Is Elizabeth Warren the Smartest Person in U.S. Politics

[kenberg]

The facts concerning education versus jobs have changed enough to make your assumptions questionable. You may want to refresh your understanding with this.

 

 

 

College graduates do better than those without college, but I think great care is needed in drawing conclusions.

 

 

From your reference.

 

For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate was 32.7 percent in 2010 and 31.1 percent over the last year (April 2011–March 2012), while the underemployment rate was 55.9 percent in 2010 and 54.0 percent over the last year.

 

For young college graduates, the unemployment rate was 10.4 percent in 2010 and 9.4 percent over the last year, while the underemployment rate was 19.8 percent in 2010 and 19.1 percent over the last year.

 

These figures for high school graduates are horrendous, but it does not follow that the solution is to take a guy with no academic interests or abilities and send him off to college. I don't have to go far from my immediate family to find people with Ph.D.s who are doing well and people with only a high school diploma who are doing well. And I can find people with college degrees who are not doing well.

 

The first Gorge Bush [added: I think George I, but I'm not positive, maybe George II] proposed a program to help the non-college bound develop marketable talent. He was loudly condemned by the great many who think that everyone should go to college. In my opinion, he was right and they were wrong.

 

As it happens, there is a story this morning in the Post about the effort to train and hire dealers and other such folks in Maryland casinos. I'm appalled by the effort to support the state by ripping off the suckers,but that's what we have decided to do here and it will be providing jobs. I can't see why a peron needs to have read Plato as preparation for dealing blackjack. Here is the link, fwiw.

http://www.washingto...f39c_story.html

 

Anyway, I would like us to get serious about providing suitable training for the non-college bound. Hopefully in something other than the gambling industry, but any port in a storm.

[y66]

Anyway, I would like us to get serious about providing suitable training for the non-college bound. Hopefully in something other than the gambling industry, but any port in a storm.

From Wikipedia:

 

Australian Apprenticeships encompass all apprenticeships and traineeships. They cover all industry sectors in Australia and are used to achieve both 'entry-level' and career 'upskilling' objectives. There were 470,000 Australian Apprentices in-training as at 31 March 2012, an increase of 2.4% from the previous year.

Apprenticeship training in Austria is organized in a dual education system: company-based training of apprentices is complemented by compulsory attendance of a part-time vocational school for apprentices (Berufsschule).[9] It lasts two to four years – the duration varies among the 250 legally recognized apprenticeship trades.

 

About 40 percent of all Austrian teenagers enter apprenticeship training upon completion of compulsory education (at age 15). This number has been stable since the 1950s

Apprenticeships are part of Germany's dual education system, and as such form an integral part of many people's working life. Finding employment without having completed an apprenticeship is almost impossible. For some particular technical university professions, such as food technology, a completed apprenticeship is often recommended; for some, such as marine engineering it may even be mandatory.

 

In 2001, two thirds of young people aged under 22 began an apprenticeship, and 78% of them completed it, meaning that approximately 51% of all young people under 22 have completed an apprenticeship.[citation needed] One in three companies offered apprenticeships in 2003,[citation needed] in 2004 the government signed a pledge with industrial unions that all companies except very small ones must take on apprentices.

In the modern era, the number of apprenticeships have declined greatly in the United States. Free traditional apprenticeship job training has largely been replaced with on-the-job training (pay as you work), vocational classes, or college courses, which requires the student or an organization to pay for tuition

[y66]

From June 8, 1990 story by Louis Uchitelle:

 

ACROSS Europe, apprenticeship programs train millions of young people for skilled jobs. In the United States, where millions of young people leave high school without much hope of entering skilled, well-paid trades, apprenticeship programs barely exist.

 

Logically, this ancient form of job training seems due for an American revival, given the rising demand for skilled workers to master the complex computerized machinery and the new technologies that are constantly changing work practices. An effort is afoot to give apprenticeship in America a shot in the arm. For teen-agers who do not go on to college, becoming an apprentice would be a middle ground between high school and full-fledged work.

