
The Human Wealth of Nations - carlosgg
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304355104579236150801599552#printMode
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bilbo0s
I have listened to a great deal of hand wringing since the PISA reports
dropped and I think it is easy to concentrate on the negative and overlook the
positive news from these results.

Three points I think we should keep in mind.

One, the results were VERY uneven among the states. More importantly, if you
look at the Northeast, (Massachusetts, NY, NJ etc), and the western Midwest,
(Minnesota, Wisconsin), the scores were pretty competitive relative the top
performing nations actually. For instance, in Massachusetts, even if you only
counted the scores of black students, the Math and Science average was higher
than Finland, which is continuously touted as a model of educational
efficiency!

Two, teens in Mississippi, Texas, California and Washington are pretty much
the same as teens in Minnesota, New Jersey and Massachusetts. This is good
news, as it indicates that there are models out there that can be employed to
better the performance of students in other areas of the country.

Lastly, something about the US creates an openness in its citizens that drives
a good deal of activity beneficial to society. The article references, for
instance, "... America's entrepreneurial energies, its openness to innovation
and creative destruction ...". This "Creativity" has some value, which I would
admittedly be challenged to quantify. It is the sort of thing tests will
overlook. Which is curious, because in the future I think it will be one of
the most important skills, (or, 'traits' perhaps), of the high value worker.

My last point had only a tangential relevance to the PISA, I just thought it
was an important point to make. That aside, I think the first two points are
clearly cause for a cautious optimism here.

~~~
tokenizer
Thanks for the context. These statistics favor monocultural societies and
collectivist societies over individualist ones. Your point on innovation is
but one overlooked factor that these stats don't account for.

I'd love to get some global statistics on educational knowledge of 18 year
olds in all of these countries, and also get statistics on the per capita
numbers on new businesses opening up by this age group in these countries as
well. Just a thought that IMO may not skew these stats so much towards
monocultural/collectivist societies so much.

~~~
quinnchr
The U.S. actually ranks pretty low among OECD countries in terms of rate of
entrepreneurship. There is a strong correlation between a strong safety net
and entrepreneurship.

~~~
tokenizer
And I'm sure innovation in general is even harder to monitor.

Well I still stand by my observation that the top rated countries are on
average more monocultural and collectivistic (which would lead to better
safety nets I'd hope).

------
rayiner
Another article that misleadingly cites PISA scores without adjusting for
demographics: [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-
sheet/research/how-p...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-
sheet/research/how-poverty-affected-us-pisa-s.html), [http://super-
economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...](http://super-
economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html).

The U.S. has problems, but the problems are not schools, teachers, or funding.
The problem is Chicago, Philly, L.A., Detroit, etc. Places that have levels of
crime and social dysfunction that simply _do not exist_ at that scale in other
OECD countries.

I live in Wilmington, DE. A city of 71,000 people. Last year, it had 26
murders. London, a city of 8 million people, had 99. That's a 30x higher
murder rate (and 2x higher than Bogota, Colombia!).[1] These are mostly
20-somethings killed in gang wars. There's a pipeline from the schools here
straight into these gangs. I'm not surprised that test scores aren't the first
thing on the minds of kids here.

Also, I'll note that the U.S. has one of the highest fertility rates in the
OECD, just behind Mexico and Turkey. I don't think its unreasonable to assume
that this has an impact on the demographic distribution of children in
schools. That is to say, I'm willing to bet that children in schools in other
OECD countries were more likely to be planned and born to parents who intended
to take care and properly educate them than children in American schools.

[1] Four major U.S. cities (five if you count Puerto Rico as part of the U.S.)
make the list of the 50 most murderous cities in the world:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate).
The only countries with cities on that list that aren't in Latin America are
Jamaica, South Africa, and Iraq.

~~~
bluedino
Probably close to 90% of the murders on that chart are related to the drug
trade. Notice how they are mostly in Central/South America.

~~~
rayiner
Sure, and Wilmington is on I-95, a major drug trafficking corridor. Kids get
caught up in gangs, and the gangs are minor or major players in that drug
trade, and the gangs are a major presence in the schools.

I'd bet that ending the drug war and destroying the drug trade would have a
much larger impact on test scores in the U.S. than even drastic improvements
in school funding or teacher quality.

------
bicknergseng
"""Some 7% of U.S. students reached the top two scientific performance levels,
compared with 17% in Finland and an amazing 27% in Shanghai."""

I'm not normally a stickler for this kind of statistical bullshit, but this is
particularly bad. They compared a country of 300mil with a country of 5mil
with a city of 14mil. I think the percentages are interesting, but this is
ACTUALLY comparing apples and oranges. I'd be interested to see how Boston (or
whatever US city with the highest "scientific performance level") does in that
mix though.

