Conventional wisdom is that more education leads to better jobs and prevents you from falling behind in the workforce. But countries like India already have the skills of the 21st century that we're trying so hard to get, and they're willing to work for a tenth as much-
America has done a lot to improve and extend relations with india, evemn giving them exemptions to non-proliferation treaties and freeing them up to build nuclear weapons. With relations that good, expect much better ties between american corporations and indian workers, and a lot more outsourcing.India has moved directly into industries that advanced countries like the United States thought were their exclusive turf. ... What this means is that American workers whose jobs are threatened ... are, in many cases, people who thought they already had acquired the skills to "fill the jobs of the 21st century"...
full article here- http://economistsview.typepad.com/econo ... an_fe.html
Heres more on why having a college eduation doesn't guarantee success anymore- in fact, average real wages for college graduates actually fell about 5% between 2000-2004:
Full link here- http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/003527.phpBen Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot wrong on monetary or fiscal policy. But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared that "the most important factor" in rising inequality "is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education."...
The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year...
Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system ・and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.
It seems like more and more, success means being on the top from the beginning. Its still possible to come from the bottom and rise through hard work, but thats getting harder and harder to do with every generation. If you're one of the best and brightest things are good, otherwise get out of the way and get ready for the pain and leaner times...
