Category Archives: Eat the Young

Why Are Children So Expensive?

I wrote this a few months back, but never got around to posting it. Scott’s post on wage stagnation reminded me to post it, because I discuss some of the same things here, while he ignored what I think is the most obvious cause of wage stagnation.

Someone posted on twitter, asking why kids became expensive. I answered mostly about the spiritual reasons: the unwillingness to sacrifice. And that’s true; kids are affordable, IF you’re willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

However, as Nick B Steves has said, ordinary virtue should not require heroic effort. You can have many kids if you’re willing to make extraordinary effort to do so, but any sane and healthy society should make it relatively easy to have many kids, ours does not. So,I’m going to show why kids are so expensive.

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Wages

The first reason is wages. Inflation-wise wages have been stagnant since about the 70s. Despite massive increases in productivity, people are not making more real money.

Wages are determined by where the demand for labour and the supply of labour meet: how many jobs are there and how many people need jobs. This is elementary economics, but I’m going to make it clear here, because when it comes to discussing labour supply and demand, I notice people tend to make self-serving analyses as if basic economic principles change when it comes to labour, so I want to make it clear:

The more jobs that need to be filled, the higher the demand for labour, so this pushes wages up. If the jobs to be filled decreases, demand for labour decreases, which pushes wages down. If the size of the labour force increases, labour supply increases, which pushes wages down. If the size of the labour force decreases, labour supply decreases, pushing wages up.

Over the past 60 years or so, there have been multiple major trends both increasing the labour supply and decreasing labour demand.

The biggest trend is feminism. Feminism pushed women into the workforce which (more or less) doubled the labour force over a period a few decades. This pushed wages down hard.

The second major trend is immigration. Since the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, opening immigration up, 59 million immigrants (as of 2015) have arrived in the US. The US population in 1965 was 194 million, in 2015, it was 321 million, for a total growth of 127 million. 46% of US population growth since 1965 has been from immigration.

That is a unnaturally massive growth in the labour supply, which has had a massive downward pressure on wages.

I will note here, that keeping wages low has been a near explicit part of the arguments for immigration. “Labour shortage” is synonymous with “wage shortage”; when employers argue that there are not enough workers, what is really being said, is they are not paying enough to attract workers. “Jobs Americans won’t do” is synonymous with “Jobs Americans won’t do unless paid more than currently offered”.

To make matters worse, the 1965 INA opened up immigration from third world countries, where wages were already naturally low. So labourers being imported into America would be willing to work for much below what an American would accept as reasonable, increasing the downward pressure on wages.

While these two trends where increasing labour supply, other trends were decreasing labour demand. Particularly off-shoring and mechanization.

Off-shoring moved industry from high-wage America to low-wage third-world countries, while mechanization has replaced human workers with machines. Both of these have had large depressive effects on labour demand, and therefore wages, particularly in non-service, low-skill occupations, which are the easiest jobs to both automate and move.

You can’t afford children, because you’re not getting paid decent wages because capital has systematically forced you into competition with poor third-world labour, imported labour, and your wife over jobs, forcing wages down.

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Housing Costs

Housing costs are the single biggest expense (rivaled only by taxes) to your average person, and housing costs have exploded.

In 1960, the median house price was $58,000 (in 2000$). In 2000, the median house price was $119,600. In 2015, the median house price was $294,200 (in 2015$), which comes to $213,700 in 2000$.

In 55 years, housing prices have almost quadrupled, while wages have stagnated.

One of the major reasons is the increase in housing size. Since 1975, housing size has doubled. But that does not explain a quadrupling in housing costs. It would at best explain a doubling, but should be less than doubling because new marginal square footage should theoretically be cheaper due to the fixed costs in a home.

Another major drivers of house pricing includes increased demand from the fracturing of the family. In an intact nuclear family, two parents and their children share 1 house (possibly with a grandparent or two). In a divorced family, two parents and their children share 2 houses. An unmarried man and an unmarried woman have 2 houses (roommates amerloriate this to an extent). A single mother with children and her baby daddy have 2 houses. Etc. Throw on top of this the shift from multi-generational homes, and the fracturing of the family and the turn away from marraige has had a large, but, AFAIK, unmeasured effect on home prices (this would make a good study proposal for any economists out there).

Another major driver is immigration. 59 million people needing housing is a huge upward driver of housing demand and therefore housing prices.

A third major driver is schooling and safety. “Good schools” is a major driver of house prices and “safe neighbourhoods” because most parents, understandably, want their kids to get a good education and to be able to live without worry they’ll won’t become involved with or victims of drugs, gangs, and crime. Everybody is also aware that “good schools” and “safe neighbourhoods” are politically-correct codes words for schools and neighbourhoods without poor minorities who statistically make schools bad and neighbourhoods unsafe.

Because federal laws make discrimination in housing on any basis but price illegal, the only way to keep schools good and neighbourhoods safe is to discriminate on price. This puts a huge upward pressure on price, as people move to high price neighbourhoods to escape poor minorities (who may then follow them, because they too want good schools and safe neighbourhoods, forcing the process to repeat, escalating prices even higher).

Because of this, safe, affordable housing is functionally illegal in American cities and prices ever increase.

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Two Income Trap and Child Care

The increased upward pressure on housing prices has the side effect of forcing more families into the two income trap, so they can afford a good house.

This has a variety of effects that increase costs, making children expensive.

Child care is the largest of these. As I’ve explained before, affordable child care is impossible, so child care will immediately eat up a significant portion the second income. Child care by itself, is a major factor of why children are so expensive.

A second income usually requires a second vehicle (more on this below), another major fixed expense. A stay-at-home parent has time to cook home made meals, mends clothes, and participate in other cost-saving activities; a dual income household will eat out more often, purchase more expensive pre-made food, have to replace clothes, etc.

The two income trap imposes a number of large extra costs on families and removes many cost-savings that an at-home parent allows.

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Taxes

I was going to write about the increasing tax burden here, but I couldn’t find much much data on the overall US tax burden; most of it was just federal tax rates, and calculating overall tax burden for the average middle class person over time is much more effort than I’m willing to put in to a blog post.

But according to this 2012 NYT article, the overall tax burden has been declining somewhat, except for low-income people, who continue to pay minimal taxes.

So we’ll say increasing taxes probably aren’t particularly responsible for kids costing too much.

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Vehicles

Among average people, vehicles are second largest major fixed expense after housing, and they have generally gotten more expensive over time, primarily as more families have moved to being two car households and gas has gotten more expensive.

This site compared a few classic cars and all have increased by half to almost doubling since 1965 (inflation-adjusted). But these are classics and so might no be applicable.

According to Wiki, the Chevrolet Impalla was the best-selling full-size car in 1965 and is still the best-selling today, so we’ll use this and assume other similar cars are competitively priced. In 1965, a 4-door V-8 sedan Impala was 2,779, which comes to $20,910.17 in 2015$. The base price of a new Impala in 2015 was $27,700. An increase of about a third.

But large families need more than five seats. The 1965 Impala 9-passenger station wagon was $3,073, $23,122.33 in 2015$, the 6-passenger was $22,347.32. You generally can’t buy station wagons today, because US regulations classified them as cars, making them uneconomic to produce under US fuel standards, which was a major regulatory backfire for environmentalists, as families switched to minivans and SUVs, which were much worse on fuel. The best-selling SUV in 2015 was the Ford Escape, which started at $24,000, but only can seat 5 passenger. The best-selling minivan, is the Dodge Grand Caravan, it seats 7 passengers, and started at $22,000. The Chevy Express was the cheapest 9+-passenger I found on a site, and it starts at $29,000 for the cargo version, so probably just a bit more for a passenger vehicle.

