Paycheck-To-Paycheck Nation

[ender]

There's a difference between doing heavy lifting in a gym for 1 hour every 2 days with good nutrition otherwise and doing repetitive awkward physical labour for several hours a day, every day.

FWIW, when I worked in a manufacturing facility we had major initiatives around this type of thing to keep all actual manual labor ergonomic.

In fact the facility had an engineer 100% dedicated to ergonomic reviews of workstations/fixtures/etc. There were a lot of teams in the factory doing similar work, too.

This is certainly not always the case but it's also not never the case that the trades are forced into body destroying work, even in manufacturing/assembly operations.

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

Everything else being equal (i.e. the child in question has no family business, parent in the same trade etc. etc.), education is the primary driver of social mobility.

http://paa2019.populationassociation.org/uploads/190465

This paper controls for the important factors (socioeconomic status, school quality, geographic), and finds strong causal relationship of education attainment with social mobility.

Where I live, Asians and Jews are obsessed with sending their kids to college. And these are not just the rich/educated Asians and Jews, but semi-educated parents like the mom-and-pop takeout joint I often frequent with two small kids going to the same middle school as my daughter, or my auto mechanic whose son told me his dream is to get to MIT someday.

I don't think it'll be a bad idea to instill such cultural obsession in the Hillbilly Mountains. To me at least, it seems that is kinda'/sorta' what WhiteTrashCash is advocating for.

But how do you control for the cohort effect? Is there even a large pool of intelligent, high socio-economic class students who don't go to college? That's the issue. It's the ability to go to college (intelligence and/or grades and/or money) not the actual college education that is the determinative factor. At most, the only "inherent" thing you get out of college is the degree, which acts as a signifier. It's a sorry state of affairs but that's the truth.

[ctuser1]

Don't you think this paper at least supports a more watered down version of my claim? There is a cultural component to higher educational attainment. But the part 2 of my claim, education -> economic mobility, is not examined in this paper. So my statement "finds strong causal relationship of education attainment with social mobility" is misleading in that context.

Where in the paper is there an association between education and economic mobility?

Both your claims were around economic mobility being the "causal relationship" and "primary driver" for economic mobility.

I don't see how the paper supports your claim in any watered down version, when the paper you cite is literally titled "Educational Mobility Among the Children of Asian American Immigrants" (emphasis mine) and not "Economic mobility."

If the paper, for example, even examined the relationship between education and economic mobility then you could say there's some relevance to what you picked.

But you should most definitely not just pick a random research paper a google keyword search matched, use it as evidence without even reading the title, and assume your point is backed up by research.

Stepping back a bit.

I saw the question as primarily cultural - whether it is a good idea to emphasize college education or not, as some cultures do.

My initial "google" results (that you decry and I use quite often) didn't seem to control for economic status. e.g. Indian Immigrants are generally richer when they land than, say, Vietnamese. I wanted to find something where they controlled for the "economic" factors, and isolate the "cultural component" of emphasizing college education.

This paper does that "Control". It shows that even kids of poor Vietnamese immigrants have high educational "mobility". It does NOT deal with the second part of my claim that educational mobility has a high correlation with social mobility.

That specific part (education -> economic mobility) is actually much easier to find support for.

So yes, it was sloppy for me to not also establish part 2 (admittedly the main part) of my claim. It would have been better for me to either post research backing the entire claim, or no research paper links at all.
And no, it wasn't a result of "just" keyword search.
And no, you shouldn't expect peer-review level effort on the part of an MMM forum poster. I do google, read the abstract, search author to see if he is credible and post it as a "defense" of my position. Sometimes that can be "incomplete" - like in this case, which is fixed easily enough.

[Metalcat]

Don't you think this paper at least supports a more watered down version of my claim? There is a cultural component to higher educational attainment. But the part 2 of my claim, education -> economic mobility, is not examined in this paper. So my statement "finds strong causal relationship of education attainment with social mobility" is misleading in that context.

Where in the paper is there an association between education and economic mobility?

Both your claims were around economic mobility being the "causal relationship" and "primary driver" for economic mobility.

I don't see how the paper supports your claim in any watered down version, when the paper you cite is literally titled "Educational Mobility Among the Children of Asian American Immigrants" (emphasis mine) and not "Economic mobility."

If the paper, for example, even examined the relationship between education and economic mobility then you could say there's some relevance to what you picked.

But you should most definitely not just pick a random research paper a google keyword search matched, use it as evidence without even reading the title, and assume your point is backed up by research.

Stepping back a bit.

I saw the question as primarily cultural - whether it is a good idea to emphasize college education or not, as some cultures do.

My initial "google" results (that you decry and I use quite often) didn't seem to control for economic status. e.g. Indian Immigrants are generally richer when they land than, say, Vietnamese. I wanted to find something where they controlled for the "economic" factors, and isolate the "cultural component" of emphasizing college education.

This paper does that "Control". It shows that even kids of poor Vietnamese immigrants have high educational "mobility". It does NOT deal with the second part of my claim that educational mobility has a high correlation with social mobility.

That specific part (education -> economic mobility) is actually much easier to find support for.

So yes, it was sloppy for me to not also establish part 2 (admittedly the main part) of my claim. It would have been better for me to either post research backing the entire claim, or no research paper links at all.
And no, it wasn't a result of "just" keyword search.
And yes, you shouldn't expect peer-review level effort on the part of an MMM forum poster. I do google, read the abstract, search author to see if he is credible and post it as a "defense" of my position. Sometimes that can be "incomplete" - like in this case, which is fixed easily enough.

I completely expect people to be able to back up their claims with exquisite level of evidence if they are going to speak in absolute terms.

If you speak with authority on a subject, I expect you to have authority on that subject.

If you are sharing an opinion, or a perspective, or just challenging someone else's absolutes, then yeah, go nuts, cite papers, anecdotes, and own your content for what it is, the musings of an internet rando like everyone else with varying types of insights from different perspectives.

But as I said, if you claim to know "the truth", people are going to come for you, and they should.

ETA: I mean the general "you*, not you in particular

[ctuser1]

Everything else being equal (i.e. the child in question has no family business, parent in the same trade etc. etc.), education is the primary driver of social mobility.

http://paa2019.populationassociation.org/uploads/190465

This paper controls for the important factors (socioeconomic status, school quality, geographic), and finds strong causal relationship of education attainment with social mobility.

Where I live, Asians and Jews are obsessed with sending their kids to college. And these are not just the rich/educated Asians and Jews, but semi-educated parents like the mom-and-pop takeout joint I often frequent with two small kids going to the same middle school as my daughter, or my auto mechanic whose son told me his dream is to get to MIT someday.

I don't think it'll be a bad idea to instill such cultural obsession in the Hillbilly Mountains. To me at least, it seems that is kinda'/sorta' what WhiteTrashCash is advocating for.

But how do you control for the cohort effect? Is there even a large pool of intelligent, high socio-economic class students who don't go to college? That's the issue. It's the ability to go to college (intelligence and/or grades and/or money) not the actual college education that is the determinative factor. At most, the only "inherent" thing you get out of college is the degree, which acts as a signifier. It's a sorry state of affairs but that's the truth.

Disclaimer: The specific post of mine you quoted is misleading, the paper I linked does not deal with "social mobility" - which was my claim.

However, isn't cohort effect easily controlled for if you look at mobility? If you assume that the children are about as intelligent as their parents, then who achieves social mobility as a function of educational mobility. I'm hesitating to post actual research paper link - but this brookings link https://www.brookings.edu/research/thirteen-economic-facts-about-social-mobility-and-the-role-of-education/ (Section 9, Figure 9A) seem to show that educational mobility significantly increases the probability of social mobility.

[StarBright]

I live in a working class neighborhood, and hence ‘know’ (=acquainted with) more treadies than I’d otherwise be.

