Houshphandzadeh wrote:

pacino wrote:the average death age of first responders is 48 years old. they're definitely all good.

ummmmmm

wait

it just happened nine years ago

how would you have an average death age?

I'm all for that bill passing, but that is absolutely the dumbest stat I've ever read. What's the average age of first responders? What's the average of first responders who die generally? Since they need to still be working, it's probably not much higher than 48

Wizlah wrote:Yeah, right. I wanna see that graph broken down by displine. My plumber earns more than me. I guarantee it.

I would too, but I would bet people with fine arts type degrees are being lumped in with the MBA's, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. I'm sure well degreed individuals in the arts, academia, etc are at the lowest end of the curve on degrees/salary - well, just above social workers (at least in the US).

Which may be part of smooth's point, though doesn't address the capital issue.

But on the other hand, I'd bet your plumber represents a small portion of primary school only workforce. To me the point of the graph is clear even if greater breakdown is preferred. Not everyone is suited for secondary education. Not everyone is suited for sales, or starting their own business/entrepreneurship. Those people, and there are a lot of them, are left with fewer and fewer options for "middle class" employment/ownership/etc.

VoxOrion wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Yeah, right. I wanna see that graph broken down by displine. My plumber earns more than me. I guarantee it.

I would too, but I would bet people with fine arts type degrees are being lumped in with the MBA's, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. I'm sure well degreed individuals in the arts, academia, etc are at the lowest end of the curve on degrees/salary - well, just above social workers (at least in the US).

Which may be part of smooth's point, though doesn't address the capital issue.

But on the other hand, I'd bet your plumber represents a small portion of primary school only workforce. To me the point of the graph is clear even if greater breakdown is preferred. Not everyone is suited for secondary education. Not everyone is suited for sales, or starting their own business/entrepreneurship. Those people, and there are a lot of them, are left with fewer and fewer options for "middle class" employment/ownership/etc.

The widening of the gap also reflects the movement of the "non-secondary" jobs overseas, which I suspect keeps the income level for those jobs down in the US.

Despite Wealth, Nassau County Is in Fiscal Crisis

Facing a huge budget deficit when he took office in January, Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano did not impose a hiring freeze. He did not stop borrowing to subsidize some of the richest school districts in the country. He did not eliminate the Police Department’s beloved mounted unit.

Instead, Mr. Mangano, a Republican who won one of the first upsets of the Tea Party era, did what he had promised: He cut taxes, adding $40 million to the county’s deficit, which has since reached nearly $350 million.

Now, with its bonds suddenly downgraded and a state oversight agency preparing to seize its checkbook and credit cards, Nassau is on the verge of a full-fledged fiscal crisis.

HAhaaaa

EDIT: This week, the situation grew more dire. Before heading to Disney World on Wednesday for a three-day golf outing and a fund-raiser, Mr. Mangano went to Albany, where he discovered what others said had been obvious: There would be no state assistance for Nassau now.

HAhaaaahaa

VoxOrion wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Yeah, right. I wanna see that graph broken down by displine. My plumber earns more than me. I guarantee it.

I would too, but I would bet people with fine arts type degrees are being lumped in with the MBA's, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. I'm sure well degreed individuals in the arts, academia, etc are at the lowest end of the curve on degrees/salary - well, just above social workers (at least in the US).

Which may be part of smooth's point, though doesn't address the capital issue.

Mostly I'm suggesting that if you drop hedge funders, etc out of the college+ categories, it has a greater effect on average reported incomes than dropping the really well-paid plumbers out of the primary-ed only category.

I'm not sure the occasional misfit (college dropout Gates, etc) would greatly offset the effect I've suggested.

cshort wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Yeah, right. I wanna see that graph broken down by displine. My plumber earns more than me. I guarantee it.

I would too, but I would bet people with fine arts type degrees are being lumped in with the MBA's, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. I'm sure well degreed individuals in the arts, academia, etc are at the lowest end of the curve on degrees/salary - well, just above social workers (at least in the US).

Which may be part of smooth's point, though doesn't address the capital issue.

But on the other hand, I'd bet your plumber represents a small portion of primary school only workforce. To me the point of the graph is clear even if greater breakdown is preferred. Not everyone is suited for secondary education. Not everyone is suited for sales, or starting their own business/entrepreneurship. Those people, and there are a lot of them, are left with fewer and fewer options for "middle class" employment/ownership/etc.

The widening of the gap also reflects the movement of the "non-secondary" jobs overseas, which I suspect keeps the income level for those jobs down in the US.

Don't forget information technology has wiped out entire categories of employment.

There's nothing unusual in that--new technologies always render certain categories of employment obsolete.

