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from the we-don't-need-no-stinkin'-degree dept.
New Executive Order Fights Credential Inflation In The Federal Workforce:
On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to fill job vacancies based on merit, rather than require a minimum level of education for candidates seeking open positions. The order rightly recognizes that a job candidate with several years of relevant experience may be just as qualified, if not more so, than one who has collected a stack of advanced degrees.
"Employers adopting skills- and competency-based hiring recognize that an overreliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates and undermines labor-market efficiencies," the order reads. "Currently, for most Federal jobs, traditional education — high school, college, or graduate-level — rather than experiential learning is either an absolute requirement or the only path to consideration for candidates without many years of experience."
The order still allows federal agencies to prescribe minimum educational requirements for job candidates if the degree is legally required by the state or local government where the federal employee will be working. Additionally, they may consider a candidate's education if the degree "directly reflects the competencies necessary" to do the job.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @05:11PM (7 children)
Like many things, it does require you to open your eyes to see. Meritocracy doesn't mean everybody gets rich and lives happily ever after. It means we create a world where people can achieve things through their own means instead of being left to rely on the kindness of their lord, or government should we speak of a communist style system.
And that does exist. Software, as always, is the most obvious example. You can learn to develop for free, you can get development software for free, you can publish your software to an audience of literally billions for nearly free. If you are capable of creating anything that even a *tiny* chunk of society would find of value, you can not only make it but *really* make it. And that is just one facet of life. There are ways to make it life for almost any given skill, especially in the era we currently live in. Hell, even 'skill' in whining about the lack of meritocracy is plenty to make a living - 'Capitalism sucks, blah blah blah, click here to give me money on Patreon for confirming your biases!'
The thing is most people don't really want to work to achieve something. They want to just kind of exist and be paid for existing. That's not a meritocracy, that's not even communism, and damn sure not socialism - that's fantasyism.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:22AM (6 children)
Well, show me the big fortunes that were built on merit and not by scamming, exploiting others or damaging the property of others.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:32AM (1 child)
Exploitation is the primary merit you're scored on. If you're a great exploiter (a "leader"), you have merit. If you are exploitable, you lack merit. Businesses are run by businessmen, and exploitation is all they know.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @02:58AM
Thanks for explaining exactly what the problem is. It is anti-meritocracy, but cloaked as if it is. Lying and ripping people off because you have enough of a hold on the market is NOT a good thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @05:29AM (3 children)
Go look on Steam, or Apple, Google Play for the most obvious example. There are millions of pieces of software out there, and a lot of them find pretty reasonable markets - even if niche. Niche doesn't matter when you have literally billions of potential customers. Behind vast numbers of software you'll find there's one guy, maybe two. And those guys are now living *very* comfortably.
Today in America 6.7% of households are millionaires. If you're thinking you might just assume that 'okay, this is probably California + New York which have huge populations and where millionaire has somewhat of a different connotation'. But that's not true. This [kiplinger.com] page lays out the wealth in the US per state. In 'poor' states the number of millionaires starts upwards of 4%. But I'd also emphasize that in those states just a couple hundred thousand is effectively rich.
Vastly more people than ever before are 'making it', because it's far easier to make it than ever before. There have been never-ending media reports on the disappearing middle class, and that is 100% true. But the main reason it's disappearing is not because they're becoming poorer, as the media invariably implies, but the exact opposite. The main problem we have now a days is one of fertility. This [statista.com] is a graph of fertility in the US by income. People earning less than $10k per year, who are presumably living off the taxpayer, are having 50% more children per year than those earning more than $200k per year with a linear slide for incomes in between.
A meritocracy notwithstanding, a kid growing up in a household where their parent(s) think it's a good idea to have a kid when they're earning $10k a year is pretty much fucked. Folks actually doing well in life need to start pumping out more kids. People who can't even feed themselves need to stop having so many kids. Otherwise you're just going to see a never-ending spiral of wealth inequality. We're creating a system where the vast majority of children are being born to families who have made lots of really awful life decisions, and they're now responsible for instilling values into a new generation. Not a good idea!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @06:45AM
From the Kiplinger's article:
Thank Trump.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @11:47AM (1 child)
Oh, we traded the large and prosperous middle class, for 5% millionaires, what a great deal! Sounds like something Trump would do!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @04:07PM
You know there was a time I used to believe something not entirely different. This [urban.org] paper from the Urban Institute is one of the things that played a major role in starting to shift my worldview. Since think tanks do tend to spin things a bit, I'd quote this [wikipedia.org] snippet on their political stance. It can be summed up with the observation that they (the Urban Institute) fall somewhere between the NAACP and PETA. Their paper gives changes in society's various socioeconomic groups over time. In the below table I'm going to give the percent of society each group made up in 1979 followed by the percent in 2014:
Rich: 0.1% -> 1.8%
Upper Middle Class: 12.9% -> 29.4%
Middle Class: 38.8% -> 32%
Lower Middle Class: 23.9% -> 17.1%
Poor: 24.3% -> 19.8%
In 1979 51.8% of society was *at least* middle class. Today 63.2% is *at least* middle class.
In 1979 48.2% of society was lower class or poor. Today it's 36.9%.
We are *very* clearly on the right track ( economically ) in America, and things continue to get dramatically better. Keep in mind that those gains were realized in less than 40 years, and in recent years these trends have been accelerating. I started looking into these numbers when I found that much data seemed to not match certain 'woe is us' narratives espoused by the media. Those data being things like software salaries. Now a days in software 6 figure salaries aren't all that rare. There was a time when a 6 figure salary was something you hoped to hit after 20 years of promotions and even probably only possible if you made your way into upper management. And it wasn't just inflation. Salaries are growing much faster than inflation. And there are lots of these jobs.
Hahaha, holy shit. Ok, I just went to the BLS page on software developers [bls.gov] in preparation for my next point, and noticed something. The **MEDIAN** pay for a software developer is 6 figures. The point I was going to make there is about the scale of these jobs as well. That's 1.3 million jobs and there are millions of related jobs as well since the BLS breaks software into all sorts of different categories. And most categories in it are among the fastest growing of all jobs out there.
And it's not just software. Software is just such an easy example because it's a relatively new industry and it's just huge and growing by the day. Plumbers, welders, electricians, carpenters, etc are all now mostly pushing upwards of $50k a year. Other skilled fields like engineers are often pushing 6 figures, and so much more. I mean everybody is just doing pretty damned well now a days. The only requirement is that people get off their ass and actually do something. I mean even for people with no useful skills or education, you can *get paid* while learning trades in an apprenticeship. And you'll get a job that will be in demand everywhere in the world for the foreseeable future.