They seem to have a swell lifestyle till they are 40. They are earning a lot of money, they can afford a lifestyle that office workers like me need to spend double to attain (they barter a lot for expensive labor).

However, by mid-40’s, almost all of them develop some health problem or the other that seriously affect their ability to do their physically demanding jobs. They continue doing the same line of work (almost none of them are mustachians, so I doubt they have options), but with painful quality of like/work sacrifices. The luckier of them have a spouse who is a nurse and bring fantastic healthcare. The rest even forego some medical care.

tl;dr - by the time they are 60, 80-90% of tradies have a shit life.

There are some exceptions. Some of them switch to being business owners. I hired a tree guy who climbed on a 50-ft tree himself. He was 68 at that time and way more physically capable than I will ever be, AND he owned a multi-million-$$ rental properties portfolio!! People probably tend to see the outliers and glorify trades. Similarly outlying “college educated” would far outperform the outlying tradies! At the lower end of the distribution, a back issue is less of a problem for an office worker than a tradie + the minimally health conscious office worker has much lower chances of getting it.

Thank you! Was scrolling through the thread to make sure someone mentioned this. I grew up in a rural/blue collar neighborhood and over half my friends/family are still in trades.

My parents pushed their kids towards college because working in the trades is bad enough on your body that you aren't likely to get over the finish line to retirement. I've got three uncles (electrician, truck driver, and a linesman) who are physically wrecked and keeping their fingers crossed that they can maintain their healthcare until they are old enough for medicare. The truck driver has lost his job a few times in the last few years because he can't load/unload fast enough - he's 58 and moves like an 80 year old.

[ctuser1]

I completely expect people to be able to back up their claims with exquisite level of evidence if they are going to speak in absolute terms.

If you speak with authority on a subject, I expect you to have authority on that subject.

If you are sharing an opinion, or a perspective, or just challenging someone else's absolutes, then yeah, go nuts, cite papers, anecdotes, and own your content for what it is, the musings of an internet rando like everyone else with varying types of insights from different perspectives.

But as I said, if you claim to know "the truth", people are going to come for you, and they should.

ETA: I mean the general "you*, not you in particular

That is fair but context dependent. If I am presenting a paper in a conference, you are 100%, absolutely correct with zero reservations.

When arguing about political decisions, the process "should be" different. Tearing down a claim based on procedural grounds is great, as long as an opposing claim is made and is established with higher degree of confidence.

The null hypothesis I am arguing for is that education is the most important (=biggest bang for the buck) lever to effect social mobility and hence should be heavily invested in socially, politically and culturally. Casting procedural or substantial doubt on this claim is perfectly fine. However, it can only be replaced by a different null hypothesis if/once that is established with a higher degree of confidence.

Positions that appear absolutist at first glance can sometimes be reasonable rhetorical tools in the later context. At least I use it often.

[ender]

I completely expect people to be able to back up their claims with exquisite level of evidence if they are going to speak in absolute terms.

If you speak with authority on a subject, I expect you to have authority on that subject.

If you are sharing an opinion, or a perspective, or just challenging someone else's absolutes, then yeah, go nuts, cite papers, anecdotes, and own your content for what it is, the musings of an internet rando like everyone else with varying types of insights from different perspectives.

But as I said, if you claim to know "the truth", people are going to come for you, and they should.

ETA: I mean the general "you*, not you in particular

That is fair but context dependent. If I am presenting a paper in a conference, you are 100%, absolutely correct with zero reservations.

When arguing about political decisions, the process "should be" different. Tearing down a claim based on procedural grounds is great, as long as an opposing claim is made and is established with higher degree of confidence.

The null hypothesis I am arguing for is that education is the most important (=biggest bang for the buck) lever to effect social mobility and hence should be heavily invested in socially, politically and culturally. Casting procedural or substantial doubt on this claim is perfectly fine. However, it can only be replaced by a different null hypothesis if/once that is established with a higher degree of confidence.

Positions that appear absolutist at first glance can sometimes be reasonable rhetorical tools in the later context. At least I use it often.

Uh, what?

You most certainly don't get to present an invalid research article in "support" of your claim and then turn around and say that "well, my completely bullshit argument requires extra evidence to refute, since it's now the standing null hypothesis."

That's not how logic works.

[ctuser1]

You most certainly don't get to present an invalid research article in "support" of your claim and then turn around and say that "well, my completely bullshit argument requires extra evidence to refute, since it's now the standing null hypothesis."

That's not how logic works.

Since you are calling my argument that education -> economic mobility is a "bullshit argument", and not just a badly argued one, I'd be eager to hear your "standing null hypothesis" and why you think education is not important.

[Poundwise]

A lot of the things being pointed out as physical wear and tear from various trades jobs sound like exercise to me. Isn't fitness and health a big part of the MMM lifestyle? Carrying a 75lb toilet or having to work in a hot attic is surely something that a fit, Mustachian should be able to do no? How is doing something like that occasionally at work significantly more taxing on your body than routinely lifting weights or cycling several miles to work? Shouldn't a good Mustachian be exercising in order to be more capable in their day to day lives anyway? Your body is designed to do work a lot more than it's designed to sit in a cube staring at a screen. I feel like we're just trading one set of physical problems later in life for another in a lot of cases.

I think the point of wear and tear in trades is the constant, repetitive nature of it all.

Yes, plumbers and electricians do a lot of physical labor.  My BIL was in trades (building manufactured homes) and a lot of people turn into physical wrecks really young (like, 50), because of the repetitive nature of the physical movements.  (Vs desk jobs which are the opposite - physical wreck from sitting on your butt all day).

When we first moved into our house, the guy who did our floors sat down with my 12 year old son and showed him his missing finger and two big scars on his knees where he had surgery. He said his dad was a medical doctor but he never worked hard in school, did drugs and drank then had to work his way up again.  He now owned his flooring business and made very good money. He told my son to stay clean and study hard because ruining his health wasn't worth it.

That said, at the peak of our earning years, we could barely afford to buy the house of a plumber.  The last he was seen, the plumber was driving a very nice little red convertible and living the high life on the Jersey coast. He took his boat with him (we can't afford a boat).

I also wonder if the difference WTC is seeing has to do with relative frequency of blue/white collars. Here, you can't throw a rock without hitting somebody with a degree, but trade skills are rare. In this area, tradesmen will charge $200 to show up and look around, let alone do anything. My auto mechanic makes much more per hour than me. 

But these are the bosses.  The guys who work for them... the immigrants who don't speak much English, the skilled tradesman who parties too much to run his own business (we had a really smart and knowledgeable furnace installer have to leave the job because he had health issues associated with his addiction, his partner told me) ... they don't make all that much.

[ender]

You most certainly don't get to present an invalid research article in "support" of your claim and then turn around and say that "well, my completely bullshit argument requires extra evidence to refute, since it's now the standing null hypothesis."

That's not how logic works.

Since you are calling my argument that education -> economic mobility is a "bullshit argument", and not just a badly argued one, I'd be eager to hear your "standing null hypothesis" and why you think education is not important.

When you use completely orthogonal academic papers to make your point, it makes it pretty easy for me to consider it a bullshit argument yes.

 

[ctuser1]

You most certainly don't get to present an invalid research article in "support" of your claim and then turn around and say that "well, my completely bullshit argument requires extra evidence to refute, since it's now the standing null hypothesis."

That's not how logic works.

Since you are calling my argument that education -> economic mobility is a "bullshit argument", and not just a badly argued one, I'd be eager to hear your "standing null hypothesis" and why you think education is not important.

When you use completely orthogonal academic papers to make your point, it makes it pretty easy for me to consider it a bullshit argument yes.

Interesting.

You think that the truth or falsity of an argument depends only on how that is argued and the arguer, and nothing more fundamental than that!

I can see why that would cause confusion.

