Tyler Cowen: Average Is Over

A C today is like an F from the 1970s.

 

Does he have as many degrees as 93Devil?
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You can accomplish a lot when you don't spend your entire day on message boards.

 

Meh, not worth it.

 

I know what you're getting at. It's cute that you think what I described is that isolated.

 

It might color your opinion of the book that Tyler Cowen is a Kochhead. His chair is funded by the Kochs.

http://www.charleskochinstitute.org/wellbeing/advisory-board/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercatus_Center

That might explain why the book's thesis is, "Fuck you, we're rich, the rest of you go eat beans."

 

Ding ding ding-a-ding ding.

 

OK, I really want to read this book now. I actually think the bottom-line premise, that the uneducated and unskilled are in serious danger of being left way behind right now, is an important one that we should heed. It brings up a lot of important questions: Does inequality really matter? Are workers trainable? What happened to all the blacksmiths? What kind of social safety net should we construct? Should we actually place a drag on technological development at this point? But if it's a guidebook to the apocalypse for the rich and powerful, well, that's kind of shitty.

 

Current workers? It depends, right?

What are their basic skills? Critical thinking, and problem solving are transferable skills. Too many don't have those skills, and they aren't easy to learn late in life.

But, there's no excuse for younger folks. Career change is now the norm. Acquiring valuable skills is necessary, and you can't pretend not to know.

High paying, low skill jobs just will not exist.

 

I think that unions, if they really want to help their workers, would recognize this and make training a major component of collective bargaining demands. I'd rather squeeze that out of an employer at this point in time than another $1.50 an hour.

 

It's one of the first things that gets cut in rough times, but well run, big companies have ongoing training programs for (management) employees, and tuition reimbursement programs.

Continental Airlines had a fairly extensive program. You could even take things like free Spanish lessons after work, on site.

 

OK, so Yglesia writes that the book actually offers some policy prescriptions for assisting the middle class in this period he predicts, but is skeptical about the political process's ability to implement them:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/26/average_is_over_the_new_book_from_tyler_cowen.html

I'm going to do something radical here and read the book for myself, and then offer up some thoughts on it on this thread. Because it certainly, despite the Moch Brothers' involvement, doesn't sound like the, "Let them eat cake!" polemic that this board has identified it as.

 

From the article you linked: "The actual forecast is that the political system will be under the control of a relatively narrow elite who will stomp on the interests of the median household. ... Cowen's actual message seems to be that we ought to make ourselves more complacent, and that these somewhat bleak trends he forecasts aren't really all that bad if you look at them in the right light." Geez, leave the politicking and big thoughts to the rich: I wonder where Cowen got that idea.