Comments on: SSC Gives A Graduation Speech

By: Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » The Next 40 years in Twelve Hundred Words

Sat, 19 Jul 2014 10:35:14 +0000

[…] Killed the American Dream,” The Scholar’s Stage (1 July 2013) Scott Alexander, “SSC Gives a Graduation Speech,” Slate Star Codex (23 May 2014) Yukon Huang, Canyon Bosler, “China’s […]

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By: jaimeastorga2000

jaimeastorga2000 — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 16:18:20 +0000

Also, I recommend you read about the Venus Project / Zeitgeist Movement which have similar ideas (but without money).

And I recommend against them. Having read their intros and their FAQ, I can’t possibly take them seriously.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 20:48:38 +0000

This reminds me of the video “Will Work For Free” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuGRgdJA_c).

Also, I recommend you read about the Venus Project / Zeitgeist Movement which have similar ideas (but without money).

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By: Ialdabaoth

Ialdabaoth — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 21:21:52 +0000

there will always be those jobs that need to be done that no one wants to do and you need an economic incentive to get them to do it.

That’s pretty solvable, though. With a basic income, you can still choose to work. If tasks need doing that no one wants to do, then people will start offering more and more money for other people to do those tasks, until eventually it becomes worthwhile for someone to do them, even with a basic income.

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By: emily

emily — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 20:42:42 +0000

Education takes people out of the labor pool- which is apparently what we need right now (imagine if there were even more people wanting jobs- wages would go even lower). There just has to be a way to make education less expensive so that even if you are not working, you are not going too deep into debt. I’m not that optimistic about guaranteed basic income- too many people will feel that it is “not fair” and there will always be those jobs that need to be done that no one wants to do and you need an economic incentive to get them to do it.

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By: Robert Easton

Robert Easton — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 10:27:31 +0000

Scott’s post is explicitly addressed to graduates of 2014 and so the claim that someone could have made 4% real over the last 20-30 years is reasonable enough. It maybe implicitly says the same will be true for the next 30 years as well and if so I think that might be where it turns into a pet peeve of mine. The idea that the stock market will earn well above inflation forever is apparently so “obvious” that it’s not even worth saying. But to me it seems about as plausible as this “house prices will go up forever” thing (actually I’m still scared that one’s true). From anon256’s comment, it’s anti-efficient market hypothesis to believe in this reliable 4% real returns mechanism, and while I don’t necessarily expect everyone to believe EMH, I would say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and “I can beat the market” sounds like an extraordinary claim to me.

Separately of course this solution doesn’t scale; the US government certainly can’t invest hundreds of thousands of dollar per capita in the stock market without reducing the rate of return it will then get. So even if it can currently borrow at 0% and invest at 4% real at the margin, that’s very different to it doing so for everyone.

All of this is perhaps getting away from Scott’s main point though. Regardless of the exact numbers, education is very expensive and so you’d hope whoever’s paying for it is getting something pretty good in return.

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By: Anon256

Anon256 — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 22:50:56 +0000

You don’t show your maths but it sounds like you are assuming the US government can get around 4% annual real risk-adjusted returns on multi-trillion-dollar investments. The US government can currently borrow money at around 0% inflation-adjusted interest (this number rarely goes over 2% and is often negative). Thus if your assumption were true the government could easily afford any imaginable policy, by borrowing money, turning around and investing it, and running off the interest. (Maybe the government’s creditors would want higher rates if the government borrowed so much more, but this doesn’t seem to happen in practise, and also why should they hesitate to loan the government money when the government has a magical 4%-real-returns machine?)

Back in the real world, government promising people a fixed income in the future based projected returns from money “invested” now sounds like the story of most public-employee pension funds, which have left poorer states and municipalities bankrupt and are a huge drain on richer ones. Indeed such overly-optimistic expectations about returns on financial capital have perhaps caused even more problems than the overly-optimistic expectations about returns on “human capital” you are denouncing.

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By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 23:02:03 +0000

Okay! I hadn’t heard that one before. I was picturing something along the lines of heroin use – “Needle and spoon.”
Zen hugs for you. I’m a senior at a state university in California, and I’ve seen a lot of people in my cohort going through the same thing.

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By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 21:27:34 +0000

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/wpress/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

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By: Lorxus

Lorxus — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 21:25:45 +0000

Not actual spoons, metaphorical spoons representing willpower/mental resources/a lack of a feeling of exhaustion.

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