by KaiserJeep » Fri 03 May 2019, 09:47:55
The present low rate of graduation from university level studies, the effects this has on subsequent employment and income earnings, are pretty much as they have always been. When I graduated in the 1970s, a simple undergraduate degree added somewhat over a million dollars of earnings in average over the career of an individual. Things are different today, with the equivalent figure being between two and a half to three million dollars. Then as today, about 40-45% of the freshmen who studied actual technical or STEM curriculae eventually acquired a diploma. (Admittedly, some transfer to and graduate from less demanding "professions" than STEM.) Which unfortunately is not enough to fuel the engine of modern American technological commerce.
Many would like to deny this. However the USA retains the one feature that distinguishes it from all other large countries, which would be approximately 250 million people with Middle Class incomes and expectations. Some of us stayed in the fray, and got the degree, and had the professional career, and observed that things pretty much stayed the same as the World changed.
In truth, Hispanic culture has taken over the MidWest. I observed large numbers of Spanish and Portuguese speaking peoples laboring on the corporate farms in Wisconsin during my recent house hunt in the area. There are also sizable numbers of Asians in the towns and villages. All are pursuing Middle Class lifestyles and incomes. This phenomenon is not new, but the sheer degree of it is surprising to me, having been living away from the MidWest for 40+ years.
Silicon Valley is also undergoing a similar change. My former neighborhood was always a rainbow of skin tones and cultures, but unless my estimate is off, the total number of my neighbors is now dominated by Southern Asians from India and two sizable contingents of Chinese and Indonesians. The Indonesians appear to be 100% Muslim, the Indians are primarily Hindu, and if the Chinese practice any faith it is not apparent. Some years ago the Catholic Church on the corner gave up it's last English language Mass, due to low attendance - but still has such in both Spanish and Portuguese. Meanwhile, the three groups that are shrinking in numbers are 1) Whites, 2) Hispanics, and 3) Blacks.
Pardon me for being so blunt, but we are employing immigrants in increasingly high numbers in each area. Meanwhile the same 40-45% are graduating from STEM curriculae in US colleges and universities, not nearly enough. Most of the dropouts are enjoying Blue Collar jobs, too bad they wasted a year or two years first.
Note that I sold my Silicon Valley home in March for just short of a million dollars, to two nice first time Hindu home buyers. He is an EE working for Intel, she is an Accountant as was my wife. What each of them makes to qualify for such a mortgage I have no idea, I'm sure it would only depress me know the details. We got no less than eight offers in the first three days on the market, and all were above our asking price. The winning bid was more than a hundred grand above our asking figure - and we had a genius of a realtor who explained that the actual most critical factor was that we set the price LOW ENOUGH. Which we did, after spending approximately 50 thousand dollars on a cosmetic remodel and landscaping. (For those of you following along, we chose the plastic lawn and efficient drip irrigation for the relative few real plants. This was the exact correct choice to attract a buyer with high income and low aspirations for maintenance.)
As long as the USA can attract the talent it needs to turn the wheels of our economy, the USA will remain at the top of the heap as a desirable place to live. Here on Nantucket, there is a new underclass of Jamaicans. I mean, there have always been minorities here, mainly of African extraction, dating back to the colonial days of the 1600s, but today there are large numbers of Jamaicans, and for the first time, racial unrest and actual acts of hate and discrimination are apparent to all, even me. The wife is blown away by this, the island was formerly one of the few places that skin color truly did not matter, but those values have been lost over the last four decades. Let me make a sad and true observation - it was not the native islanders that caused this change, rather a huge influx of hurricane-displaced brown skinned Jamaicans who came with expectations of discrimination, and a ready resentment of those with white skins.
The recent college admissions scandal did not surprise me. I competed with many, many "engineers" who could not design an exit scheme for a cardboard box, were they inside. They had BSEEs and MBAs, and were confidently expecting to soon be managers. It came as a rude shock to them to find out that one had to be a successful technical leader on several successful projects to become a manager. In truth I never mastered spreadsheets that well, because I could always ask my wife for help on department budgets. They could not however manage engineers whose work they did not follow or whose skills they did not share. My employers were keeping score, those whose products sold the most were promoted - a fair standard I struggled with and met with moderate success.
Those who bought their way into colleges for their underacheiving offspring will soon find that they wasted their money. The practice has always been common within Ivy League schools, of course. But unless one can impart a work ethic to your offspring, they too will fail, despite technical expertise.
Now for the bitter truth. We are already past peak for many many resources on this Earth. Nor is there even enough STUFF on the whole planet to give any semblance of a US-style Middle Class lifestyle for most of those 7.7+ Billion humans. The present lifestyle improvements that are ongoing are simply the decining curve of the huge productivity improvement brought about by digital technology in recent decades. However, the labor side of the US Middle Class lifestyle as a whole is being sustained by immigrants, some with college degrees, and some with strong backs. I confidently predict that both China and India will NEVER come to rival the USA, even though they aspire to do so. China recently surpassed the USA as the #1 petroleum consumer - but China has between 3.5X and 4X the population of the USA.
Note that I am not arguing that Americans are any happier than other nations. I accept at face value the statements of Ibon and others that they live among happy people outside the USA. Indeed, I think that wanting more than one has is essential, a part of the formula for success. I see no reason that the attraction this country has for many outside our borders should not continue, and our Middle Class should not continue to swell. I also believe these forces will continue to act as resources dwindle - the USA will in my estimation be the last country to enter the resource decline, and in the end, will either succeed or fail in transforming itself before such a decline into a low energy, Greener lifestyle. Sadly, Trump's much-maligned wall will eventually be required, before we run low on "stuff".
Despite all media reports to the contrary.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.
Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0