I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees:

- People with more money live better lives, so let's just print/hand out money and everyone will live a better life!

- People with college degrees live better lives, so let's just push more people through college and everyone will live better lives!

In both cases, of course, completely missing the underlying reasons money/college degrees provide(d) better lives.

It's hard to believe that any single person in government truly thinks printing money will increase resources or that more easily handing out college degrees will automatically make everyone better off. So I don't fully understand how this happens, perhaps pandering to the electorate.

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satvikpendem 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a prime example of the tragedy of the commons and there's honestly not much that can be done because of how competition on the supply side of the labor market works; for employers, a degree is no longer a differentiator among candidates.

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JKCalhoun 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Consider the contraposition.

• Poor people live shorter, unhealthier lives.

• Without a college degree, your employment options are diminished.

It's fine to trash "handing out money" or "pushing more people through college" but then what is left is: there's nothing we can do for poor people.

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Aeolun 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Make money not a consideration in applying for college? Not by handing out whatever the universities are asking for of course, but by giving them a fixed $X per student.

	▲	drivingmenuts 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That might have worked if we had established that right after WWII, but it would never get off the ground now. The current system is too entrenched.

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anon291 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course there is. You can just hire them and train them. Most positions don't require college degrees. Everything you need to know for most jobs you learned in high school. At most you need a certificate program of some kind.

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venturecruelty 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The good news it that you don't need to hand out money or degrees. See, some people have an inordinate, obscene amount of money, and they would be able to lead full, happy, fulfilling lives if some of that money went to help people who have very little. Because if you're making $30,000 per year working at a gas station, and you lose that income, you're basically screwed. But if you make millions of dollars every year, you won't really miss a small portion of that. You'll be just fine.

So you just need to sort of move wealth around such that it is less egregiously unequal. Oh, and states can fund universities like they did a few decades ago. :) Win-win! Poorer people get to participate more freely in society, with more opportunities, and you don't have to print any extra money.

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AnimalMuppet 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The difference is that printing money creates more money, but doesn't create any more stuff. College degrees (theoretically) create more educated people. If you just "hand out" degrees, that doesn't happen, but if you actually teach people, then it does.

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linguae 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree with you.

The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck.

What happens when a large number of college graduates enter a tough hiring market while they have five- (or even six-) figure student loan balances? It’s one thing to work at McDonald’s debt-free with a high school diploma; it’s another thing to end up at McDonald’s with tens of thousands of dollars in debt with a bachelor’s degree.

Of course, there’s more to going to college than career prospects, and there’s also the reality that no one is owed a job. Still, given the amount of adults struggling with paying off their student loans, it’s no wonder more people are reevaluating the economic value of going to college.

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pixl97 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

All this states is expensive degrees aren't worth it, not paid for education.

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OGEnthusiast 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Told by who?

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anonymouskimmer 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My anecdote isn't quite the same, but it's along the lines of many adults, not just one's parents: While in high school I constantly got the message on how important it was to stay in school and graduate with a high school diploma. Ironically I passed up the chance to have an associate's degree before my 18th birthday, because I absorbed this message so well that I prioritized high school graduation over the A.S.. It was years later (round about the time I finally finished that A.S. at the age of 29) that I realized the message hadn't been meant for me, but for the students who were at risk of dropping out of high school.

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tolerance 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well for starters, perhaps the older homeowners who live in safe neighborhoods and provide for [young Americans] without living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Their parents.

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OGEnthusiast 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah that's unfortunate then, America has changed so much in the past 10-15 years that advice that was worth following for the previous generation is just totally useless for the current circumstances. I don't think the parents had bad intentions though, they were just overly-optimistic in assuming the prosperity they enjoyed would continue indefinitely.

	▲	tolerance 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> they were just overly-optimistic in assuming the prosperity they enjoyed would continue indefinitely. What worries me is how they came to believe this in spite of the last 10-15 years of change in the country…while possibly raising around 3 generations of high school graduates throughout.

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anon291 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Educated people are the way they are due to a particular personality that they have. They are curious and self driven. Many educated people have no formal education. You cannot teach a personality.

That's not to say other personalities are less worthwhile... It's just that we have emphasized one kind of personality as the ultimate one and then are surprised that -- after maxing out opportunities for those already suited towards that personality -- a saturation point is reached and future effort has marginal gains.

	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	anonymouskimmer 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What's wonderful about comprehensive universities is that there's a program that can excite the interest of almost every personality. And even if that wasn't the case, education in general actually speaks to a variety of personalities: The self-motivated learner, the self-improver, the intellectual explorer, the goal-oriented achiever, the rules-based structure seeker.

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echelon_musk 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I like to call this degree inflation.