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Comment by fireeyed | Hacker News Reader

This is what happens when supply side overwhelms demand side. I remember in my teens, a person who graduated highschool with a modicum of technical aptitude could get hired as an entry level engineer in electronics, manufacturing, automotive etc. No longer the case. They won't even hire you for dog catcher with that background.

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When was that? 40? 50 yrs ago?

Did you really mean engineer or did you mean entry level technician?

When I graduated high school in the late 80's, you would at least need a community college degree to become even a technician or technologist.

I was curious, so I looked it up: "There are no formal education or experience requirements for this position."

https://a127-jobs.nyc.gov/psc/nycjobs/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HR...

It doesn't invalidate your broader point in the slightest, of course.

Are we overpopulated?

No, but we did move all the entry-level work overseas as a response to the successes of the civil rights movement. See also: Detroit, Camden, Gary, etc.

Over-accreditation might be the issue instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...

Hard to tell how you would easily stop the trend of educational inflation though, degrees are an easy way to sort through applicants.

The USA has sub-replacement fertility, as do almost all Western countries.

Population growth is entirely due to immigration.

We should open our borders to other very-high-HDI countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

(With diversity and equality requirements, eg. max 10% from any one country, max 49% males from any one country)

And disallow immigration from all others.

In other words, let our population continue to shrink.

Perfect for the "elite" who get to coast on trust funds while the unemployed poors die off.

Not so perfect when an outside force decides to declare war.

Falling population leads to cheaper housing, higher wages, less congestion for government services and infrastructure.

More affordable housing is a major factor in fertility rates, so eventually the population just finds a stable equilibrium.

Increasing population leads to the opposite - the elites are the ones pushing for mass-immigration, since they benefit from rising land prices and lower wages.

"A stable equilibrium" might as well read stagnation.

How do you suppose we incentive competition in stagnation?

Prosperity IMHO means a growth in per-capita wealth. On the other hands, "the elites" may prefer a growth in total wealth (since part of that growth accumulates to them) through a population increase even if it comes at the cost of decrease in per-capita wealth for the actual society.

We can even speed up the process by letting the poors have unlimitied opiates!

Tell BoJack! You've solved the drug problem in America!

The whole world could live in Texas. It's a failure of the people in leadership positions and who control the resources to create a game where everyone can find a fulfilling role to play. Instead its rent seeking and actively blocking the game from changing because that would risk their wealth.

If you are asking this question because you think we are, what steps are you willing to take to ensure you don't have kids?

No, it's just that desperately needed, useful work goes undone(and the people who would have otherwise done it go unemployed) because the market doesn't incentivize it.

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