[ocbyc]

A worker is worth what a business can pay for the value they bring. Arguably a low paid apprenticeship is more beneficial than mounds of college debt. Somehow taking debt is seen as better than simply breaking even. I know many jobs that would benefit from someone "sweeping the shop" while they learn the business.

[eropple]

And when they starve or go homeless in the process of “learning the business”?

Spherical cows don’t work in physics, let alone economics. Minimum wages are suboptimal but starving is worse.

[BenjiWiebe]

Wouldn't you starve or go homeless even faster if you had no income but were paying for an education?

vs getting paid (a little) to get education.

[worried4future]

No, because, when you're paying for an education you can also get loans (at usurious rates) to cover cost of living expenses too!

You won't pay now for that 10k/year required meal plan for cafeteria food and 20k/year for hostel-level accommodation but you're sure going to pay for it later.

[FpUser]

>"Spherical cows"

Thanks for the laugh. Makes for warm and fuzzy memories. My science days are some 30 years behind.

[worried4future]

> And when they starve or go homeless in the process of “learning the business”?

These are effects of the fact that costs of living are dramatically out of control, you can't just infinitely raise the minimum wage to compensate as this is only making the problem worse.

[worried4future]

> A worker is worth what a business can pay for the value they bring.

I think this is a good point of view, but, it's important to remember that what the business can pay differs from what it's willing to pay and that larger employers are more able to drive rates lower. Not all businesses are equal and we should favor the ones which bring the most benefit to the most people.

> Arguably a low paid apprenticeship is more beneficial than mounds of college debt.

100%. Remove "arguably" from your comment. Factor in the value of starting earlier and negative value of the debt you accumulate and very few professions truly benefit from a college education and most of the remaining ones only do so due to regulatory capture effects of requiring them and we would do well with reducing those in favor of far more trade-focused education (tl;dr more trade schools, less liberal arts colleges).