Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street

Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by kamaal on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @12:36AM (#4941319)

>>I know this is HN, but the blatant disregard for how the humanities effect the enjoyability of your life is vulgar.

I am not disregarding humanities or history. But it makes more sense to read them when you have no other better work to do. Sorry for putting it bluntly, but you should have better work to do than studying philosophy and arcane trivia about the past.

>>Why should we not allow people to devote their life to historical studies?

Because they don't pay well. And sometimes don't pay at all. Nobody is going to pay you for just knowing 1000 things that happened some hundreds of years back. Such knowledge is not useful to solving any pressing problems that exist currently.

>>Society is creating enough wealth to ensure the pursuit of knowledge for those who wish to undertake it. And pursuit of knowledge is a more driving force for economic growth than any subsidy, any tariff.

Which knowledge, not all forms of knowledge are same. Are they?

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by zalew on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @01:20AM (#4941427)

And ironically, while you have a degree and express your opinions about education, your wording makes you sound like you are in high school. While I agree with the sentiment that there are other more in demand degrees, calling humanity studies 'arcane trivia about the past' or saying that 'such knowledge is not useful to solving any pressing problems that exist currently' reminds me of all those people for whom news are dumbed down to a 14yr old level because they don't understand any context anyway. To add more to the irony, AFAIK your country is quite overflowed with IT graduates who end up in call centers or other technological slave labor just like their buddies from commerce. So in the end, your enlightening gospel kind of invalidates itself.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by kamaal on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @01:39AM (#4941461)

Are you seriously suggesting the people continue to study things which don't pay them well or don't pay them at all?

And if that happens, they follow their passion and when they come out of college and don't find jobs who should they blame? How is the system's mistake that your passion is not in demand and doesn't pay well?

Look I'm not saying you should study philosophy at college. But at the same time you shouldn't look too surprised if with that degree you don't get a job that pays well.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by zalew on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @02:21AM (#4941560)

I said none of those things and I won't explain what's already written in front of you (talk about understanding context). Just keep in mind that excess of labor force in a sector leads to decrease in wages and increasing demand in neglected markets. Between 'we demand jobs for philosophers' and 'everybody should just study IT' there are more balanced scenarios. Trends don't change in one year cycles - when you notice that something went wrong it's already too late and it takes long years to fill the gap, and only assuming a too agressive correction doesn't happen.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by lbrent on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @03:41PM (#4944689)

"I am not disregarding humanities or history. But it makes more sense to read them when you have no other better work to do."

How is this not disregarding? Just to put things a little bit into perspective. I have an advanced degree in physics and a minor degree in maths. The most part of my professional career have I spend in various IT related positions, running my own businesses for the last 15 years. I am making enough money to lead a comfortable life. But if basically the only even remotely relevant thing (by other measures than monetary, i.e. improving the lives of anybody else) I have ever done was build a website for a global NGO and a mobile app for a local opera house. If anything I have worked for companies whose success might quite likely have made that world a worse place.

Last year I accidentally ran into a girl I knew back in college. She was majoring in sociology. She is my age(40-50), still living in a shared apartment and currently working for close to minimum wage for a local non profit that helps fugitives and illegal immigrants to get legal support and generally help them in their daily struggles.

My point is: Yes I make more money, but I have an immense respect for people like her who sacrifice this for ideals and actually improve peoples live on a regular basis. And in this regard your attitude (like "but you should have better work to do than studying philosophy and arcane trivia about the past") is not only disregarding but insulting and quite frankly shortsighted and ignorant.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by eli_gottlieb on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @06:28PM (#4945436)

You really should read your Marx. We're in an overproduction crisis: the world's most pressing problem is its lack of problems to solve.

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