The "not everyone is cut out for college" bit I'm increasingly thinking is a bit of a canard though. What does it mean exactly? Since I'd say 90% of success in college involves nothing more than ordinary self-discipline which would be required for success in any field. Which is some sense is a logical reason why the degree is a reasonable think for employers to look for beyond the basic credential. In my experience, the students who have not done well at college are students I wouldn't trust to clean my pool (if I had a pool).

TenuredVulture wrote:

cshort wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Yeah, right. I wanna see that graph broken down by displine. My plumber earns more than me. I guarantee it.

I would too, but I would bet people with fine arts type degrees are being lumped in with the MBA's, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. I'm sure well degreed individuals in the arts, academia, etc are at the lowest end of the curve on degrees/salary - well, just above social workers (at least in the US).

Which may be part of smooth's point, though doesn't address the capital issue.

But on the other hand, I'd bet your plumber represents a small portion of primary school only workforce. To me the point of the graph is clear even if greater breakdown is preferred. Not everyone is suited for secondary education. Not everyone is suited for sales, or starting their own business/entrepreneurship. Those people, and there are a lot of them, are left with fewer and fewer options for "middle class" employment/ownership/etc.

The widening of the gap also reflects the movement of the "non-secondary" jobs overseas, which I suspect keeps the income level for those jobs down in the US.

Don't forget information technology has wiped out entire categories of employment.

There's nothing unusual in that--new technologies always render certain categories of employment obsolete.

The "not everyone is cut out for college" bit I'm increasingly thinking is a bit of a canard though. What does it mean exactly? Since I'd say 90% of success in college involves nothing more than ordinary self-discipline which would be required for success in any field. Which is some sense is a logical reason why the degree is a reasonable think for employers to look for beyond the basic credential. In my experience, the students who have not done well at college are students I wouldn't trust to clean my pool (if I had a pool).

On the other hand, plenty of people who've done very well at college have conspired to cause cataclysmic messes the consequences of which all of us have the displeasure of living with.

I doubt they were really "cut out for college", inasmuch as their reasons for being there were to make the connections and practice the habits that would gain them the opportunities to cause those cataclysmic meses, rather than, say, to absorb Pliny & Ovid.

I wouldn't trust them to clean my pool either.

I want to, and will, bore some of you to tears and piss off others of you by talking about education and the economy in a minute. But first, from the article doc linked to above...

Mr. Mangano is pleading for more time, publicly saying he was personally negotiating with the unions for significant savings. Privately, he has been lobbying state lawmakers to let him raise the county’s sales tax by a quarter of a percent, which would generate about $60 million. Getting the sales tax increase, union leaders said in interviews, was a precondition for them to make concessions.

Moody’s, the bond-rating agency, is not waiting. On Nov. 4, it downgraded the county’s debt, citing $158 million in risks and weakening liquidity, and warning that even Mr. Mangano’s contingency plans required contingency plans.

This week, the situation grew more dire. Before heading to Disney World on Wednesday for a three-day golf outing and a fund-raiser, Mr. Mangano went to Albany, where he discovered what others said had been obvious: There would be no state assistance for Nassau now.

The hint here? The sales tax, which is the most regressive one. Future historians are going to debate endlessly whether the 'baggers' true defining quality is their dickishness or idiocy.

The last graf here at least offers a laff through the wince.

VoxOrion wrote:More interesting graphs (posted by Rich Lowery *HISSSS* at National Review)

I think conservatives need to spend more time thinking about all of this, and what our solutions–if any–are to it.

So first of all, good on Lowry for what Vox quotes here. I think the "problem" is basically how to raise educational attainment so that even if the trend persists or sharpens further (and it will), it matters less in terms of equity, growth and international competition because more people are at the top couple lines. I don't know how you do this while hating on the public sector as that tribe constantly does, but I'd love to hear some ideas.

The thing itself: I've seen numbers on how people at different education levels contribute to/take from the public coffers, and the one I remember is that the difference over the course of an average working lifetime between not finishing high school and finishing high school is a swing of something like $327,000--from being a net "loss" of $140k or so to contributing about $190k. It goes up from there, to the point where college graduates are net contributors to public budgets above a million dollars. One way to think about this is that the stuff we edumacated types tend to "use"--roads, uniformed services, etc--are fairly inexpensive; the stuff the less educated tend to use--incarceration, homeless shelters, etc--are fairly costly.

The other point, obviously relevant these days, is the differentiation of unemployment rates by educational attainment. Here's the BLS page showing average jobless rates by schooling in 2009. As you rise in educational attainment, the employment-to-population ratio goes up and the unemployment rate goes down. This is a big deal even before you figure the "education premium" which Lowry via Vox features in the graph.

