are they gonna shut down the golf courses, too?  Because holy waste of water, Batman.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Isn't most of the water in California used by farmers (like 80%). I mean, sure, its a good thing if they get rid of those lawns, but that won't really help much if 80% of the water is used by farmers. Seems to me that if California wants to restore its water levels it needs to demand change from the farmers. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I saw a program recently on almond farmers ripping up orchards because they could no longer pay for water to supply their trees.  The figure of 40 litres of water per tree per day sticks in my mind.  But anyway, I expect that there will be less produce from California as the drought deepens and the export of farm products becomes more difficult since production must fall.  All those nice exotic greens from there are a straight luxury that we have gotten along without for centuries.

[Mike D 8]

 

California water board shuts down the tap on green lawns.

 

 

Getting rid of grass will be a huge lifestyle shift for many, but it is the biggest single measure that individual Californians could take to ease the crisis, according to Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist with Nasa.

 

"Drought tolerant native landscape is beautiful - we just have to get over this grass thing," he explains.  "We live in an arid and semi-arid state and we need to start acting that way."

 

 

I have been saying this for years. I live in Southern California, and water districts are coming down hard on consumers and now restricting all new permits for landscaping - which is a good thing, but they really do need to go further and nail the big agribusinesses and corporations (like Hershey) that use extremely high amounts of water here.

 

What they did was look at all of the existing native vegetation here, this beautiful often-green, drought-tolerant Chaparal and Sage Scrub that does not require any intervention nor watering from humans and has gotten by that way for centuries in this part of the world - ripped all of that out, and replaced it with golf courses, exotic tropical plants and palm trees that require many gallons of water each day "because they like it more". It doesn't take a team of professional investigators to figure how that is was stupid. This is why I believe the stereotpyical American view that California is some lush, tropical, always-sunny paradise is not only horribly and provably inaccurate, but actually harmful and wastes copius amounts of natural resources. California's Tourism board, Hollywood, and late-night talk show hosts exacerbate this problem by taking advantage of the incredible stupidity of the average American. I am very against the construction of all new suburban tracts in this state, I believe they are an extreme waste of money and resources. The less people in California, the better off this state will be. I can't even begin to tell you how I've seen this state's beautiful countryside get paved over for pretentious cookie-cutter McMansions, luxury car dealerships, more shopping centers and office space than anybody knows what to do with. The rest of the United States keeps sending us these yuppies and folks who demand unnecesarrily large houses, granite countertops, new Mercedes-Benz SUVs, and country clubs - These people need to just go away.

[Larks2242 251]

California congressman Darrell Issa may have ticked some people off but truth hurts, They are in better shape here then elsewhere.

[Mike D 8]

California congressman Darrell Issa may have ticked some people off but truth hurts, They are in better shape here then elsewhere.

 

[LexusInfernus 908]

If by elsewhere you mean India, sure. But what about say....Sweden? Norway? The Netherlands? I'm quite confident that compared to these countries, American poor have it pretty bad actually. 

[Mike D 8]

If by elsewhere you mean India, sure. But what about say....Sweden? Norway? The Netherlands? I'm quite confident that compared to these countries, American poor have it pretty bad actually. 

 

Exactly. I was going to respond to his post with a wall-of-text post, but I decided that would take too much time and I just didn't feel like going through that crap at the moment. I could write a 10-page essay on all of the things wrong with the content in his post, and his genuine belief in it. Besides, I've been itching to use that 'are you serious' pic and it summed up my reaction to his post pretty well anyway.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Poor is not a matter of impecuniousness, it is an attitude and has become a culture for some.  It is clear that in America, despite the general opportunity, there are many who remain poor out of choice.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Poor is not a matter of impecuniousness, it is an attitude and has become a culture for some.  It is clear that in America, despite the general opportunity, there are many who remain poor out of choice.

This again? Being poor is not the result of an attitude, it can't be fixed by just thinking positive thoughts about how to get rich, people don't remain poor out of choice because they just enjoy working 2 dead end jobs for no pay. 

 

If we ever want to get rid of poverty, one of the first things we must do is stop perpetuating this myth that poverty is the result of not having the right attitude and that it is a lifestyle choice. Its toxic and stands in the way of ever fixing the real problems, because this attitude fundamentally denies that there are problems that prevent people from getting ahead in life.  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, maybe you don't think that is the case, but go talk to a few generational welfare families and I think you might do your sums again. 

 

It isn't the people with multiple minimum wage jobs that are a problem.  They are trying to get out of their situation.  They are either undereducated for the job market, or living in the wrong place.  How they find funds to migrate to better conditions is one of the great conundrums.  Should there be relocation funds available for them, and are they willing to leave whatever roots they have in the present place?

 

Undereducated is a relative term, BTW.  My son graduated from university with a B.A. in Philosophy and found that an a buck and a quarter would get him a cup of coffee.  He went back to school and got a three year diploma in Science Laboratory Technology and found employment right away.  His Phil. degree was only good for admission to grad school for either Law or an MBA.

[Larks2242 251]

If by elsewhere you mean India, sure. But what about say....Sweden? Norway? The Netherlands? I'm quite confident that compared to these countries, American poor have it pretty bad actually. 

 

No they do not. maybe the extreme few, but vast amount of Americans that claim to be poor also own a car, a  cellphone and have a  place  to sleep.

 

In impoverished  countries people still risk death to come  here  for even the lowest of the American life.

[Mike D 8]

 

If by elsewhere you mean India, sure. But what about say....Sweden? Norway? The Netherlands? I'm quite confident that compared to these countries, American poor have it pretty bad actually. 

 

No they do not. maybe the extreme few, but vast amount of Americans that claim to be poor also own a car, a  cellphone and have a  place  to sleep.

 

In impoverished  countries people still risk death to come  here  for even the lowest of the American life.

 

 

Ask immigrants from Central and South America. Many of them come to the United States, and do not have the "proper" means of getting into this country, and therefore have little to no opportunity at all. I've seen a 60 Minutes piece on how many of these families claim that they are no better off here than where they just came from. All it takes is one traffic stop, and you're deported. Yes they risk death to come here, but I'd say this is largely in vain and I blame Hollywood for perpetuating the myth that life in America is like the dreamy sitcoms you see on TV. It isn't. A lot of Americans still don't like brown-skinned people, and it shows.

 

And while many poor Americans do own a car, I've seen numerous cases where that's all they own. Some entire families live in old RVs and vans, especially since 2008. You can find documentaries of this on YouTube, easily. And everyone has a place to sleep. Whether it's in a comfy house, a homeless shelter or under a bridge - a place to sleep is a place to sleep.

 

Also, gadgets and gizmos are not widely available in just America. I've seen pictures of people living in utter poverty in places like Sao Paulo, Brazil and some own laptops and smartphones. Same with many impoverished African countries. People's fantasy of what poverty is "supposed to look like" has not applied in decades. And what is this "only a few extremes"? America's poor are no better off than Canada's, the UK's, France's, Germany's, or any other "first-world" (I hate that phrase) countries. In fact, out of all developed countries, America has the weakest social safety net. Doesn't sound better to me. Maybe better than India like Lexus said, and other countries like it. But certainly not high and almighty either. 

 

And you might say "well, a lot of homeless people in America are fat" but that's because the cheapest food is also the most unhealthy and fattening (like McDonalds). Should I tell the people living under the freeway overpass a few blocks from me that they're not really poor? Statements like that of the California congressman's are overgeneralizing and inaccurate. But the again, I know Americans love their false over-generalizations, stereotypes, and blatant misinformation and would do anything to defend (and even justify) them in a heartbeat. Stupid is popular.