[Paper Chaser]

This thread's funny. People pretending that working in the trades is shit work for shit pay and basically everyone is crippled by the time they are 50. Another thing to keep in mind at least for all my friends is they have far more year's earning a decent living than I do. We're in our mid 30s now and until I was about 28 I never earned more than $30k in a year. Meanwhile they were all earning that by 20. Most of my friends that didn't go to college had purchased homes by the time they were ~22ish. I find it funny that in a forum started by a person that claims you can live a middle class lifestyle for $25-$30k/yr many are saying that working in the trades is the path to being poor for the rest of your life.

I guess all my friends are the anomaly then. Most of my friends growing up didn't get college degrees and they are all living very solidly middle class lives and like I said my wife didn't get a college degree and she makes what I would consider pretty good money.

This is what I was getting at. I've worked menial labor jobs delivering building materials. I've carried the toilets up stairs, and refrigerators, and drywall and boxes of flooring, and just about everything else. I've got family that are plumbers, electricians, welder/pipe fitters, and trim carpenters. They all make wages far above average, and they're not race horses that run all out, all day long. They absolutely use their bodies, but they aren't doing a lot of the same motions over and over again. I've done more repetitive motion in manufacturing jobs and in my routine workouts than the tradespeople that I know do in a normal workday. I've torn my body up more playing sports than the tradespeople that I know do at work. Being active and physically fit can take a toll on long term wear/tear too.

I had my driveway paved this summer. I was talking with the owner of the paving company while they were taking a break and he mentioned that he and his wife were getting ready to go to their second home in Venice. I said "That's a nice part of Florida" and he said "Venice, Italy". That was a WTF moment for me. I'm an engineer with a household income that's multiple times the median for my area, and I'm never going to have a second home in Italy in addition to my nice primary home. But the guy that paves driveways sure does.

I stand by my assertion that office jobs and physical labor both take a toll on the body, just in different ways. I think I'd much rather have a knee replaced due to 60 years of use than try to treat heart disease/obesity or spinal surgery from slouching in a chair for decades.

[mizzourah2006]

You most certainly don't get to present an invalid research article in "support" of your claim and then turn around and say that "well, my completely bullshit argument requires extra evidence to refute, since it's now the standing null hypothesis."

That's not how logic works.

Since you are calling my argument that education -> economic mobility is a "bullshit argument", and not just a badly argued one, I'd be eager to hear your "standing null hypothesis" and why you think education is not important.

When you use completely orthogonal academic papers to make your point, it makes it pretty easy for me to consider it a bullshit argument yes.

I think what they are trying to say is that you made a presumably research based argument and provided research that in no way backed up your point. It would be like me arguing for more funding in early childhood education and providing a peer reviewed physics article as my support. Then someone calling me out on it and me saying...the fact that the article in no way supports my argument doesn't change the fact that my hypothesis has legs.

No one here is saying eduction is unimportant. You've moved the goalposts. People are simply saying a college education is not the only way to a middle class lifestyle. I don't understand how people are taking issue with that statement....but leave it to the internet.....

Just realized I quoted you Ender Instead of the person I meant to respond to. My fault.

[economista]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am an economist and my field of study is social mobility and education. I've tried to stay out of this discussion but I just can't seem to stay away from it. Here is a very well researched study that is a few years old now (2012) but it is used and cited extensively in the literature around this topic.

Enjoy :)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0920-pathways-middle-class-sawhill-winship.pdf

[ctuser1]

I think what they are trying to say is that you made a presumably research based argument and provided research that in no way backed up your point. It would be like me arguing for more funding in early childhood education and providing a peer reviewed physics article as my support. Then someone calling me out on it and me saying...the fact that the article in no way supports my argument doesn't change the fact that my hypothesis has legs.

No one here is saying eduction is unimportant. You've moved the goalposts. People are simply saying a college education is not the only way to a middle class lifestyle. I don't understand how people are taking issue with that statement....but leave it to the internet.....

Generally it is pointless to continue this "he said she said" line of argument. I will stop this specific line of argument after this post.

You've moved the goalposts.

Did I?

My goalposts for the latest kerfuffle are clearly specified in this post.

Summary:
1. Education is the primary driver of social mobility.
2. Cited a paper claiming it supports education -> social mobility.
 (the paper does not do what I claimed here. Instead it deals only with Educational mobility. I explained in another post why I got confused here. But that isn't quite important. This point itself is bunk.)
3. Cited cultural obsessions about education among some ethnic/cultural groups.
4. Claimed that such obsession would be a good thing to drive in the Hillbilly mountains.

Please show me where I "moved" the goalposts during the course of this argument.

--------------------------

No one here is saying eduction is unimportant.

My "goalposts" are clearly summarized above. Ender called that "bullshit argument" in this post.

Note: He did not say my "bullshit research skil", but "bullshit argument". i.e. he is contesting the goalposts above.

You clearly missed this post from ender or didn't think through what it means.

--------------------------

It would be like me arguing for more funding in early childhood education and providing a peer reviewed physics article as my support.

The paper I cited is not "orthogonal" - like Ender claims, neither is it citing a physics article to support early childhood education. An article citing "Educational Mobility" is very relevant. Coupled with my next link https://www.brookings.edu/research/thirteen-economic-facts-about-social-mobility-and-the-role-of-education/, (Section 9, Figure 9A), it establishes the data driven support for my argument. I was missing the critical piece (the second link from Brookings, or any other thousands of such data floating around everywhere) in establishing the logical link, something easily remedied.

You may be projecting Ender's behavior on to me, where he claims that my arguments are "bullshit" because I did not research properly for an internet forum.

[mizzourah2006]

So are you in fact defending the assertion that higher education is the only way to not end up with a lower class lifestyle or not?

[ctuser1]

So are you in fact defending the assertion that higher education is the only way to not end up with a lower class lifestyle or not?

It isn't the "only" way. I have never claimed so.

It has a strong correlation with better outcomes. There are cultures that assert education to be the "only" practical way to move up in society, and they seem rather successful by their income stats.

Everything else being equal, college education provides the best possibility of success for a 18yo kid.

[big_owl]

I work at an industrial megafacility and the top two income earners on the entire site are mechanics.  They beat out all the engineers, management, directors and our VP, it's a long running joke.  Part of the reason for this is that they get paid hourly and work a lot of overtime.  But it is what it is. 

[bigblock440]

If a college degree was the key to wealth, why the big push to have student loans paid back by the taxpayer?

Average salary for someone with a degree is about $50k.  At a 50 hour work week (lets be honest, 50 hours+ is normal for many college degree'd professionals) you'd only need an hourly rate of $17.50 to exceed that.  That's a basic, button pushing, manufacturing floor job.  My maintenance techs are all clearing 60k, some significantly more, and this is all at the lowest paying plant I've worked at, others had many hourly employees making 22-26/hr, add in OT and you're right there for your 80k "middle class" income.

Where the F did you get the 50K figure?  Because it's just flat out wrong!  Seems like some of you people just like to make shit up, well I'll call you out on it. 

Below is from the BLS, median for those with only a bachelor's degree is 61K (1,173 median weekly * 52) and that was from 2017, bump it up another 5K at least for wage inflation and remember that doesn't even include people with Master's and Doctorates.

And the NE link shows that 2020 median for those with only a bachelor's is 65K.   If you include ALL college grads including those with a master's or higher that would get you to around 70K.  Compare that to HS only median income of 38K or some college but no bachelor's of 43K.  Not to mention the lower unemployment rate associated with earning at least a bachelor's. 

Granted those with at least a bachelor's on average have higher IQ's, come from wealthier backgrounds, etc so the differences reflect that to some degree but I doubt it would fully explain the differences. 

While WTC was wrongly absolute about this it's fucking clear that what he says is true in general. 

https://www.northeastern.edu/bachelors-completion/news/average-salary-by-education-level/

https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/education-pays.htm

Google is where I got the $50k from.  Seeing that Masters or higher only gets you to 70k, that's not even enough to live a middle class lifestyle on hillbilly mountain, or enough to even make more than a maintenance worker in a manufacturing plant.

