[pydry]

>You need to have both.

For employment the most it does is set a ceiling on wages. Pushing up your ceiling doesn't necessarily push up your wages.

>I would also push back a bit that a PhD adds immense value.

Of course, that's a common opinion. Blue sky research is vastly underrated in the west. This is partly why the Chinese are overtaking us.

[bumby]

>Blue sky research

I’m not discounting fundamental research in the way you may be implying. I’m just saying it has little economic value until it has an application. By definition, it doesn't have an economically marketable use, so it can't have economic value.

I also don’t think China is overtaking the US on a research front. They publish a lot (although I would question how much 'blue sky' vs. derivative), but that’s a bad metric for a lot of reasons.

[pydry]

>it has little economic value until it has an application

That's a bit like saying that employees create very little value until a product is sold. Realized value != created value.

It is precisely the lack of competition on this front (research) for decades and the abstract nature of the value created that has led it to be so badly undervalued.

[bumby]

That's exactly the point. To put it in more HN terms, the best-engineered software has no economic value until it is put into use/sold. Created value != economic value. So what is the economic value if its never realized? Nothing. The entire distinction is that there is a difference between types of value; my post focuses on economic value because that is what's related to someone's pay.

If you could quantify fundamental research's value to the economy (without hindsight), it ceases to be fundamental research. Again, by definition, fundamental research does not have application. If it has no application, it has no interface to the economy. I'm not saying R&D or fundamental research has no potential economic value. It has no current avenue for realized economic value. And our system is incentivized for short-term gain. You could be a magnificent fundamental researcher, but if your work doesn't add to the economy in a relatively short timeframe, you probably won't be paid very well compared to a lesser researcher who does.

[pydry]

>software has no economic value until it is put into use

This is exactly my point. This ^ is categorically false.

>If you could quantify fundamental research's value to the economy

It seems like you're committing the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

[bumby]

Please explain how shelfware provides economic value. Imagine I make some wizbang software capable of increasing GDP by 50%, but it never gets used. What value did that bring to the economy?

I think you are misunderstanding the fallacy you linked. I've already said multiple times there are multiple dimensions to value. The economy is specifically about goods and services sold, so yes, we should measure production. It says nothing of other dimensions. You can have a job that is of immense social value (e.g., clergy or dog fostering or whatever) while only having marginal economic value. So what other non-productive economic dimensions do you suggest? I suspect anything you name would go into a different category than economics (e.g., quality of life). That's fundamentally misunderstanding my point.

You seem to be saying "See that idle factory over there!? Look at everything it's contributing to the economy!" and I'm saying "It's not contributing anything because it's idle." And there may still be other dimensions to its value. Maybe the architecture has artistic value, or it's history has cultural value. But none of those domains move the needle at all for economic value. I have been very clear in constraining my argument to economic value for a good reason, and it's not about your linked fallacious argument.

Since this discussion concerns wages, my claim was that economic value addition is the most highly correlated with pay. You may say we should compensate people more for what they bring to society rather than just what they bring to the economy, and I would probably agree. But that's not the system we're working under and that is my point.

[pydry]

>You seem to be saying "See that idle factory over there!? Look at everything it's contributing to the economy!" and I'm saying "It's not contributing anything because it's idle."

I'm saying that factory has value - sometimes quite a lot of economic value.

The specific example you chose is actually interesting because in the west we largely do view idled factories as valueless and have shifted to a just-in-time manufacturing philosophy whereas Russia has taken the opposite approach of building in a lot of slack into their industrial capacity so that they can scale up quickly.

The practical upshot of this is that our differing conceptions of value are a large part of why we are no losing the largest land war in Europe since WW2. We simply don't have the capacity to scale production to necessary levels.

This is an aside, though.

>Since this discussion concerns wages, my claim was that economic value addition is the most highly correlated with pay.

Yes, this is still false. It correlates with leverage, of which your ability to give the impression of economic value addition is just one part.