Minimum Wage

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Yeah, I suppose we should probably stop going so far off topic. If it is desirable I don't mind deleting my last post. It is important though that we do see the minimum wage as more complex than most people claim. I suppose, I might actually put my vote in on this mess though soon.

I haven't voted yet either. Almost forgot about that lol

Ha! Yeah, I avoided doing so because I did not want people to know what I believed in until later into any discussion. I probably will delete my last post though.

I voted to abolish it. Asides from my 'moneyless' society tangent, we CAN do without it. If minimum wage is enough to make a living (which it should be in 'theory') then the cost of everything will just increase. People who dont make minimum wage will want more money, it'll cause a mess. Leave it or ditch it (leave it)

Clearly you don't:



The whole point of the example I gave you is that you would pick the person with the additional qualification. You'd be foolish not to. If you run my simple example on, the result will always be the same whether it's 1 vs 2, or 10 vs 11. All other things being equal, the best candidate as measured by their ability to accrue qualifications will always get the job. So, why educate them beyond what's strictly necessary? Why pour valuable resources into something that has no benefit?

I'm not saying all additional education is unnecessary, or that there's anything wrong with someone educating themselves for the hell of it (I do so myself), I'm just demonstrating that given limited resources there's a point (that varies from person to person) beyond which there's no value to society in directing public funds towards educating them further.


But this doesn't demonstrate how education makes people better at flipping burgers, does it? You're just talking about selection using GPAs. GPA's are measure of a persons ability to pass exams that correlates with stuff like IQ, normal cognitive processes, motivation etc. Good criteria to select a person by, but nothing else. It doesn't demonstrate that taking a course in differential calculus, for example, will make you better at flipping burgers, does it?


I see what you're saying, but I don't think it's a good idea to talk about a "full productive capacity". There's a large degree of subjectivity attached to attributing value to an individual's input. Just look at what film stars, and football players earn. Are they more valuable to society than someone who, for example, cares for handicapped kids? Someone with an IQ of 85 may be very capable of doing that task, btw. Would you consider that their input was below a useful "productive capacity"? But you are correct in that economically, according to the warped values of Western capitalism, someone who cares for others in this way is written off as a veritable non-person, and some vain arshole who prances around infront a camera is worshipped by every Sun-reading dolt in the country.

As for the vote at the top of the page, I haven't. My conscience tells me that everyone should be entitled to a decent living wage, but the realist in me tells me that within the current economic context it's not really tenable other than as some political cosmetic exercise.

Statements like these are totally uninformative.


The resources are already being made available, why not make use of it then? Besides, a big thing about education is that people don't really know what to do with it. Think that it has no direct benefit? It helps more than one would think. If I had taken a class in differential calculus (I have), at least I can read articles in newspapers that involve some knowledge of advanced math, and not be a total dolt about it. I can read critically for myself, because I have the knowledge to do so. There's more to knowledge than what is applied directly to the job. Education and knowledge helps me to think, and see what's above and beyond my little narrow job, or my little narrow life. They help me to see that things are a lot more complicated than they seem, and having this added perspective can actually help me with even the most mundane situations. Example below!


If differential calculus improves analytical skills, then I can analyze a situation like flipping burgers to do the job more efficiently. How do I maximize the number of burgers that I can put on the grill? How do I arrange ingredients to assemble the burger faster? Maxima/minima is one of the major uses of differential calculus, after all. Maybe not the actual use of differentials (though I probably could find it) is needed for burger production, but the formal concept of maximizing or minimizing something is based on calculus. It's one of the reasons economics is dependent on differential calculus. Interviewers don't always look for direct experience; they look for how the applicant can take his or her previous experience, and apply the new knowledge to a new situation. This is a sign of a strong applicant.