You're also lumping in retail/fast food/services and hospitality workers when you break it down by education level only, which literally no one has said is a lucrative career path.  It's fairly clear you're in the same bubble White Trash is.

[ender]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am an economist and my field of study is social mobility and education. I've tried to stay out of this discussion but I just can't seem to stay away from it. Here is a very well researched study that is a few years old now (2012) but it is used and cited extensively in the literature around this topic.

Enjoy :)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0920-pathways-middle-class-sawhill-winship.pdf

I just read through this - thank you for sharing this.

It pretty conclusively points out that success in life financially is much less a result of "college vs not" and many factors which transpire before the decision about college or not is even part of the equation.

[Poundwise]

It looks to me like the people using anecdotes to support the "trades make as good or better lifestyle than white collar jobs" or those who support the opposite opinion are comparing apples to oranges. How does it work out if you compare the owners of a blue collar vs a white collar concern of similar size? How does it work out for junior people... are you including the techs and the grad students, the apprentices and the unlicensed workmen?  What's the median lifestyle and what is the spread?

[economista]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am an economist and my field of study is social mobility and education. I've tried to stay out of this discussion but I just can't seem to stay away from it. Here is a very well researched study that is a few years old now (2012) but it is used and cited extensively in the literature around this topic.

Enjoy :)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0920-pathways-middle-class-sawhill-winship.pdf

I just read through this - thank you for sharing this.

It pretty conclusively points out that success in life financially is much less a result of "college vs not" and many factors which transpire before the decision about college or not is even part of the equation.

Yes - exactly! It's also not a black and white situation that can be talked about in absolute terms, and I think that is where this thread has gone off the rails a bit. For my graduate research I looked only at people born below the poverty level and then looked at the impact education has on the future earnings for that segment of the population. Statistically, those who go to college do better on a large scale, but there are always outliers. What there is even more evidence of is that SOME FORM OF HIGHER EDUCATION is the key, and that higher education does NOT have to be a traditional college education. Someone who is a skilled tradesman has received higher education, over and above a standard high school diploma, the same with someone who is a massage therapist, a hair dresser, etc.

One thing I particularly like about the article I linked is how they breakout and define the checkpoints, specifically the transition to adulthood where they designate a college degree OR earning >250% of the poverty level.

Just for anecdotal evidence, I did not meet the very first checkpoint on the chart (none of my siblings did). I was born at a low birth weight, to a mother below the poverty level who did not graduate high school. I have successfully made it to the middle class by middle age and I have a master's degree. One of my brothers has an associates degree in criminal justice but works in management for a company that installs and repairs commercial garage doors and he has reached middle class as well. I have a sister who has an associates degree in massage therapy but she struggles to keep a roof over her head and food on the table and is always a $100 disaster away from being homeless. I have another brother who did not graduate from high school and who cannot keep a job for more than a week or two at a time. He is currently in jail. All four of us were born from the same mother, raised in the same environment below the poverty level where we alternated between trailer parks, subsidized housing, and being homeless, yet we have all seen drastically different financial outcomes. Two of us are completely self-sufficient and living an "easy" middle class lifestyle, while the other two are really struggling.

[mizzourah2006]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am an economist and my field of study is social mobility and education. I've tried to stay out of this discussion but I just can't seem to stay away from it. Here is a very well researched study that is a few years old now (2012) but it is used and cited extensively in the literature around this topic.

Enjoy :)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0920-pathways-middle-class-sawhill-winship.pdf

I just read through this - thank you for sharing this.

It pretty conclusively points out that success in life financially is much less a result of "college vs not" and many factors which transpire before the decision about college or not is even part of the equation.

This has been my experience. Me and my friends all grew up in what I would consider solidly middle class families that valued education even if some of our parents didn't go that route. Most of us went to private school from k-12. However after that many of us went different routes. Some went into real estate, some went into the trades (electricians and linesmen), some went into sales, etc. Most of my friends did not get a bachelor's degree, some did, myself included. All of us have solidly middle class incomes or better now, with families, homes of our own, etc. I will also say that my undergrad in psychology would not have put me in a better spot than almost all of my friends that chose to not go the college route. It was the fact that I did well enough in undergrad to get into a fully funded PhD program that got me where I am now. I took a year off after undergrad to study for the GRE and the best I could find was an internship that didn't pay that I worked at for 24 hours a week and then I worked another 18-24 hours a week as a grocery clerk in a grocery store earning $9.65/hr. Meanwhile all my friends that didn't go to school were well into their careers, many of them in the trades.

You can look at this like a cohort study. Where we all grew up together from about 2nd grade through HS, were close, played sports together, hung out together, etc. Some of us went to college, some of us didn't. All of us were "successful".

[mizzourah2006]

It looks to me like the people using anecdotes to support the "trades make as good or better lifestyle than white collar jobs" or those who support the opposite opinion are comparing apples to oranges. How does it work out if you compare the owners of a blue collar vs a white collar concern of similar size? How does it work out for junior people... are you including the techs and the grad students, the apprentices and the unlicensed workmen?  What's the median lifestyle and what is the spread?

I don't think anyone is arguing against the fact that in general people with a college education earn more than those without. But that's like saying people with mechanical engineering degrees earn more than people with all other college degrees. You're taking a subset of a larger population as less than 35% of the US population is college educated and most of them come from higher SES homes. The only argument I've made is that it is possible to make a middle class living and achieve FI before 65 without a college degree and the trades are one solid route. According to the BLS the median salary in the US for an electrician is just shy of $57k. The median salary for someone with a bachelor's degree is about $61k. Factor in the fact that the electrician got to start earning within his/her career a few years earlier, they didn't take on student loan debt and in many cases the trades also still have pensions I'd say it's not exactly like the median bachelor's earner is in a far superior financial situation.

Plus this ignores the fact that the original argument wasn't about comparing incomes, it was about whether or not people without a college education could earn enough for a middle class income/lifestyle. It then quickly turned into a pissing match between college vs. not and where you can make more.

[Metalcat]

It looks to me like the people using anecdotes to support the "trades make as good or better lifestyle than white collar jobs" or those who support the opposite opinion are comparing apples to oranges. How does it work out if you compare the owners of a blue collar vs a white collar concern of similar size? How does it work out for junior people... are you including the techs and the grad students, the apprentices and the unlicensed workmen?  What's the median lifestyle and what is the spread?

Someone claimed that university education was the only way to make a decent income. Many of us shared anecdotes demonstrating that that isn't true.

Somehow that lead to people posting stats that people with university education *on average* make more money.

So yes, it's apples to oranges, because the people talking about anecdotes were never, ever arguing against the "on average" beneficial effect of education.

[Tigerpine]

This is as much fun as watching people argue whether the glass is half full or half empty after you point out that it's at half capacity. ;)

[Malum Prohibitum]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am an economist and my field of study is social mobility and education. I've tried to stay out of this discussion but I just can't seem to stay away from it. Here is a very well researched study that is a few years old now (2012) but it is used and cited extensively in the literature around this topic.

Enjoy :)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0920-pathways-middle-class-sawhill-winship.pdf

I just read through this - thank you for sharing this.

It pretty conclusively points out that success in life financially is much less a result of "college vs not" and many factors which transpire before the decision about college or not is even part of the equation.

Yes - exactly! It's also not a black and white situation that can be talked about in absolute terms, and I think that is where this thread has gone off the rails a bit. For my graduate research I looked only at people born below the poverty level and then looked at the impact education has on the future earnings for that segment of the population. Statistically, those who go to college do better on a large scale, but there are always outliers. What there is even more evidence of is that SOME FORM OF HIGHER EDUCATION is the key, and that higher education does NOT have to be a traditional college education. Someone who is a skilled tradesman has received higher education, over and above a standard high school diploma, the same with someone who is a massage therapist, a hair dresser, etc.

