Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/25/neoliberal-salve.html
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Careful there. Being critical of the Democratic party will make certain folks here think you’re a Trump supporter.
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but one recommendation is so face-palmingly dumb that it’s almost impossible to believe they made the cut.
No garentee exist when dealing with the Federal Government, regardless the political tilt.
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I remember the golden era of US economic expansion that occurred after all the farmers who lost their livelihood in the dust bowl were retrained as math professors.
Democrats: Fuck off with this nonsense.
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I’ve never been a big fan of articles that just come out and claim that such and such is a success or failure. I did check the link to the article provided as support for the claim that job training was shot down in 2004, but it was simply an Amazon page for a book. I’m not interested in ordering a book. So I’ll just make a couple of points:
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Many US Companies offer job training. I worked in the Insurance Industry for 21 years and my company like all other insurers that I’m aware of offered training…first reading materials, then classroom, and finally on the job guidance. I though that training was excellent and very successful.
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The US Military is in essence ‘job training’. Young kids with no particular direction in life join the military and are trained in teamwork, responsibility and normally some field of expertise. When they leave the military, they are considered hot prospects. They have training in technology, EMT, managerial, etc.
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Most advanced European and Asian countries offer job training in lieu of intellectual education like our 4 year colleges. (Now 6 to 8 years and thousands of dollars in debt only to step into a $10 an hour job on achieving your degree.). I’m more familiar with German job training, so I’ll reserve my comment to that country. This is an excerpt:
One reason that vocational programs are less common in the U.S. is that companies are less willing to pay for apprenticeships that offer on-the-job training. German companies “pay 75 percent of the $19,850 annual cost of each trainee, and the government covers the rest,” PBS NewsHour reports in 2014.
There’s also the issue of consistency. Whereas, American vocational programs differ from school to school, German vocational training is regulated — with “standardized occupational profiles, or curricula, developed by the federal government in collaboration with employers, educators and union representatives,” according to The Atlantic. The outlet also noted the following:
( https://www.attn.com/stories/13232/how-germany-and-america-differ-job-training )
*** If it is so successful in Germany because they approach it well, then why does the author dismiss it as nonsense? I think crediting companies to help pay for real world training is an excellent idea. It sure beats having kids exit college with a BA after 8 years and a mountain of debt …and no job.
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Luckily, as ITT Tech and it’s buddies have demonstrated, low quality ‘training’ is never hacked together on the cheap just to exploit a well meaning subsidy.
I’m sure the closet is full of ideas that are great in one country, and face smackingly stupid in the USA. Job training in the US is a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars and will continue to be the until the program is redesigned from the ground up.
Well there’s your problem right there. The way they always do this is lip service to the left wing, and then the neoliberal CANT GET ELECTED because they lose the left wing by moving their neoliberal lips.
Hi Al, Hi Hill, how ya doin’?
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@anon75430791 @Urbane_Gorilla haven’t y’all learned that bringing facts to a manufactured outrage don’t do no good round these parts?
I think if the US is going to import ideas that work in other countries, they ought to start with free healthcare for everyone.
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Job training programs are abused by Fast Food and other low wage companies who don’t need a check from the government. Department of Labor says that 92% of the workers would have been hired regardless of the money Congress pays to McDonald’s corporate. Actually programs like this incentivize high turnover because one position can provide “job training” credits multiple times a year if you just fire your employees right after you finish “training” them to run the drive through window.
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Trump: “I’ll build a wall, raise tariffs, and kick out the immigrants. Jobs, jobs, jobs!”
Dems: “Here’s some training, so in ten years you can get a job designing Android apps. And here’s some unemployment insurance too”.
Both are bullshit. Which will get more votes??
One of the reasons, vocational training works well in Germany is that they have a long history of doing it, stretching back to medieval guilds.
Germans (maybe as a result, maybe because that’s just how Germans think) also have a real thing for ‘doing things properly’. That way may actually be rubbish but if it is the way they think a job should be done, that is how they will want to do it.
Trying to import that sort of system into countries which either never had it (the US pretty much) or ruthlessly disposed of it (the UK pretty much) is not surprisingly hard because all the various cultural background things that prop up the system aren’t there.
So you end up with (for example) employers who think “Why should I train my staff properly? They’ll just sod off and work somewhere else.”