 

The Commission on the Skills of the American Work Force, a panel of business and union leaders, is issuing a set of proposals today that asks Congress to create a nationwide government-regulated apprenticeship program, financed partly through a payroll tax. Separately, the Labor Department has created the Office of Work-Based Learning to support pilot apprenticeship projects. And the Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth H. Dole, is recruiting 25 industry, government and labor leaders for an advisory group that will suggest ways to expand apprenticeship training.

 

'We are actively promoting school-to-work programs, but we are not calling them apprenticeship,'' said James D. Van Erden, administrator of the Office of Work-Based Learning. ''The word carries connotations of the union movement and we don't need this negative baggage.'

 

Apprenticeship means learning a trade, over three or four years, through a combination of classroom study and on-the-job training. Most of the nation's electricians, carpenters, plumbers and ironworkers acquire their skills this way, but outside the construction industry, apprenticeship programs exist only sparsely, for some auto and aircraft workers, machinists, mechanics and a few others.

 

The Fitzgerald Act, passed by Congress in 1937 to correct abuses inflicted on apprentices, empowered the Labor Department to register the programs and to set standards, like a minimum of 144 hours a year of classroom training. Nevertheless, only 300,000 people are in registered apprenticeship programs, roughly unchanged since 1950. Most programs are the fruit of union agreements, although the military trains 50,000 of the apprentices as an inducement to re-enlist.

 

From colonial times until well into the Industrial Revolution, being an apprentice was standard job training. With the advent of the assembly line, millions of jobs were limited to two or three simple, quickly learned tasks. As a result, apprenticeship training retreated to crafts like carpentry and electrical work, which still required complex skills. But now, with the rise of a flexible workplace -one that requires ingenuity and complex skills to carry out a variety of tasks - apprenticeship training is coming back into vogue.

 

Reacting more quickly to the change, West Germany, Sweden, France and other European countries are well ahead of the United States in government-sponsored apprenticeship training, often financed through special taxes. ''You can sustain profits in two ways in the international arena,'' said F. Ray Marshall, a Labor Secretary during the Carter Administration. American companies opted for cost-cutting through layoffs and limits on wage increases, he said, while other industrial nations sustained wages, but trained workers so they could produce more.

 

Lately, however, some big American companies, like Motorola, Ford, General Electric and American Express, are spending tens of millions of dollars on job training that resembles apprenticeships. They are, in effect, beginning to adopt the European approach. But from a corporate executive's viewpoint, incorporating this individual company training into a national apprenticeship program has two big drawbacks as well as one big advantage.

 

The advantage is that the companies could pay a training wage with Government sanction. Ironworker apprentices, for example, currently start at between 35 percent and 50 percent of a journeyman's wage, moving up each year toward full pay. One drawbacks is that companies would have to comply with Federal regulations, particularly rules that insist upon minority hiring for the programs. And they would have to issue nationally recognized certificates to newly graduated apprentices, who could then depart with their licenses for new jobs, just as journeymen carpenters move among employers, offering their licenses as proof of their skills.

 

Whatever the pros and cons, other leading industrial nations are moving to train their workers and increase their productivity. 'We do this for college-educated people,' Mr. Marshall said. 'But we do virtually nothing for people who don't go to college.'

 

So,how is this working? To be continued ...

[y66]

Susanna Capelouto reported this story on NPR this morning: What Germans Know Could Help Bridge U.S. Workers' Skill Gap

[kenberg]

Susanna Capelouto reported this story on NPR this morning: What Germans Know Could Help Bridge U.S. Workers' Skill Gap

This says it all very well, I would quarrel only with them presenting this as some new thing:

 

"If you tell everybody, 'Get a college education; that gets you into the middle class. Doesn't matter what you major in, you just need that college degree.' Well, is it any surprise?" he says. "Now we see this manufacturing coming back to us, and that's what we have to get ourselves prepared for."

 

No doubt the job market fluctuates in just about any sector but it seems to me that a good electrician (one of the trades mentioned) or a good plumber or a good landscaper or a good lot of things has always had a pretty good shot at being in demand. And very importantly, they often find pleasure and satisfaction in their jobs. Here's a news flash: There are people out there who do not think of a career in mathematics as their dream job. Perhaps the prefer working outside to sitting at a desk reading a computer screen and then "taking a meeting". Hard to believe, but I swear it's true.

[mike777]

For sake of discussion I hope people keep an open mind when it comes to the direction of the causal arrow.

 

Lant Pritchet's (World Bank economist) empirical investigation says there is no evidence that raising the general level of education raises income at the level of a country but that the opposite Is true. Wealth leads to a rise of education.

 

AT the very least I hope it raises questions if the priority or main goal is to raise the income level of a country what are the factors that best achieve that goal.

 

Knowledge is important but Scholarship and organized education are not the same.

 

Pritchett, L,. 2001 "Where Has All the Education Gone?" World Bank Economic Review 15.

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fwiw I think freedom, private property rights and such are really major factors in raising income levels at a country level. ARe you going to allow private ownership of innovation and the benefits derived from them?

 

One on going debate is whether things such as mineral rights should be held by private land owners or only by the central govt. Of course this assumes that private land ownership is legal.

[y66]

From Thomas Geoghegan's 2006 review of Louis Uchitelle's "The Disposable American":

 

"The Disposable American" is a history in which odd characters like Pat Buchanan, the former chief executives Jack Welch and Albert J. Dunlap (known as Chainsaw Al), the economist Alfred Kahn and others loom large — but so do Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Robert E. Rubin, former secretary of the treasury. But Mr. Uchitelle is just as interested in ordinary people and in the way that layoffs keep tormenting those who have been let go. As he writes, "I did not think in the early stages of the reporting for this book that I would be drawn so persistently into the psychiatric aspect of layoffs."

 

The layoff, Mr. Uchitelle argues, has transformed the nation. At least 30 million full-time American employees have gotten pink slips since the Labor Department belatedly started to count them in 1984. But add in the early retirees, the "quits" who saw the layoffs coming, and the number is much higher — a whole ghost nation trekking into what for most will be lower-wage work. This is the Dust Bowl in our Golden Bowl, and to Mr. Uchitelle, layoffs in one way are worse than the unemployment of the 1930's. At least then, most of the jobless came back to better-paid, more secure jobs. Those laid off in our time almost never will.

 

Mr. Uchitelle effectively wrecks the claim that all this downsizing makes the country more productive, more competitive, more flexible. He is willing to admit that downsizing can be necessary. "The global economy is not to be denied," he writes. But to lay off is now like a business school tic, whether it makes any sense or not. With fewer employees, many companies begin to crumble. Innovation also suffers. "Rather than try to outstrip foreign competitors in innovation, a costly and risky process, we gave up in product after product," Mr. Uchitelle writes.

[barmar]

The facts concerning education versus jobs have changed enough to make your assumptions questionable. You may want to refresh your understanding with this.

Yes, I'm aware that the current economy makes things harder for college graduates than it was a decade or two ago. But they can get assistance from their parents while they're looking for work. They have that safety net that poor people don't, so they're better able to ride out the problem. Becoming a drug dealer is not likely to be their instinct to overcome this, but I imagine that for inner-city youths it can be one of the few viable solutions.

[Winstonm]

Yes, I'm aware that the current economy makes things harder for college graduates than it was a decade or two ago. But they can get assistance from their parents while they're looking for work. They have that safety net that poor people don't, so they're better able to ride out the problem. Becoming a drug dealer is not likely to be their instinct to overcome this, but I imagine that for inner-city youths it can be one of the few viable solutions.

 

I see, so your solution to no bread to repay student loans is to let them eat their parents' cake. How very French.

[kenberg]

My summer after graduation in 1960 was weird. I wish the to be new grads the best. The eldest grandchild will be one of them. The world now is quite different. I liked mine, but it seems that she likes hers. Anyway, go for it!

[y66]

From Paul Krugman's 3/10 NYT column:

 

So does reducing inequality through redistribution hurt economic growth? Not according to two landmark studies by economists at the International Monetary Fund, which is hardly a leftist organization. The first study looked at the historical relationship between inequality and growth, and found that nations with relatively low income inequality do better at achieving sustained economic growth as opposed to occasional “spurts.” The second, released last month, looked directly at the effect of income redistribution, and found that “redistribution appears generally benign in terms of its impact on growth.”

 

Nobody is proposing that we try to be Cuba, but moving American policies part of the way toward European norms would probably increase, not reduce, economic efficiency

[y66]

From Income inequality leads to lower growth (Feb 26):

 

(Reuters) - Income inequality can lead to slower or less sustainable economic growth, while redistribution of income, when measured, does not hurt and can even help an economy, IMF staff found in a research study released on Wednesday.

 

Although the study by International Monetary Fund economists does not reflect the Fund's official position, it is another sign of a shift in its thinking about income disparity.

 

"It would still be a mistake to focus on growth and let inequality take care of itself, not only because inequality may be ethically undesirable but also because the resulting growth may be low and unsustainable," according to the study.

 

The IMF analyzes the economies of each of its 188 member countries and offers advice on government budget and monetary policies. It is also a lender of last resort, tasked with supporting global financial stability.

 

It has traditionally advised countries to promote growth and reduce debt, but has not explicitly focused on income inequalities. But in the past year, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has said that creating economic stability is impossible without also addressing inequality.

 

Oxfam, the international development group, has long argued that organizations like the IMF need to address rising gaps between the rich and poor, and stop encouraging low public spending.

 

"In the bad old days, the IMF asked governments to cut public spending and taxes," said Nicolas Mombrial, the head of Oxfam's Washington office. "We hope this research and Christine Lagarde's recent statements are a sign that they are changing their tune."

 

Economists are still divided about the relationship between growth and income inequality, which has spiked around the world as economies struggle in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

 

Some have also blamed rising income inequality for contributing to the crisis in the first place, by encouraging more borrowing by people who wanted to maintain their standards of living. See Special Report: reut.rs/1frreDJ

 

Jonathan Ostry and Andrew Berg, two of the authors of the IMF paper, also researched the link between income inequality and growth in 2011.

 

At the time, Ostry said the response was that income redistribution rather than inequality was responsible for hurting growth: some argued that inequality prompted governments to transfer money to the poor, which reduced incentives to work.

 

Their follow-up paper on Wednesday showed redistribution was not to blame.

 

"We find that inequality is bad for growth ... in and of itself," Ostry told reporters on Wednesday. "And we can say that redistribution by itself doesn't seem to be bad for growth, unless it's very large."

 

They said there was evidence that extremely high taxes or transfers to the poor, such as which occurs in some European countries, could hurt growth. But they found that redistribution also helped growth by reducing inequality.

[ArtK78]

This all makes perfect sense, as poorer people spend a much greater percentage of their earnings on consumption rather than investment.

[Winstonm]

This all makes perfect sense, as poorer people spend a much greater percentage of their earnings on consumption rather than investment.

 

I agree, and it is not so difficult to follow that if an additional 10% is removed from savings (i.e., wealth) and distributed to those who consume 100% of income then demand grows. Growth in demand is followed by a response from suppliers.

[kenberg]

Growing up, I was taught, largely as unquestioned faith, that the fundamental reason for the growth in U.S. prosperity was the success of the labor movement. The reasons were the obvious ones expressed above and elsewhere. If a large portion of the population has a satisfactory middle class life then there will be a market for goods. I have never changed my mind about this. Somehow everything fell apart.