One thing I particularly like about the article I linked is how they breakout and define the checkpoints, specifically the transition to adulthood where they designate a college degree OR earning >250% of the poverty level.

Just for anecdotal evidence, I did not meet the very first checkpoint on the chart (none of my siblings did). I was born at a low birth weight, to a mother below the poverty level who did not graduate high school. I have successfully made it to the middle class by middle age and I have a master's degree. One of my brothers has an associates degree in criminal justice but works in management for a company that installs and repairs commercial garage doors and he has reached middle class as well. I have a sister who has an associates degree in massage therapy but she struggles to keep a roof over her head and food on the table and is always a $100 disaster away from being homeless. I have another brother who did not graduate from high school and who cannot keep a job for more than a week or two at a time. He is currently in jail. All four of us were born from the same mother, raised in the same environment below the poverty level where we alternated between trailer parks, subsidized housing, and being homeless, yet we have all seen drastically different financial outcomes. Two of us are completely self-sufficient and living an "easy" middle class lifestyle, while the other two are really struggling.

It was interesting reading.  I am curious whether you have ever looked into intelligence and its relationship to everything in that study?  It seems an intelligent member of the bottom couple of quintiles would stand a much higher chance of realizing upward mobility compared to a person with an IQ of 84, for instance.

[researcher1]

It looks to me like the people using anecdotes to support the "trades make as good or better lifestyle than white collar jobs" or those who support the opposite opinion are comparing apples to oranges.

As other people have pointed out, that is not at all what is being discussed.

This started when WhiteTrashCash posted his indefensible ramblings that people cannot live a reasonable middle-class life without a degree...
- "It is basically necessary to have [a college degree] if you want to have a good middle class life."
- "Except for certain circumstances for very lucky people, the trades don't pay."
- "This forum is about making six figures…"
- "It’s not about being a low paid peon for your entire life [referring to people without a degree]."

[economista]

It was interesting reading.  I am curious whether you have ever looked into intelligence and its relationship to everything in that study?  It seems an intelligent member of the bottom couple of quintiles would stand a much higher chance of realizing upward mobility compared to a person with an IQ of 84, for instance.

I don't have the time to look up the actual sources to share, but it is true that low IQ, low intelligence, learning disabilities, etc have an impact but a lot more depends on where they start in life/who their parents are. Unless the person has a drastically low IQ that categorizes them as intellectually disabled, the bigger impact is how much intervention they receive, and the earlier the better. People with these disabilities have to work harder and have more hands on help with their education, but none of them are unable to succeed and flourish. Unfortunately too many fall through the cracks and don't receive the help and interventions they need early enough in life so by the time they make it to 18 years old and need to get a job and support themselves they have no coping skills, no organizational skills, and difficulties with reading, writing, math, etc. There are also numerous studies that show on average, there is a higher proportion of those who "fall through the cracks" who are raised in the lower income spectrums. I've read quite a few studies that try to break out the % impact that certain things have on economic success later in life and parental SES is often one of the biggest impacts.

[mm1970]

This thread's funny. People pretending that working in the trades is shit work for shit pay and basically everyone is crippled by the time they are 50. Another thing to keep in mind at least for all my friends is they have far more year's earning a decent living than I do. We're in our mid 30s now and until I was about 28 I never earned more than $30k in a year. Meanwhile they were all earning that by 20. Most of my friends that didn't go to college had purchased homes by the time they were ~22ish. I find it funny that in a forum started by a person that claims you can live a middle class lifestyle for $25-$30k/yr many are saying that working in the trades is the path to being poor for the rest of your life.

I guess all my friends are the anomaly then. Most of my friends growing up didn't get college degrees and they are all living very solidly middle class lives and like I said my wife didn't get a college degree and she makes what I would consider pretty good money.

I never said that everyone is a wreck by the time they are 50, but I did say that it does happen.

My BIL is a physical wreck.  He's still trying to work a physical job at 60 after multiple shoulder and back surgeries.  My other BIL is a plumber and in MUCH better physical condition (and he's in his early 50s).  He's not a physical wreck at all, but definitely has injuries to deal with.

My dad would not have been able to keep his job as an auto mechanic into his 60s, and he was pretty fit.  My neighbors are in their 60s as a plumber and a massage therapist, and the massage therapist simply doesn't have the physical strength at 65 to keep doing the heavy work.

I'd like to see the statistics, really, but there's a HUGE difference between the different types of physical labor, and there's also a big difference between being 50 and 60, and also genetics come in to play.  (And lifestyle.)  Like regular exercise, there are things you can do to prevent injury if you have a physical job.

Goodness, when I was 30 I worked in a cleanroom, that's pretty cushy, but MAN, those first two weeks of being on my feet for 50 hours a week were ROUGH.

I come from a very blue collar family and I think trades are a great choice - but don't pretend like they are physically a walk in the park, because they are NOT.  There's a lot of talk out there about working until 70, but in my experience, many people in physical jobs cannot come close to that.  And honestly, many people in "thinking" jobs cannot either.

[Villanelle]

Since I'm someone who posted a "tradespeople I know who are doing fine" anecdote post, I'll chime in and say that I was never in any way implying that tradespeople make as much money as college educated people, on average.  I was specifically addressing the repeated assertion that college was the only way to financial success and the NO tradespeople every come out okay (or that those who do are some sort of rare breed).  I was pointing out that many tradespeople or people without a college degree do quite well for themselves, something WTC said was basically impossible.

He was ridiculously wrong.  That doesn't mean that college may not be a better choice for some people or that on average a person with a college degree makes more money (though as the conversation has shown, whether that is causal or not is still in question).  All it means is that one can do quite well for themselves without a college degree, working in a trade, and that thousands and thousands (likely tens or hundreds of thousands) of people do just that.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Since I'm someone who posted a "tradespeople I know who are doing fine" anecdote post, I'll chime in and say that I was never in any way implying that tradespeople make as much money as college educated people, on average.  I was specifically addressing the repeated assertion that college was the only way to financial success and the NO tradespeople every come out okay (or that those who do are some sort of rare breed).  I was pointing out that many tradespeople or people without a college degree do quite well for themselves, something WTC said was basically impossible.

He was ridiculously wrong.  That doesn't mean that college may not be a better choice for some people or that on average a person with a college degree makes more money (though as the conversation has shown, whether that is causal or not is still in question).  All it means is that one can do quite well for themselves without a college degree, working in a trade, and that thousands and thousands (likely tens or hundreds of thousands) of people do just that.

And just to emphasize again, we're talking about the bad aspects of trades - mainly damage to the body, without the bad attributes of college (again, present situation) of people going to college and not finishing or going with a degree that gives them nothing, having done nothing in college towards trying to network and use their situation to help get a good job out of college while wracking up tens of thousands of dollars of student debts. TLDR Either one can suck if you do it wrong.

[mm1970]

I also wonder if the difference WTC is seeing has to do with relative frequency of blue/white collars. Here, you can't throw a rock without hitting somebody with a degree, but trade skills are rare. In this area, tradesmen will charge $200 to show up and look around, let alone do anything. My auto mechanic makes much more per hour than me.

I think that might be it, plus what it's like growing up in Hillbilly Mountain.  I grew up in a poor, rural area.

I think he might be thinking not just that in his experience, tradesmen don't do great.  But also: "just go into trades" from people who went to college sounds a bit like "well, if you can't afford it, fuck you."  It's because of this:  where I grew up, trades is OFTEN what you did because you couldn't afford anything else.

My dad was in trades.  My mom worked at a bank.  I was the first (and only) of the children in my family to go to college traditionally, right out of high school.  In fact, I don't think any of my 30-40 cousins went to traditional college until my year/ age group (graduated high school in 1988).  I had cousins who joined the military, went into trades, got jobs doing physical labor.  My brother drove truck for awhile and is now a prison guard.  A couple of cousins became nurses (and eventually got more degrees).  Two of my sisters went to college at night or later in life.