So, it looks like 3-4 child family vehicles are significantly more expensive to buy, as are larger 8+ child family vehicles, but, contrary to my expectations, the large 5-7 child families are about the same.

Except that the SUV’s and vans cost a lot more in fuel and as mentioned above, 2-income families now almost always need 2 vehicles.

Gasoline costs have increased: with the exception of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises (when prices hit $3/gallon, post-WW2 gas prices generally stayed between $1.50-$2/gallon (in 2015$). Since 2000, gas prices have ranged between $2.50-$3.80 per gallon. Since 2006, gas prices have generally been higher than the $3/gallon they were at the peak of the oil crises. During this time gasoline usage has also been increasing, likely largely due to increasing suburbanization.

Another hidden cost: older vehicles were generally easier to repair and maintain at home, but the increased inclusion of electronics in vehicles, makes it increasingly difficult to repair without very expensive specialized electronic equipment, necessitating an increasing reliance on professionals for maintenance and repair, adding significant cost.

So, the need for two vehicles due to the two income trap has increased the cost of vehicles significantly for your average family, while vehicles themselves have become moderately more expensive. The cost of gasoline has increased significantly while consumption has increased.

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Food

Food is generally the fourth biggest cost to families after housing, taxes, and vehicles. The average American spends less on food, as a percentage of income, then they used to. Hoever, good expenditures have stopped declining and been flat over the last 15-20 years.

However, this is deceptive, if you look at average household size since 1960, it mirrors average household size relatively closely. The levelling off of food costs as income share matches the levelling off of household size. This suggests food costs have been mostly constant per person, but less kids means less spending on food.

In a time of major productivity gains and stagnant wages, food costs have not really shrunk.

A major cause of this is the increase in eating out. It costs more to eat pre-made food than it does to make your own food. The average American now spends about 43% of their food budget on eating out. As well, when eating in, they are more likely to buy expensive pre-made meals than making their own. All this increases food bills.

The primary cause of this increase in eating out and in eating pre-made foods, is the two-income trap. When one parent was at home, they had sufficient time and energy to create homemade food, saving money. When both parents work, food preparation time becomes a luxury often foregone due to a lack of time and motivation.

In addition, to eating out costing more, eating out itself has increased in cost.

In economics, there’s an informal purchasing power parity index known as the Big Mac Index, that can roughly how close inflation rates measure actualy close consumer price data.

In 1968, when it first came out, a Big Mac cost $0.49, $3.34 in 2015$. In 1986, the first year of the Big Mac Index, it cost $1.60, $3.46 in 2015$. In 2000, $2.51, or $3.45 in 2015$. In 2015, the most recent year the BMI measured, it cost $4.79.

The cost of a Big Mac stayed relatively even until sometime after 2000. Since then there has been a ~40% increase in the cost of a Big Mac beyond inflation. My anecdotal experience in Canada and basic market competitiveness theory, suggests that this growth is probably true across eating out on average.

So eating out, which is 40% of your food bill, is now 40% more expensive than it used to be.

I’ll also note here, that the rapid growth of Big Mac costs past inflation, suggests that inflation has been severely underestimated, in which case, everything I’ve posted is much worse than the numbers suggest. I’ve always been skeptical of CPI, but a 40% extra increase over 15 years in something as basic and omnipresent as a Big Mac heightens my doubts.

Food costs haven’t really increased, but they haven’t particularly decreased either.

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Education

Saving for college is a major expense for many middle-class families. Lots of ink has already been spilled over this, so I’m not going to repeat much. College has been increasing in price much faster than wages. 8 times as much according to this article.

A lot of young people start off with a lot of college debt. The average student loan borrower has $37k in debt upon graduation. That’s a lot of money, the equivalent of a down payment on a house. Instead of buying a house and accumulating capital, they’re paying off usury.

And they’re not really getting anything of increased value for this debt. The money is being burned in cost disease and their job prospects are worse than those of college grads decades ago.

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Consumer Debt

Now, one of the major destroyers of people is usury. The average millennial has $42,000 in debt, the plurality of which is credit card debt. The average American is $33,000 in debt. I’ve already written about usury (and inflation) before, but debt and debt payments are major

Usury takes advantage of the average person who is not mentally equipped to fully understand the implications of debt and compounding interest. It shackles them in debt bondage. The average American spends $280k over their lifetime just on interest. The average person with credit card debt pays $1.1k in interest each year.

Household debt has increase from 31% of income in 1951 to about 100% now (it was up to 120% during the housing boom). All this debt means increased interest payments to banks.

Usury is strangling the average household, particularly the young.

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Communication Technology

This is a simple one, but the average American user spends $47/month on mobile phones and $132 on cable and internet. That’s almost ~$180/month. When I was growing up, cable was rare and internet and mobiles practically non-existent. And this is just monthly bills, not including the purchase of HD TV’s mobile phones, and computers. This is a huge added expense most families take on.

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Personal Choice

Finally, personal choice is why you can’t afford children. This is what my tweets harped on. People can’t afford children, because they are unwilling to sacrifice for them.

People eat out instead of making meals at home (driven by the two-income trap). People buy larger houses than they should (driven by “safe schools” and the two-income trap). People by two cars (driven by the two-income trap) and new cars. People go into consumer debt. People take useless degrees. People buy luxuries.

There are major structural issues making children expensive, which I’ve outlined above, but on the individual level, you can probably afford children if you are willing to sacrifice. People have been raised and become accustomed to luxuries they can’t afford (hence the massive amount of consumer debt most have). This may be due to structural issues, but on an individual level you can probably afford kids if you sacrifice.

Don’t go into debt for a useless degree; take trades or get a useful degree. If one of the parents stays home and engages in traditional money-saving practices (such as home-cooking and coupon-clipping), the family can avoid buying a second vehicle and paying child care costs. This will require buying a smaller house, children may have to share rooms and you may have minimal private space. Luxuries in entertainment and food may need be cut back. Cable cut. Home internet forgone for mobile only, or vice versa. It may require moving to a lower cost county or state.

Your grandparents raised 6 kids in a small 3-bedroom house with no TV, 1 car, minimal entertainment or luxuries, home-cooked meals, and penny-pinching. You can too if you will it enough and are willing to sacrifice for it.

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The reason you can’t afford children is because wages stagnated while costs increased across the board.

Wages have been destroyed by a rapidly expanding labour pool due to immigration and feminism. At the same time, housing costs skyrocketed due to the two-income trap, a quest for safe schools and neighbourhoods, rapidly and artificially expanding population, and family breakdown. The two-income trap necessitated two vehicles, which along with gas greatly increased transportation costs.

Education has trapped the young in debt, while general usury eats people alive and prevents them from accumulating capital.

Finally, you’ve been raised to be accommodated to a lifestyle and luxuries you can’t afford and which you finance with debt.

On a personal level, you can overcome this and have children by making major sacrifices. On a societal level, it is insane and unhealthy to require the average person to make inordinate sacrifices just to be able to afford children. Any decent and sane society will do what it can to make raising a family comfortably affordable to most people.

Our society has been designed to destroy your ability to have children without either being rich or taking on massive usurious debt and making inordinate sacrifices.

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Post-Script: I am not blaming immigrants for immigration, minorities for integration, or women for feminism. All of these are structural issues basically forced upon an unwilling populace by government and capital. Immigrants, minorities, and women followed, as would be expected, the incentives given them, and I generally don’t fault people for following incentives unless it’s a heinous evil, which none of the individual actions taken under this incentive structure would be. In fact, minorities and women probably suffered the most under this regime. Immigrants generally benefited, but being foreigners had minimal hand in the original changes in the 1960s.

