China

[Dinar]

20 minutes ago, Luca said:

If you would have listened to the interview, he talks about exactly that at minute 50:00. The problem with today's left, wrong focus of the problem, china and milton friedman etc

 

He also didnt celebrate Marx, but he pointed things out that marx already talked about, which are a correct assesment of the current economic situation. 

 

 

I don't listen to those who call capitalists parasites.  I have seen that movie before, it is a call to mass murder.

[Gregmal]

5 minutes ago, Dinar said:

I don't listen to those who call capitalists parasites.  I have seen that movie before, it is a call to mass murder.

Within reason, yes I agree with you. Where I differ is when you get these scumbag types who have more than enough for themselves to be comfortable already, yet continue to worship money and take advantage of others for more. Theyre definitely parasites

[thepupil]

2 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Yup...the biggest grift in America right now is the guys getting paid 6 figures with amazing benefits and complete job security to drink craft beers and teach/hit on young adults 4 hours a day, 3 days a week. 

 

I completely disagree. I regard the academic career path as brutal. It's low pay, unstable (until it becomes gloriously so for the minority who make tenure track), political, and just generally shitty.

 

To become one of those people getting paid an okay amount takes 7,10,15,20 years of PhD, adjunct, assistant, etc. I don't envy people in academia at all and do not regard it to be a grift. if anything, people chasing the dream of becoming a professor are the ones being grifted....The people I know who are trying to / have gotten there work harder for far less pay than people in corporate / tech / finance / medicine.

 

do you know anyone in their 20's / 30's that's tried/is trying to become a professor? 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2024 by thepupil

[cubsfan]

23 minutes ago, thepupil said:

 

I completely disagree. I regard the academic career path as brutal. It's low pay, unstable (until it becomes gloriously so for the minority who make tenure track), political, and just generally shitty.

 

To become one of those people getting paid an okay amount takes 7,10,15,20 years of PhD, adjunct, assistant, etc. I don't envy people in academia at all and do not regard it to be a grift. if anything, people chasing the dream of becoming a professor are the ones being grifted....The people I know who are trying to / have gotten there work harder for far less pay than people in corporate / tech / finance / medicine.

 

do you know anyone in their 20's / 30's that's tried/is trying to become a professor? 

 

 

 

It's a complete grift. The teaching assistants do most of the work. 

 

The hard sciences are the best of the bunch. The soft sciences & humanities are the worst.

Once you have tenure, all you have to do is keep your politics straight - and you'r e golden.

 

Many universities are a cesspool of bloated staffs that drive tuition way beyond inflation.

The administration personal growth are out of control - and those are easy and useless degrees.

Edited March 22, 2024 by cubsfan

[Gregmal]

21 minutes ago, thepupil said:

you know anyone in their 20's / 30's that's tried/is trying to become a professor? 

Yes. 20/30s isn’t sunshine and unicorns but once you get your 7-10 years in I don’t think I could find better or easier all around jobs. The mid 40s gal who teaches 1st grade at my sons school makes $130k a year…
 

And the thing is too, the 20/30 crowd it often not the crowd put through rigorous training and academics…but the state schoolers and party animals. 
 

This isn’t an “I hate teachers” declaration by any means, but there’s little question in my mind that between the low barriers to entry, high level of political gatekeepers, and an overall entrenchment within the “public funding” sphere…ugh…yuck.

[cubsfan]

^^^ We love teachers. I owe a lot to them. What we are seeing now is not academics - but soft jobs, ridiculous tuitions driven by useless administration staffing, and inability to get rid of bad teachers.

 

That is disaster for education in America.

 

What company do you know of that can survive not firing people that don't perform well?

 

I attended a meeting in Chicago 10 years ago re: education.  The stats that were discussed: the Chicago Public Schools, the 2nd largest and highest paid big city teachers in America - fired

4 people that year - 4 out of 20,000.

[Gregmal]

For instance, my friends father in law, was a high school principal in NYC til he turned 60 and retired. In his 20/30s he did tons of camping and RVing in the summers, a lifestyle he enjoyed living and one made possible by all the time off teachers get. He boasted about having to be thrifty early on, but his quality of life was definitely acceptable. By his 50s he had several homes and was financially thriving. He’s currently in his 90s and still collecting 6 figures a year from the tax payers JUST from the pension!

Edited March 22, 2024 by Gregmal

[Luke]

20 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

For instance, my friends father in law, was a high school principal in NYC til he turned 60 and retired. In his 20/30s he did tons of camping and RVing in the summers, a lifestyle he enjoyed living and one made possible by all the time off teachers get. He boasted about having to be thrifty early on, but his quality of life was definitely acceptable. By his 50s he had several homes and was financially thriving. He’s currently in his 90s and still collecting 6 figures a year from the tax payers JUST from the pension!