So the push, here, to go into trades MAY sound like you don't care about people who cannot afford it.  The US is not a meritocracy, and it would be great if it could be.  There are awesomely bright kids all over who don't have the option of going to college because they cannot afford it, and they don't have parents who can or even would help.  In some areas of the country, you really "made it" when you were able to go to college.

When I graduated from college, I went into the Navy (thank you ROTC).  One of my classmates said to me (we weren't friends): "Doesn't it suck that we are all starting off in real jobs at $40k, and you have to join the military, making less than half that?"  Fucker was a C student whose dad was a doctor.  Anyway, I simply answered "No.  You know, I'm just damned lucky to be here.  Without the Navy, I'm not sure that I would have been able to afford to stay at this school.  I'm thankful that I was able to do it."

[mizzourah2006]

I also wonder if the difference WTC is seeing has to do with relative frequency of blue/white collars. Here, you can't throw a rock without hitting somebody with a degree, but trade skills are rare. In this area, tradesmen will charge $200 to show up and look around, let alone do anything. My auto mechanic makes much more per hour than me.

I think that might be it, plus what it's like growing up in Hillbilly Mountain.  I grew up in a poor, rural area.


So the push, here, to go into trades MAY sound like you don't care about people who cannot afford it.  The US is not a meritocracy, and it would be great if it could be.  There are awesomely bright kids all over who don't have the option of going to college because they cannot afford it, and they don't have parents who can or even would help.  In some areas of the country, you really "made it" when you were able to go to college

1. I'm assuming Hillbilly Mountain is his way of representing a poor area where he lives? Is this accurate? I see people referring to it as if it's an actual location and not representative of  poor rural area. Am I incorrect in this assumption? Is it an actual location?

2. Again, I don't see anybody telling anyone to forego a college education for the trades. Maybe you can quote where I or anyone said that. All anyone has taken issue with is the fact that some here, WTC, specifically have said it's not possible to make a good income and/or live a middle class lifestyle without a college education. Maybe that's more true in some parts of the US, I could see my wife really struggling to get a good job in a place like DC, when everyone and their mother has a college degree, but in the midwest where I grew up and where I am now (arguable in the south), that just isn't true and I graduated college in 2006. So it's not like I'm a 50 year old talking about the way it was in the late 80s/early 90s.

Also, at least in my anecdotes my friends could have gone to college, in fact most of them did a year or two at community college, mostly because they weren't even sure if they wanted to go to college, not because they couldn't have afforded to go to Mizzou or some other state school in Missouri. They ended up dropping out and going into the trades instead.

[Zikoris]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

[JGS1980]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

I think what Zikoris said was very fair. Things have changed, and the updated studies should take that into consideration.

[John Galt incarnate!]

It was interesting reading.  I am curious whether you have ever looked into intelligence and its relationship to everything in that study?  It seems an intelligent member of the bottom couple of quintiles would stand a much higher chance of realizing upward mobility compared to a person with an IQ of 84, for instance.

Yes, they would.

Wikipedia

"Mainstream Science on Intelligence" was a public statement issued by a group of academic researchers in fields associated with intelligence testing. It was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on December 13, 1994, as a response to what the authors claimed were inaccurate and misleading reports made by the media regarding academic consensus on the results of intelligence research in the wake of the appearance of The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray earlier the same year.

Here are some of the findings published in Mainstream Science on Intelligence.

"IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes ... Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance"


"A high IQ is an advantage because virtually all activities require some reasoning and decision-making."


"The practical advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life’s settings become more complex."


"Differences in intelligence certainly are not the only factor affecting performance in education, training, and complex jobs... but intelligence is often the most important."

economista posted I don't have the time to look up the actual sources to share, but it is true that low IQ, low intelligence, learning disabilities, etc have an impact but a lot more depends on where they start in life/who their parents are.

I've read quite a few studies that try to break out the % impact that certain things have on economic success later in life and parental SES is often one of the biggest impacts.

The Bell Curve Review: IQ Best Indicates Poverty - Harvard ...dash.harvard.edu › handle › Ben_Palmer_Ec_970
PDF

Ben Palmer. 4/30/2018. Abstract.  I replicate The Bell Curve results that relate SES and IQ to poverty.

Palmer's curves are similar to these.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

That's a great point about a current updated situation between non technical degrees and random trades. An example that came to mind is this. If I had a child with a strong mechanical aptitude and ability to do very well in advanced math and physics, would I encourage them to do something like a car mechanic or electrical to mechanical engineer? I would probably encourage them the engineering route for a *sometimes* easier job with greater earning potential. However, what if I had a kid who was interested in art? Would I encourage them to go ahead and get an art major degree, taking on that debt load or encourage them to go a trade route that maybe had tie ins to art? The assumption is the trade route would in more situations provide a more stable, higher income. Not in the edge cases of course, but in more situations, I think it would probably be more lucrative and secure.

[Paper Chaser]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

I've typed up a similar post multiple times now and I've deleted it each time because I just didn't feel like my point was being conveyed properly, but you've made the point that I was hoping to make, better and more concisely than I was able to. Any data about the value of college degrees from before maybe 2000 or even 2005 is probably not applicable to the current options that a young person has. Both the cost and the benefit of college have changed in that time.

[Villanelle]

Since I'm someone who posted a "tradespeople I know who are doing fine" anecdote post, I'll chime in and say that I was never in any way implying that tradespeople make as much money as college educated people, on average.  I was specifically addressing the repeated assertion that college was the only way to financial success and the NO tradespeople every come out okay (or that those who do are some sort of rare breed).  I was pointing out that many tradespeople or people without a college degree do quite well for themselves, something WTC said was basically impossible.

He was ridiculously wrong.  That doesn't mean that college may not be a better choice for some people or that on average a person with a college degree makes more money (though as the conversation has shown, whether that is causal or not is still in question).  All it means is that one can do quite well for themselves without a college degree, working in a trade, and that thousands and thousands (likely tens or hundreds of thousands) of people do just that.

And just to emphasize again, we're talking about the bad aspects of trades - mainly damage to the body, without the bad attributes of college (again, present situation) of people going to college and not finishing or going with a degree that gives them nothing, having done nothing in college towards trying to network and use their situation to help get a good job out of college while wracking up tens of thousands of dollars of student debts. TLDR Either one can suck if you do it wrong.

Yes, I understand that.

But it feels very much like trying to refute something that was never said.  Here's how I see the conversation.

WTC said that making decent money at a trade was impossible.
A bunchof people said that was wrong, and provided examples.
Then other people cited issues with working a a trade, as though that had anything at all to do with the second group's argument against WTC's statements.

That third group could also say that water is wet.  Or that Achelousauri are extinct.  They wouldn't be wrong, but it would be misleading to somehow related that back to the conversation where someone said A was impossible and other people gave multiple examples of A actually happening. 

Yes, some--perhaps even many--trades can be hard on the body.  But that doesn't make the statement that it is impossible to make a decent living at a trade any more true.

[Aelias]

I come from a very blue collar family and I think trades are a great choice - but don't pretend like they are physically a walk in the park, because they are NOT.  There's a lot of talk out there about working until 70, but in my experience, many people in physical jobs cannot come close to that.  And honestly, many people in "thinking" jobs cannot either.

We're pretty far off topic at this point, so I don't feel bad derailing further. This a great point that is very often overlooked.  There was an article on this in the Atlantic a while back that basically laid out the case for why most people in "thinking" professions peak in their 20s-30s.  The downward slide is slower and more comfortable than in a more physical profession, but anyone who is counting on being able to work at full capacity into their 70s is making a hell of an assumption.  A lot of people just can't physically or mentally perform at a high enough level at that point.