The ones at fault are government and capital who imposed a destructive economic incentive structure upon society so they could destroy wages and increase consumption to feed their greed and lust for power. They are the ones who caused this and the ones responsible for why you can’t afford children.

Make sure you aim the blame properly.

The Young Man’s Dire Problem

Scott Alexander examines technological unemployment, concluding that there it is unlikely there is technological unemployment.

He notes that the number of prime age male labor force non-participators (PAMLFNPers) is increasing. He looks at this graph, and states it is not discouraged workers who are not in the labour force:

Concluding this section Scott states:

Second, Winship’s optimistic take on PAMLFPR is hard to easily refute. PAMLFNPers pretty clearly say they’re not looking for jobs, and they’re just perfectly innocuous students, retirees, etc. We have trouble believing them, especially based on their demographics. But it’s very hard to look at the increase and see a place where unemployment issues could have slipped in.

Third, PAMLFPR has been getting worse gradually since about 1960, with no sign of any recent worsening. It is hard to explain why technological unemployment would have started around that time – at least if we limit our explanations to the nature of technology alone. And it doesn’t seem to match the more sudden decline in manufacturing around 2000.

Following this section, he then goes into a section how automation seems to be driving people from middle-skill jobs to lower-skill jobs.

What Scott sees but doesn’t notice the ramifications of, is that the increase in PAMLFPR is a long-term trend as is automation.

Being a discouraged worker requires having looked for a job at some point. But if the long-term trend is there are no jobs, a young man will give up before he starts. He might want a job in some vague sense, the same way you might want a million dollars or a Ferrari, but he knows it’s not going to happen, so he doesn’t try in the first place.

This is where the PAMLFPR’s come from.

Scott asked why technological unemployment started around 1960, but if we compare the manufacturing employment  it begins to decline about 1950 or so (ignoring the WW2 bump). It leads the increase in PAMLFPR’s by about 10 years, which is more or less what you’d expect, given that young men take some time to adapt to new market conditions. (Scott points out: “87% [of manufacturing unemployment] is due to increasing productivity/automation”).


As you can see, with a bit of an expected lead time, manufacturing employment and the increase in PAMLFPR’s (ie. decrease in employed PAM’s) are pretty heavily correlated. Manufacturing employment as a percentage of employment declined from 30% to 10%, while PAM employment declined from about 97% to 88%. A 20-point decline in manufacturing employment is met by a 9-point decline in PAM employment.

This is what you’d expect from technological unemployment, given that many men will find lesser jobs elsewhere, instead of dropping out entirely.

In this long-term trend, many are going to drop out preemptively. They won’t be discouraged, because they never would have been “encouraged” in the first place. Technological employment won’t show up on these charts, because it is long-term, generational, and permanent, while these charts examine “normal” economic processes.

Scott also asks, “Why didn’t previous eras of improving automation result in job loss?” Economists say that past technological advancements increasing productivity had not historically reduced employment. So why is it doing so now?

The answer is simple. Previous technological advances required humans to make them. Agriculture advances: fewer farmers, but farmers become buggy makers. Ford makes the Model T: fewer buggies, but buggy makers becomes car assemblers. Robots are invented: fewer car assemblers, but car assemblers become machine assemblers. But at this stage the pattern changes. Machines start assembling other machines.

Machines assembling machines is a fundamental change in the way the economy works. Other technological advances required human workers to implement them and build the new technologies, but when robots make robots, there is minimal need for humans, the robots are replacing them permanently.

Of course, this is not happening all at once, and that’s why the charts are a decline not straight drop, but this technological shift is fundamentally different and is permanent (barring industrial collapse). What happened in previous eras is irrelevant.

There are other related reasons of “why now?”: prosperity, entertainment, and the decline in marriage and fertility.

We are prosperous enough that practically everybody has their basic needs met. Unless you are mentally ill, a drunkard, or a druggy, you’re almost guaranteed a roof over your head. Our poor people are fat, so no one’s going without food. Entertainment is cheap: for $100 you can get internet, Netflix, and a video game or two each month. In the past a young man had to work or starve; now, with a few roomies, or an indulgent parent or girlfriend, a young man can live very comfortably with nothing more than a  small disability cheque and/or the occasional side hustle.

One former discouragement of being unemployed is the boredom of having nothing to do. Now, one $60 video game can provide hundreds of hours of entertainment, $7 gets you Netflix, and $50 internet access provides unlimited entertainment if you don’t mind pirating.

inally, and probably most importantly, men work primarily to take care of their families. It doesn’t take much for a man to provide a comfortable life for himself: a cheap, shared apartment or mother’s basement, tendies and ramen, and an Xbox. That doesn’t cost very much. Men only really need real money if they’re taking care of their family. With the average age of marriage being 30+, declining marriage rates (25% of millenials won’t marry, period), and declining fertility, a significant portion of young men will never have to shoulder family responsibility, and those that do won’t until much later in life. If he’s not supporting a family, he doesn’t really need to be employed.

So, let’s take a look at a low-skilled 22-year-old male looking at his future, here’s what he faces:  medium-status jobs are an impossibility, his dad’s job at Ford will replaced by a machine when he’s forcibly retired at 55 and the job is never coming back. He’ll probably never get married; if he gets your girlfriend pregnant, odds are they’ll break-up anyway and she’ll be supported by the welfare state. He could get a job at McDonald’s but half his pay will go to child support, so it doesn’t really seem worth it. If his parents let him stay in their basement and feeds him,  the occasional under-the-table job, a small disability cheque, and a few bucks from Patreon for a game review blog or a few Fiverr jobs get you an Xbox and enough games. If they kick him out, he lives at his buddies for some cheap under-the-table rent and maybe he gets the job at McDonald’s or maybe he just does a bit more under-the-table work or starts selling weed. If his buddy kicks him out and things get too bad, he shoots himself, adding to the ever-rising white male suicide rate.

Is this 22-year-old unemployed? No. Is he a discouraged worker? No. Will he ever be a productive member of society? Probably not. Is he suffering? Maybe existentially, but not materially.

If he technologically unemployed? By any reasonable analysis he is. If his father’s job wasn’t going to be replaced by a machine, he’d probably work for Ford, be productive, and get married, but he doesn’t have that option. So, he doesn’t work, but he never shows up in any conventional economic analysis, because he has never worked and never plans to work. People dismiss technological unemployment because they didn’t measure him, but still economists wonder, where did he go?

This is the first stage of the Dire Problem. Technological unemployment is invisible, because none of the standard measures measure it and nobody important (except, maybe, Donald Trump) cares about young working-class men, but it is here nonetheless.

Crippling the Priesthood

Here is another, long term strategy for the Trumpenkrieg.

The right has two main enemies: the press and academia, together with the bureaucracy they form what we call the Cathedral. Academia creates liberal doctrine and indoctrinates the young into it. The press promulgates doctrine. The bureaucracy implements it. The bureaucracy, while a problem, follows the lead of the press and the academy.

The press is immolating itself. It is being outflanked by non-traditional media enabled by modern technologies and is squandering what’s left of its legitimacy rapidly. We should help it along its course, but its self-destruction is nigh inevitable. The main question is rebuilding something favourable to western civilization in its place.

On the other hand the academy is going strong and continually grows stronger. It’s primary strength is that a diploma is necessary for a “good” job. The destruction of the traditional economy is leaving many in a situation of Yale or jail. For ever-more Americans the choice is increasingly either college or destitution. So most young Americans choose to load themselves in debt for their anti-poverty paper.

