I don't really have the time, energy, or knowledge to create a fully cited refutation of the author other than to say that this just seems really wrong.
It might not be technically wrong because the author seems to be citing facts and I'm sure they're correct. But it seems wrong in the sense that they're missing the forest for the trees. Between 1991 and 2014 a lot has changed, particularly in the earning power of the generation being cited as being more educated. This is probably has very little to do with their education, more like it's kind of a macroeconomic ... situation ... they were born in to.
And this is for a country that already has the highest GDP in the world.
Maybe a better way to look at it would be to use people who were born into poverty and see if the rates of escaping it have changed because of more education....I don't know...this just feels like this author is picking a weird fight with education.
>Between 1991 and 2014 a lot has changed, particularly in the earning power of the generation being cited as being more educated. This is probably has very little to do with their education, more like it's kind of a macroeconomic ... situation ... they were born in to.
I suspect that's the point. That the reasoning "people with degrees aren't poor, so let's just give everyone a degree" wouldn't result in eliminating poverty, it would result in a bunch of poor people with degrees.
sure, we all ride the ebb and flow of the economy, but if we were talking about developing countries or even historically impoverished communities in the US i suspect it would be harder to make the argument that education doesn't help.
> It might not be technically wrong because the author seems to be citing facts and I'm sure they're correct
You were on the right track in your first sentence.
The author is not an academic publishing a paper. He's a political blogger drawing conclusions he wants from handpicked data. This post was not reviewed by anyone and should not be regarded as fact simply because some data was included.
In fact, the author was fired from this blog a few days ago [1], which makes the appearance of this post on HN today even stranger
The author was not fired for being incorrect. He was fired for arguing on twitter in a manner that caused negative emotions about his publisher. Implying that this somehow invalidates his argument is a fallacious ad-hominem attack.
Do you have any concrete arguments against his conclusions?
> Implying that this somehow invalidates his argument is a fallacious ad-hominem attack.
I did not mean to imply his firing invalidates the article. It was just an observation. You're right, his firing has nothing to do with the pseudoscience of the article, and the pseudoscience invalidates all by itself.
This article describes the concept of pseudoscience pretty well [1]
It might not be technically wrong because the author seems to be citing facts and I'm sure they're correct. But it seems wrong in the sense that they're missing the forest for the trees. Between 1991 and 2014 a lot has changed, particularly in the earning power of the generation being cited as being more educated. This is probably has very little to do with their education, more like it's kind of a macroeconomic ... situation ... they were born in to.
And this is for a country that already has the highest GDP in the world.
Maybe a better way to look at it would be to use people who were born into poverty and see if the rates of escaping it have changed because of more education....I don't know...this just feels like this author is picking a weird fight with education.