Sunday, April 20, 2014

Why "Economics" is BS

As far as I'm concerned, most people can't think, even if they have high IQs, even if they have advanced degrees. Here's an example:

First, I am not arguing for or against the minimum wage. I know all the arguments pro and con. But the most ridiculous one, that is completely unhinged from reality, is that the minimum wage prevents the young from getting jobs so they can gain experience and knowledge and get a higher-paying job.

These days, that's a joke. Those jobs don't exist anymore. The idea of Jimmy Olsen, Cub Reporter, working his way up from the bottom, died a long time ago.

I've seen many people stuck at some fast food place, and that is as far as they are going to go. They don't "gain experience and knowledge" so they can get a better job. Those higher-paying jobs don't exist anymore. If these people think they are going to work their way up from flipping burgers to district manager, think again.

These days you have to get a college degree (most of which are worthless) or technical school (which isn't worthless) to get a good job. If you have a job as a security guard, exactly where are you going to go with it? Again, fast food worker? Janitor? Working in a nursing home?

My experience has been most jobs are not particularly skilled. I used to work for MBAs from Harvard and Yale. They were jokes. Their jobs were not "skilled." They belonged to the Old Boys' Club (and yes, it does exist). And if you don't belong to it, you're screwed. Either you're in with the In Crowd, or you're out and get little.

It's not what you know, it's who you know.

The median IQ in the U.S. is 100. That's means half the people in this country have IQs of 100 or less. They're not going to work their way up to anything.

And obviously, flooding the country with 85-to-89 IQ Third Worlders isn't going to help. They've going to stay at the bottom - forever.

My parents, who were high school dropouts (although they later got their GEDs) did just fine. He was a general contractor (he once told me, "I could not do today what I did then") and my mother worked as a night admitting clerk at the local ER. Today she'd have to be a nurse - these days, a four-year-degree, with a bunch of worthless classes such as algebra (I've seen women drop out of various programs because they could not pass classes they did not need).

I estimated my parents' IQs at 105 to 107. I shudder to think if I had been born today to parents without decent jobs, because court "economists" cheer exporting good jobs and importing criminal trash.

Now it's all degrees and certifications - you know, in lieu of all the "knowledge and experience" that's supposed to open all those "high-paying jobs" to you.

I used to walk my dog in a local park. Every morning there were the same 6-to-8 Hispanic kids sitting under a tree. They were 16 to 18 years old, and clearly dropouts. I thought, why not? What jobs await them with or without high school diplomas?

Nothing, that's what.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The economics of prosperity are simple - low taxes and enforced contract laws - its the economics of power that get us in trouble.

Anonymous said...

"The mean average IQ in the U.S. is 100. That's means half the people in this country have IQs of 100 or less. "

Greetings Bob. Thats incorrect. What you mean is "median".

If five people had an IQ of 20, 25, 50, 110 and 120 the mean average would be 65 but the median 50.

Regards!

CorkyAgain said...

Is the first paragraph really meant to say that everything following the colon is itself an example of the inability to think?

Because that seems to be its literal meaning, as it is currently written.

Glen Filthie said...

No, what Bob said is correct but is grammar is not. 'mean' and 'average' are the same thing.

And - I had heard the average American IQ was 105 but that is of little matter. The average black American IQ is about 95.

What we need is a good war. We have to cull some of these stupid people out.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Somewhat related, I've deposed old guys now developing mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure in factories in the 1950's and 1960's.

I don't feel too sorry for them. These are 80-yo men. They are long-lived for their age cohort. They have had 20+ years of defined-benefit retirements for showing up and doing the same task every workday. I really don't see how that could ever be sustainable. Hopefully someone can prove me wrong.

It may yet be possible for people to carve out good lives for themselves as wages equalize with the global mean, but only if government is scaled way, way back.