RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth

RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Community Discussions] >> Dungeon of Political and Religious Discussion

Message

mnottertail -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 7:40:23 AM)
So, what is the tax on that? What do you pay to renew the drivers license, the plates on the car, and for a beer at the average swillhole bar (although I know you have no swillhole bars in Norge)

JeffBC -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 7:44:40 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad It's $26/hr in Norway, for unskilled labor with no prior work experience. Our trading balance is positive, even without the oil. You're getting ripped off. So basically, in the US we pay 20x what we ought to for executives and CEO's and pay something like 1/3 of what we ought to for laborers. I forgot to add... then we feel so sorry for those employees that we are paying 2000% of their actual value (CEO's & executives) that we give them steep, steep tax breaks to help ease their uncomfortable existences.

tazzygirl -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 7:50:10 AM)
quote: I forgot to add... then we feel so sorry for those employees that we are paying 3000% of their actual value (CEO's & executives) that we give them steep, steep tax breaks to help ease their uncomfortable existences. Seems to me we are giving them tax breaks so they wont pull up their tent stakes and take their business elsewhere. Financial blackmail anyone?

Aswad -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:02:09 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: mnottertail So, what is the tax on that? What do you pay to renew the drivers license, the plates on the car, and for a beer at the average swillhole bar (although I know you have no swillhole bars in Norge) Income tax averages 25% or so, with the low quartile paying about 10% and the top quartile paying about 25%. Renewing the drivers licence is $50, but you do that maybe two-three times unless you get an illness. Plates are free, as such, but you pay a fee of about $500 per vehicle per year. Total tax averages 40% to 45%, counting everything. Beer at a bar is excruciatingly expensive, at $10/pt. IWYW, — Aswad.

defiantbadgirl -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:04:31 AM)
I really like this thread. Americans need to know this stuff, especially since many think the global economy is responsible for dwindling wages. I never bought into the lies against single-payer health care, but I did blame the global economy for decreasing wages until now. If competing in the global economy forced lower wages, both Australia and Norway would be failing because of their higher wages.

Aswad -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:07:57 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: JeffBC So basically, in the US we pay 20x what we ought to for executives and CEO's and pay something like 1/3 of what we ought to for laborers. 2 million USD is what the CEO of Statoil makes in total, counting bonuses, stock and so forth. Statoil runs the national oil industry, in practice, accounting for 30% of the GDP. IWYW, — Aswad.

cordeliasub -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:17:42 AM)
This may be very very non-PC, but as far as education goes, I think that a college degree just doesn't mean as much as it used to mean. I mean, we keep dumbing down things so that students can pass high stakes tests that anyone who actually knows anything about education will tell you doesn't show ANYTHING except how kids sat for a few hours for a few days. And of course...EVERYONE must take these tests, even the kids who can barely hold a pencil and have a 70 IQ. So what was once taught in middle school is now taught in high school and that is now taught in colleges. A college degree is now as commonplace as....having a cell phone, and you can buy them online too. They do not guarantee a higher salary or wage.

tazzygirl -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:22:33 AM)
~FR We, as Americans, definitely have our priorities wrong. 60 dollars an hour to build a car.... yet look at the salaries of RN's who deal with life and death, Teacher's who mold the minds of our future... even Doctors make only around that much an hour if you factor in all the hours they spend on the health of their patients. Yet so many can justify millions, even billions, to a CEO?

