Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: 9YearLurker
Not very many STEM jobs can justify the salaries paid to top STEM graduates working in finance. There really wouldn’t be much point to outbidding finance firms for such above-market-wage STEM jobs anyway.

You are missing the point and only using part of the professor's assertion, "There are a lot of skilled workers who have been lured out of the not-very-well-paid STEM occupations to work in high finance and elsewhere, and he suggests that an increase in wages would bring many back into STEM activities."

It is false choice to say that you either increase STEM wages to compete against those working in high finance or just allow STEM jobs to go unfilled.

Plain old market supply and demand works very well, thank you.

The problem is that it is not a level playing field. We are importing cheaper labor to fill many STEM jobs, which depresses wages across the board in those fields. And there is an endless supply of cheap, skilled labor from abroad. Our immigration policies bear no correlation to our real job needs.

During the past four years, the average household income has declined by $4,500 or almost 10%. If there was truly a shortage of labor, skilled or unskilled, we would see wages increasing. They are not. They are actually going down and have been for decades.

Over the past 40 years, a period in which U.S. GDP per capita more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, the annual earnings of the median prime-aged male have actually fallen by 28 percent. Indeed, males at the middle of the wage distribution now earn about the same as their counterparts in the 1950s! This decline reflects both stagnant wages for men on the job, and the fact that, compared with 1969, three times as many men of working age don’t work at all.

37 posted on 01/16/2013 9:13:48 AM PST by kabar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies ]


To: kabar

Of course men’s wages haven’t risen as rapidly as wages across the board—they used to be paid a premium for simply being men!

But those wage studies under-report actual increases, because most such jobs include health benefits that have been rising far faster than the rate of inflation.

Really, what is the point of trying to lure back STEM-educated workers who can be more productive elsewhere?

And our entire country benefits when smart and skilled immigrants come to work here. It is less capable, unskilled immigrants who are a drag on the economy and our standard of living.


45 posted on 01/16/2013 11:25:48 AM PST by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson