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| Re: ARTICLE: 1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed (935237) | |||
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Re: ARTICLE: 1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed |
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Posted by JayMan on Tue Apr 24 09:11:28 2012, in response to Re: ARTICLE: 1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed, posted by Concourse Express on Mon Apr 23 18:46:53 2012. Indeed, part of the problem stems from advances in technology which has wiped out jobs. I also agree that the new fields created by these advances (mostly in IT and hardware/software engineering) require higher IQs than the positions such technology replaced.That's not just part of the problem. That is THE problem. All this garbage we hear about economic ups and downs (in the sense that most people expect the economy to recover from this downswing, which it won't really) serves to distract from this issue. About demographics and the vicious cycle of poverty: Curb illegal immigration - period. Oh most definitely; that goes without saying. We need to take a serious look at immigration in this country. People decry places like Alabama for their tough stance on immigration, and that the exodus of illegals from state has only served to leave crops lying unpicked in the fields, but this is only because the system is setup to be reliant on illegal Mexican labor. Cutting off the supply might allow the system to adapt to their absence—or maybe not, we'll see. Ironically, those are jobs that we would seriously like for technology to replace, but it has thus far failed to. However, you're not going to increase the productivity of those in the "normal" IQ range without proper training, so I will again insist on education reform (though I believe you also said something along those lines, in the form of vocational/trades/training programs for cats in the normal IQ range). One solution is the combination of higher standards with integrated psychometric testing at the high-school level (e.g. via a more g-loaded SAT on par with the SATs of old); thus your "standardized" tests now give IQ scores that can be assessed against the average bachelor-level IQ of 115. Yup, I agree. But here's the problem with that: there aren't enough jobs in the skilled trades for people with middling IQ. Even if these people that are now wasting their time in college instead went into skilled trades more suited to their IQ level, the vast majority of them would find that there's nothing there waiting for them. Technological advance has gutted many of these jobs. However, you'd probably have to reform wages also; so long as unemployment/welfare checks are higher than a typical low wage position, there is little incentive for individuals in those situations to seek work. Now I'm not saying cut welfare/unemployment (I'm against such cuts), but methinks you'd have to do one of the following: 1) Raise the minimum wage (such that the min-wage job offers more than welfare/unemployment and thus incentivizes such work among the lower IQ/working classes) 2) In lieu of idea 1, reform the low-wage jobs such that there is upward mobility (i.e. modest raises/promotions for achieving certain benchmarks on the job). Many jobs may already have this, but I believe many more don't. I have said much along these lines. I have stated that, especially at the bottom, work simply doesn't pay. If it wasn't for the projects, for example, no one could afford to live in New York City on minimum wage or on what most low-level service jobs pay. A good percentage of people refuse to participate in the labor force for this reason (not that there's much out there for them at this point). Labor at the bottom needs to be subsidized, but not by raising the minimum wage—that would only tax businesses and raise the price of basic goods and services as well as discourage hiring. I was thinking along the lines of a negative income tax, as Robert Reich has proposed. There is a little problem with that however: it would lower the prestige of certain lower-end but not bottom barrel fields. How good would the EMT or CNA feel if their jobs, which currently don't pay a whole lot but somewhat more than minimum wage, suddenly paid the same as a McDonald's burger flipper? That aside, I still think it'd be worthwhile. If employers are using the bachelor's requirement for "signalling" purposes then this is another problem, though I'm not entirely convinced this requirement is used solely for this purpose. I say this only because a person's connections may enable him/her to get jobs they'd otherwise be unqualified for, even taking IQ into consideration. I've even heard stories from friends about how cats embellished degree/experience info on their resumes and were offered high-paying gigs as a result. Meanwhile, cats who are honest on their resumes and who also have what it takes are left up the creek. You can't accurately gauge conscientiousness on this wise if cats regularly lie or embellish info. No, but I'm not sure how much you can do about this problem. No matter how fair you make the market place, the well-connected are always going to be better off than the unconnected. But also remember that success takes more than just IQ; it also requires certain personality traits. Self-discipline is one, but in some fields, say business, connections matter not only from what they bring, because having connections in and of itself itself is an effect of personality. For example, there are some fields that have a dearth of East Asians (business and law are examples), but this certainly not because they don't have the brains, but because they don't have the personality traits to excel. E. Asians tend to be introverted and "nerdy", where as these fields call for more type A personalities. More "alpha" types are likely to have large networks of connections as well. >>>>Only eugenics offers any hope of a long-term solution, along with a serious thought of limiting immigration (even of high-IQ individuals...glad I'm already here). I'm not convinced. For one, the option of voluntary sterilization already exists (although it is mainly for contraceptive/health purposes; see here for a description of one such organization). True, but there are no incentives for the people who we don't want to breed to undergo it. Incentives need to be put in place to encourage the economically unproductive to curb their reproduction. We also need to encourage the productive individuals in society to breed more, but to be honest, I can't think of anything that's likely to be effective at that task. The Europeans would sure like to know. Many of these countries have been trying to raise their abysmal fertility rates by actually paying women to have children, to uncertain success. France has an about replacement-level fertility rate, but this is primarily due to births among their sizable North African/Muslim minority. Not exactly the result they had in mind, I'm sure. Steve Sailer has argued that curbing the low-IQ population growth would encourage more reproduction among higher IQ groups. He claims that without needing to flee low-IQ ghettos, the cost of living would be lower and more higher-IQ couples could raise families. I can't say that he's wrong, but I'm not sure what the magnitude of that effect would be. As an aside, I will add that among NW Euros and their descendants at least, there seems to be a density sensitivity when it comes to breeding. Germanics seem to like having open space and plenty of room to themselves (I can't say that I blame them:  ).I think that when too many of them are living close together, for a variety of reasons, child-bearing drops. You will note that all the states with a high White fertility rate are vast open nothingnesses, where the typical family can claim a lot of their room to themselves (and, by extension cost of living is low). I'm sure this is true of all human groups, but perhaps some are more sensitive to it than others. Secondly, I wouldn't curtail immigration of high-IQ foreigners while leaving the illegal immigration problem unsolved (and even if/when such problem is curtailed, I still wouldn't favor such a measure; the combination of reduced illegal immigration and legal immigration of high-IQ individuals might collectively raise the average IQ of the nation). As I said, cutting off illegal immigration is a given. However, immigration reform alone is unlikely to have the desired effect. And even still, high-IQ immigration isn't necessarily a good thing, as we don't want foreigners to out-compete native-born Americans for cognitively demanding jobs. Overall however, America would be in a better place if it didn't have the low-IQ masses that is does. |
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