 

I did a little experiment today. I had a number of things to do, interacting with various people as they performed their jobs. I

ll give my first example, and then summarize. I had a little mishap with the car last week (a post ran into my bumper) and it needs to be fixed. I called a place on Friday and talked to a very pleasant woman who made an appointment for me at 10:00 to get an estimate. I showed up a little early and was looking for the correct door when one of the workers called out that the office was in the building over to my right. I went in and someone looked up immediately and asked if I was the guy with the Accord. Yep. He siad someone would be with me in a minute and so it was. I was out of there by 10:15. I'm going to use them to fix the car.

 

The experiment is that I tried to remember in each encounter that I had during the day whether or not the person I was talking to needed a college degree for the job that they had. The final tally was about 12 to exactly 0. Maybe some of these guys had a college degree, maybe not, I could not care less.

 

We have screwed this up. I understand why many employers ask for a college degree. Partly this is because the high schools, many of them, suck. And then there is the idea that completing college shows the ability to complete something. So I get it, at least sort of. But it is a big change in American society and it has other implications beyond jobs. We have now defined adolescence to go on until well into the 20s. Sure, there is science that says brains are not fully developed by 18, and maybe not be 75 either, but I don't think that it is healthy to treat a 20 year old as if he can hardly be expected to think for himself.

 

Anyway, I welcome serious plans to help those in need become successful. To as large an extent as possible, I hope we can use help to ease more people, or their children, into self-sufficiency.

[y66]

We most definitely need to change the way we think about all this. We have totally screwed this up.

 

These guys have some good ideas:

 

Henry Street Settlement

- New York, New York

 

Project Quest

- San Antonio, Texas

 

Focus: HOPE's career training programs

- Detroit, Michigan

So do others mentioned here: Where Biden Should Look for Job Training Ideas

[mike777]

"Growing up, I was taught, largely as unquestioned faith, that the fundamental reason for the growth in U.S. prosperity was the success of the labor movement. The reasons were the obvious ones expressed above and elsewhere. If a large portion of the population has a satisfactory middle class life then there will be a market for goods. I have never changed my mind about this. Somehow everything fell apart"

 

 

I think Ken raises a very important point...Most were taught that success of the labor movement was the fundamental reason for growth and prosperity in the usa.

 

If we can test this theory vs say innovation or productivity or other factors that would be helpful.

 

Some attribution analysis here would be helpful rather than just belief.

-------------

 

 

Fwiw I believe that a culture of innovation ...one that allows failure to lead to second chances rather than deep shame is the most important factor.

 

I use Japan as just one cultural example where failure leads to deep shame and inhibits innovation.

 

There are other examples where protecting the status quo/interests inhibits innovation.

 

All of which leads to stagnation.

 

I am pro Union...Unions drove innovation in many ways.

Today the downside seems to be they are often about protecting the status quo/interests which inhibits innovation rather than being a driver of innovation.

[kenberg]

I didn't mean to be downplaying innovation.or other engines of growth.

 

As I think over this thread, I think I see where I differ from some others. Most all of us believe in help for those in need of help. The difference, and it may be no more than ways of speaking, seems to center around long term goals and hopes. I expect and hope that most adults can eventually be self-supporting. Of course some cannot, I recognize that, but most can. So as we think of help for the needy, I think in terms of how this will help them to need less help in the future. The labor movement saw to it that a person (ok, given the times it was mostly a male) could get paid decently for doing something useful. This is fundamentally different from deciding that a good sized segment of society will never be able to do anything useful and so we will just support them. No doubt it will sometimes be the kids who will succeed instead of the parents, but forward movement is to be a major goal in my view of help.

 

But yes, I would be interested in knowing if my view of the tole of the labor movement in the development of the American economy is accepted by economic historians. I have pretty much always regarded as obvious to anyone who pays any attention at all.