 

I can't stand this attitude that "everything in and about America is always better, there are no real problems, everything is the greatest it has ever been, we can keep doing this forever and there will be no consequences, problems will never happen here, we're still number one, we're the best, and everybody else has it worse." It is so completely and blatantly moronic, inaccurate, counterproductive, over-generalizing & over-simplifying, dumbed-down, both ignorant and arrogant, it makes my skin crawl. "We're the freest nation in the world!" said the country with the highest incarceration rate in the history of the world. Does anybody even realize how stupid this is? No other country in the world has ever imprisoned more of its own citizens than the United States currently does - yet nobody seems to care. Crime is the big boogeyman since the 90s and these so-called "generous, compassionate" Americans don't want something that could potentially help others anywhere near them.

 

The above attitude also encourages apathy and laziness. "America doesn't really have problems, screw those whiners. Let's just keep doing the same crap we've been doing and shut up." Horribly inaccurate and anyone with eyes can see that it is just stupid. That's why people got pissed at the congressman (by the way, didn't we recently have the least productive Congress in this nation's history?) Keep up that "America is flawless and everyone else is worse-off" attitude, and that stuff you see in India? Coming soon near you. Speaking of which, I've seen a number of shantytowns situated near freeways here in California in the last couple of years. I remember driving past one along I-15 near Victorville, CA and my Dad and I did a double-take, turned to each other and said "Mumbai-style!"

 

So kill that counterproductive attitude, it's extremely unhelpful Mr. Congressman.

[Duke87 1,070]

 

If by elsewhere you mean India, sure. But what about say....Sweden? Norway? The Netherlands? I'm quite confident that compared to these countries, American poor have it pretty bad actually. 

 

No they do not. maybe the extreme few, but vast amount of Americans that claim to be poor also own a car, a  cellphone and have a  place  to sleep.

 

In impoverished  countries people still risk death to come  here  for even the lowest of the American life.

 

 

This just dodges the point here - poor people in the US are better off than poor people in impoverished countries, sure. But what about compared to poor people in the aforementioned European nations? Do the American poor have it better than them? If so, how?

 

If the bar we set for ourselves is "well, we're better than the third world!", that's a lovely way to strive for mediocrity.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Well, maybe you don't think that is the case, but go talk to a few generational welfare families and I think you might do your sums again. 

Ever heard of the poverty trap? In order to get out of poverty, you need a well paying job right? In order to get a well paying job, you need to have a college degree. In order to get a college degree, you need money, which is exactly what poor don't have. You also need to have finished highschool, but that proves difficult for a lot of poor people, because there is a huge incentive for them to start working early in order to earn extra income for their family. They need that income because otherwise they might not have food on the table. The problem with poverty is that in order to get out of it, you need to plan for the long term, but you can't plan for the long term if survival is a day by day issue. 

 

Rich people on the other hand, have enough money not to worry about that, so they can easily plan for the long term. Education is also no problem because they can afford it. And for them there are other options to earn more money as well. A rich person has money to spare to invest in the stock market, or just money to spare to put on a bank account and leave it to collect interest for a couple of years. Poor people don't have the money to spend on stocks or put it away on a saving account, because they need all the money they earn to pay for basic necessities like rent, food and transport. 

 

So long story short, if you want to earn money, you first need to have money. If you don't have money, you can't get rich, its that simple. You can have the best attitude in the world, but it will not help you out of poverty. 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

I'm somewhere above the poverty line (slightly, barely) here in Japan, and poor people here are probably better off than they are in the States.  Everyone gets health and dental coverage based on their income through the government.  Mass transit is easy to use and plentiful.  There are plenty of shallow, stupid, materialistic gadgets and whatnot through which they (uh, we?) can compare ourselves to others.  We even have a car here!  Lots of poor people in America have much more limited access to a lot of that, if they have access at all.  I used to think that America was the best, America was so great, but having lived here for so long and seeing how different people in a country a world away do it, I really gotta say that a lot of the things they do here, especially politically/government-wise, are way better than the crappy way we're settling for back home.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

 

Well, maybe you don't think that is the case, but go talk to a few generational welfare families and I think you might do your sums again. 