About Wiz and his plumber: at least in the US, you probably can't do that job without post-secondary education. Union apprenticeship slots--not the only way to become a plumber, but the best--are extremely competitive, and much more equitably awarded than was the case twenty years ago. You finish high school, you do well, and then your apprenticeship essentially substitutes for college education.

Which is the real takeaway. The goal shouldn't be to get everyone a four-year college degree, but in the post-industrial economy, with private-sector unionization all but dead and buried, the odds of reaching economic self-sufficiency without something beyond a high school degree are almost zero. Whether it's industry-recognized certification (and probably more than one), an AA, or that BA/BS, you need something. What we as a society must move toward is the idea that four-year college isn't for everybody, as a matter of ability and inclination, but post-secondary education most definitely is.

Houshphandzadeh wrote:because it's impossible to average in the survivors!

Not if you can see teh future!

He meant the average age of death of those to suffer the consequence of death after 9/11, with the exclusion of those who have perished during 9/11 or encountered a premature death non-related to the aftermath of 9/11.

The post-9/11 GZ responder death count as of Nov 2010 is 916. Most from respirtory conditions and blood cell cancers.

There's a big uptick in malignant mesothelioma (a rare form of cancer usually caused by asbestos exposure) and blood cell cancers in first responders and recovery workers. IIRC, the first 30-some floors of the WTC towers had asbestos fireproofing sprayed on the steel.

The first responder illness rate since 9/11 is around 70%

An April 2010 study of 5000 rescue workers, all the workers studied had impaired lung functions and 20% are on permanent respiratory disability.


IOW, these peeps got dealt a crappy hand.

Well there you go, that's a weird congruence right there. Positively non-euclidean, I'd say. It's not everyday that dajafi, me and vox all agree on something of an economic nature.

I'd be curious to know your thoughts on the german apprenticeship system(that article is a brief overview, but you'd want to do some more in depth reading than that), which gets a lot of chat over here these days, or indeed anytime people are fretting about too many students. Not to put it down. I think there's something too it. doubly so when I read that approximately 70% of germany's employment is provided by small to medium businesses,

But I'd also like to put forward a premise, with minimal founding in actual fact. First, a brief bit of context. At the start of blair's new labour government, they set great store by meritocracy, and a large amount of time and money was put into getting more people into college under Labour's time in power. There's boring cultural snobbish stuff hanging round there which was probably added impetus for this. It was surprising that it was whole-heartedly taken up, given the costs attached, especially compared to ireland where they passed an act for free third level education to anyone who successfully applied for a place back in the mid 90s. With all the fuss and bother recently about student tuition fees in England (in scotland, third level education is also free) a figure was mentioned saying that in the 10 years or so since 2000, the student population has quadrupled. How big it is as a ratio I cannot tell you off the top of my head, nor have I looked up figures that can compare it to elsewhere.

Nonetheless, it was a significant increase, and I suspect was matched to some degree in the Republic as well (not least, because times were grim in the 70s and early 80s, so irish people were having tons of babies. You know how it is).

I don't believe that college is a good fit for every kind of role in life, but in the UK, it has become the principle provider of third level education. So my proposition is this - are the figures quoted by vox skewed heavily in favour of college graduates because that's the only game in town? or is the mix of college education to other vocational training such in the US that I'm way off base? because if I saw those figures over here (and I'm sure I would), I'd say that if you have shit loads of college graduates, then suddenly a graduate degree is the first and easiest way of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Total off the top of my head bollix. like I said, there are no real numbers behind it, nor any evidence that employers would like it otherwise.

Suicide Bombing comes to Stockholm

Good thing, by and large, they completely suck at what they do

jerseyhoya wrote:Suicide Bombing comes to Stockholm

Good thing, by and large, they completely suck at what they do

Man, the swedish nazis gonna love this.

You know jerz, I grew up listening to about one death a week on the radio. Numbers ain't everything. One person down is a good enough result for any bomber. I realise you're just trying to lash in with the black humour and everything, but a dead person is a dead person.

Yeah I don't mean to minimize it, but apparently he had 6 pipe bombs and only one of them went off properly (according to someone on the Liverpool board where I read about this who might be full of shit). Just thinking it could have been a whole lot worse.

jerseyhoya wrote:Yeah I don't mean to minimize it, but apparently he had 6 pipe bombs and only one of them went off properly (according to someone on the Liverpool board where I read about this who might be full of $#@!). Just thinking it could have been a whole lot worse.

Ah rite, that's just me being a sanctimonious cunt, so.

I do get the impression that that stuff isn't hard to fuck up though. I know of someone who nearly shat themselves on a tube after the second round of tube bombings (which weren't very effective), because they were next to a guy with a rucksack bomb which didn't go off. apparently he just calmly started doing chin ups and waited for the police.