I’ve stated before, we should end federal student loans, and I stand by that, but that is a minor measure that still leaves the system intact. Another measure to strike against the university is to end disparate impact. Sailer has been writing about how disparate impact prevents direct meritocratic hiring, forcing employers to rely on indirect signals, such as a degree, for years now. Ending disparate impact would alleviate some of the economic necessity of a college degree.

But, I’m going to present a strategy even more direct. One that would almost immediately cripple the academy’s stranglehold over meritocratic signalling. I will say beforehand, that this would require significant resources and extensive coordination. Ideally, this could function as a start-up if someone had enough access to VC and could get buy-in from at least one industry to start, but realistically, this would probably have to be a government project (so if any of you have a line to Bannon or someone else who might be interested, send this idea along; take credit if you want, the idea is simple and not particularly novel, its implementation would be the heavy work).

The idea is simply a Knowledge and Skills Signaling Organization or KASSO for short. Essentially, the KASSO would be a single window supplier of certifications for occupational knowledge and skills.

KASSO would work with various industrial and occupational organizations to develop a battery of certification tests, both academic and practical, for each industry/occupation, the completion of which would demonstrate a certain level of competence in the tested competency. Upon successful completion of certification tests, the testee would be given a certificate of competence, which would he could present to employers.

For an example of how this would work, let’s look at programming. Programming already has a large spread of certifications, but KASSO would centralize and standardize these certifications. It would start by consulting with major Silicon Valley firms and other firms with large programming departments, about what particular skills requirements they would require for their various programming occupations. It may also talk to other industry players, such as programming languages organizations, language developers, or conferences, but it would primarily be aimed at what the employers wanted.

Working with these groups, it would develop a series of tests that would show competence, in these. For example, you could have a C++ 1, C++ 2, and C++ 3 for basic C++ knowledge for grunt-work programmers, mid-level programmers, and expert programmers, respectively. Each test would be a rigourous, complete and supervised. The C++ 1 test could, for example, be a combination of developing a few simple programs or routines, doing some basic debugging, and answering some basic theoretical questions. While the C++ 3 certification could be developing a complex program from scratch and a difficult debugging problem based on a real-life example.

The length and involvement of these tests would depend on the requirements thereof. The C++ 1, may only be a 3-hour test, while the C++ 3, may be three 8-hour days or even a 24-hour marathon.

Upon successful completion of the C++ 1 test, the testee would then be provided with his C++ 1 certificate, which he could present to his employer who would know that this testee was qualified for C++ work and to what degree he was qualified. What competences and what level of competence each degree represented would be easily available and clearly explained on KASSO’ website.

Of course, adding more gradations of skills would also be a possibility. You could have, for example, C++ 1 – Standard, Silver and Gold, depending on the level of competency shown.

Cheating would be possibility, so the strictest anti-cheating measures would be put in place to ensure the integrity of the process. Each testing class would be kept small, say a half-dozen testees. Each test would be monitored by two KASSO testers at all times. To prevent memorization, each test would actually be one of a half-dozen similar and equally challenging, but different, tests administered in a quasi-random order. There would also be a cool-down period for unsuccessful testees; say 4 months before they could attempt the test again. Insofar as possible, the tests would be as practical as possible so that cheating required as much competence in the subject matter as successful completion.

KASSO would pay for itself, or even be a for-profit organization. If each student had to pay, say $500 per a test, they could take a half-dozen different certifications for a fraction of a years worth of tuition, yet KASSO would still be raking in cash. Or, more likely, different tests would have different costs: C++ 1 may only cost $100, while C++ 3 may cost $2000. For those taking multiple related certification, there could be a discount program. Say, $5000 for testing in C++ 3, VB 3, and Java 3.

This same thing would be done for each in-demand language. There might be a set of certifications for those showing competence in language independent parts of programming. Whatever industry expresses a desire for. There might be a broader Programmer certification for those who’ve been certified in a certain range of programming languages and theory.

For each skill domain, industry, and/or occupational group there’d a similar set of tests and certifications, drawn from the needs of the various industries and organizations hiring people with those skills.

In addition, to such specialized certificates, such as programming, KASSO would offer more generalized certifications. A small battery of tests, similar to a GED, similar to a high school certification. Another, more larger and more difficult general test, that would be generally equivalent to the knowledge gained from a generalized humanities bachelor. A series of general tests could be equivalent to a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, with a minor in Political Science. A series of tests could be the equivalent of a business degree. And so forth.

You could even apply tests to softer skills. Although, these tests may be harder to plan and implement, you could have certifications in salesmanship or public speaking.

These were all general examples, the details would have to be developed by experts, but the essential idea of KASSO is to create a self-funding organization providing a set of well-known, broadly-accepted, reliable certifications. Employers would know exactly what certified students had demonstrated competence in, while (future) employees would know which certifications would be needed to get the job they wanted.

There are a number of potential pitfalls. The main problem would be starting this up and getting buy-in from employers. Now, for the federal government a solution might be converting the useless education department to developing KASSO.

Another problem that would come from a government implementation of KASSO is political considerations intervening in what should be an impersonal and objective certification program. To combat this, the government should make it an independent, arms-length institution mostly outside the the ability for politicians or bureaucrats to interfere. Possibly even privatize it after it gets off the ground.

Anybody implementing KASSO may also have to be wary of disparate impact, but with enough will this could be worked around.

But beyond these pitfalls, KASSO would have numerous benefits. First, it would allow another route to competence signaling beyond college or even beyond high school. It would allow the self-taught, the self-motivated, and prodigies to receive certification without having to rely on formal schooling. It would reduce tuition debt slavery, as people could get certification relatively inexpensively through KASSO. It would reduce certification time as people taught themselves on their own schedule, so young people could enter the workforce earlier. Once heavily adopted, it would provide a standard set of certifications for human resources departments to look for and for (future) employees to pursue. It would help poor people lift themselves from poverty; they could get “better” jobs by studying on their own schedule and getting certifications. It would break the back of academia. It would prevent the waste of time and resources of dropouts, as it’s a lot easier to waste a day and $500 failing a test than a year and $10,000 failing your first year at university.

* All numbers and examples are rather arbitrary and undeveloped. They are there for illustrations sake; this is a broad outline, the experts would have to develop the real details.

Why Young People Leave the Church

Heartiste has posted a chart of where couples meet their spouses and romantic partners:

Follow the yellow line, it represents the church. In 1940, the church was the third likeliest method of meeting your spouse, after family and friends. Now it is the lowest, practically non-existent, while family is the second lowest.

Some of this could possibly be chalked up to declining church attendence rates, especially among the young, but, church attendence has remained near 40% since 1940.

Church leaders are always asking why young people leave the church. The first graph is all that needs to be said.

Young people are looking to find love. This is natural, this is healthy. If they can not find love in the church, they will find it elsewhere.

The church should be supporting young people in finding love, so healthy, productive marriages will result. Instead, the church has entirely abandoned its responsbility to promote family formation, and has left the process to peers, clubs, and online dating.

Why is the church letting this happen? Why is the church forcing their young people to rely on friends, the club, and online dating to find a family? Are godly marriages going to result from restaurants and bars? Are peers the best means of finding a marriage partner?

If young Christians are forced to look elsewhere to find love and marriage, they will be enticed by the secular world. If a man can’t get a wife at church, that cute non-Christian smiling at him at work may have a stronger pull than his developing faith. If a young woman isn’t being courted at church, resisting the temptation of the attention of dozens of men at the club will be difficult.

If the church doesn’t capture its young people through marriage and love, the secular world will through sex and pleasure, and the church will continue to collapse.

Is the church really going to allow the depersonalized meat market that is online dating to be the most effective way to find a Christian spouse?

Of course, church’s aren’t entirely to blame: where are the parents? Look at that blue line? Why has this generation completely abandoned their children to fend for themselves?