Ever heard of the poverty trap? In order to get out of poverty, you need a well paying job right? In order to get a well paying job, you need to have a college degree. In order to get a college degree, you need money, which is exactly what poor don't have. You also need to have finished highschool, but that proves difficult for a lot of poor people, because there is a huge incentive for them to start working early in order to earn extra income for their family. They need that income because otherwise they might not have food on the table. The problem with poverty is that in order to get out of it, you need to plan for the long term, but you can't plan for the long term if survival is a day by day issue. 

 

Rich people on the other hand, have enough money not to worry about that, so they can easily plan for the long term. Education is also no problem because they can afford it. And for them there are other options to earn more money as well. A rich person has money to spare to invest in the stock market, or just money to spare to put on a bank account and leave it to collect interest for a couple of years. Poor people don't have the money to spend on stocks or put it away on a saving account, because they need all the money they earn to pay for basic necessities like rent, food and transport. 

 

So long story short, if you want to earn money, you first need to have money. If you don't have money, you can't get rich, its that simple. You can have the best attitude in the world, but it will not help you out of poverty. 

 

What utter crap.  You do not need a college degree to be successful.  University education is a myth.

 

What about skilled trades?  An apprentice gets paid even while learning, and has every opportunity to advance to journeyman and even trade master.  Plumbers get paid more than your average jerk with a doctorate in many cases. 

 

It comes down to qualification, and that piece of paper issued by a college or university might get you in the door, or it might not.  Even though I have the title of Professor, it might interest you to know that my only degree came from HKU (Hard Knocks University), but nevertheless, I retired from teaching in a public college.  All it took was a rather insatiable curiosity, and some serious work both in and out of the workplace.  College degrees are overhyped and overrated.

[LexusInfernus 908]

This whole 'you need a college education to get a good paying job is a myth' thing is getting kinda tiring. The numbers don't lie, on average a college education gets you better paying jobs, period. While I'm sure some people manage to get rich without one, they are exceptions, not the rule, and in all those cases they were either extremely lucky, or had some kind of advantage that the vast majority of people just don't have. 

 

Now as for being a plumber paying so well, that is not entirely true.. 

 

If we take the average of 20 dollars an hour, yeah it pays better than working at McDonalds. But you probably don't have medical coverage or its pretty limited medical coverage, while plumbing certainly isn't a job without its dangers. Furthermore, its definitely not a job that just about everyone can do just like that (good luck getting into plumbing if you are a woman). Sure, you don't need a college degree, but you do need a license and you need to know how to do that kind of stuff. Furthermore, plumbers are their own businesses. Good luck starting your own business if you got no money. 

[hym 358]

This whole 'you need a college education to get a good paying job is a myth' thing is getting kinda tiring. The numbers don't lie, on average a college education gets you better paying jobs, period. While I'm sure some people manage to get rich without one, they are exceptions, not the rule, and in all those cases they were either extremely lucky, or had some kind of advantage that the vast majority of people just don't have. 

 

Research has also suggested that pursuing a skilled trade job can offer a person over a $1,000,000 in additional assets to retire on compared to the average college-educated worker.  Additionally, thanks to the cost difference between a two year technical degree and the cost of attending a four year university, the skilled trade worker will actually have more disposable income than the college-educated worker, despite earning less per year.  The combination of 4 or 5 years of no/little earnings plus heavy debt, carries a huge time and financial burden that the skilled trade worker does not have to bear.  It's similar to the argument about pursuing a PhD; you likely start with a higher salary, but the additional time not earning money, plus the additional debt, usually wipe out most, if not all, of the financial benefits of the higher salary.