freedomdwarf1 -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:57:13 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cordeliasub This may be very very non-PC, but as far as education goes, I think that a college degree just doesn't mean as much as it used to mean. I mean, we keep dumbing down things so that students can pass high stakes tests that anyone who actually knows anything about education will tell you doesn't show ANYTHING except how kids sat for a few hours for a few days. And of course...EVERYONE must take these tests, even the kids who can barely hold a pencil and have a 70 IQ. So what was once taught in middle school is now taught in high school and that is now taught in colleges. A college degree is now as commonplace as....having a cell phone, and you can buy them online too. They do not guarantee a higher salary or wage. This is something I have been bitching about for years over here. When I left school, it was frigging hard work to cover any subject completely so you learned everything just in case it came up in the exams. These days, they only teach kids what they need to for what they know is going to be in this years exam papers - they barely touch on anything else in the subject. When you get subjects such as English, they don't even down-mark you for poor grammar, lack of punctuation or spelling errors or even for not using paragraphs. When I sat my English exam, it had to be a minimum of 5,000 words, coherent, with appropriate punctuation. marks were knocked off for every spelling mistake, gramatical error etc. When my kids sat their exams last year, it was a 500 word essay and just about everything else, other than the language itself, seems to be ignored. I looked at my daughter's exam paper and in my day, it might have gotten an E or possibly a D- with a comment akin to 'good effort'. She actually scored an A* with distinction FFS!! In my day, only the top 4% ever got acredited with an A and that had to be damned near perfect. They only recently introduced the A* grade because too many kids were getting an A. WTF?? Same as in Maths, they don't cover even half the syllabus we did in our day - those topics were put into a higher grade exam. My step-son managed to credit himself with an E for maths - and that is still considered a pass mark! In my day, anything less than a C was considered a fail. He doesn't know his tables and cannot even do 2+2 without using a calculator or counting on his fingers! If you ask him anything complicated like: which is more - A) 90% of 10 or B) 50% of 1,000, you'll get answer A because he just can't visualise the scale of numbers (he thinks 90 is bigger than 50, so that must be the right answer). Some might say that not everyone can do percentages. Whilst that may be true, he can't even work out if he gets the right change when he spends money at the local shop! They call this education??!? Sheeesh. What my kids were learning at age 13-16 and for exams were at a lower level than what I was taught at junior school at age 9-11. Yet we hear that students are working hard and getting great results and that exams are not getting easier! Jeeeez.... Gimme a break will ya! Employers and many colleges are now complaining that kids with strings of 'good' exam results are just not good enough for even basic tasks to qualify for the lower menial jobs or entry into college. So, are we doing the right thing in believing that a good(?) education, costing megamoney, is going to get you a good job at the end?? Unless you specialise into medicine or some such occupation, I don't think so. Not these days. [end-rant]

Moonhead -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:59:44 AM)
You'd be a lot better leaving school early and getting an apprenticeship for a trade than going into further education these days.

meatcleaver -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 9:04:06 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl quote: ORIGINAL: Fellow 13 dollars/hour is actually the target in the manufacturing. The calculations show it would be a competitive wage to China labor. According to what I read in another thread, MINIMUM WAGE in Australia is equal to $17.30/hr US dollars. How is Australia's wage competitive to China labor? How is Australia competing in the global economy? Chinese manufacturing and its labour is very inefficient which is why most of its manufacturing is low end tat products. Chinese labour costs are rising and recently some companies have been shifting production back to the west. China is aware that if its growth is to continue, it has to move its manufacturing up into premium products and that is not easy to do, especially in a culture where individual initiative is frowned on. As for Australia compteting, it has huge natural resources China would willingly pay over the odds for to maintain supply.

freedomdwarf1 -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 9:24:31 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Moonhead You'd be a lot better leaving school early and getting an apprenticeship for a trade than going into further education these days. Nice idea - IF there were any decent apprenticeships out there. Granted, there are some, but not many. In a recent Panorama programme, most of these 'apprenticeships' were no more than free labour for 10-14 weeks and there was nothing at the end of them for the kids taking part. A lot of kids are forced to take them to receive their benefits and the companies get paid for taking the kids on (as well as tax breaks). This is so unfair to the kids involved. The programme interviewed over 2,000 kids on such 'apprenticeship' schemes all over the country and not a single person had landed a job when they finished. What's even worse is that the people running these placement schemes are paid an exorbitant amount of money by the government to set them up. My daughter workd for 3 months, up to 60 hours a week on really strange and unsocial shift patterns - anything from 6am until 10pm. She and the other 6-7 others that were forced to do this were all 'let go' at the end of it. It was nothing short of slave labour for free, yet it was advertised as an apprenticeship with a 'good chance of a job at the end of it'. Really?? From the info my daughter gleaned from other permanent members of staff there, the company had been doing this for over two years and had not taken on a single new employee even though they were desperately short of staff if the 'training kids' weren't there. As far as I know, to this day, Job Centres are still sending kids to these so-called 'apprenticeships' and also still requiring them to fulfil their jobsearch requirements otherwise they don't receive their benefits. It's all well and good if you manage to find a genuine apprenticeship and land a job at the end of your training. Unfortunately, our mindless government seem to come up with these ridiculous schemes, that cost the tax payers megabucks, and all for what?? They are just juggling the unemployment figures to make it look good - because those 'in training' aren't counted in the jobless figures.

