Public School Education System Thread

[Okeefenokee]

For my classmates that went into trades after high school, all four years had been a complete waste. Trades are largely taught on the job, and don't involve the hypotenuse. They'd have been better served to get a four year headstart on their trades.

Yep. Big time red pill on the bureaucracy: high school is a waste of time all around and should be abolished. Kids should go directly to college or trade school.

I'd like to see a year or two of intro to trades before the kids pick one. Let them get their toes wet on a half dozen different ones before they pick which one they're going to pursue. Just to tamp down the buyer's remorse.

[C-Mag]

Shows pretty clearly how bad the government inflation statistics are.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09 ... 09_078.asp

Estimated average annual salary of teachers in public elementary and secondary schools: Selected years, 1959-60 through 2008-09

Average public school teachers' salary
School year Current dollars constant 2007-08 dollars2
1969-70 8,626 48,343
2008-09 53,910 53,168

Salaries haven't gone up much, according to their inflation metrics. Also, the costs of equipment, benefits, security, food, have all skyrocketed, with our much-higher standards for schools today. They barely served food, and most didn't bother with air conditioning in the 70s.

There's plenty of ways to twist this around, but I'd chalk it up to massive inefficiencies in the system, and a lot of government beaurocracy. Also, the chart format is incredibly misleading, unless you were expecting Reading scores to somehow rise by 200% and keep track with the other metrics on there.

And real wages have been going down steadily since Nixon sold the US on fiat currency. But I'm all for re-looking our education system and giving school choice a chance. One of the things that will come out of this is specialized schools that teach the basics but focus on an area of interest, such as trade schools or the arts. It's worth a shot.

[apeman]

I'd like to see a year or two of intro to trades before the kids pick one. Let them get their toes wet on a half dozen different ones before they pick which one they're going to pursue. Just to tamp down the buyer's remorse.

I agree, one failure of our current system is that most choose a career path without having any idea what the day-to-day realities of that career are really like. Of course that will lead to mismatches (despite the nonsense aggregate demand / aggregate supply analysis used in mainstream econ, a better paradigm is to look for mismatches in skills sets, expectations, needs, forecasting v reality, etc. to explain joblessness)

[Speaker to Animals]

Shows pretty clearly how bad the government inflation statistics are.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09 ... 09_078.asp

Estimated average annual salary of teachers in public elementary and secondary schools: Selected years, 1959-60 through 2008-09

Average public school teachers' salary
School year Current dollars constant 2007-08 dollars2
1969-70 8,626 48,343
2008-09 53,910 53,168

Salaries haven't gone up much, according to their inflation metrics. Also, the costs of equipment, benefits, security, food, have all skyrocketed, with our much-higher standards for schools today. They barely served food, and most didn't bother with air conditioning in the 70s.

There's plenty of ways to twist this around, but I'd chalk it up to massive inefficiencies in the system, and a lot of government beaurocracy. Also, the chart format is incredibly misleading, unless you were expecting Reading scores to somehow rise by 200% and keep track with the other metrics on there.

And real wages have been going down steadily since Nixon sold the US on fiat currency. But I'm all for re-looking our education system and giving school choice a chance. One of the things that will come out of this is specialized schools that teach the basics but focus on an area of interest, such as trade schools or the arts. It's worth a shot.

The real wage drop has more to do with women entering the workforce. While, in principle, allowing women equal opportunities in the workplace was a just decision, women actually doing this fucked over both men and women alike in the long run. Combined with technological advances that drastically increased worker efficiency, computerization and automation, and now the offshoring of American jobs and glutting of US labor markets with H1B visas.. fiat currency really comes in at the bottom of the list for reasons why we are so fucked right now.

[C-Mag]

And real wages have been going down steadily since Nixon sold the US on fiat currency. But I'm all for re-looking our education system and giving school choice a chance. One of the things that will come out of this is specialized schools that teach the basics but focus on an area of interest, such as trade schools or the arts. It's worth a shot.

The real wage drop has more to do with women entering the workforce. While, in principle, allowing women equal opportunities in the workplace was a just decision, women actually doing this fucked over both men and women alike in the long run. Combined with technological advances that drastically increased worker efficiency, computerization and automation, and now the offshoring of American jobs and glutting of US labor markets with H1B visas.. fiat currency really comes in at the bottom of the list for reasons why we are so fucked right now.

So you are saying all these forces combined to create a modern glut of labor that keeps earnings down.
I haven't heard anyone talk about that. Do you have any references.