Those guys are from the previous generations and indeed had much better times and prospects. But the times have changed and the liberalization at universities really lead to what @thepupil described. The suicide rate for PHD students is by a large factor higher than to the already higher rate for normal students compared to non studying peers in the same age group. A phd is a race to the bottom and really badly paid. In my opinion you must hate yourself to a degree to put up with it. For the few who attain the PHD and then go into university, i think they deserve a high salary and good working conditions considering they did almost 10 years of high level studying. 

 

Of course that is likely different for literature and arts where i do understand that some things are questionable. 

 

But anything science related is a tough nut. 

[Luke]

3 hours ago, Dinar said:

I don't listen to those who call capitalists parasites.  I have seen that movie before, it is a call to mass murder.

He differentiates between industrial capitalists and financial capitalists. Private equity who buys up apartments, lobbies the government for rent liberalization and then squeezes working class families with high rents are parasites. People who abuse their workers, prevent unionization etc are parasites. 

 

Not ALL capitalists are parasites and he never said that. But there are some folks that do only harm in this system and thats whats important to point out. 

 

The more important point is: The left is lost in fights that benefit the financial type of capitalists, gender equality, diversity etc. Even if they focus on economic abuse they forget the most important thing: HOW do people get rich and HOW do societies get wealthy? And how can we politically use that knowledge to increase the wealth for our societies? 

 

The way he framed china seeing this is, that china allowed the western market mechanism and benefitted of it but also received the bad parts of the west, high inequality, monopolization, overleveraged gamblers that do no good (real estate developers hello) etc. 

 

Its now for them to decide what kind of ways are endorsed to get rich and which ways are not endorsed or even regulated. 

Edited March 22, 2024 by Luca

[Luke]

I can absolutely not understand how people think Xi wants a Stalinist communism while he travels far to the US to talk with CEOs etc for investment, leaves a wide room for private economy etc. But the state will play a bigger role than it does in the west from now on and i think people see that too negative because the fordist type economies also had way more growth than the kind of deindustrialized neoliberal service economies in the west. 

Edited March 22, 2024 by Luca

[cubsfan]

12 minutes ago, Luca said:

Those guys are from the previous generations and indeed had much better times and prospects. But the times have changed and the liberalization at universities really lead to what @thepupil described. The suicide rate for PHD students is by a large factor higher than to the already higher rate for normal students compared to non studying peers in the same age group. A phd is a race to the bottom and really badly paid. In my opinion you must hate yourself to a degree to put up with it. For the few who attain the PHD and then go into university, i think they deserve a high salary and good working conditions considering they did almost 10 years of high level studying. 

 

Of course that is likely different for literature and arts where i do understand that some things are questionable. 

 

But anything science related is a tough nut. 

 

It's a race to the bottom because you are NOT firing those overpaid non performers. The teaching assistants do all the work - and you can't rid of dead wood, so they can move up. The definition of entitlement and protection.

[Hektor]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-loosens-cross-border-data-134027656.html

[Dinar]

3 hours ago, thepupil said:

 

I completely disagree. I regard the academic career path as brutal. It's low pay, unstable (until it becomes gloriously so for the minority who make tenure track), political, and just generally shitty.

 

To become one of those people getting paid an okay amount takes 7,10,15,20 years of PhD, adjunct, assistant, etc. I don't envy people in academia at all and do not regard it to be a grift. if anything, people chasing the dream of becoming a professor are the ones being grifted....The people I know who are trying to / have gotten there work harder for far less pay than people in corporate / tech / finance / medicine.

 

do you know anyone in their 20's / 30's that's tried/is trying to become a professor? 

 

 

That's just not true.  I know a bunch of people who at 22 went into graduate school, and at 27-28 were working as professors, with $170-$250K salaries, some with subsidized housing (2 bedroom for $2k per month in West Village of Manhattan where market price was $8k), 30K+ per year research budget that you could use for travel to conferences in Maui or Italy, and yes, teaching load of 6-10 hours per week, 12 weeks a year.  Oh, and let's not forget university will pay college tuition of their kids if they go to that school, or 50% if they go to another university.  

