> Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive.
How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?
If what you claimed is true, then if the rate of education were to go up, then the income premium for education would go down, because you’re saying the income premium is correlation and not causation of education’s effect on society. But education rates have been going up for the last 50 years and the income premium for education is stable, despite more people being educated. Why?
> Richer countries spend more on education but the extra spending on education follows the getting rich, not the other way around
Your argument is that education is an economic drain. Where is the evidence of that? Even if true that wealth precedes education (and citation is needed there), your argument here is contradicting your earlier argument that education is socially wasteful - countries are getting richer and staying richer with increased education rates, regardless of whether it’s causation or correlation.
Ghana is an outlier with political issues not representative of most of the world, it doesn’t prove much about education. China’s massive economic growth coincides with an increase in education, framing it as being “based” on an uneducated populace because their education rate was lower at the start seems like it’s dodging the inconvenient fact that their education rates have risen while their economy has grown? Why are you so convinced that education is not even part of the cause for their economic growth, or anyone else’s?
You seem to be claiming that education teaches nothing of economic value, does not help people personally gain any skills, does not help people improve their productivity? Is that what you’re saying, and if so why?
>How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?
That's the entire point. We can't quantify if education actually makes people more productive and if it does, is that productivity applied to helping or hurting society. For example, an aspiring software dev could get educated in computer science which would increase their productivity (provided they actually learned something which is not a given). However, they could become a white or black hat hacker with differing effects on society. Another scenario is that a person doesn't know what they want to do and so they take a variety of courses until they find something they like. A lot of that education is wasted energy that doesn't help anyone if they can't use it.
How do you define productivity? Why can’t you define it? Why can’t you quantify it? If you can’t quantify it, why do you believe it? Maybe it’s not quantifiable because it’s not true?
If you define educational productivity as GDP or income, or in financial terms, then the evidence is pretty clear and very strong that education doesn’t hurt. For education to not improve “productivity”, then you must be defining productivity some other way that you’re expecting me to intuit. I’m only hearing some rationalizing for why you’re ignoring the data we actually have.
The Fed study I posted does attempt to quantify the causal effect of education, and so do quite a few other studies. I recommend doing some research about what has been done to find out how this issue has been quantified already. I have looked into quite a few of these studies and their methodologies, and I haven’t seen a single one claim that education has zero or negative causal effect, even when their summary leans toward the income premium being more correlation than causation. All of them conclude it’s a mix, and there’s a positive contribution from the act of attending school, learning history and skills, gaining independence, etc. I don’t think education is by any means 100% efficient, whatever that would even mean, but claiming it’s zero or negative is really extreme, especially if you can’t produce any evidence.
How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?
If what you claimed is true, then if the rate of education were to go up, then the income premium for education would go down, because you’re saying the income premium is correlation and not causation of education’s effect on society. But education rates have been going up for the last 50 years and the income premium for education is stable, despite more people being educated. Why?
> Richer countries spend more on education but the extra spending on education follows the getting rich, not the other way around
Your argument is that education is an economic drain. Where is the evidence of that? Even if true that wealth precedes education (and citation is needed there), your argument here is contradicting your earlier argument that education is socially wasteful - countries are getting richer and staying richer with increased education rates, regardless of whether it’s causation or correlation.
Ghana is an outlier with political issues not representative of most of the world, it doesn’t prove much about education. China’s massive economic growth coincides with an increase in education, framing it as being “based” on an uneducated populace because their education rate was lower at the start seems like it’s dodging the inconvenient fact that their education rates have risen while their economy has grown? Why are you so convinced that education is not even part of the cause for their economic growth, or anyone else’s?
You seem to be claiming that education teaches nothing of economic value, does not help people personally gain any skills, does not help people improve their productivity? Is that what you’re saying, and if so why?