Is the American Dream dead?

[Yossarian]

The disparity between the haves and the have nots is now a huge gap. We're (the working/middle class) going backwards....

As noted in the other discussion, the issue is more skilled vs unskilled than anything else. I've been a bit down on our prosepcts given what I've been seeing in some parts of my city. I just don't know how we are going to significantly move the needle on skillled labor.


Saw this today. It's a narrow study but my bet is you can extrapolate the results more broadly.

[ApatheticNoMore]

High skilled there probably mostly means around a decade of investment in colllege (like doctors), medium skilled I suspect is jobs I've held, but really they're not that medium skilled. It's all easy, 10% of one's brain. Pretending we're all so skilled is making mountains out of molehills (medium skilled stuff like software development is easily outsourced, even what might be called "higher skilled": lawyers can be outsourced, some doctor stuff can be outsourced etc.). Skilled is discovering relativity.

But not actually seeing a society where everyone has to go through the equivalent of med school education as particularly feasible OR even DESIRABLE IN ANY SENSE!!! (it's sometimes admirable and worthwhile, but it postpones adulthood far more than is normal or maybe even healthy for most people) - I support improving wages at the bottom - I support the fast food strikers. Of course some kind of trade school alternative works if your Germany (I don't know that there are that many other countries the German model actually works for besides Germany).

[bae]

...medium skilled stuff like software development ...

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "software development"... Most development efforts I've been involved with required incredibly skilled practitioners.

[Yossarian]

High skilled there probably mostly means around a decade of investment in colllege (like doctors), medium skilled I suspect is jobs I've held, but really they're not that medium skilled. It's all easy, 10% of one's brain.

Apparently people sit around and classify stuff like this:

Three types of workers are identified on the basis of educational attainment levels as defined in the International Standard Classifification of Education (ISCED). “Low skilled” (ISCED categories 0, 1, and 2) roughly corresponds to less than secondary schooling. “Medium skilled” (3 and 4) means secondary schooling and above, including certain professional qualifications, but below college degree. “High skilled” (5 and 6) includes those with a college degree and above.

[Spartana]

Apparently people sit around and classify stuff like this:

Three types of workers are identified on the basis of educational attainment levels as defined in the International Standard Classifification of Education (ISCED). “Low skilled” (ISCED categories 0, 1, and 2) roughly corresponds to less than secondary schooling. “Medium skilled” (3 and 4) means secondary schooling and above, including certain professional qualifications, but below college degree. “High skilled” (5 and 6) includes those with a college degree and above.

I wonder how they would peg a highly educated person who is choosing to work in a "low skilled" type of job? Or visa versa? Education level and job skill/type are 2 different things.

[Spartana]

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "software development"... Most development efforts I've been involved with required incredibly skilled practitioners.

So do most plumbers and mechanics I know :-)!

[sweetana3]

My brother is a highly educated qualified civil engineer and at one time owned two profitable businesses. He needed good health insurance and has been a USPS mail carrier for 15 years.

[Rogar]

Then there is the rare, highly skilled, and poorly paid job of being a good stay at home parent.

I watched an interesting interview with Elizabeth Warren talking about her new book, A Fighting Chance. She told the story of how, in her early fifties, her mother became a single parent with no other skills than home keeping. She immediately put on her best dress and shoes and applied for a minimum wage job at Sears, where he went to work supporting her family. Her point was that in that time, minimum wage could actually support a family, while now it is hardly enough to support a single person head of house hold. She pointed out that since then the minimum wage has barely crept up while worker productivity has increased times 22.

I think I can remember from my young days of single mother in my neighborhood that got by with poorly paying jobs.

[Spartana]

I'm sure that there are tons of highly educated Liberal Arts PhD's out there working lower income jobs. Unless they can get into academia, there aren't a lot of jobs a Philosophy or Elizabethan Poetry major can find. So that's why I take those kinds of studies with a grain of salt. They don't take into account the many people on both sides of the educational/job fence who don't fit the mold. A high school drop out may earn more working a blue collar tech job - or perhaps has started their own very lucrative business - then a highly educated "Doctor" of French Literature does.

[Spartana]

Then there is the rare, highly skilled, and poorly paid job of being a good stay at home parent.

I watched an interesting interview with Elizabeth Warren talking about her new book, A Fighting Chance. She told the story of how, in her early fifties, her mother became a single parent with no other skills than home keeping. She immediately put on her best dress and shoes and applied for a minimum wage job at Sears, where he went to work supporting her family. Her point was that in that time, minimum wage could actually support a family, while now it is hardly enough to support a single person head of house hold. She pointed out that since then the minimum wage has barely crept up while worker productivity has increased times 22.

I think I can remember from my young days of single mother in my neighborhood that got by with poorly paying jobs.

My Mom was one of those single Mom's who, after 15 years as a SAHP, had to go back to work in an unskilled labor (i.e. factory) to provide for her 3 kids. Even then a minimum wage job didn't cut it and she usually worked 2 or even 3 jobs (and also rented out one of the bedrooms in our house) until she was able to train for a marketable skill and get a better job with better pay. I think many single women, unlike my Mom, got alimony - and child support if they had kids. That probably helped to make the minimum wage go much much further. Today we have never-wed parents who may not have financial assistance from the other parent and have to depend solely on their own income to make ends meet.