[jshowa3]

An increase income range is an increase in income. Most companies do not hire high school students or drop outs for more than minimum wage.

How you can reconcile a higher educated person being higher up the income ladder, but not making more than what they made working minimum wage at a lower education level, eludes me.

What stagnant income means is, they aren't making more relative to their productivity. Meaning salaries have not changed all that much for about 2 - 3 decades through raises despite high productivity.

[randomdata]

> An increase income range is an increase in income.

I think I see the issue here. I am talking about the population as a whole, you are talking about an individual. It is true that over time individuals tend to move up the income ladder. And that more capable people move higher up the ladder thanks to being more capable, free of disability that hinders their achievement. However, the steps of the ladder have remained unchanged over decades. Making more than someone else is not the same as making more than you otherwise could have.

If we break that ladder up into percentiles, the person at the top of, say, the 70th percentile made x of number dollars in 1970 and the person at the top of the 70th percentile still makes x number of dollars today, in real dollars. In 1970 that person did not have an education above high school. Today that person does. Despite promises, their income did not increase with increased educational attainment. Incomes are stagnant. There was no advantage to gaining that higher education with respect to income. The person at the top of the 70th percentile, who got there because of the abilities and constraints they were born with, would have ended up there regardless.

> What stagnant income means is, they aren't making more relative to their productivity.

What stagnant income means is that incomes are literally not changing, relative to inflation. On average, if you made $1 last year, you will make $1.02 this year, assuming a 2% inflation rate. A real increase of $0; stagnant. To put it another way, incomes, in nominal dollars, are increasing at the same rate as inflation.

[jshowa3]

But they are. You make roughly a million dollars more in your life time than you would if you didn't graduate college.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Exec-Summary-w...

Inflationary dollars are largely irrelevant as everything is more expensive than it was decades ago due to inflation.

[randomdata]

Your link effectively only shows that higher earners earn more than lower earners.

That is not the same as incomes increasing because of higher education. Incomes have held stagnant for a number of decades, even as more and more people attain higher and higher levels of education. If 0% of the population had a higher education or 100% of the population had higher education, your income would remain the same as it is now.

McDonalds isn't going to pay someone flipping burgers a million dollars more over the span of their burger flipping career simply because they attained a physics degree. That is not how the economy works at all. If 100% of the population had a physics degree, someone is going to be left flipping burgers. 100% of the population are not going to be working on solving string theory. The economy cannot function in that manner.

Inflationary dollars are relevant as that is how we measure stagnant incomes. An income that tracks inflation is stagnant. Incomes are stagnant. We are not talking about spending.

[jshowa3]

Yes, but a science lab isn't going to hire a high schooler with no science degree. And no business will pay a physicist with a degree minimum wage. That's the point. The result of obtaining higher education categorically results in you earning more income. And most people filling minimum jobs are not people with higher education.

Are people with higher education in low wage jobs? Yes. Is this common? No. And the only reason it would be common is if there was no income incentive to gain higher education, which there isn't.

I'm beginning to think you really don't understand what I mean.

[randomdata]

> Yes, but a science lab isn't going to hire a high schooler with no science degree

What choice would they have if 0% of the population had a degree? This is ultimately why incomes haven't changed even as more and more people attain higher education. In the past the best and brightest people were hired into those positions as high schoolers. And now the best and brightest still are, except they have higher education now because of the social pressure to attain a higher education.

> And no business will pay a physicist with a degree minimum wage.

They absolutely would. Of course they would. I have no idea where you got the idea they wouldn't?

A person capable of becoming a physicist has little reason to want to work a minimum wage job though. The fact that they can attain a physics degree means that they do not posses the limiting qualities (disabilities, poverty, lack of intelligence, etc.) that leave less able people stuck in minimum wage jobs. People who are burdened with certain disabilities, poverty, lack of intelligence, etc. never had a real chance of completing physics degree. It is not within their ability.

> The result of obtaining higher education categorically results in you earning more income.

No. Those with higher educations, statistically, earn more than those without higher educations, but they are not earning more than people in the past who did not have higher educations. Additionally, this correlation exists because people who failed to attain higher education have qualities that limit their success in both school and the workplace.

> I'm beginning to think you really don't understand what I mean.

No, I fully understand that being able to excel in school is correlated with being able to excel in the workplace. This is obvious. Someone with crippling autism, which did not allow them to graduate from high school, was never going to become CEO of Google. I get it. That does not mean dropping out of high school will cause you to contract crippling autism.

It is well understood that education acts as a filter, leaving the poor performing people, who also perform poorly in the workplace, behind in academic achievement. This is quite different to school causing someone to become a high performer.