6 ms·

So the solution is to make everyone a nurse or an engineer or a manager? Who's going to sweep the streets and grow food?

by Produce 14y ago

Ralith 14y ago
What? The solution proposed by the article is to make quality education available.
- Produce 14y ago
  And the implication of everybody being well educated is that everyone will have white collar jobs or prestigious blue collar jobs. If everyone is well educated then who will want to take a job as a street cleaner when they've just spent $80k on their education? The solution is clearly not limited to just educating everyone, is it?
  - Mz 14y ago
    Real education does not necessarily mean spending big bucks. There is plenty of evidence that simply throwing money at the problem doesn't really work. A better correlation is high parental involvement and a community which values education. Also, pay alone does not determine if one is poor. It is not possible to avoid having people who are "relatively poor" as measured by absolute income. But it is possible to take better care of people and reduce real problems like malnutrition, even if you have phd's waiting tables because there are too many of them.
    - Produce 14y ago
      What about a creative approach to the problem coupled with questioning our basic assumptions - why should anyone be relatively poor in the first place? Do we really need money in a high resource environment? When society is, in effect, dependent on everyone doing their part then why should someone be poorer just for the part they play? Why do we not run more social experiments on different ways of structuring things? We could section off a few islands and let the idealists create their perfect societies on them and see who does best. We could take lessons from those experiments and integrate them into mainstream society. I'm just saying, education has been improving steadily over the last century yet the wealth gap has increased. It's clearly only one element of the solution.
      - Mz 14y ago
        I think there will always be relative poverty, no matter what you do. By that I mean there will always be some folks who have less, some who have more. I have problem with that. In fact, I think there are big problems with trying to force too much sameness. But, yes, I think we can do better by the masses. I have thought about such things a long time. I am currently homeless and most homeless people are not penniless. Most of them have too little income for a middle class lifestyle but do have some kind of income. I would like to start a business at some point which would not be aimed solely at homeless people but which I think would probably have high appeal for them. In other words, I expect them to be a significant percentage of the customer base. Treating them like customers instead of charity cases in a business aimed at adding value to their lives for a reasonable fee would improve their situation, not necessarily helping them get off the street but helping make life more bearable while on the street. Also making life more affordable for folks who are barely hanging on, thus likely preventing some people from slipping into homelessness. Charities have their place, but there is a reason why the expression "charity case" is basically insulting.
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    Robots?
natep 14y ago
There is so much wrong with this statement and way of thinking that I don't even know where to start. I'm upvoting, because I don't want this comment to disappear, but it's still wrong-headed. 1. Answering the first quesiton directly: No, that's not the solution proposed by the article. The goal was to get the poor involved in politics, in the largest sense of the word. At the end, he reported that almost everyone in the first class was either in school or employed full-time. No mention of managerial roles, or what they were training to be. One tried to start a union, so she is not heading towards a managerial role. There are plenty of programs out there that do try to train people in technical skills, like nursing, engineering, or management, but this was _not_ one of those programs. This is a way to help the poor break out of the vicious cycle of poverty themselves by giving them the tools to think about their situation. Who knows what they'll do with those tools. 2. Answering the second question, allowing for your premise: Robots, programmed by all of these engineers we wouldn't've had otherwise, and the people that are too poor to be helped, or unable for other reasons. This is what we call a _good_ problem. 3. Making fun of you/sarcasm: OK, sure, lets not help the poor at all, because what if we're _too successful?!?_ That would be horrible! We'd starve to death in dirty streets, because people would be too busy nursing, engineering, and managing each other, and not realize there was no food! 4. Rejecting your premise and addressing the second question: Who's going to do the blue collar jobs? Mostly the same kinds of people that do them now, except they will have more political empowerment, and a greater capacity for reflection and critical thinking. I know a few educated people that choose to work as farmhands, so it's not impossible, and I myself enjoy an "honest day's work" (speaking as someone with the privilege of an education in the humanities). Can you imagine how awesome it would be if we had a society of critical thinkers and moral philosophers, instead of the reactionary, anti-intellectual, gullible, fundamentalist society we have now[1]? Can you imagine if the lowest common denominator weren't so low? I'm not saying it would be a utopia, but for at least the last few hundred years, people have been dreaming of a time when machines had taken over every menial task, and humans could spend their time as they wished, free to follow pursuits of their own choosing. [1] I'm not trying to say 100% of society is like that I'm just saying that significant fractions of the American population at least show one or more of these characteristics, and I don't think it's making for a better society.
- 14y ago
CJefferson 14y ago
How about some people from privaliged backgrounds, that decided not to take advantage of the many opportunities they received?