[thepupil]

1 minute ago, Dinar said:

That's just not true.  I know a bunch of people who at 22 went into graduate school, and at 27-28 were working as professors, with $170-$250K salaries, some with subsidized housing (2 bedroom for $2k per month in West Village of Manhattan where market price was $8k), 30K+ per year research budget that you could use for travel to conferences in Maui or Italy, and yes, teaching load of 6-10 hours per week, 12 weeks a year.  Oh, and let's not forget university will pay college tuition of their kids if they go to that school, or 50% if they go to another university.  

you must know more successful aspiring academics than i do. 

 

to me it seems like an almost reward-less grind pursued out of passion / desire for prestige rather than $$$ or work/life balance. 

 

 

[Dinar]

17 minutes ago, thepupil said:

you must know more successful aspiring academics than i do. 

 

to me it seems like an almost reward-less grind pursued out of passion / desire for prestige rather than $$$ or work/life balance. 

 

 

I did a Phd, so I know a bunch of people in my class, the year or two before and the year or two after.  A distant relative just got a job as a computer science professor at NYU.  

[thepupil]

30 minutes ago, thepupil said:

you must know more successful aspiring academics than i do. 

 

to me it seems like an almost reward-less grind pursued out of passion / desire for prestige rather than $$$ or work/life balance. 

 

 

 

my reference points are people i went to undergrad w/ who graduated in 2009 and 2011

 

2009 Guy Magna Cum Laude, Engineering, Top 10 University

2013 PhD Civil Engineering, top 10 school

2014 - Present Associate Professor @ Large midwest university

 

the average associate professor at this school, with his years of experience makes $90K. 

 

I made more than that in my first year after college. I have no idea in what world this dude is "grifting". 

 

2011 girl, liberal arts top 10 university

2011-2013 teach for america

2014 - 2020 PhD, top 10 university

2020- 2023 postdoc same school

2023- present visiting assistant professor in rural new england at liberal arts college

 

google tells me a "visting assistant professor" at this school makes $70K

 

these are my direct touch points. people who graduated 13-15 years ago from a top 10 undergrad, who i doubt have hit $100K yet. 

 

my wife is in field w/ PhD's, she has one. the academic route pays far less and works harder than the non-academic route. she made like $20-$25K as a funded PhD for 5-6 years, $40K as postdoc (another 2 years). that's 7-8 years of post undergrad indentured servitude.

 

if she went academic route she'd be making $90K in an expensive metro....like where's the grift? it's a grift by the institutions. they utilize like 10 eyars of free labor from the PhD's/ 

 

I

Edited March 22, 2024 by thepupil

[Luke]

30 minutes ago, Dinar said:

That's just not true.  I know a bunch of people who at 22 went into graduate school, and at 27-28 were working as professors, with $170-$250K salaries, some with subsidized housing (2 bedroom for $2k per month in West Village of Manhattan where market price was $8k), 30K+ per year research budget that you could use for travel to conferences in Maui or Italy, and yes, teaching load of 6-10 hours per week, 12 weeks a year.  Oh, and let's not forget university will pay college tuition of their kids if they go to that school, or 50% if they go to another university.  

You make it sound so easy. You need a 3 years bachelors, 2 years masters, and a Phd takes a minimum of 5 years where i live. 

 

Thats a total of 10 years full time hardcore studying. Then you have to consider that more than 50% take longer for either bachelors or masters. So maybe you are done with 30 after going through the grinder. 

 

Meanwhile the trade school guys already have a house, kids, fat portfolio etc while you were in school studying your ass off. 

 

Weren't you the one who said you are not rich with 10m in your account? How the hell are these guys living on 170k-250k after having studied for a decade+? 

Edited March 22, 2024 by Luca

[Luke]

11 minutes ago, Dinar said:

I did a Phd, so I know a bunch of people in my class, the year or two before and the year or two after.  A distant relative just got a job as a computer science professor at NYU.  

Was your phd such a freebie and what do you consider as a "fair salary" for someone with a phd? 

[Luke]

11 minutes ago, thepupil said:

 

my reference points are people i went to undergrad w/ who graduated in 2009 and 2011

 

2009 Guy Magna Cum Laude, Engineering, Top 10 University

2013 PhD Civil Engineering, top 10 school

2014 - Present Associate Professor @ Large midwest university

 

the average associate professor at this school, with his years of experience makes $90K. 

 

I made more than that in my first year after college. I have no idea in what world this dude is "grifting". 

 

2011 girl, liberal arts top 10 university

2011-2013 teach for america

2014 - 2020 PhD, top 10 university

2020- 2023 postdoc same school

2023- present visiting assistant professor in rural new england at liberal arts college

 

google tells me a "visting assistant professor" at this school makes $70K

 

these are my direct touch points. people who graduated 13-15 years ago from a top 10 undergrad, who i doubt have hit $100K yet. 