Well, I heard my first heartwarming story about someone benefiting from the proposed unemployment benefits extension. A neighbor was proud to declare that the additional extension, along with his under the table earnings, will allow he and his family to take a trip to Disney World. Why the fuck do I bother working.......

cshort wrote:Well, I heard my first heartwarming story about someone benefiting from the proposed unemployment benefits extension. A neighbor was proud to declare that the additional extension, along with his under the table earnings, will allow he and his family to take a trip to Disney World. Why the #$&! do I bother working.......

wait, wait, you're kidding - someone, somewhere might actually take unfair advantage of a program like this?

Short, don't you think maybe your gall is just a jot misplaced?

Maybe you should start by pillorying some of Mark Madoff's peers, who won't be juicing the economy with their extended tax breaks (which would pay for your entire neighborhood to go to disneyland) - they'll be sticking that dough in their ermine-lined socks.

dajafi wrote:The thing itself: I've seen numbers on how people at different education levels contribute to/take from the public coffers, and the one I remember is that the difference over the course of an average working lifetime between not finishing high school and finishing high school is a swing of something like $327,000--from being a net "loss" of $140k or so to contributing about $190k. It goes up from there, to the point where college graduates are net contributors to public budgets above a million dollars. One way to think about this is that the stuff we edumacated types tend to "use"--roads, uniformed services, etc--are fairly inexpensive; the stuff the less educated tend to use--incarceration, homeless shelters, etc--are fairly costly.

To a great extent, you could throw health care into your last sentence as well.

drsmooth wrote:

cshort wrote:Well, I heard my first heartwarming story about someone benefiting from the proposed unemployment benefits extension. A neighbor was proud to declare that the additional extension, along with his under the table earnings, will allow he and his family to take a trip to Disney World. Why the #$&! do I bother working.......

wait, wait, you're kidding - someone, somewhere might actually take unfair advantage of a program like this?

Short, don't you think maybe your gall is just a jot misplaced?

Maybe you should start by pillorying some of Mark Madoff's peers, who won't be juicing the economy with their extended tax breaks (which would pay for your entire neighborhood to go to disneyland) - they'll be sticking that dough in their ermine-lined socks.

This is an admirable impulse--to blame the real bad actors of the economy, and the political class that their largesse supports and writes rules and sets norms on behalf of, rather than those who imitate them at something like 1/10,000th of the scale. But we're so wired to blame p/a welfare cheats while actually lionizing bailed-out bastards that I can't really blame anyone for following along.

It's the same illogic that puts the onus of debt reduction not on the super-rich, who are paying less in taxes now than at any time in at least sixty years, but Social Security recipients:

Social Security was never the cause of the nation's debt problems. This issue dates all the way back to the Eighties, when Ronald Reagan hired Alan Greenspan to chair the National Commission on Social Security Reform, ostensibly to deal with a looming shortfall in the fund. Greenspan's solution was to hike Social Security tax rates (they went from 9.35% in 1981 to 15.3% in 1990) and build up a "surplus" that could be used to pay Baby Boomers their social security checks 30 years down the road.

They raised the SS taxes all right, but they didn't save the money for any old Baby Boomers in the 2000s. Instead, Reagan blew that money paying for eight years of deficit spending and tax cuts. Three presidents after him used the same trick. They used about $1.69 trillion in extra Social Security revenue (from the Greenspan hikes) to pay for current-day goodies, with the still-being-debated Bush tax cuts being a great example. This led to the infamous moment during Bush's presidency when Paul O'Neill announced that the Social Security Trust Fund had no assets.

Well, duh! That is what happens to a fund, when you spend 30 years robbing it to pay for tax cuts for Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein. It will tend to get empty. But of course this wasn't presented to the public as being the consequence of too many handouts to wealthy campaign contributors: this was presented as a problem of those needy goddamned old people wanting to retire too early and being just far too greedy when it came to actually wanting their Social Security benefits paid out.
...
Social Security taxes are capped, which means that above a certain level (I believe it's $106,000 this year) there are no additional taxes. Which means that Jamie Dimon pays a disproportionately small amount of Social Security tax -- an arrangement that makes sense, if that money is only going to one place, i.e. back, later on, to the person who paid the taxes, in the form of Social Security benefits.

But if all that money is just going into a big pile to be stolen by a long line of presidents who are using it to pay for things like pointless wars and income tax cuts for their rich buddies, the Social Security cap means that this stealth government revenue source disproportionately comes from middle class taxpayers. Add in the fact that the proposed solution to the budget problem now is cutting Social Security benefits, and what you get is a double-screwing of middle-class taxpayers: first they see their Social Security taxes used to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, and then they see cuts to their benefits to pay for the fallout from that robbery.

Yeah, I know: Social Security reforms wouldn't hit current recipients. Larger point still stands.

Edit: I moved this post here