So the solution is to make everyone a nurse or an engineer or a manager? Who's going to sweep the streets and grow food?

by Produce 14y ago

So the solution is to make everyone a nurse or an engineer or a manager? Who's going to sweep the streets and grow food?

Ralith 14y ago

What? The solution proposed by the article is to make quality education available.

Produce 14y ago
And the implication of everybody being well educated is that everyone will have white collar jobs or prestigious blue collar jobs. If everyone is well educated then who will want to take a job as a street cleaner when they've just spent $80k on their education? The solution is clearly not limited to just educating everyone, is it?
- Mz 14y ago
  Real education does not necessarily mean spending big bucks. There is plenty of evidence that simply throwing money at the problem doesn't really work. A better correlation is high parental involvement and a community which values education. Also, pay alone does not determine if one is poor. It is not possible to avoid having people who are "relatively poor" as measured by absolute income. But it is possible to take better care of people and reduce real problems like malnutrition, even if you have phd's waiting tables because there are too many of them.
  - Produce 14y ago
    What about a creative approach to the problem coupled with questioning our basic assumptions - why should anyone be relatively poor in the first place? Do we really need money in a high resource environment? When society is, in effect, dependent on everyone doing their part then why should someone be poorer just for the part they play? Why do we not run more social experiments on different ways of structuring things? We could section off a few islands and let the idealists create their perfect societies on them and see who does best. We could take lessons from those experiments and integrate them into mainstream society. I'm just saying, education has been improving steadily over the last century yet the wealth gap has increased. It's clearly only one element of the solution.
    - Mz 14y ago
      I think there will always be relative poverty, no matter what you do. By that I mean there will always be some folks who have less, some who have more. I have problem with that. In fact, I think there are big problems with trying to force too much sameness. But, yes, I think we can do better by the masses. I have thought about such things a long time. I am currently homeless and most homeless people are not penniless. Most of them have too little income for a middle class lifestyle but do have some kind of income. I would like to start a business at some point which would not be aimed solely at homeless people but which I think would probably have high appeal for them. In other words, I expect them to be a significant percentage of the customer base. Treating them like customers instead of charity cases in a business aimed at adding value to their lives for a reasonable fee would improve their situation, not necessarily helping them get off the street but helping make life more bearable while on the street. Also making life more affordable for folks who are barely hanging on, thus likely preventing some people from slipping into homelessness. Charities have their place, but there is a reason why the expression "charity case" is basically insulting.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  Robots?

natep 14y ago

There is so much wrong with this statement and way of thinking that I don't even know where to start. I'm upvoting, because I don't want this comment to disappear, but it's still wrong-headed. 1. Answering the first quesiton directly: No, that's not the solution proposed by the article. The goal was to get the poor involved in politics, in the largest sense of the word. At the end, he reported that almost everyone in the first class was either in school or employed full-time. No mention of managerial roles, or what they were training to be. One tried to start a union, so she is not heading towards a managerial role. There are plenty of programs out there that do try to train people in technical skills, like nursing, engineering, or management, but this was _not_ one of those programs. This is a way to help the poor break out of the vicious cycle of poverty themselves by giving them the tools to think about their situation. Who knows what they'll do with those tools. 2. Answering the second question, allowing for your premise: Robots, programmed by all of these engineers we wouldn't've had otherwise, and the people that are too poor to be helped, or unable for other reasons. This is what we call a _good_ problem. 3. Making fun of you/sarcasm: OK, sure, lets not help the poor at all, because what if we're _too successful?!?_ That would be horrible! We'd starve to death in dirty streets, because people would be too busy nursing, engineering, and managing each other, and not realize there was no food! 4. Rejecting your premise and addressing the second question: Who's going to do the blue collar jobs? Mostly the same kinds of people that do them now, except they will have more political empowerment, and a greater capacity for reflection and critical thinking. I know a few educated people that choose to work as farmhands, so it's not impossible, and I myself enjoy an "honest day's work" (speaking as someone with the privilege of an education in the humanities). Can you imagine how awesome it would be if we had a society of critical thinkers and moral philosophers, instead of the reactionary, anti-intellectual, gullible, fundamentalist society we have now[1]? Can you imagine if the lowest common denominator weren't so low? I'm not saying it would be a utopia, but for at least the last few hundred years, people have been dreaming of a time when machines had taken over every menial task, and humans could spend their time as they wished, free to follow pursuits of their own choosing. [1] I'm not trying to say 100% of society is like that I'm just saying that significant fractions of the American population at least show one or more of these characteristics, and I don't think it's making for a better society.

14y ago

CJefferson 14y ago

How about some people from privaliged backgrounds, that decided not to take advantage of the many opportunities they received?