Yeah, "full productive capacity" is pretty subjective, but honestly there are some categories (e.g. the elderly) that I think do not rely so much on subjectivity. Biology puts limitations, and we have to respect that. When you are referring to value, I assume you are talking about economic value (salary), and not social value. Football players and movie stars are overpaid, certainly, but that is a separate issue. Someone with an IQ of 85 could be capable of doing the task, but as well as a person with an IQ of 100? It depends. This also tends to assume that people will only work the bare minimum required to do a job, and this is not always the case. If I am bucking for increased pay or a promotion, I'm certainly going to work more than the bare minimum!

Off topic!

Only when you don't notice the colon at the end of the statement that indicates that the next few paragraphs, that you've omitted in the quote, are related to it!



But who's making the resources available? Is it being financed out of taxation? If it is then the government should have some damn good explanations as to why it's being spent in the way it is. They need to show that the money is being utilised effectively and appropriately — and your ability to read the newspaper marginally more critically is not really evidence of the effectiveness, or appropriateness of education spending, especially as you appear perfectly capable of opening a book, or using the internet, in order to glean what's necessary, anyway.




Well, I'll give you a few marks for effort, at least! Clearly, though, you're clutching at straws with that one.

That last point is just your own opinion, and you're entitled to it.

But it is interesting about the prospect that government must rationalize the subsidizing of public education, whether it is money well spent. It is money well spent, but is it money best spent? If one wants to look completely at what is most efficient, then in the small picture, why allow anybody to be trained in any field in a public university other than their direct job? It would seem to suggest that anybody who wants to learn such a thing should totally pay for it himself. But if there are no jobs available in that field, what should that person do? Also, without learning breadth topics, people vote without understanding larger-scale issues. Then what is the economic cost of a popularly-elected and -influenced government making inefficient domestic and foreign policies?

I think it's important to point out that when one thinks that "once a waste, always a waste," the statement is false as far as education is concerned. Education is in essence an investment, and there's no saying when such investment will bear fruit. I took Spanish in high school, never used it so far in my years of working, thus it would look like a waste. But in 10 years time, if my employer sends me to Mexico or Argentina to talk shop with business partners there, then my taking Spanish is no longer a waste. The same could be said about any education, anything a person learns that is not directly related to the job the person does right now.

To boil down both arguments:

Having a higher standard of education:
pros - skills for future employment, increased awareness of larger-scale issues
cons - waste of taxpayer money

Educating to the minimum required for employment:
pros - increased efficiency for taxpayer dollar/productivity ratio
cons - workers unable to diversify into other areas as needed by market, lack of knowledge of larger-scale issues

The final thing I wanted to add, before I go off and educate myself further on protein interaction technologies -- I understand the thought that it should be sufficient to educate people to the extent they need to do their jobs. But it makes the system more vulnerable to the risk of undereducating. And there's a huge economic penalty for undereducating; people who are not qualified to do the jobs they are supposed to do are less productive than they should be. The market does not stay the same, on a regular basis, technological advances change the day-to-day work people have to do. Jobs even get phased out by advances such as automation. There is currently a nursing shortage in the United States. If I were trained as a nurse but not working as it, then go back to nursing as a profession, not only would my education not be a waste, but I would have saved economic productivity simply because I can fill the position right away. If education is always having to play catch up with industries, the years of lost productivity while waiting for people to be trained will have significant economic consequences. So if anything, one would want to have a little bit of overage, a little bit of overeducation to safeguard against and minimize the risk of serious consequences. And if the overage plays a safeguarding role, then is it really a waste? If I as a company am required, by safety standards, to sell automobile tires that can maintain 35 psi, am I going to have my quality control department set the requirement for tires going out of my manufacturing door at 35 psi, or something slightly higher? There will always be a statistical possibility that my tires will underperform, and this risk is higher if my QC standard is at 35 psi, compared to if my standard is instead 37 psi. And I have worked with QC departments and they never set their standards to be equal to expectation. Their standards are always slightly higher. Education is no different. It's always better to have a slight surplus in many things, than to have a deficit. Skillsets are no different.