 

A lot of success in the job market isn't due to luck.  It is due to better decisions:

 

• One of the complaints of the Occupy Wall Street crowd was "Where are the jobs?".  Meanwhile, transport companies in the Eagle Ford area of Texas were offering starting salaries in excess of $100,000/year to anyone with a commercial driver license and a clean background check.
• It is well-known in the US nuclear power industry that working shutdowns offers the best pay.  Consequently, a lot of nuclear workers simply travel around the country from one shutdown to the next, soaking up the massive shutdown pay and freebies that go with it.  Then when they decide they are tired of the lifestyle, they find somewhere that they want to settle for a while and use all the earnings they built up to buy homes, nice trucks, save for their children's education, etc.
• If you live anywhere in southeast Texas or southwest Louisiana and follow local news, odds are good you've heard of the Sasol expansion in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  It has arguably the largest industrial expansion in North American history.  Trade workers who have been resting comfortably in $120,000/year jobs are leaving their employers and heading to Lake Charles by the thousands.  Sure, the $150,000+/year jobs aren't going to last forever, but the workers know that and they are simply trying to bank a few hundred thousand dollars before leaving again and heading back to wherever they came from initially.  And when the construction is over, Sasol will have finished preparing a technical school ready to funnel willing high school students into $90,000/year jobs that don't require much more than sitting at a computer all day.
• If you work with industrial electricians, you will quickly find that a lot of them come from the Navy.  Why?  The Navy has several technical training programs known for producing very good electricians.  Ask about their background and many will freely tell you, "Yeah, I decided I wanted to get into this field but I didn't want to pay for it, so I joined the Navy and made them pay for it."  Or you will hear, "I didn't have the money to go to school.  Joining the military isn't the most enjoyable way to enter a field, but it sure beats flipping burgers at McDonalds."  (I've met aviation techs who joined the Air Force for a similar reason.)

 

On the other hand, estimates for the "malemployment" rate of college graduates runs somewhere between 30-50 percent, meaning potentially as many as 1 out of 2 college graduates, from a financial perspective, would have been better off never attending college.

[LexusInfernus 908]

So you want me to believe that jobs are everywhere in the US, and that earning more than a median income (51.000 dollars a year) is apparently also super easy because those jobs are literally everywhere, as long as you make the 'right decisions'. So if it is that easy, then why isn't the US median income 90.000? Why do 45 million Americans require government assistance and why is the rest apparently happy with a median income of 51.000 dollars? Are they all to lazy? Stupid? Too blind to see all those wonderful high paying jobs that require no college education that are apparently everywhere? Sorry, but I don't buy that argument for one second. Clearly its not that easy to get such a wonderful job, and clearly those wonderful jobs don't exist in such excess that everyone can just get them. 

 

For one, as you said, a lot of those jobs require moving to specific areas. If all your money goes into paying rent and food, I very much doubt you can just pack up your stuff, and move to another state in the hope that you get a job there. Second, they may not need a college degree, but I assume that they do at least require a highschool degree, which also becomes problematic for a lot of people. Or a drivers license, again, costs money, and when all your money goes into basic survival, getting a drivers license will be difficult. And a clean background check, well that speaks for itself. Poverty and crime are related, and there is a good chance that someone who grew up poor in a poor neighborhood will fail a background check. Third, not everyone can be an electrician or a plumber or whatever. To take myself as an example, if I were to work as an electrician, I would probably electrocute myself on the first day. Its not something I have a natural affinity towards, nor is it something that interests me, so I would suck at such a job. 

 

And sure, the use of college degrees is getting less thanks to the spiraling costs of such a degree (also, do PhD's cost money in the US? Over here people tend to get paid for doing their PhD). But my point that you need money in order to earn money stands. And again, I refuse to believe that getting an above average paying job that requires no degrees and is open to almost everyone is as simple as moving to the right state. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