If you want to see the church renewed, if you don’t want your young people to continue abandoning the church, fix this. Bring your young people together and get them married. Don’t abandon them to their own devices and allow the secular world to devour them.

****

Here’s some ideas for churches of where to start fix this:

1) Christian parents need to start talking with other Christian parents and start meeting with each other as families. Bring your children together in casual situations so they can get to know each other.

2) Christian families and churches should work on positive courtship. Courtship should be about bringing compatible Christian young men and young women together. It should not be a negative sorting mechanism to prevent young men from courting young women.

3) Churches need to create a culture where going for casual first dates are not a big deal. Being serious about finding a spouse does not mean that every interaction must be deathly serious. Church culture should accept that early interactions can be both and purposeful; casual dates should not be treated as major decision points equal to buying a wedding ring, because how many men are going to court enough girls to find the right one when young when a date is treated as the equivalent of an engagement.

4) Similarly, casual interactions should not be held against men or women. Men who ask a lot of women in their church out for casual dates for the purposes of getting to know each other, should not be worried about being shamed as players, likewise, women who accept many such casual dates should not be shamed as sluts. (For both 3 & 4, this, obviously, does not mean tge acceptance of casual sex).

5) Don’t discourage young dating, encourage it. There needs to be an elimination of ‘sex is bad’ talks in youth groups, more ‘sex is good, get married as soon as possible so you can have it’. Instead of discouraging dating, start getting your teenagers to take it seriously and setting them up together. If the church doesn’t start getting young people together in marriage, the secular world will bring them together in fornication. In the war between young hormones and chastity, Paul was exceedingly clear on what is to be done. Modern teachings on abstinence need to be destroyed as the near-satanism they are and replaced with the wholesome promotion of marriage. Two teenagers marrying in the church and starting a family should be celebrated as a triumph of the church, then young couples should be supported by the church as they set up their family lives.

6) Large churches should be running regular, casual events for their young adults (including teenagers) so they can get to know each other and pair off. Small churches should be networking together with other churches to create regular casual events so young adults can meet each other and pair off.

Broken Identity

At this point you’re probably aware of the alphabet soup that sexual identity has become. LGBT has been replaced by LGBTQIA, while others are rolling in even deeper distinction, such as the unintentionally hilarious acronym, LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM being used by Wesleyan University. Facebook has 56 different gender identity options, but even FB’s heroic attempts at inclusivity doesn’t include an array of other identities covering every possible combination of sexuality possible and ignores that special magic known as otherkin. Then of course there’s an slew of other identities that aren’t even sexual, (I think), such transable, transfat, and the hilarious transnigger.

And you thought I was joking.

 

Certain segments of young people tend to take these identities and run with them for all they are worth. Most of us have come across an insane Tumblr profile of someone listing off a half-dozen different identities to which they hold and demanding people address them by the ‘proper’ pronouns. Here’s a sample list of some of them, and, if the rabbit-hole really interests you, here’s a guide to creating your own personalized pronoun.

https://twitter.com/FoolishReporter/status/602933607875780608

It is easy to laugh at all this craziness, but this trend of extreme self-identification points to something much deeper than a few troubled individuals. This letter to Ask Amy illustrates nicely:

However, I was never very open about my sexual orientation. I felt like I always knew, but at the same time I didn’t know how to figure it out.

When I was 17 I went to a party; there was a girl there I liked, but she came with a guy. At some point, she came over and just started kissing me and it was like magic. Then the guy came over. It turns out she wasn’t interested in me, but was doing something he had talked her into.

That was my only experience with another woman — but I know I’m bisexual. I came out at school to some friends, but no one took it seriously. I even came out to my family — but my mom is the only one that took it seriously.

I have been in a relationship now with a man for a year and a half. I love him, but I feel like a part of me is missing. Turning 20 is a wake-up for me. I’m figuring out what I want to do in my life (and friends are getting married). The guy I’m with takes my confession of being bi as, “You’re just bi-curious.”

I’m thinking about asking if we could take a break so that I can try and find myself, but I’m terrified that if I do the door will close entirely. Should I “come out” again and hope I’ll be taken seriously and that he’ll support me?

Here’s a girl whose sole lesbian experience is a single meaningless kiss at a party and who’s in a serious relationship with a man, but still feels compelled to identify as bisexual, even to the point of destroying her relationship to experiment. The key to the whole issue is that she feels a part of her is missing and she wants her identity taken seriously.

A key need of man is identity. His identity informs him as to who he is, but man is a social animal, so who he is almost entirely a function of his social relations. He cannot create his identity in isolation. Once developed, his identity exists as a spiritual sense of place telling him where he belongs in the world and how he relates with the people around them.

A key part of growing up is developing this identity, finding out who you are. A mature adult has discovered and established his identity; he might further develop, refine, or even alter his identity, but he has a secure sense of his place in the world.  (There is a reason listening to 40-year-olds talk about finding themselves is disgusting, it is an aberrant and unhealthy infantalization of themselves).

The proper time for developing this identity is early adulthood, what we now call adolescence. A child’s identity, his spiritual sense of place, is not something that really exists as independent of his parents, he is basically a cypher of his parents. It is early adulthood where his he really begins to form his own independent identity.

In a healthy society, identity formation is a relatively straightforward process. You belong to you family, you adopt the faith, ideology, and history of your thede, to a greater or lesser extent, you become economically productive and contribute to society, you find a spouse get married and have children, you make a few friends, involve yourself in the community, and adopt a leisure activity or two along the way. Your particular quirks, skills, and deficiencies naturally grow out of this process.

It is fairly easy to have a sense of place when you can tell yourself “I am John Yeoman, son of Jack Yeoman, an Englishman of the County of Smallshire. We Yeoman’s have been Anglicans attending Smallshire Church for 5 generations. I am a farmer who works the land my fathers have for more generations than can be counted. I am husband of Jane Yeoman and father of 4 children. At the pub on Fridays, where I am known for losing at cards, I play the fiddle and retell stories about our childhood pranks on Mr. Cooper with my childhood friends.”

That sort of identity writes itself and grows naturally. When you are part of a culture, do things for others, and are socially connected to the community around you, your identity forms on its own and you learn who you are organically. A spiritual sense of place just happens.

In our modern society though, this process doesn’t happen. Think of your average “adolescent”. At the time when a person should be developing his identity, he is stuck in a public school doing nothing productive to anyone else, while learning multiculturalism, how evil his country and people have been to oppressed minorities. He lives with his family in a neighbourhood he moved to just a few years ago when his parents upgraded their house. His family, if he is lucky, consists of an intact nuclear family, maybe a cousin or two, and the occasional visit from his grandparents, if he is not, he lives in a broken home with a single mother, maybe a step-father. He probably has some friends, most of which he will never see again after high school. He probably doesn’t go to church or participate in any social activities with anybody who is not also an adolescent. He is definitely not married and any relations with the opposite sex he has had has assuredly been temporary and known to be so beforehand. Maybe he has a hobby or a sport or two, maybe he doesn’t.

So what is he supposed to base his identity upon? His disconnected family? His Christmas-evening only religion? His oppressive country? His lack of culture (called multiculturalism)? His grades? His sport? It’s all kind of lacking isn’t it?

Look a the letter writer above? She’s 20, she’s been a biological adult for 6-8 years now and she’s just now thinking of “finding herself” possibly by destroying the one thing she has that will let her actually find an identity. What has she accomplished that she can base her identity? What place has she found in her community? Has she been economically productive? Maybe a few part-time jobs. Does she have a family of her own? Just a boyfriend she’s considering leaving. She needs an identity, something that defines her in relation to the world around her, and will make the world take her seriously (ie. will give her a spiritual sense of place). Yet she doesn’t have anything, and it’s not really through any fault of her own.