 

Added: It's hardly news that the Democratic Party does not have the support of the working class to the same degree that it once did. It would not be surprising to find that a truck driver sees the purpose of help pretty much as I do, and thinks that the Dems see it differently. To the extent that this is a mis-perception they may want to work on this, and to the extent it is real they may want to re-think it a bit.

[y66]

From a 1991 review of Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back by Thomas Geoghegan:

 

Although it sounds nearly impossible to write a charming book about such a complex subject as the diminished role of unions today compared with what they did in the New Deal years, Thomas Geoghegan succeeds in doing so by telling the story through his own life as a labor lawyer. His account of how he remains in the boondocks of trade unionism while most of his Harvard Law School classmates practice in more lucrative but duller fields makes for lively reading. Mr. Geoghegan, a product of the 1960's, heeded a different drummer: his own altruistic instincts.

 

Part autobiography, part evidence of how Federal laws tilt against unions and part history of modern labor relations, "Which Side Are You On?" seldom reads like a tract. While the author's own feelings are plainly summed up in his book's subtitle, he is fairly evenhanded about distributing blame for the plight of unions. With noble exceptions, the leaders of some of the big unions as well as big companies come off as unconcerned about the lives of their members and their work force. As a consequence, Mr. Geoghegan finds that business and the economy suffer.

 

The Federal Government receives the lowest rating in "Which Side Are You On?" From his perspective as a Chicago lawyer who has sat in on many negotiations to save jobs and pension rights, Mr. Geoghegan dates the decline of union power to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over President Harry S. Truman's veto. When people ask him why labor can't organize the way it did in the 1930's, he replies: "Everything we did then is now illegal." That law led to "union busting," he says, a recent example being President Ronald Reagan's decision to dismiss 12,000 air traffic controllers for disobeying his order not to strike.

 

...Citing one of his own tough cases, Mr. Geoghegan says he spent seven years during the Reagan Presidency representing 2,500 former employees who sued International Harvester for the benefits they lost when Harvester "transferred title to a dummy corporation." A succession of such actions left no one to pay the pensions. "The deal was so mean, so vile, that even the investment bankers gagged," he writes. "Lehman Brothers, the investment banking firm handling the sale, went to Harvester and objected on simple moral grounds." The resolution of the problem took years, but eventually the workers received sharply reduced pensions.

[y66]

From Steven Hill's February 2013 article in The Atlantic:

 

The new liberal vision of a competitive economy built around a resurgent manufacturing sector and an educated middle class seems to ape what Germany does best. But how much do we really understand what makes the German economy a world-class leader?

 

It's true that, by U.S. standards, Germany has a model system for technical training of workers. The Land of Bismarck has fed its manufacturing machine with a steady supply of technicians, engineers and skilled workers through a superb apparatus of vocational training and technical apprenticeships. Companies work closely with regional technical schools, sometimes sponsoring programs to prepare the graduates so they are immediately job-ready.

 

But Germany's vocational training isn't top of the class by European standards. That prize goes to Denmark. Over four percent of Danish gross domestic product is spent on job training and support -- about the same percentage the U.S. spends on its military budget while allotting a mere 0.7 percent to job retraining and support. And Danes have job placement down to a quasi-science. Experts prepare what is known as a "bottleneck analysis," using pollsters to survey employers on what jobs they will need in coming years. The feedback is then used to identify the next labor shortages and to pick the correct training courses for individuals. One Danish jobs analyst said, "In our system, we can make supply and demand match," an impressive boast that shows a proactive government can help a flexible labor market.

 

THE SECRET SAUCE IS S.M.E.

 

Beyond vocational training, a huge factor in Germany's manufacturing and export success lies in its vibrant mittelstand -- those small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) that form the backbone of the economy. Germany has a cornucopia of Fortune 500 companies that are manufacturing leaders -- global brand names like BMW, Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, Volkswagen, Daimler and BASF -- but what really sets Germany apart is its beehive of small and medium-size businesses.

