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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.

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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.

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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)  

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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.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl

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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?

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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.

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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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]

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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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.

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.

• A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
  
• Personal Responsibility
  
• Help for the truly needy
  
• Limited Government
  
• Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
  

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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.

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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.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: Edwynn

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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.