Or ‘training companies’ who just exist to take people’s money without providing any actual useful training.
Or ‘training companies’ which exist mainly to keep people off the unemployment statistics (a UK specialty).
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Your response is one of the typical issues with American politics(and debates in general in this country)
The attack isn’t on “training people”. Training people is a great idea.
The attack is on offering tax credits to employers to train their employees.
Empirical data has repeatedly demonstrated that tax credits to employers DO NOT result in positive results for ANYONE, except maybe the employers.
“I don’t like articles that say something is a failure or a success”
So basically, you judge things based on their narrative power? If you think a program SOUNDS like it should work, then it should work. Evidence be damned. Why did we even bother to invent science.
That kind of thinking gives us shit. That kind of thinking gives us homeopathy, school vouchers, and a privatized FAA.
Actually, your response is one of the typical issues with American politics (and debates in general in this country)… You chose to read into my response the straw man you could attack. I understand that the article was referring to using tax credits as an encouragement to induce companies to train, and I understand ‘the article’ said (without any support) that data shows that it does not work.
Basically I’m saying that I don’t like unsubstantiated ‘black and white’ statements.
Not only did I note my dissatisfaction with the lack of support for the statement, but I responded with three real life situations that I feel negate that ‘nebulous’ report.
So far, people have argued that I’m wrong…yet nobody has proffered any reason why my three examples are incorrect. In fact, Why is it, aside from basic 'Murican heel dragging, that the German system would not work here?
And here’s an instance that I just came across yesterday. A kid just graduated from welding school. As part of his college level training they encourage shops to take them on as low paid trainees. He did that…They paid him minimum wage, and he stepped out of college into the same shop at $15 p/h. In this instance, the shop wrote off that trainee wage, which is no different than tax credits for training in the same vein as the German system where the state pays 25% and the shop pays 75%, except perhaps in minor percentages.
Can anyone really believe that the way we do it is better than the way the Germans approach it? BTW… I’ve lived in Germany, France, Spain and England. And I’ve lived here.
So, somebody please explain to me why with 4 legitimate examples, providing tax credits to encourage on the job training is a bad idea… Save your opinions for people who care.
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My mother was born in Bath, my first wife was born in Hook Norton…I lived and worked there for about a decade. I do get the cultural and social differences. In fact I recall some American chain sending their Russian staff off to be trained in how to smile and be nice.
And what you noted about ‘education for sale’ is a problem here in the US. We have many trade schools that take your money (backed up by the taxpayer BTW) and promise you an education and a good paying job…Lots of those have now gone belly up.
We also have many companies who whine about the lack of skilled workers and take advantage of hiring foreign workers at a lower wage than they’d pay American workers through the H1-B visa program… My thinking is, well… gee! If there aren’t enough qualified workers here…Then damned well train them yourself, as I was trained in my Insurance job. (BTW… As a laugh, Donald Trump employs foreign workers for his hotels and casinos under that same visa program, because apparently he can’t find any waitresses, cooks or maids in Florida for his Mar-A-Lago Resort…Hah!).
IMO the biggest stumbling block we 'Muricans have is our bullheaded determination to do things in such a way that is not in our best interest. We’re a pretty stupid people and easily led. When we’re told that we can’t do something, or it is wrong, we pretty much just swallow it. That’s why we spend twice as much on health care for example as we would if we had anything like a European National Health. It would save our nation 1/2 the $3.2 Trillion we spend each year. Instead, you can see the 535 Congressfolk playing tug of war over finding ‘a health care system’ that will work… Something that affects 320 million of us. Go figure.
So I’m back to my original opinion,
Clearly the Democrats will and did get more votes… But does that matter in a nation that has an electoral college that is in effect a reflection of the gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement that the GOP have employed effectively over the last 12 years? When you stack the deck, you have the advantage. BTW… I voted GOP from Nixon through Bush Jr’s 2nd term, then Libertarian, and finally Dem. I’m hardly a knee jerk anything. 
Like lunches, nothing is ever free. Someone always pays.
Having worked for Germans & German companies, can confirm 100%.
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Including, as it turns out, the current healthcare system which has massive costs despite not providing healthcare.
There’s not such thing as a free lunch, but if you are currently paying $50 to not have lunch, you might start thinking that a $10 lunch looks free.
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