This is the allure of these weird identities young people have taken too adopting. They do not have the experiences, productivity, community, or social relations to create true identities, so they have to start making up their own. Creating identities usually requires hard work though; you can not become a violinist without practicing or a volunteer without volunteering.

But if you take and magnify a personal quirk, you can easily create a new identity. Like to emotionally bond to people before having sex? You’re a demisexual. Have a low libido? You’re asexual. Like White Fang and think wolves are cool? You’re a wolfkin.

This extend beyond just the weird sexual deviancies though. How many young moderns base their sense of identity on other hedonic pleasures? How many young people have their music consumption as their main identity? How many young people have gamer as one of their main identities? How many young people are identified through their drug use? Their fashion sense? Their sexual conquests? Their television tastes?

Doing these activities may or may not be particularly wrong, but using such as a primary identity indicates something is broken somewhere. Something is missing in their development when a young adult’s primary identity come through shallow pleasures rather than through something true and real.

But this goes beyond just young adults, even our adults are constantly “finding themselves.” Stable social relations, productive economic work, community involvement, friendships, family, all are declining. People are becoming more isolated from each other and more alienated from their work. They need to find something to fill this gap.

This is why a homosexual can’t just be a guy who privately sodomizes other men, he must be out of the closet displaying his pride. He has no other identities to hold onto, for he has no deep social relationships and no spiritual sense of place, so he has to make an identity out of where he enjoys sticking his penis. This is the true horror of the homosexual movement, the abolition of the self until only your identity is your penis.

This is the modern world, a place where people are so empty, their identities so broken, that it has become mainstream for people to base their identities on, to relate to the world through, their hedonic tastes. A healthy society is one where identity creation is a natural process that flows organically from the process of growing up. A person should be able to naturally find and fill productive and healthy social roles, so he can find a spiritual sense of place, so he can belong.

Guest Post From Europa: Demographic Figures

Today’s post are some talks and demographic figures compiled by a European reader who wishes to remain anonymous. I haven’t watched the videos, so I can’t guarantee their content.

Remember, we are willing to accept guest posts as long as they are readable, on-topic, and provide some value.

UN figures 2010 European women 1.5
Greece 1.4,
Spain 1.4,
Portugal, 1.3,
Italy 1.3,
Germany 1.3
Ireland 2.1
Europeans over 65 up to 2030 up 40%
Nothing changes by 2040 2 workers per retiree

1900 25% World population in Europe
2050 7%
29 countries, including 12 EU countries Fertility Rate below Replacement Level
Germany 82m – 71m
By 2050 number of 16 – 64 year olds in Europe declined 20%
By 2050 EU Short of 35m workers
Same period South Asia workforce up 50%
Same period Central Africa workforce tripled.
At present there are more people over 65 than under 16 in the UK.
In the EU now 4 workers per pensioner.
By 2050 2 workers per pensioner.
In the US 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every day and Social Security has an $80 BILLION deficit.
Germany 80m today four generations 10m.
Scotland extinct within 5 generations.
In Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore the birth rate is falling towards 1.0 meaning a 50% population fall per generation. Not even the Black Death had such a catastrophic impact.
Germany 1.41 children per woman
USA 2.06,
Sweden 1.67,
Spain 1.48,
In the USA there will be more people by 2050 over 80 that under 15.
There are more pets, especially dogs, than children in Japan.
Lee Kwan Yew Singapore elder statesman, unless things change there will be no more original citizens.
Japan current trends Government estimates population 2012 121m today 48m 2112.
60 years of age +
Japan 42%
Germany 38%
These figures assume that Japan and Germany’s birth rate will increase.
Russian population decline.

143m today 2030 10% less

EU today & 2050 750m

Spain today 46m 2050 48m through immigration
Italy today 61m 2050 62m through immigration

Germany today 82m 2025 79m
Minus 0.02% Growth Rate
Half the population 44 or younger
1.4 children per woman
21% over 65
Contraceptive use 66%
Life Expectancy 80

Fertility has declined by 50% last 50 years.

Over 90 countries have sub-replacement fertility rates.

During the lifetime of today’s young people the World’s population will start to decline.

The US is the ONLY developed country with a healthy fertility rate.
UN Population office.
Latvia 1.3
Romania 1.3
Andorra 2.13
Spain 1.3
Lithuania 1.3,
Italy 1.3,
Hungary 1.3,
San Marino 2.13
Bosnia 1.3
Germany 1.3,
Russia 1.3,
Japan 1.3,
Armenia 1.3,
Croatia 1.3,
Singapore 1.4,
Estonia 1.4
Austria 1.4
Lichtenstein 1.4
Switzerland 1.4
Portugal 1.5
Georgia 1.5
Czech Republic 1.2
Slovakia 1.2
Slovenia 1.2
Republic of Korea 1.2
Moldova 1.2
Bulgaria 1.2
Belarus 1.2
Greece 1.3
Poland 1.3

In Russia 140 deaths for 100 births
Russia today 145M 2045 70M

Latvia more deaths than births 1989 – 2002 13% population decrease.

Within a generation this situation will unfold throughout Europe.

Since 1970 immigrants and their children have prevented decline in the US population. By 2040 the world population, according to one UN estimate, will start to decline.

World population around 2065 will peak and then start to decline.

The US workforce will remain stagnant over the next two decades.

The EU work force will decline after 2040 indefinitely, as far as demography can see.

The number of Europeans 30 – 40 will decline significantly, by 15% – 20% possibly, in the coming decades.

By 2050 every region of the World will have a significantly higher proportion of older people.

US 3 workers per retiree today by 2030 2 workers per retiree.

As of 2010 the working age population of all the rich countries combined has already started to shrink, see birth rates.
1.78 Norway,
1.74 Finland
1.74 Denmark,
1.68 Holland.

Since 1990 60% of US population growth has come from immigrants and their children. This figure is 80% in Europe.

Population Loss by 2050

Russia 57m 40%
Germany 32.5M 40%
Italy 26.5m 46%
Ukraine 22m 48%
Spain 21m 46%
Poland 18.5m 46%
UK 14m 25%
Czech Republic 5m 50%
Belarus 4.8m 50%
Austria 4m 41%
Serbia 3m 41%
Switzerland 2.9m 38%
Bosnia 2.3m 50%
Lithuania 1.8m 50%

Average 611 divide 14 = 44%

Mexico 6.8 children per woman 1970 and 2.3 today.

Teenagers Don’t Exist

Recently the topic of teenagers, and how awful they are, came up in a Twitter conversation I involved myself in. While I’ve mentioned the topic in the past, I thought I’d write a bit more on them here.

Adolescence is a modern invention/perversion. Until about the 1800s or so, a person of about the age 13 was considered an adult. Since about that time, better nutrition has led to puberty occurring earlier (in the 1800s it occurred at about 15-16, it now occurs at about 12-13), but at the same time independence has also decreased. A teenager is a biological adult. (Mentally, a person continues maturing until sometime in their mid-20s).

The problem of rebellious or destructive teenagers is not a fault of the teenagers, but rather a fault of society. A teenager is an adult being treated as a child. A 14-year-old should be learning independence and self-sufficiency by going out into the world on his own (on an apprenticeship, to college, to his own shack on the family farm, etc.) and should be looking for a wife shortly therefore after. Instead, in our modern world teenagers live under the dominion of their parents as a child.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24 ESV)

Of course teenagers rebel, any adult treated as child will rebel against being infantilized. They lash out because they know at some level that their parents having dominion over them is wrong, because an adult still under their parents is against the natural order. It is not teenagers that are the problem, it is the parents and the society.