cordeliasub -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 11:31:13 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1 quote: ORIGINAL: cordeliasub This may be very very non-PC, but as far as education goes, I think that a college degree just doesn't mean as much as it used to mean. I mean, we keep dumbing down things so that students can pass high stakes tests that anyone who actually knows anything about education will tell you doesn't show ANYTHING except how kids sat for a few hours for a few days. And of course...EVERYONE must take these tests, even the kids who can barely hold a pencil and have a 70 IQ. So what was once taught in middle school is now taught in high school and that is now taught in colleges. A college degree is now as commonplace as....having a cell phone, and you can buy them online too. They do not guarantee a higher salary or wage. This is something I have been bitching about for years over here. When I left school, it was frigging hard work to cover any subject completely so you learned everything just in case it came up in the exams. These days, they only teach kids what they need to for what they know is going to be in this years exam papers - they barely touch on anything else in the subject. When you get subjects such as English, they don't even down-mark you for poor grammar, lack of punctuation or spelling errors or even for not using paragraphs. When I sat my English exam, it had to be a minimum of 5,000 words, coherent, with appropriate punctuation. marks were knocked off for every spelling mistake, gramatical error etc. When my kids sat their exams last year, it was a 500 word essay and just about everything else, other than the language itself, seems to be ignored. I looked at my daughter's exam paper and in my day, it might have gotten an E or possibly a D- with a comment akin to 'good effort'. She actually scored an A* with distinction FFS!! In my day, only the top 4% ever got acredited with an A and that had to be damned near perfect. They only recently introduced the A* grade because too many kids were getting an A. WTF?? Same as in Maths, they don't cover even half the syllabus we did in our day - those topics were put into a higher grade exam. My step-son managed to credit himself with an E for maths - and that is still considered a pass mark! In my day, anything less than a C was considered a fail. He doesn't know his tables and cannot even do 2+2 without using a calculator or counting on his fingers! If you ask him anything complicated like: which is more - A) 90% of 10 or B) 50% of 1,000, you'll get answer A because he just can't visualise the scale of numbers (he thinks 90 is bigger than 50, so that must be the right answer). Some might say that not everyone can do percentages. Whilst that may be true, he can't even work out if he gets the right change when he spends money at the local shop! They call this education??!? Sheeesh. What my kids were learning at age 13-16 and for exams were at a lower level than what I was taught at junior school at age 9-11. Yet we hear that students are working hard and getting great results and that exams are not getting easier! Jeeeez.... Gimme a break will ya! Employers and many colleges are now complaining that kids with strings of 'good' exam results are just not good enough for even basic tasks to qualify for the lower menial jobs or entry into college. So, are we doing the right thing in believing that a good(?) education, costing megamoney, is going to get you a good job at the end?? Unless you specialise into medicine or some such occupation, I don't think so. Not these days. [end-rant] Amen and amen....some kids just can't do the work. People do not all have the same abilities and IQ. Instead of following the "everyone gets a trophy for participating" idea....we need to be honest with ourselves and with kids. Then we have the whole "helicopter mom" phenomenon - my ex has parents calling to yell about their baby's C....IN COLLEGE! Lord help us. He has to accommodate for everything....I wonder what will happen top these kids who are "easily fatigued and therefore cannot be expected to attend class regularly." Will their bosses let them "not attend work regularly"? We have created a generation of test bubblers who cannot problem solve or think for themselves. They all have soccer trophies and high self esteem - but they have no work ethic ot grasp of reality.

Moonhead -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 12:25:19 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1 quote: ORIGINAL: Moonhead You'd be a lot better leaving school early and getting an apprenticeship for a trade than going into further education these days. Nice idea - IF there were any decent apprenticeships out there. Granted, there are some, but not many. In a recent Panorama programme, most of these 'apprenticeships' were no more than free labour for 10-14 weeks and there was nothing at the end of them for the kids taking part. A lot of kids are forced to take them to receive their benefits and the companies get paid for taking the kids on (as well as tax breaks). This is so unfair to the kids involved. The programme interviewed over 2,000 kids on such 'apprenticeship' schemes all over the country and not a single person had landed a job when they finished. What's even worse is that the people running these placement schemes are paid an exorbitant amount of money by the government to set them up. My daughter workd for 3 months, up to 60 hours a week on really strange and unsocial shift patterns - anything from 6am until 10pm. She and the other 6-7 others that were forced to do this were all 'let go' at the end of it. It was nothing short of slave labour for free, yet it was advertised as an apprenticeship with a 'good chance of a job at the end of it'. Really?? From the info my daughter gleaned from other permanent members of staff there, the company had been doing this for over two years and had not taken on a single new employee even though they were desperately short of staff if the 'training kids' weren't there. As far as I know, to this day, Job Centres are still sending kids to these so-called 'apprenticeships' and also still requiring them to fulfil their jobsearch requirements otherwise they don't receive their benefits. It's all well and good if you manage to find a genuine apprenticeship and land a job at the end of your training. Unfortunately, our mindless government seem to come up with these ridiculous schemes, that cost the tax payers megabucks, and all for what?? They are just juggling the unemployment figures to make it look good - because those 'in training' aren't counted in the jobless figures. I didn't realise that they were legally allowed to describe that horribly exploitative "work experience" nonsense as an apprenticeship. That's both utterly appalling, and a lie of remarkable density. It certainly isn't what I was thinking of, as I had the few apprenticeship programmes that Blair didn't get around to doing away with to shoehorn kids back into the academic education system (however much damage it did it to the schools and however much it devalued higher education qualifications) in mind when I said that. The other nonsense on the other hand, has fuck all to do with training, and is more about having the taxpayer pay to provide some supermarket owner with free labour for a menial job that requires little or no training.

