[hintymad]

> Let’s state the uncomfortable truth. The future for many Americans is bleak and their lives are going to be nasty, brutish and short. Everyday I see a world where many in my generation have simply given up all hope for opportunity of a family, a house, a stable career and forced to confront an uncertain future in a world that is slowly boiling itself to death.

But why? Why can't more kids get into STEM fields? Why aren't there more decent jobs, say manufacturing jobs? Why are American kids so bad at basic reading, critical thinking, and basic arithmetics? Why is there an apparent bifurcation in the K5 system, where a large number of perfectly capable kids get misled and tortured by craps like Common Core, while a small number of kids are ready for algebra or more advanced maths? Why do we have kids who get straight A in high school yet can't pass placement test in a community college? Why do we have so many kids who ace through high school think entry-level courses like introductory calculus or organic chemistry are too hard? The questions can go on.

And I certainly don't hope that the answers are what Seattle and California public schools have started to teach: https://equitablemath.org/

[me_me_me]

> Why can't more kids get into STEM fields?

Because not everyone is predisposed to be a programmer, engineer or statistician. Not everyone can become a whitecollar worker. This is reality of the world we live in, no amount of though experiments will change that.

What you are really doing is blaming victims of a system set against those people.

Our society should be built so those people can have decent lives too. Ie minimum wage should provide you with above poverty life. Currently in some cities 3 minimum wages are barely that.

I am not talking about giving poor people money for palm beach holidays twice a year. Working in McD should be enough to pay for an small apartment bills and food and sending you kids to school.

What current situation created is that middle class has to subsidize the social welfare for working class people - WORKING people. Ie middle class pays part of wages of minimum-wage workers because they are in poverty while holding a full time job(s).

[baja_blast]

Agreed the idea that "everybody study STEM or get a PHD" is flawed, not everyone can have a white collar job with a high salary. The goalposts will just move, look at SK for example almost every millennial there has a collage degree yet still many of the college graduates that went to less elite schools work at 711.

Also in China art graduates make more than STEM graduates since a STEM grad is a dime a dozen.

[ChuckNorris89]

Are all art grads in China that well off or only the few rockstars?

[hintymad]

Of course not. A random google search led to this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/307262/china-average-ann...

Saying arts major earn better than techies is like saying professional sports are more promising than tech jobs. Both are gross negligence of stats.

[smattiso]

Have you seen our housing stock, our housing supply, our infrastructure? There are plenty of jobs needing to be done. A virtually unlimited amount of progress is possible.

The problem inherently lies with the assumption that the free market will fix all and assuming that some entrepreneurial person is going to lead the charge and redevelop our country. What a joke.

The boom after the Great Depression that made the US into a superpower was driven entirely by government dollars.

My solution would be: * Raise minimum wage to $30 an hour. * Implement land value tax + higher capital gains taxes in order to stem inflation. * Hire 10x the amount of construction workers, civil engineers, etc and provide them with the funding for projects.

Get to work. It's laughable that someone working at Snapchat can make 1M a year while the jobs that literally build our country are paying dogshit.

We need wealth redistribution but not via UBI, via actual development. Let's raze the slums and rebuild with shiny skyscrapers. It's possible. We just have to get away from capitalists getting increasingly rich while the rest suffer.

Also as an aside, my bet is that "programming" reverts to the mean within 10 years as a career. 20 years ago programmers were paid peanuts. Most of the heavy lifting of building software has already been done, AI, low-code, etc. is going to make it increasingly easier. Be ready.

All of this is GOOD, why does it cost 5 million dollars to build a site so that I can reserve a place in line at the DMV (made up example). The tech industry has enjoyed a monopoly on transmitting data. Building an app or a website should be as easy as opening an excel spreadsheet or a word doc. That is coming and your UI coding skills are going to be essentially useless very soon.

[avgDev]

A single contractor will never be able to generate more money than a single software engineer. There is a reason software development pays so much.

I can go work for any company and help get rid of their employees or maximize efficiency. A simple program can save hundreds of man hours.

People who think building a website is cheap have no idea what they are talking about. Sure, a static site is easy. However, once you are building a site that needs to work with a system from the 1980s, you start to hit road blocks....and many many large business run on stuff from 80s. Places like costco, banks, etc.

[sudosysgen]

If more kids get into STEM, then eventually STEM salaries will regress to the norm. It's a non solution.

Systematically, the average American will and must confront quite the bleak future.

[maerF0x0]

thinking about, building, and running a business is pretty much the only real future. This may look like becoming an expert and contracting oneself out, or it may look like finding a niche and exploiting it for all the market value it's worth.

Working for someone else has been the "easy" route (mentally) for a long time, and easy things never pay well.

[WJW]

> thinking about, building, and running a business is pretty much the only real future

Much like the GP comment, if more people start their own businesses then expected returns from running your own business will regress to the norm.

[sudosysgen]

I agree this is viable for some people. But it's structurally impossible for a sizeable portion of the population to do it. Our economy needs employees to run. It's not a question of easy/hard.