Now of course, teenagers are not always going to make the best decisions because they are new at being adults and are learning the basics of adulthood, but in our current order, instead of learning about adulthood at age 15 so they are responsible adults by their 20s, people are now making the same failings in their early-20s and sometimes even their late-20s/early-30s, so your average person is not a responsible adult until their 30s.

Despite this, most modern teenagers would probably break is left on their own. This is, again, not the fault of the teenagers, but most children nowadays are so thoroughly over-protected and over-controlled by their parents and infantilized by the school system that they have never been learning the kinds of independence a healthy adult needs.

Children nowadays are being raised to learn a horrible combination of lack of freedom and lack of discipline. A child learning both will be the most self-actualized and most successful. A child with freedom but no discipline will generally pick up some level of discipline through trial and error, and a child of of discipline but no freedom will usually be able to survive although possibly not thrive, but one with neither will drown.

Ideally, we should start training our children to become adults when they should do so, in their mid-teens.

****

This is not going to happen on a society wide scale because infantalized adults are useful for the long march.

Adolescence gives the public school system an extra 4-6 years (8-12 extra if he goes to university) to condition a person to the docility and obedience necessary to get a man to be willing to work in a cubicle or factory for 3-4 decades of his life. It conditions a man to accept schooling and academics as being the primary measures of worth, so that he is willing to feed his mind, time, and money into the progressive college system. It prevents early family formation and helps keep the squeeze on the family so the state can continue to interject itself. It conditions dependence and a slave mentality in a man so he is more likely to see dependence on the state as normal. Adolescence is just another case of how its all related; the long march continues.

Sex Ed Hypocrisy

I found this both amusing and angering:

EDMONTON – An Edmonton teenager and her mother have successfully filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, alleging the Edmonton Public School District’s use of a Christian fundamentalist abstinence education program infringed upon their rights as non-Christians.
…
Dawson’s mother Kathy, an agnostic who supports sex education, signed the permission slip for Emily to attend CALM’s sexual education classes. She was shocked when Emily texted her to say the “sex ed” class was being taught by an anti-abortion activist, from the American-based Pregnancy Care Centre.

The leftist theocrats spent decades ramming “sexual education” into the public education system against the vocal opposition of Christians, the right, and anybody with any sanity because indoctrinating elementary-school children in the joys of sodomy and pedophilia is essential for the leftist goal of destroying the family.

One pro-life Christian group manages to infiltrate their sexual indoctrination sessions and make it vaguely pro-family and suddenly it becomes a human rights issue that must be dealt with in court.

It’s funny how suddenly teaching children about sex is wrong when it comes from a point of view of Christian morality rather than nihilistic hedonism.

Remember, its all about forcing their views and destroying traditional values, nothing more.

To add even more joy, this is how the article ends:

It’s absurd. CALM isn’t religion class. That’s not what parents sign up for. Sex education in our local public schools should be delivered in a scientific, non-judgmental way, by qualified professionals, not outsourced to an American-based pro-life lobby group.

Emily and Kathy Dawson have inspired an important public debate about the nature of our public schools. They deserve our thanks for their courage in speaking out.

This left-wing moralizing BS is a part of the news story. It’s not an editorial, it’s in the national news section. The priests of progressivism aren’t even trying to hide that the news is simply propaganda any more.

The gloves are coming off, they’re coming into the open, and they won’t stop until they’ve devoured your children’s souls and destroyed whatever is left of the family.

Drugged and Indoctrinated

I’ve written before that it’s all related. Little of what I write is a thought unto itself, which is why I try to consistently link back to my previous thoughts throughout my many blog posts.

I came across an article illustrating how its all related. Here is one Belinda Luscombe arguing why she needs to drug her kids even if ADHD doesn’t exist.

At this point, it sounds insane enough, but that is literally the title of the article: “It Doesn’t Matter if ADHD Doesn’t Exist, My Son Still Needs Drugs”

The article starts sane enough, she doesn’t want to drug her kid and Dr. Saul is arguing ADHD does not exist. Her son comes from a “bookish home” and had tutors, but is dyslexic. The son gets in trouble at school and has trouble reading and writing and the school tries to convince the parents to drug the son, but the parents resist. Not untypical.

But then you begin to see the pathological insanity of the system, but you have to look close.

One interesting wrinkle is here:

We may have stood our ground forever, except for the aforementioned “charming” part. Turns out our son was something of a pied piper. If he decided to wander off task, he took half the class with him. The nice folks at the nice school pointed out it wasn’t very fair to the other parents.

The kid is a natural born leader. The charismatic-type who people will naturally follow. Naturally, this is used against the child: He’s a natural leader, therefore it is all the more important to drug him.

But, in any case, what modern parent can approach the specter of a child who doesn’t learn with any equanimity? Even a not-very-attentive adult can see that the knowledge sector of the economy is the safest haven in downturns. The gap between those with college degrees and those without is ever widening. Not just in income, but also in life areas like successful marriages and health. The option for a kid who can’t sit and learn is not a slightly less lucrative career, it’s a much more miserable existence.

How much pathological modernism can be forced into a single paragraph? Understand the (barely) implicit script presented here:

The child must go through public schooling so he can get into college so he can get into an office job so he can survive the failing economy so he can be healthy and have a decent marriage.

First thing to note is the fear. She states “the cold hand of impending doom got us by the neck and squeezed.” The system is working quite well when it can instill actual dread in a parent when the public education system is failing him.

The second thing to note is that all these correlations she’s pointing to are probably genetic in origin. In other words, its not the education and college degree that makes someone healthy, marriageable, and successful, it is the person underneath, and given that he was such a naturally charismatic child, he probably would have done alright. So her fear is rather unfounded.

Third, look at the implicit assumption that college and an office job is the correct path. No consideration he could go into sales (which would seem an obvious path for a charismatic child), trades, or entrepreneurship. Nope college and an office job or bust.

Fourth, the implicit assumption that if a kid can’t learn in our public schools the child is wrong, not the schools.

She pretty much accepts that her child must be drilled complacency to be a good office drone or he will be a total failure at life. Pathological modernism.

Either he needs a class size of about six, with an incredibly adept and captivating teacher, or he needs a little help.
…
Could we get our kid through school another way? Maybe. Perhaps spend half the day in P.E. Or get him a governess instead of a classroom. Or find a teaching style that is different, somehow, more kinesthetic or less visual or uses blocks or therapy monkeys. But they’re all just maybes and he’s not our only kid and he’s not our only life challenge and his useful school years are slipping away. The meds work, are almost free of side effects and, far from being handed out willy-nilly, are a huge pain to get every month.

Notice what’s not on that list?

Home-schooling. She’d rather drug her kid than leave her job and reduce her families consumption. Either that or the thought of home-schooling enver even entered her head. I’m not sure which one would be more sad.

When I asked our now 16-year-old son if he liked taking his meds, he said “Sure. They help me concentrate.” And when I followed up with, “Would you rather be able to concentrate without them?” he gave me one of those specially-reserved-for-moronic-parents-looks and replied, nice and slow, so I’d get it. “Wouldn’t anybody?”

At least he’s happy.

She did get one thing right though: “But if we want to eradicate a chemical solution to what might be a behavioral disorder, we’ve got a whole economy and education system to reorganize.

It seems there might be something needing changing with a system that requires drugging 14% of our boys to work. I am shocked by this.

Of course, she then states “While you guys get on that, I’ve got to get my kid through school.

How cauterized does someone’s soul have to be to be to look to your kid, know the system is destroying him enough that he needs drugs to simply cope, and then say, meh, I’d rather drug him than change it or remove him from it?