DesideriScuri -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 4:20:38 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cordeliasub This may be very very non-PC, but as far as education goes, I think that a college degree just doesn't mean as much as it used to mean. I mean, we keep dumbing down things so that students can pass high stakes tests that anyone who actually knows anything about education will tell you doesn't show ANYTHING except how kids sat for a few hours for a few days. And of course...EVERYONE must take these tests, even the kids who can barely hold a pencil and have a 70 IQ. So what was once taught in middle school is now taught in high school and that is now taught in colleges. A college degree is now as commonplace as....having a cell phone, and you can buy them online too. They do not guarantee a higher salary or wage. I'm not sure it's because of "dumbing down" as much as it is that more people having a degree. The mroe people with a degree, the more you need to separate yourself from the rest.

thompsonx -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 5:32:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Moonhead You'd be a lot better leaving school early and getting an apprenticeship for a trade than going into further education these days. If one wishes to become educated then one goes to college. If one wishes to make money then one goes to trade school.

switchdavid69 -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 8:02:14 PM)
DFB, What do you think the minimum wage should be ?

littlewonder -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/26/2012 9:26:18 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri I'm not sure it's because of "dumbing down" as much as it is that more people having a degree. The mroe people with a degree, the more you need to separate yourself from the rest. Believe me, colleges have absolutely dumbed down. Master and I constantly have this conversation. He asks me how my college classes are going and I complain about how boring they are because it feels like I'm back in middle school. The stuff I'm learning is not any different at all from what I learned then and going to college only to get a piece of paper that says "congratulations for learning how to make yourself look busy for a future boss". The only reason I'm even bothering is because when I am applying for jobs now they all want someone with a bachelors or Master's degree even though I have 20 years experience in the field. The experience doesn't seem to matter to them. All they want is that piece of paper unfortunately.

Edwynn -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/27/2012 3:17:58 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Moonhead You'd be a lot better leaving school early and getting an apprenticeship for a trade than going into further education these days. Except that in Germany, e.g., a non-college bound student doesn't have to drop out of school to get meaningful work experience. Apprenticeship is part of the program from age 15 onwards, along with school classes that actually are pertinent. Commensurate meaningful experience goes along with the education needed to support the 'total package' of worker skills in that scheme. In the US, you ether get a HS education that leaves you with no job skills at all, or pay a bunch of money for higher education, even for just an associates (two year) degree, while trying to support yourself at the same time with a low wage job. The US, and to a similar extent, the UK haven't quite grasped the concept of 'human capital' as a component of economic growth and as the only thing that can keep a developed economy competitive and doing anything more than treading water.

cordeliasub -> RE: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills - The "Skills Gap" Myth (11/27/2012 5:14:52 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn quote: ORIGINAL: Moonhead You'd be a lot better leaving school early and getting an apprenticeship for a trade than going into further education these days. Except that in Germany, e.g., a non-college bound student doesn't have to drop out of school to get meaningful work experience. Apprenticeship is part of the program from age 15 onwards, along with school classes that actually are pertinent. Commensurate meaningful experience goes along with the education needed to support the 'total package' of worker skills in that scheme. In the US, you ether get a HS education that leaves you with no job skills at all, or pay a bunch of money for higher education, even for just an associates (two year) degree, while trying to support yourself at the same time with a low wage job. The US, and to a similar extent, the UK haven't quite grasped the concept of 'human capital' as a component of economic growth and as the only thing that can keep a developed economy competitive and doing anything more than treading water. Exactly. And part of the reason for this is that we feel the need to feed our egos either as a society, or a school system, or even as parents, by insisting that ALL kids in high school should be doing college prep. The kid who is in 10th grade still reading at a 4th grade level and who is taking algebra for the third time does NOT need to be on a college track - he/she needs to be doing what they do in Germany - getting prepared for a job at which he/she can succeed. I have taught as an adjunct at our local junior college - and I taught "remedial reading." These are kids who cannot read, basically. Sorry to be harsh...but kids who cannot read and cannot do basic math (they have remedial math as well) do not need to be in college. They need to be learning a skill of some sort. That isn't elitist; that is reality.

Page: << < prev 1 [2] 3 4 5 next > >>

Collarchat.com © 2025

Terms of Service

0.046875