[hintymad]

I'm fine with the norm. The norm is better than losing all hopes or a bleak future. The norm is a job that pays ordinary salary but gives me hope that I sharpen my skills and get rewarded accordingly (no guarantee, of course, but there's hope).

I'm grateful that STEM pays so well nowadays, but I don't mind if my pay goes back to norm in exchange for many people having a better future. I don't see the current K12 system will help, though.

[sudosysgen]

The norm is falling through time. Right now, the norm is fine, but in a few decades, the norm will be to barely be able to afford rent.

The way things are going, the norm is trending towards pretty bleak, yeah.

[hintymad]

I guess STEM here really means the fields that pay decently and require hard skills. I hope we will always have such fields, be they STEM or not.

[sudosysgen]

Of course. But they will pay decently so long as relatively few people go into them.

[equality_1138]

Increase in STEM degrees does not have a causal effect on number of good jobs. Any hope that it does is about as speculative as "investing" in bitcoin or the next Gamestop pattern.

[ChuckNorris89]

So much this.

I live in Austria now and the market is flooded with STEM grads due to very good schools and free education to the point where, in my college town, I can't throw a rock out the window without hitting someone doing a PhD in ML, but that doesn't translate to an abundance of jobs due to the lack of VC funding in this area.

This leads to massive academic title inflation where, unless you already have job experience, most companies can afford to throw your resume in the bin if you don't have a MSc and stil have enough candidates to fulfill their demand, so your only choice if to pursue at least a MSc if you want to be employed.

Friends in Denmark have told me the same, you can easily find an Architect but good luck finding a plumber.

[equality_1138]

The truly sad part is it leads to broad financialization of Science. People up here making education into a personal problem (haves/havenots) are apparently "too smart" to see the social costs of heavy public investment in STEM education

[mandelbrotwurst]

Surely there must be some value in a more educated and capable population in and of itself?

[sudosysgen]

Salaries are not determined by the value employees create on the downside. They are determined on the minimum by the minimum your employer can get away with paying you, which is a function of scarcity.

On the maximum, they are determined by value, in that your employer will never pay you more than the value you create (otherwise, why hire you?)

[pydry]

It's not far off for graduate jobs already.

Unionization will fix this. A glut of STEM candidates will not.

[seibelj]

If you have enough money you can move to a good public school district or pay for private school. If you are poor you must accept the monopoly school in your district - that is the rule.

I myself enjoy having choices for myself and my children but that is a consequence of money. This is why I support school vouchers - let parents determine how to spend their money, and let schools compete for students.

[BrianOnHN]

Vouchers only tilt things in favor of private schools.

The problem (US) is we've been steadily decreasing the relative cap on public school spending.

If the spending wasn't so little, you'd probably be a lot more adamant about that voucher.

[seibelj]

I disagree with you 100%. The problem is we spend more money on schooling than nearly every other country, especially in our inner cities that have very poor outcomes. We don’t need to spend more - another $10k per student with the same teachers and administration isn’t going to magically make every school better. We need to inject competition into the system and stop allowing mediocre / bad schools to muddle along. I’m not sure if you are aware of how bad public schools in the USA can be, but I have witnessed a few and it’s very depressing.

[BrianOnHN]

> We need to inject competition into the system

That 10K doesn't fix it overnight, but it does raise salaries which would increase competition in the talent pool.

[tstrimple]

Only if allocated appropriately. I'm fine with more money going to education, but shouldn't there be some accountability from school districts as to where that money goes? Otherwise how do we ensure it's going to the educators to attract more talent rather than get lost in the bureaucracy?

[elindbe3]

Most of the money isn't even going to teachers, it goes to an increasingly bloated administrative staff. Really what we need to do is fire 50%+ of the non-teaching staff at schools. Use that money to give the teachers a raise and lower property taxes at the same time.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10527

[hintymad]

It's not just about money. The US spends way more on K12 than other countries per capita, yet I'm not sure if the spending really pays off. Let's take maths for example, how much do I really need to spend to be good at maths? Well, I need a good teacher, I need a few good books, I need lots of well designed problem sets. Do they really need a lot more investment than other countries? I doubt it.

[BrianOnHN]

> Let's take maths for example, how much do I really need to spend to be good at maths?

Where are you from?

Things cost more in the US. Look how much we spend on the military. The fact we can and should spend more on edu isn't even debatable.

What needs to be debated is how do we stop the squanderers?

[hintymad]

Yeah, or like in other countries, teachers are subject to competition and can be replaced by better ones.

[wwww4all]

The US public school system is money graft operation to pump money to teachers unions and education industry.

It’s not about kids and education anymore. Just look at how all teachers unions and most teachers are opposed to opening schools. They know the joke in the system and just want to ride out the COVID plan forever.

Teaching kids about anything, especially difficult STEM subjects, are very difficult and requires excellent teachers. The teachers unions don’t care about that, they just run the kids through the system. That’s why good education is lacking in US.