I have to agree with Lexus up there.  Jobs aren't everywhere, a lot of them require knowing specific people to get you in (and a HUGE part of job hunting is networking the right way), and if you have to move to get to a job, it is a very difficult, if not impossible thing for many.  What about your house/mortgage/months left on your rent or maybe an internet service/cable TV contract you signed?  What if you don't have the cash lying around for a move (we had to get rid of basically everything we owned last month to move back to America because the alternative is hiring movers to get our stuff across the Pacific which costs upwards of US$10,000, an extreme case sure, but relevant to this discussion nonetheless)?  What if you don't want to leave your family? (again, in my experience, not having your family around as a safety net, for example for when your wife has to be hospitalized to prevent a preterm birth, or just to watch your kids to give you a breather for a few hours once every month or two, makes life far more difficult than it needs to be).  Or you can't because you have to help take care of them for whatever reason?  What if you have a medical condition that prevents you from dealing with a different climate?  Or maybe you just hate the weather there that much that it's a deal breaker?  (there is absolutely no way you'll get me to live in another warm, humid climate like here in Japan again, no way, not a chance, nowhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line for me).  And especially for the poor, the very poorest of us, they are going to be locked into wherever they are doing whatever they're doing because saving up the money to move far away even if they wanted to is simply out of the question.  Their money is spoken for before they even spend it.

 

But whatever.  I guess if it helps people sleep at night they can tell themselves that poor people deserve it because they're lazy, uneducated, etc.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

One of the greatest mistakes educaterers made in the last half of the 20th century was to stop streaming.  Streaming is a strategy of identifying students, usually at the secondary school level, to encourage those who don't really qualify for university admission into one of two alternate streams: business subjects such as secretarial science and/or bookkeeping; and skilled trades.  The high-school I went to had three divisions, and by the end of grade nine students were encouraged to proceed to one of the academic, trades or business subjects list.  Then the experimentation with education started with emphasis on the academic stream only.  This mistake results in a lot of kids winding up at a university and wondering what to do now, because they quickly discover that spoon-feeding has ended.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I grew up in Australia and live in England but the job situation sounds similar in the US. The problem with poverty is if you grow up with poor parents poor friends neighbours etc chances are you will either get into crime and drugs etc or if you are hardworking land yourself a deadend job because you can not afford to get better education.

As to trades all I know is that I was ineligible for an apprenticeship because I had not resided in the UK for three years. Don't know what the US is like but methinks making apprenticeships into a government regulated entity was a mistake.

The main issue in areas with good public transit is to be able to afford a place to live. Rent is the main reason people get stuck in poverty. If people own their dwelling or earn more than rent costs it is okay but there is too many people and rents are high.

As to moving here in the UK you can not claim benefits unless you have an address in an area, and securing a job far away is a preposterous suggestion unless you have grand qualifications for some fancy specialized job.

I ended up getting a nightshift job at a walmart owned supermarket though I had studied administration successfully. It's who you know not what and I did not know snyone back in Australia nor here.

But really I think a very big problem is culture. If your parents are drunks, mentally ill, benefit receivers etc then you have no encouragement to succeed.

[Duke87 1,070]

A lot of success in the job market isn't due to luck.  It is due to better decisions:

 

• One of the complaints of the Occupy Wall Street crowd was "Where are the jobs?".  Meanwhile, transport companies in the Eagle Ford area of Texas were offering starting salaries in excess of $100,000/year to anyone with a commercial driver license and a clean background check.
• It is well-known in the US nuclear power industry that working shutdowns offers the best pay.  Consequently, a lot of nuclear workers simply travel around the country from one shutdown to the next, soaking up the massive shutdown pay and freebies that go with it.  Then when they decide they are tired of the lifestyle, they find somewhere that they want to settle for a while and use all the earnings they built up to buy homes, nice trucks, save for their children's education, etc.
• If you live anywhere in southeast Texas or southwest Louisiana and follow local news, odds are good you've heard of the Sasol expansion in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  It has arguably the largest industrial expansion in North American history.  Trade workers who have been resting comfortably in $120,000/year jobs are leaving their employers and heading to Lake Charles by the thousands.  Sure, the $150,000+/year jobs aren't going to last forever, but the workers know that and they are simply trying to bank a few hundred thousand dollars before leaving again and heading back to wherever they came from initially.  And when the construction is over, Sasol will have finished preparing a technical school ready to funnel willing high school students into $90,000/year jobs that don't require much more than sitting at a computer all day.
• If you work with industrial electricians, you will quickly find that a lot of them come from the Navy.  Why?  The Navy has several technical training programs known for producing very good electricians.  Ask about their background and many will freely tell you, "Yeah, I decided I wanted to get into this field but I didn't want to pay for it, so I joined the Navy and made them pay for it."  Or you will hear, "I didn't have the money to go to school.  Joining the military isn't the most enjoyable way to enter a field, but it sure beats flipping burgers at McDonalds."  (I've met aviation techs who joined the Air Force for a similar reason.)