Yet another reason to FIRE . . . 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-peak-professional-decline/590650/

[GuitarStv]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

I think what Zikoris said was very fair. Things have changed, and the updated studies should take that into consideration.

Have things really changed all that much?  I feel like an art history major from the '60s would probably have similar difficulties finding employment as one today.  That sort of degree is undertaken to learn about something for the sake of learning . . . not to build any skillset to help find employment.

[Metalcat]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

I think what Zikoris said was very fair. Things have changed, and the updated studies should take that into consideration.

Have things really changed all that much?  I feel like an art history major from the '60s would probably have similar difficulties finding employment as one today.  That sort of degree is undertaken to learn about something for the sake of learning . . . not to build any skillset to help find employment.

Not really.

Any degree used to make you more employable and more promotable.

I also have and always will rail aggressively against the notion that arts degrees don't provide any skill for professional work.

University degrees in general confer research skills, most importantly the ability to evaluate the source of information. Arts degrees tend to be especially good for developing writing skills and abstract analysis.

Education in history and Anthropologie can make someone far, far more culturally aware, which can be critical in multinational business. Same with political science and policy.

A degree is psychology provides immense insight into human behaviour.

I'm not sure what magical set of employable skills an undergrad in most sciences provides that it's seen as somehow more valuable?

People who graduate with degrees that lead to specific jobs are actually the minority. There's an enormous population of professionals working in offices utilizing skills they learned in non vocational degrees.

To craft a career with a humanities degree certainly takes more than just having a degree, but that doesn't mean that those degrees don't impart valuable professional skills.

And I will say this over and over until I am blue in the face.

[Zikoris]

Not really.

Any degree used to make you more employable and more promotable.

I also have and always will rail aggressively against the notion that arts degrees don't provide any skill for professional work.

University degrees in general confer research skills, most importantly the ability to evaluate the source of information. Arts degrees tend to be especially good for developing writing skills and abstract analysis.

Education in history and Anthropologie can make someone far, far more culturally aware, which can be critical in multinational business. Same with political science and policy.

A degree is psychology provides immense insight into human behaviour.

I'm not sure what magical set of employable skills an undergrad in most sciences provides that it's seen as somehow more valuable?

People who graduate with degrees that lead to specific jobs are actually the minority. There's an enormous population of professionals working in offices utilizing skills they learned in non vocational degrees.

To craft a career with a humanities degree certainly takes more than just having a degree, but that doesn't mean that those degrees don't impart valuable professional skills.

And I will say this over and over until I am blue in the face.

I think it's important to differentiate between value of a degree in the theoretical versus what actually happens. Yes, 100% studying arts makes one a well-rounded person, and studying anything at the university level can make one a better writer, etc. But I would really like to know what's happening to people who graduate with those degrees right now, not what happened to people who graduated with those degrees 30 years ago, because it seems like these days there are an awful lot of young people graduating with a tremendous amount of debt and struggling a lot to find good jobs. Employers aren't placing the value on their credentials that they did a long time ago when it was much less common for a person to have a degree.

I love learning about interesting topics myself, completely see value in the arts, and could totally see studying all sorts of things at higher levels for personal enjoyment But young people are being sold a false bill of goods when it comes to college these days, and a lot of them are getting absolutely screwed over as a result.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Since I'm someone who posted a "tradespeople I know who are doing fine" anecdote post, I'll chime in and say that I was never in any way implying that tradespeople make as much money as college educated people, on average.  I was specifically addressing the repeated assertion that college was the only way to financial success and the NO tradespeople every come out okay (or that those who do are some sort of rare breed).  I was pointing out that many tradespeople or people without a college degree do quite well for themselves, something WTC said was basically impossible.

He was ridiculously wrong.  That doesn't mean that college may not be a better choice for some people or that on average a person with a college degree makes more money (though as the conversation has shown, whether that is causal or not is still in question).  All it means is that one can do quite well for themselves without a college degree, working in a trade, and that thousands and thousands (likely tens or hundreds of thousands) of people do just that.

And just to emphasize again, we're talking about the bad aspects of trades - mainly damage to the body, without the bad attributes of college (again, present situation) of people going to college and not finishing or going with a degree that gives them nothing, having done nothing in college towards trying to network and use their situation to help get a good job out of college while wracking up tens of thousands of dollars of student debts. TLDR Either one can suck if you do it wrong.

Yes, I understand that.

But it feels very much like trying to refute something that was never said.  Here's how I see the conversation.

WTC said that making decent money at a trade was impossible.
A bunchof people said that was wrong, and provided examples.
Then other people cited issues with working a a trade, as though that had anything at all to do with the second group's argument against WTC's statements.

That third group could also say that water is wet.  Or that Achelousauri are extinct.  They wouldn't be wrong, but it would be misleading to somehow related that back to the conversation where someone said A was impossible and other people gave multiple examples of A actually happening. 

Yes, some--perhaps even many--trades can be hard on the body.  But that doesn't make the statement that it is impossible to make a decent living at a trade any more true.

I think I was not clear with what I said. Suffice it to say, I agree with what you're saying.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Not really.

Any degree used to make you more employable and more promotable.

I also have and always will rail aggressively against the notion that arts degrees don't provide any skill for professional work.

University degrees in general confer research skills, most importantly the ability to evaluate the source of information. Arts degrees tend to be especially good for developing writing skills and abstract analysis.

Education in history and Anthropologie can make someone far, far more culturally aware, which can be critical in multinational business. Same with political science and policy.

A degree is psychology provides immense insight into human behaviour.

I'm not sure what magical set of employable skills an undergrad in most sciences provides that it's seen as somehow more valuable?

People who graduate with degrees that lead to specific jobs are actually the minority. There's an enormous population of professionals working in offices utilizing skills they learned in non vocational degrees.

To craft a career with a humanities degree certainly takes more than just having a degree, but that doesn't mean that those degrees don't impart valuable professional skills.

And I will say this over and over until I am blue in the face.

I think it's important to differentiate between value of a degree in the theoretical versus what actually happens. Yes, 100% studying arts makes one a well-rounded person, and studying anything at the university level can make one a better writer, etc. But I would really like to know what's happening to people who graduate with those degrees right now, not what happened to people who graduated with those degrees 30 years ago, because it seems like these days there are an awful lot of young people graduating with a tremendous amount of debt and struggling a lot to find good jobs. Employers aren't placing the value on their credentials that they did a long time ago when it was much less common for a person to have a degree.

I love learning about interesting topics myself, completely see value in the arts, and could totally see studying all sorts of things at higher levels for personal enjoyment But young people are being sold a false bill of goods when it comes to college these days, and a lot of them are getting absolutely screwed over as a result.

I definitely agree that having an art degree can make you more marketable if you do it right. There's certainly other degrees that are easier to make you marketable. If you get an engineering degree, have an internship or two, and the economy is not crap when you come out, you'll probably be able to find a pretty good job. A degree in, let's say philosophy - you'll have a less direct path to a job, and as a result, I think it's fair to say it's going to be more difficult and take more initiative on someone to translate it into a job. All that to say, it's very individual to the person, but in general, the less direct path to a job (i.e. not a doctor, lawyer, engineer, teacher, etc.), the more likely I would think that a person would do better picking up a trade and more likely the overall average salary would be closer, because more people would fail to capitalize on a lucrative job in those degrees.

[Metalcat]

Not really.

Any degree used to make you more employable and more promotable.

I also have and always will rail aggressively against the notion that arts degrees don't provide any skill for professional work.

University degrees in general confer research skills, most importantly the ability to evaluate the source of information. Arts degrees tend to be especially good for developing writing skills and abstract analysis.

Education in history and Anthropologie can make someone far, far more culturally aware, which can be critical in multinational business. Same with political science and policy.

A degree is psychology provides immense insight into human behaviour.

