🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Blair wrote:
> 
> >Jim Blair wrote:
> >.
> >.
> >.
> >> I see it this way: those with less skill and less education are losing out
> >> to those with more education or greater skills.
> 
> Peter Lawrence <peterl@netlink.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >Unfortunately this doesn't actually tell us that more skills etc. will help -
> >because it doesn't distinguish between tendencies to increase product and
> >tendencies to poach jobs. The issue is discussed at http://www.faxfn.org
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It depends on the kind of training, kind of education, and kind of
> shortages in the job market.

That's not what's needed. We KNOW that - what would help is some way of 
knowing what works through to those things. Perhaps the later examples will 
make things clearer...

> 
> >... In
> >fact, it is quite easy to describe a self consistent scenario which is
> >consistent with the above, in which the search for skills means less product;
> >it's when people go into training etc. and divert resources into it that only
> >match their MARGINAL gains but not the absolute increase in GDP (if any). The
> >losses show as an externality.
> 
> Sure if the shortages are in math and science teachers, and doctors,
> nurses, and the schools are turning out English majors specializing in
> 18th  century poetry or  Gay and Lesbian history .....

Even the former might be harmful (it depends), but the larger problem comes 
up with, say, the increasing output of lawyers (which is happening here as 
well).

The things that make the difference are the benefits across the board of 
having more "X" around, and the costs of getting them, as against the 
benefits and costs to each new X of becoming an X. It's quite likely that in 
both the USA and Australia the costs and benefits of more lawyers, say, are 
such that it's worth becoming a lawyer but not worth having a lawyer added to 
stock (externalities again).

One consideration that comes into it is the distinction between directly and 
indirectly productive. Even for "'math' and science teachers, and doctors, 
nurses", they do nothing directly but only assist in the work of others at 
the time or by helping those others reach productivity later. When the number 
of indirectly productive workers is already very large, a percentage increase 
in them is a much larger percentage decrease in the directly productive.

It would all be so much easier to show with a graph...

> 
> >
> >So that raises the question, how can we tell which case applies? PML.
> >
> 
> In our local paper yesterday there was a letter published in reply to an
> article on the increase in low paid workers in Wisconsin, and on how hard
> it is to get by on less that a "living wage".
> 
> The letter was from the president of the Wisconsin Health and Hospital
> Association.  He pointed out that anyone who completes a 2 year degree
> program from MATC or other technical college in any of a variety of health
> care programs (nursing, radiation technology, med tech, medical record
> administration, etc) can be assured of a career with a family supporting
> salary.
> 
> The family next door to me is considering moving to another part of the
> country.  They are looking where he can find a job. As he said, while he
> may be limited, his wife is a nurse: she can get a good job anywhere they
> decide to move.

Quite; and the costs of her becoming a nurse are already sunk costs. But the 
public policy question is rather different - since, after all, that nurse is 
a drain on the directly productive, which has the potential to spill over. 
I'm not falling into one of the usual Marxist errors of denying the validity 
of indirectly productive, just pointing out that by the very nature of 
indirectness there is more scope for externalities than with the directly 
productive - with them, the gains are "what you see is what you get". I 
incline to the view that nurses have external costs mostly during their 
training while certain other careers like lawyers have them all through, now 
that lawyer numbers and prices have reached their present levels. PML.

-- 
GST+NPT=JOBS

I.e., a Goods and Services Tax (or almost any other broad based production 
tax), with a Negative Payroll Tax, promotes employment. 

See http://users.netlink.com.au/~peterl/publicns.html#AFRLET2 and the other 
items on that page for some reasons why.