 

About 99 percent of all German companies are SMEs, which are enterprises with annual sales of below EUR 50 million and a payroll with fewer than 500 workers. And around two-thirds of all German workers are employed in this sector. While that's the same as the EU average, it's higher than the United Kingdom (60% SMEs) and much higher than the U.S. (about 50%). While America's policy makers pay lip service to sound bites like "small business is the backbone of the American economy," Germany actually follows through with smart policy. The results speak for themselves.

A beehive of small and medium-size businesses? Didn't someone say recently in the water cooler that we could use another Teddy Roosevelt?

[Winstonm]

From Steven Hill's February 2013 article in The Atlantic:

 

 

A beehive of small and medium-size businesses? Didn't someone say recently in the water cooler that we could use another Teddy Roosevelt?

 

This beehive of small and medium-size business is antithema to the Reaganistas who only mouth Adam Smith while working toward eliminating competition and labor resistance.

[Winstonm]

This quote from a guy named Brian Buetler summarizes well why the right wing has lost its way: the cart (ideology) has been placed firmly in front of the horse (facts).

 

If you’re sure your ideas are correct and confident your solutions are the right ones you’ve already erected a significant barrier to self-examination. And when admitting error carries enormous financial, personal and ideological risk, it feels easier not to check. You’re shocked when your candidate loses, because none of your friends voted for the other guy. And you just pass along stories they tell you about the soul-crushing nature of welfare, or the horrors of the Affordable Care Act, without bothering to apply a smell test.

 

The latest example is Paul Ryan, who blindly passed along as true a contrived welfare story that was later proven to be faked.

[billw55]

The latest example is Paul Ryan, who blindly passed along as true a contrived welfare story that was later proven to be faked.

Or who made up his marathon time.

[barmar]

We have screwed this up. I understand why many employers ask for a college degree. Partly this is because the high schools, many of them, suck. And then there is the idea that completing college shows the ability to complete something. So I get it, at least sort of. But it is a big change in American society and it has other implications beyond jobs. We have now defined adolescence to go on until well into the 20s. Sure, there is science that says brains are not fully developed by 18, and maybe not be 75 either, but I don't think that it is healthy to treat a 20 year old as if he can hardly be expected to think for himself.

Those are part of it, but there's more.

 

If you have 100 applicants for 10 jobs, interviewing all 100 of them is hard work. So one way to simplify the process is to first winnow down the applicants using objective criteria, and requiring a college degree is a simple one. While it's true that you might occasionally miss out on hiring the next Bill Gates, the chance of that is slim. The top 10 of the college graduates will usually be about as good as the top 10 of all the applicants.

 

I worked for a high tech company many years ago, and they required college degrees for everyone, even receptionists and administrative assitants (aka secretaries). Not because it takes a college education to answer the phones, but because they considered these entry-level jobs -- it was quite common for people to be promoted out of these jobs. I remember a woman who was hired as our team's administrative assistant, then she became a system administrator, and eventually the team leader among the admins.

[kenberg]

 

The latest example is Paul Ryan, who blindly passed along as true a contrived welfare story that was later proven to be faked.

 

My take on the Paul Ryan story about a kid whoo didn't want a free lunch but rather a lunch in a brown bag by his mother, showing that she loved him:

 

1. No kid talks like that. The story did not need to be checked, anyone who considered it even possible that a kid said that must never have been a kid, had a kid, or known a kid.

 

2. If any kid ever said that, he should be told that his mother is not his servant. If I have ever said such a thing to my mother, she would have said something along the lines of "Here's a bag, you know where the bread box and the refrigerator are, if you want to discuss whether you are loved we can do that after you get home from school." Actually my mother would not have put it exactly that way, but I had to get this past the forum censors so I cleaned it up a bit.