[Speaker to Animals]

And real wages have been going down steadily since Nixon sold the US on fiat currency. But I'm all for re-looking our education system and giving school choice a chance. One of the things that will come out of this is specialized schools that teach the basics but focus on an area of interest, such as trade schools or the arts. It's worth a shot.

The real wage drop has more to do with women entering the workforce. While, in principle, allowing women equal opportunities in the workplace was a just decision, women actually doing this fucked over both men and women alike in the long run. Combined with technological advances that drastically increased worker efficiency, computerization and automation, and now the offshoring of American jobs and glutting of US labor markets with H1B visas.. fiat currency really comes in at the bottom of the list for reasons why we are so fucked right now.

So you are saying all these forces combined to create a modern glut of labor that keeps earnings down.
I haven't heard anyone talk about that. Do you have any references.

Sources for which point?

Real wage drop has more to do with supply and demand for labor. If supply is high, then real wages fall. It's true that inflation can eat into the spending power of real wages, but inflation has not been the primary factor here. It's been the systematic glutting of American labor. The first and biggest blow couldn't be helped. Women wanted the right to work on equal terms with men, and justice dictated we give it to them. That alone sowed the seeds for ruin in the middle class. Just because something is just doesn't mean it will be a good thing for society.

The rest of it was totally avoidable and intentional.

And with respect to the impact of inflation.. we adjust for it with rising actual incomes. The difference between real income and actual income illustrates how inflation is already factored out of the equation. When you are talking about real income, you are removing the impact of inflation. If real income is stagnant, then relative to inflation, our incomes have not generally risen or fallen. What we have seen for much of the middle class is falling real income, and that mostly has to do with loss of good jobs. Good jobs are lost because (1) there are more people competing for the same or fewer jobs relative to the population, and (2) jobs are being shipped to the third world. Anything that increases labor supply is going to negatively impact real wages. Our government policy has been to do everything possible to increase labor supply.

[C-Mag]

So you are saying all these forces combined to create a modern glut of labor that keeps earnings down.
I haven't heard anyone talk about that. Do you have any references.

Sources for which point?

Real wage drop has more to do with supply and demand for labor. If supply is high, then real wages fall. It's true that inflation can eat into the spending power of real wages, but inflation has not been the primary factor here. It's been the systematic glutting of American labor. The first and biggest blow couldn't be helped. Women wanted the right to work on equal terms with men, and justice dictated we give it to them. That alone sowed the seeds for ruin in the middle class. Just because something is just doesn't mean it will be a good thing for society.

The rest of it was totally avoidable and intentional.

And with respect to the impact of inflation.. we adjust for it with rising actual incomes. The difference between real income and actual income illustrates how inflation is already factored out of the equation. When you are talking about real income, you are removing the impact of inflation. If real income is stagnant, then relative to inflation, our incomes have not generally risen or fallen. What we have seen for much of the middle class is falling real income, and that mostly has to do with loss of good jobs. Good jobs are lost because (1) there are more people competing for the same or fewer jobs relative to the population, and (2) jobs are being shipped to the third world. Anything that increases labor supply is going to negatively impact real wages. Our government policy has been to do everything possible to increase labor supply.

It makes sense to me, I was just wondering if you have come to this conclusion yourself from looking at the evidence or you've read someone else who's put this together.

[Ex-California]

The entrance of woman into the workforce, causing a glut of labor, and therefore causing wages to drop is so blatantly obvious I figured that out when I was a 19 year old undergrad.

That was not well-received by some professors then but I imagine today I might have been literally crucified

[Martin Hash]

The entrance of woman into the workforce, causing a glut of labor, and therefore causing wages to drop is so blatantly obvious I figured that out when I was a 19 year old undergrad.

^^^ this

C-Mag, see Russ Robert's "EconTalk" podcasts on labor & wages over the past 11 years. He goes over it several times.

[C-Mag]

The entrance of woman into the workforce, causing a glut of labor, and therefore causing wages to drop is so blatantly obvious I figured that out when I was a 19 year old undergrad.

^^^ this

C-Mag, see Russ Robert's "EconTalk" podcasts on labor & wages over the past 11 years. He goes over it several times.

Thanks for the reference guys.

Doc listed a number of factors and it was that combination that I was specifically asking about.

1. women entering the work force in increasing greater numbers
2. loss of middle class jobs
3. Global Free Trade initiatives
4. uncontrolled immigration

Maybe it's my ignorance, but I've heard people talk about these individually, but not as a cumulative affect. That's where I was coming from in my poorly worded previous post.