 

Okay, but there's no escaping the basic laws of supply and demand. The only reason all these jobs pay so well is because the number of people capable and willing to do them is small. If more people pursued these career paths, the salaries associated with them would decrease and then it wouldn't be lucrative anymore. Not everyone can have a specialized job, else it isn't special. So what, then, for everyone else? McDonald's fry cooks will always far outnumber nuclear engineers. So as long as the McDonald's fry cooks continue to make too little money to live off of, the economy as a whole is going to suffer from the widespread poverty.

 

And yeah, anyone who pursues these career paths can get ahead, but that only helps them, not the economy as a whole. More people trying harder to find a job doesn't make more jobs exist. Unless business is growing, anyone who lands a job takes it away from someone else and there is no net gain.

 

 

I also feel like saying these decisions are "better" is unfairly judgmental because it dismisses some key realities. Yes, if you can move, you can find good money, but for a lot of people for various reasons relocating is simply is not a practical option. It's dandy to say "join the military", but a lot of people for various reasons aren't cut out for it. Likewise "commercial drivers license and a clean background check" isn't exactly pittance in qualifications - CDLs are expensive to get and difficult to get, and with law enforcement in the US the way it is, it doesn't take much to have a criminal record.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I am taking an economics class right now and now I understand that in order to increase the median and mode (averages for the most) sizes of the "slices of the pie" would require an increase in efficiency to increase the size of the pie and and increase in equality to make sure that the largest slices do not make the smaller slices even smaller.

 

Education, opportunities, and various tools improve the economy and everyone who can take advantage of them. However, at some point, the tools to improve efficiency will be only usable by major companies and most skills and knowledge that comes from training and education would be useless as opportunities to work are eliminated for majority of the population. Already, approximately 1/2 of the US population old enough to be working are not employed. The computers and machinery that can already do the jobs the majority of workers currently do will eventually displace the human workers. This need not be a bad thing but quality of life would not have to be completely dependent on employment.

 

--Ocram

[hym 358]

So you want me to believe that jobs are everywhere in the US, and that earning more than a median income (51.000 dollars a year) is apparently also super easy because those jobs are literally everywhere, as long as you make the 'right decisions'. So if it is that easy, then why isn't the US median income 90.000?

 

Never said that they were everywhere, or that there were enough of them to support a national median income of $90,000.  I was saying that they exist, many require basically no prior experience or skills, and they pay well above what is typical for a college graduate.

 

Why do 45 million Americans require government assistance and why is the rest apparently happy with a median income of 51.000 dollars? Are they all to lazy? Stupid? Too blind to see all those wonderful high paying jobs that require no college education that are apparently everywhere?

 

Part of that is due to factors far removed from the scope of employment.  Part of that is because a lot of people--from my experience somewhere between 50-80 percent--are terrible job seekers.  Part of that is people are happy where they are at and have no incentive to change.  Part of it is people have plans that will pay off for them later, but come with current compromises.  Part of it is that many people have no ambition and take whatever they are handed.  Part of it is some people are so terrified of risk that they stick with the safety of the present over the opportunity to move on to greater things.

 

All that said, it still doesn't detract from the reality that those opportunities exist, and it is your own fault for not pursuing available opportunities for your betterment.