Besides, how much is this waste that we are talking about, anyway? According to the US Department of Education, the Federal Government allocated ~2.9% of its $2.5 trillion budget ($71.5 billion) in 2005 on the Dept. of Education. (Source: http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html) This is compared to $401.7 billion for just the discretionary budget for the Dept. of Defense that same year. (Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy ... fense.html) Some of that money goes to "waste," and waste is of course not good, but nothing is 100% efficient. If the same percentage of money gets wasted (both administrative and the "waste" we've been talking about) for the DoE and the DoD, then more money got wasted at the DoD than at DoE. Even then, it's arguable that education waste, in the sense that we are talking about, can truly be called waste.

This point needs to be separated from the rest. I don't believe it's the role of the state to teach people with a view to influencing their vote. That gets very close to political indoctrination, the results of which can be seen right now across the UK, due to the strongly unionised, and hence leftwing, influence of the teaching profession. Yes, teach people to read and write, teach them how to enter into constructive debate: these are all valuable tools for a citizen in a democracy. But don't keep them on in education purely because you think they need to learn the state way of thinking. And if something is publicly funded it will always be the state way of thinking — with masses of information out there you have to be selective in what you teach, that selection will reflect the politics of the current government, and the organisation providing the teaching. An example of this is in how kids in the UK have been taught for years to hate everything British, and to worship every immigrant culture that lands on our shores. Did you know, you can't even display our national flag over here without running the risk of being labeled racist? But I digress...

Of course, in most situations you just have to accept a level of indoctrination is going to occur, and you have to accept that because you have to educate people. But once people can read and write, it's up to them to make themselves aware of what's happening in the world. And to be honest, even if you could educate people further to help them make a decision come election time, what's the point? The people who decide at an election are those of average intelligence who make up the majority of the population. They are incapable of processing the volume and detail of data required to make an informed decision. That's democracy's Achilles heel, unfortunately.


I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that for most people it benefits both the individual, and society, to educate a person to a point where they can do a job of their choosing, that they are realistically capable of performing. I also believe that society can benefit in other ways, too, from the education of individuals. For example society benefits from research in many areas of science, and that is not necessarily economically driven. Also, in the arts many contribute perhaps to literature, or music, for example. But those people are exceptional individuals — the very smartest people in our society. I would argue that they should be given free education. Why waste money teaching someone to learn the basics of a third language that they'll never use, when you could be funding some genius to undertake research in a specialist area of medicine, for example?

You see, if you have finite resources, you need to use them carefully. Tax revenue that's channelled into education is a finite resource.


No it doesn't. If you have finite resources, you have to plan where you are going to use them. If you plan carefully, and keep some flexibility, that shouldn't be a problem.

One has to know the ins and outs of the system or current dogma/line of thinking in a field, so that he or she knows what to buck, and the best way to go about doing it. So it kinda works both ways. This is what graduate school does, actually.



I do agree with that weakness of democracy. A strong democracy needs a populace that is not abjectly ignorant. However, I'm not so sure that it really should be up to them to make themselves as teenagers aware, beyond a bare literacy and math skill level. It's like teaching a young child, or like explaining to an Aspie a perspective that he or she is simply unaware of. A child, left to his own devices, will not learn anything. A teenager with only bare minimum literacy and math skills is not going to be made aware of things on his own accord easily at all. I had quite a few high school students whom I had to tutor, telling me, "why should I bother learning algebra? I'm never going to use it." This is even though some of the most basic, but critical tasks, like balancing a checkbook, or planning out saving money for a vacation or for retirement, and a lot of different stuff depend on algebra. The only way that a teenager is going to realize that he or she needs algebra, is when the teenager runs into problems with money management. But in that case, the teenager is going to think that there is no way of solving the problem, because the teenager has no clue that a solution exists. Why should he think to even ask somebody for the solution, if he thinks there is no solution for that person to tell him? Thus I think it's important that schools require basic knowledge of language (English in the US and the UK), algebra, world and local history/social studies (because no work occurs in a vacuum, even burger flippers should be made aware of past E. coli outbreaks from undercooked beef, let alone mad cow), and health, and not just reading and writing. There should be references to quantitative reasoning subjects (natural and physical sciences) in the math class, in the form of story problems at a minimum. Then at least a student would be aware that if he or she wanted, they could pursue more math and science. At least make the person aware of the very basic stuff, because honestly people don't bother to become aware of things if they think there is nothing to be aware of at the start. Beyond the minimum high school requirements, course selection could be pretty much up to the student's own interests, and in many American high schools (mine included), that's exactly what the administrators require from high school students just to graduate with a high school diploma. I don't know what the UK requirements for high school graduation are. I think it's up to the universities to decide what should be minimum entrance requirements for their own institutions. Then offer those requirements in high school also. By setting up high school requirements that way, the student would at least be made aware that, "oh hey, quantitative reasoning actually exists!!" Otherwise if they aren't even aware of its existence, it could even be staring at them in the face and they wouldn't know what they were looking at. What I'm trying to focus on here is the distinction between not doing something because a student knows about it and dislikes that option, and not doing something because a student is unaware that it is an option at all.