I'm not sure what magical set of employable skills an undergrad in most sciences provides that it's seen as somehow more valuable?

People who graduate with degrees that lead to specific jobs are actually the minority. There's an enormous population of professionals working in offices utilizing skills they learned in non vocational degrees.

To craft a career with a humanities degree certainly takes more than just having a degree, but that doesn't mean that those degrees don't impart valuable professional skills.

And I will say this over and over until I am blue in the face.

I think it's important to differentiate between value of a degree in the theoretical versus what actually happens. Yes, 100% studying arts makes one a well-rounded person, and studying anything at the university level can make one a better writer, etc. But I would really like to know what's happening to people who graduate with those degrees right now, not what happened to people who graduated with those degrees 30 years ago, because it seems like these days there are an awful lot of young people graduating with a tremendous amount of debt and struggling a lot to find good jobs. Employers aren't placing the value on their credentials that they did a long time ago when it was much less common for a person to have a degree.

I love learning about interesting topics myself, completely see value in the arts, and could totally see studying all sorts of things at higher levels for personal enjoyment But young people are being sold a false bill of goods when it comes to college these days, and a lot of them are getting absolutely screwed over as a result.

Not sure, but all of the staff that DH has working under him have arts degrees, and they all make either high 5 figures or low 6 figures and are in their 20s or early 30s.

His unit does research on responsible business practices. He's also worked on research and policy in pandemic issues, terrorism, fisheries, employment policy, climate change, etc, etc, and has mostly worked with arts majors all along the way.

His BFF, who is about 35 is running a unit that is analyzing economic responses to covid, and he has a degree in theatre.

It's just small examples, but there are tons and tons of office type jobs that don't require a specific vocational degree.

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

I think what Zikoris said was very fair. Things have changed, and the updated studies should take that into consideration.

Have things really changed all that much?  I feel like an art history major from the '60s would probably have similar difficulties finding employment as one today.  That sort of degree is undertaken to learn about something for the sake of learning . . . not to build any skillset to help find employment.

Not really.

Any degree used to make you more employable and more promotable.

I also have and always will rail aggressively against the notion that arts degrees don't provide any skill for professional work.

University degrees in general confer research skills, most importantly the ability to evaluate the source of information. Arts degrees tend to be especially good for developing writing skills and abstract analysis.

Education in history and Anthropologie can make someone far, far more culturally aware, which can be critical in multinational business. Same with political science and policy.

A degree is psychology provides immense insight into human behaviour.

I'm not sure what magical set of employable skills an undergrad in most sciences provides that it's seen as somehow more valuable?

People who graduate with degrees that lead to specific jobs are actually the minority. There's an enormous population of professionals working in offices utilizing skills they learned in non vocational degrees.

To craft a career with a humanities degree certainly takes more than just having a degree, but that doesn't mean that those degrees don't impart valuable professional skills.

And I will say this over and over until I am blue in the face.

I did an arts degree and a law degree and the arts degree was a poor man's law degree. We studied similar things in both but the concepts were deeper in law and the marking was harder. Not because law is an inherently greater discipline but because the cohort was so much stronger. We did a fair amount of philosophy and politics and sociology in law and that mirrored my arts major, except the same essay that got a 70 in law would get an 85 in arts.

That only works here in Australia where arts and law are (sometimes) studied concurrently as undergrad degrees. I guess in the States where arts is undergrad and the JD is a graduate level degree there's not the same issue.

I've always been sceptical of the "liberal arts teaches critical thinking" thing. I think if you're a strong critical thinker then engineering, mathematics, science, law, medicine etc will also teach / employ critical thinking all the same. The most you could say is that liberal arts emphasises verbal skills ... in a similar way to how an LLB/JD requires high-level verbal skills.

I suppose humanities study might increase cultural awareness but in my view the easiest way to pick a candidate who's culturally aware is to pick a non-Anglo or someone from a poor background. That would always be my choice. Maybe it's technically discrimination but I couldn't care less.

[Metalcat]

I feel like there have been a number of major changes over the years, and I would be curious to see if any studies have taken these factors into account with regards to long term income outcomes.

1. Once upon a time, if you just got a degree, any degree, you were pretty much guaranteed a good job, which would lead to more good jobs and higher income over the course of your life. I don't think there's any question that this is no longer the case, so I think that for the data to be useful for a young person making decisions about their education, it would make a lot of sense to exclude the outcomes for people over, say, 40 or so, as their experience would basically have much less relevance to a young person today.

2. More breakdown by specific field of study. Income-wise, I think the highest-paid fields have taken off so much that they likely skew the overall income averages considerably. I would be curious what happens to the other people. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but while someone who studied engineering almost certainly will make more than someone who studied carpentry, how do the art history majors hold up against plumbers? I suspect that these days that for a person making the choice today between, say, earning a degree in theatre versus apprenticing as an electrician, the college route might give one much less of an edge in life than one would think.

I think what Zikoris said was very fair. Things have changed, and the updated studies should take that into consideration.

Have things really changed all that much?  I feel like an art history major from the '60s would probably have similar difficulties finding employment as one today.  That sort of degree is undertaken to learn about something for the sake of learning . . . not to build any skillset to help find employment.

Not really.

Any degree used to make you more employable and more promotable.

I also have and always will rail aggressively against the notion that arts degrees don't provide any skill for professional work.

University degrees in general confer research skills, most importantly the ability to evaluate the source of information. Arts degrees tend to be especially good for developing writing skills and abstract analysis.

Education in history and Anthropologie can make someone far, far more culturally aware, which can be critical in multinational business. Same with political science and policy.

A degree is psychology provides immense insight into human behaviour.

I'm not sure what magical set of employable skills an undergrad in most sciences provides that it's seen as somehow more valuable?

People who graduate with degrees that lead to specific jobs are actually the minority. There's an enormous population of professionals working in offices utilizing skills they learned in non vocational degrees.

To craft a career with a humanities degree certainly takes more than just having a degree, but that doesn't mean that those degrees don't impart valuable professional skills.

And I will say this over and over until I am blue in the face.

I did an arts degree and a law degree and the arts degree was a poor man's law degree. We studied similar things in both but the concepts were deeper in law and the marking was harder. Not because law is an inherently greater discipline but because the cohort was so much stronger. We did a fair amount of philosophy and politics and sociology in law and that mirrored my arts major, except the same essay that got a 70 in law would get an 85 in arts.

That only works here in Australia where arts and law are (sometimes) studied concurrently as undergrad degrees. I guess in the States where arts is undergrad and the JD is a graduate level degree there's not the same issue.

I've always been sceptical of the "liberal arts teaches critical thinking" thing. I think if you're a strong critical thinker then engineering, mathematics, science, law, medicine etc will also teach / employ critical thinking all the same. The most you could say is that liberal arts emphasises verbal skills ... in a similar way to how an LLB/JD requires high-level verbal skills.

I suppose humanities study might increase cultural awareness but in my view the easiest way to pick a candidate who's culturally aware is to pick a non-Anglo or someone from a poor background. That would always be my choice. Maybe it's technically discrimination but I couldn't care less.

Well, I didn't say that non arts degrees don't confer critical thinking skills. I was simply giving that as an example of a skill that arts degrees *do* confer when someone basically implied that they have no professional utility.

As for cultural awareness, I'm not sure how hiring someone non English speaking or poor ensures that that person has a broad cultural awareness. I mean, yes, it means they have awareness of their own non English speaking or non wealthy culture. Or are you somehow implying that those people know more about the cultural practices of the whole world for some reason???

I know that for me, having a broad education in world religions and cultural customs has been enormously helpful for me professionally.

People from non dominant cultures in a given area tend to be quite polite about the people around being clueless about their norms, but they tend to really, REALLY appreciate when someone gets them without them having to explain anything.

ETA: More than once, my having studied Islam has been solid networking gold for me.