 

 

 

Second, they may not need a college degree, but I assume that they do at least require a highschool degree

 

Depends.  Something like being an electrician, yes.  Others literally only require that you can move your arms and legs and follow instructions.

 

 

 

To take myself as an example, if I were to work as an electrician, I would probably electrocute myself on the first day.

 

One of the things I have come to realize is that most people who say "I can't do this" could have actually done it.  Learning not to accept this attitude from yourself is one of those "better decisions" that tends to impact career success.  A lot of people won't do this, and they will shut themselves out of opportunities because of it.

 

also, do PhD's cost money in the US? Over here people tend to get paid for doing their PhD

 

In general, PhD's do cost money, they cost a lot of money, and if the PhD student is getting any sort of income from it, it is extremely minimal (often less than $2,000/year).  It often takes a person around 20 years to recover the cost of the PhD from the extra income he/she earned as a result of the PhD.

 

And again, I refuse to believe that getting an above average paying job that requires no degrees and is open to almost everyone is as simple as moving to the right state. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

 

It's most certainly true in Texas.  I have been hired to do work I wasn't remotely qualified to perform simply because I was available and had heard of the software they were using.  I have met a manager so hard pressed for people that she was literally attempting to hire random building visitors she never met before.  I drive to work past multiple businesses with "Now Hiring X.  Apply Within" signs or "Hiring welders.  No experience necessary" signs.  I can't turn on the radio without being barraged by companies advertising that they are looking for workers.  I passed by a dozen "craftworker recruiting and training" centers just going to lunch today.  Some companies are so desperate they are creating "intern" positions so they can suck up high school students who are willing to turn a wrench for the summer in exchange for some cash.

 

You can literally stumble across companies that are hiring simply by walking down the street.  It's been going like this for years now and the worker shortages are only getting worse.

 

Okay, but there's no escaping the basic laws of supply and demand. The only reason all these jobs pay so well is because the number of people capable and willing to do them is small. If more people pursued these career paths, the salaries associated with them would decrease and then it wouldn't be lucrative anymore. Not everyone can have a specialized job, else it isn't special. So what, then, for everyone else? McDonald's fry cooks will always far outnumber nuclear engineers. So as long as the McDonald's fry cooks continue to make too little money to live off of, the economy as a whole is going to suffer from the widespread poverty.

 

I wasn't suggesting that literally everyone would get some sort of specialized trade job.  The point was that they are available, many pay as well as, or better, than a typical college degree, and for many people, choosing a trade is a smarter path than going for a 4 year degree.

 

As for the issue of poorly payed fry cooks dragging down the economy, that is a bit more complicated.  In terms of raw totals, low paid cooks will drag down the economy from what it could be.  At the same time, other professions can easily swamp out the negative effects of their poor wages.  In Houston, energy workers are the employment metric that determines the health of the city's economy.  An army of poorly paid fast food workers will not hurt Houston's economy if the oil & gas industry is doing well.  If the oil companies are doing poorly, no other profession can make up for the loss of the energy sector's buying power.  So, no, there aren't enough high paying trade positions to support all the low paid fry cooks, but there doesn't need to be.  You only need to convert a moderate portion of them to notice a significant difference in the health of the economy.

 

And yeah, anyone who pursues these career paths can get ahead, but that only helps them, not the economy as a whole.

 

I would argue that for the average person, helping yourself is helping the economy.  You may not be making new jobs for other people, but you are still boosting your own economic value, and that will get felt elsewhere.  This is why energy workers are so important to Houston's economy.  They're economic value is worth several times that of most of their peers.

 

I also feel like saying these decisions are "better" is unfairly judgmental because it dismisses some key realities.

 

I was trying to provide examples within the context of "trade job that pays better than typical job for college graduate and requires relatively little or no training."  Obviously, it won't work for everyone, but it is a viable option for many people, and for many people, it is a better choice than pursuing a college degree.