In the United States, it is already done this way. Universities are very reluctant to take on students who would be pursuing second bachelor's degrees, and people can obtain fellowships to pay for postdoctoral or graduate studies in advanced areas. I myself have taken many classes after my bachelor's degree, and they were classes that I had to pay for myself. But the point was that if a class has a size limit of 24, and there are 2 spots open anyway, I can just pay for the tuition and take the class and enrich myself, and not only would I become even more knowledgeable about the world around me, but I also have another thing to put on my CV. The educational service is being offered anyway, I pay for the service through taxes and tuition, I take a spot that is available, it does not interfere with my full-time job, then I can just do it and it helps me. The additional economic burden of my taking the class, as opposed to just 22 people taking it, is going to be minimal.

About literature and music, those have economic impacts, too. It's much harder to quantify the economic impact of boosting worker morale through entertainment, but it's definitely there.

The government has the ability to fund science and place certain limitations on the economy, in order to steer scientific development, and society as a whole in a certain direction. It may not be economically advantageous to switch from fossil fuel-based automobiles to electric cars, but government can foster the technological advancement by funding researchers in advanced science (the National Institute of Health is a major player in grant management here in the United States), and by the use of legislation and setting of emissions standards, etc., to control industry. Without such government intervention, it's highly doubtful that things without an economic benefit would get developed. Is there anything that got developed that did not have an economic benefit, and did not involve intervention from the government?


I agree with that.


What type of planning and flexibility do you have in mind, and what is the economic cost of doing it?

No; not in a balanced way. Indoctrination is often subtle, and somewhat insidious. It is designed to be effective. If you expose people to it the majority will buy it, to an extent. Arguing that you force a good proportion of the population through a system of that nature just so that a few more resilient types can benefit from the experience doesn't make any sense at all. Why not just refrain from needlessly exposing people to it in the first place? And I best qualify that to prevent this dragging on any more than necessary: I'm saying that in the context you suggested of educating people with regard to how effectively they vote.



And a relatively basic education will ensure they are not. To all intents and purposes the population of a democracy always will be ignorant, anyway. The majority aren't smart enough to be able to consider the real issues in any depth, and even the smart ones are never going to have the time to consider the huge volume of information pertaining to a specific issue. Democracies rely on politicians to make these important decisions, and the politicians on the advice of specialist government employees. Politicians have to sell a dumbed-down version of reality to the electorate into which they weave enough disingenuity to maximise their chances of re-election. As long as you ensure the population is sufficiently educated to use books or the internet to get their information, and as long as information is freely available, then that's as much as you need to do. The ones who want to find out more about an issue will, the ones who don't won't. What's wrong with that? There's only so much the electorate can contribute, and that can be summed up in that if the government screw up, they get to boot them out at the next election.



I was talking generally. I'm not in a position to plan education policy for Uncle Sam.