****

So, in one article about a dozen paragraphs long we have: public education, ADHD and medical over-prescription, the tuition bubble, white collar uber alles, the declining economy, nontraditional sex roles, failing marriage, consumerism, and the economic fracturing of our society. All are linked together to force one young boy to drug himself, and like it, so he can continue the consumerist rat race in the future. It’s all related.

Repost: Tuition Bubble

Don’t have a new post for you today, so here’s a repost from the early days.

Here’s the New York Times running only a bit behind in reporting on the tuition bubble. I thought this would be a decent time to weigh in on the issue.

the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000 and 3 percent more than $100,000

To be honest, this is not that bad. $23k is a lot, but livable, even 54k is not insurmountable, but for the 3%, $100k is a serious commitment. In some areas equivalent to a mortgage on a starter home.

The problem though, is that these are ok only if there is employment for those taking the loans. The NYT doesn’t cover this in this article, but the real problem is half of these people graduating are not going to have jobs or will be underemployed.

$23k in debt is doable if you make $40k a year, even $120k ($900/month according to the article) is doable if you make $60k a year coming out of university and live frugally for a few years.

But, if you are unemployed or working part-time as a barrista, there is no way to keep payments up on much more than a few thousand dollars worth of debt and still be able to advance in life.

****

The NYT misses that the tuition bubble is not a bubble because tuition costs are high; an expensive degree can be an excellent investment for both the lender and borrower if it increases future earnings.

The whole article is off-base as high tuition costs are irrelevant if the economic benefits of the degree match or exceed the cost of the degree.

The tuition bubble is a bubble because a lot of these degrees are worthless.

So why are they worthless? Part of it is simply the transition to post-scarcity, even highly educated and skilled people may simply be replaced by machines. Some of it is because these degrees teach no useful skills, such as Master of Puppetry, an awesome album but a crappy degree. But there is another, even more fundamental, problem that the NYT ignores almost completely.

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The main problem is touched upon later on in the piece, but only very obliquely:

the main job of the admissions staff, after all, is to admit students

An off-hand reference in the second half of a sentence at the bottom of a paragraph is all the NYT devotes to the  crux of the tuition bubble.

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Huh? Isn’t admissions staff’s job to admit students?

No, the admissions staff’s job is to screen out students for whom university (or college) is not appropriate.

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Doesn’t admissions already do this?

No. It doesn’t. 68% of high school graduates go to college.

Thank about that for a second.

The average graduate is going to college

Remember back to your high school graduation; think about your average classmate.

The guy who wasn’t particularly bright or particularly stupid.

Do you think he would benefit from spending 4 years learning political theory or reading Rousseau?

Do you think it would benefit anyone else that he “learned” this?

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The evidence says he doesn’t.

One-third of those entering college drop-out.

They pay the expense of a couple years of college and do not even get the dubious benefits of a degree.

The college system is taking advantage of these people who shouldn’t be in college.

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One-third of college students are dropping out, at the same time, grade inflation is running rampant.

College is becoming increasingly easy, yet still a third of students still can’t hack it.

The admissions people are failing their job. One-third of people entering university are not capable of completing even the dumbed-down modern university curriculum.

Think about how many more would not be capable of completing college if standards were similar to those 50 years ago.

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Look at this post from Adacious Epigone on IQ by intended major from a few years ago.

Look at education, public admin, business, psychology, legal professions, health professionals, etc.

The average incoming student for all of these is only around average intelligence. About half of them are of below average intelligence.

This is why there is a tuition bubble.

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It used to be that a college degree meant you were a cut above the rest; that you were a competent, intelligent individual.

Now all a college degree shows is that you are able to stomach a university’s bullshit for a few years and are not a complete dullard.

That’s why your degree is worthless.

It doesn’t signal you’re a superior intellect with a strong knowledge of your specialty.

All it shows is that you’re not completely incompetent and are able to parrot BS back to the BS’ers. How much is not being completely incompetent worth to an employer?

Even a high GPA doesn’t mean much. With grade inflation everybody’s GPA is fairly high, how can an employer trust that you actually earned yours?

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As an aside, look at public admin and social services: 96.3.

Do you want to know one reason why your government doesn’t work very well? The people in public admin are being educated to run the government. Do not think that these are not going to be the front-line clerks at the DMV, or even their supervisors; these are actually the people who are going to university to learn how to create public policy. They are the ones who will be creating government policy and regulations that will control your life.

Most of them are of  below average intelligence.

Think about that for a minute. Please don’t weep.

Of course, the average business major is not much better, barely scraping by at 101. 2.

And we wonder why the US economy is stagnating?

Teachers are at 99.3. Half of all teachers are of below average intelligence. Here’s where you can start weeping for the future.

Your kid is likely being taught by someone of average or below average intelligence.

If you’re reading a post about the economics of post-secondary education on a blog for leisure (like say, this post you’re reading right now), it’s highly likely the large majority of these teachers, bureaucrats, and businessmen running things and teaching your children are much more stupid than you.

Aren’t you feeling comforted?

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Thankfully the drop-out rate is so high. I’d hate to think what the school system and government would be like if a third of these sup-par students didn’t fail to finish their degrees.

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So, after all that, you’re probably understanding why the tuition bubble exists.

It exists because too many people are getting a degree.

Everybody wants to enter the road to the professional, white-collar, middle-class, which is what university is thought of as now.

But not everybody is capable of being a white-collar professional.

Of course, modern liberal dogma can’t admit that some people are just not capable of being white-collar professionals, after all, we are all equal. The Bible (or Stephen Gould, depending on your religious beliefs) and the Constitution (or your sociology professor, depending on your political beliefs)  say so.

So those in charge, those who would read the NYT, can not and will not prevent those who shouldn’t be going to college from going to college.

Instead, they’ll encourage them to go. They’ll give these marginal students huge, government-backed loans they’ll never be able to pay back. They’ll lower academic standards as far as they can go, then lower a them a bit more, destroying any academic, economic, or signalling value of your degree in the process.

Doing otherwise would expose their ideology for the lie it is and their ideology takes precedence over the good of these marginal students, not to mention the other students whose degrees are made worthless.

So, as these marginal students flood colleges, demand for college education increases, so tuition goes up.

The academic value of the degree erodes, as grade inflation and lowered academic standards become necessary to keep these people in college, and maybe (hopefully) let them graduate.

The economic values of these degrees plummets. Your degree no longer signals competence, knowledge, and intelligence to an employer; all it signals is a lack of incompetence. Why should he pay well for that? Why should he hire the marginally competent at all?

Thus a bubble. Paying more and more for less and less.

One thing though, bubbles can’t last forever. Reality always wins in the end.

Eventually, the post-secondary education system will run into reality.

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Economists do not predict a collapse of the student loan system, which would, in essence, mean wholesale default.

NYT’s economists never fail to be amusing. I wonder if this was Krugman or Friedman, maybe both?

Those who are blinded by ideology will run full tilt into the wall of reality. They will then act surprised.

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With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country

$1 trillion, that’s almost 7% of GDP. If a large percentage of these loans default, this will be a major economic catastrophe. It may be possible for the US government to forgive them, but that will be a significant increase in national debt.

Students are likely stuck with this debt.

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So what can we do?

Short answer: nothing.

Long answer: That’s a question for another post.

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One last note:

Leaders of the for-profit industry defended themselves

I’m usually a staunch defender of the free market, but in this case, all I can say is:

Fuck them.

The for-profit college industry is a brood of blood-sucking parasites taking advantage of students who should never set foot near a college for their own benefit, and the student loans programs in a disgusting display of parasitic corporate welfare. May their whole industry rot.