 

my wife is in field w/ PhD's, she has one. the academic route pays far less and works harder than the non-academic route. 

 

I

Exactly.

 

I have no idea where dinar has his numbers coming from, a basic google search shows you reality. 

 

YES, after being at uni for a decade as assistant professor and if a spot opens up you can MAYBE go high 100k but still. 

 

 

Average Salary of public professor with PHD: 150k. 

 

No way he can survive on that with all the vacations, house, good school for kids etc. what dinar always preaches @Dinar

 

Edited March 22, 2024 by Luca

[Luke]

48 minutes ago, Hektor said:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-loosens-cross-border-data-134027656.html

really nice to see! 

[Luke]

But we are getting off topic again. Main argument were the problematic tendencies of western capitalism that china tries to counter balance. I think that assessment of the situation is well-thought-out and these regulatory crackdowns are one sign of their willingness to change it. 

Edited March 22, 2024 by Luca

[cubsfan]

You want to improve the quality and pay those that deserve rewards in Academics - get rid of the bloat. It's totally out of control at these Universities. They need to pay the teaching assistants better, since they are basically slaves to the Professors - and get rid of the Administrators. Get back to teaching.

 

https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-doubled-staff-to-student-ratio/

 

The number of staff at Stanford has more than doubled since 2000, drawing some criticism of administrative bloat — including fromformer U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

 

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2023/01/05/more-employees-than-students-at-stanford-give-each-student-a-concierge/

 

Specifically, there were 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16,937 students. The paid help of 18,038 (administrators plus faculty) outnumbered the customers (students) by 1,101.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2024 by cubsfan

[Dinar]

2 hours ago, Luca said:

Was your phd such a freebie and what do you consider as a "fair salary" for someone with a phd? 

I paid nothing for my Phd which I received ten years ago.  I also received a stipend every year.  I could have tutored undergrads for $100+ per hour if I had the inclination.

The people I am talking about received PhDs in marketing, economics, management, accounting, finance and computer science.  All making $170k-300K per annum, + insane benefits + incredible lifestyle in academia.

I don't know about Germany, in the US you do bachelor's in four years, although some people can do it in three.  Masters is part of PhD program, that can be done in four to five years.  Yes, some people take six or seven, but that is generally the exception.  

Fair salary for a PhD in academia?  I don't know it depends. You work 10 hours a week twelve weeks a year, and the rest of the time you do research, except once you get tenure, you don't even have to do that. There is well known research study/ies that show that research productivity collapses after people get tenure.  Well, for 120 hours of work per year what should you get paid?   

Keep in mind, tenure is like a bond.  You get your salary, pension, healthcare (worth $40-50K per annum after-tax in the US), other benefits - like tuition payment for your kids at university.  You can also "work" till you are 80.  

@thepupil, I don't know about professors of engineering.  I know that a friend is a professor of physics at City College of NY.  He makes about $90K per annum, pays nothing for his health care benefits, pays nothing for his future pension benefits, and teaches about 20 hours a week, twelve weeks a year.  Also gets a sabbatical every sixth or seventh year.  

 

Edited March 22, 2024 by Dinar

[thepupil]

Again, I’ll just repeat that your data points seem far more cushy than the data or my anecdata suggests.

 

almost every PhD I know also did 2-3+ years of some research or other low paying job b/w undergrad and grad to have a chance of getting into a competitive funded program. Combine with a couple years of post doc and your looking at 10-12 years before you get a job with real benefits and a salary >$60k…most people in my wife’s cohorts ended up in debt despite no tuition/stipend because making $25k in major metro isn’t cutting it.

 

the idea of a 20 hour workweek is laughable to me. Another family member is a professor at a small podunk rural liberal arts college. She’s constantly grading papers and doing emails /admin work, honestly seems like she works 50 hours/week. She make $50k/year. It’s a labor of love for her.

 

Perhaps your datapoints are people with PhD’s wher the private sector is more competitive like comp sci.

even then,. They seem world’s away from my experience.

 

Edited March 22, 2024 by thepupil

[Spekulatius]

On 3/22/2024 at 3:51 AM, Luca said:

He is not a communist advocate, but you can't deny several observations Karl Marx did. 

 

Being a professor is an important job in our societies, and he certainly provides a lot of value too, nothing about being a parasite. 

Hudson seems like a neo Marxist. He has some valid points (as did Marx) but I think his conclusions are wrong and any application of what he teaches will lead to disaster. Adam Smith is long dead but in terms of his legacy, I don‘t think we have come up with a better model.