~~~
VLM
It would be interesting to discuss the target percentage. Yes I'm sure 100%
would be nice in an abstract sense, but there are a lot of things that would
be nice.

I can assure you that my favorite waitress having a bachelors degree in early
childhood education doesn't make my food arrive at the table any quicker, or
her recitation of scripts sound any better. Or my favorite coffee barista who
has some liberal arts degree or another doesn't make coffee any better than
the illegal who can't read or write. Perhaps if all lunchroom ladies were
competent FPGA programmers then they would shovel canned peaches onto trays
better, or something.

So I'm not seeing how the hotel desk clerk in Shanghai having memorized the
periodic table is going to improve anything in any way.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You're rather nastily assuming that people who currently hold low-level jobs
_should_ hold those jobs, for their entire careers, and that therefore, any
education unnecessary for their menial jobs is unnecessary for them as human
beings.

That's one small step for illogic, one giant leap for inhumanity to other
people.

~~~
VLM
One fundamental problem is massive underemployment. Another is a failing
educational system in bubble mode means no one on the planet pays more while
getting less. Another problem (related to #2) is the monetary costs of the
failing educational system are financially crippling our youth and the
guaranteed loans that will never be paid back will financially cripple
everyone else.

So your solution is individuals who are headed for a cliff, should step on the
gas and to fling over it faster. After all, if it doesn't work, keep trying it
over and over until it does. And I'm the inhumane one LOL.

I will say if a system is inevitably crashing, then its best to accelerate the
process so as to reach the recovery quicker. The sooner we have a big crash,
the sooner we can pick up the pieces and start living again. So in that way
you are correct, the best thing kids can do "for everyone" is financially
immolate themselves, because in the long run that'll bring on the crash (and
hopefully, recovery) quicker. If that is your analysis then by its conditions,
I admit you are correct, under those specific conditions, although I'd hate to
be one of the individuals being crushed for the betterment of everyone else.

------
danielharan
"Economies grow by exploiting scarce resources, people most of all."

No, they don't. Economies grow because of cheap inputs. Every economic
revolution is the result of something becoming ridiculously cheap; the last
one was oil, the current one is computation.

~~~
Edmond
In the case of the US you could throw in centuries of free slave labor.

~~~
VLM
That would imply that immediately before the civil war the south was a
boomtown and the slaveless north was a rustbelt.

~~~
DoctorZeus
Not necessarily. Slavery might have indirectly assisted the north's
industrialization in at least a couple ways. (1) Accumulation of financial
capital in the hands of an investment class (2) Cheap cotton gave northern
factories a competitive advantage.

~~~
VLM
That is a good point although there should also be a way to compare and
contrast with other countries that didn't have slavery as an "advantage". Then
you could try to back-apply the model to other countries, like if the English
outright owned the Irish then economic growth would have increased ... or
would it have?

~~~
DoctorZeus
Good question. It would take some serious time studying history to have even a
decent guess.

------
ajuc
The results (png):
[http://i.imgur.com/mZ8Tj0kh.png](http://i.imgur.com/mZ8Tj0kh.png)

Report (pdf): [http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-
overv...](http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf)

------
VLM
"Since 1998, the Program for International Student Assessment, or Pisa, has
ranked 15-year-old kids around the world"

Every American 15 year old kid? Probably darn close. Every Vietnamese 15 year
old kid? LOL.

For a heavily class based country, the USA has quite a blind spot to how other
countries organize more heavily by class starting at a rather young age.

------
KStout
I love the smell of a Rupert Murdoch propaganda piece in the morning.

------
carlosgg
Weird that India did not participate.

------
michaelochurch
Here's a terrifying thought (which I believe to be correct).

I don't think US schools are _that_ bad on fundamentals. They're probably
quite good on average. Of course, a large percentage of what makes a school
good or bad is the other students, not the teachers or material. I'll get to
that...

These indifferent, underachieving students (disproportionately, but not
entirely, in poor areas) aren't stupid or bad people. I think they're just
_rational_. They see what society has to offer them even if they do succeed
and conclude that it's not worth the effort for them. If middle-class,
college-educated people are applying for jobs in fast food, then what should a
low-income student, who _might_ be able to scrape together enough scholarships
to get through undergrad with merely moderately crippling debt, expect? They
see people far ahead of them in the socioeconomic queue ending up miserable
and disappointed, and conclude that there's no chance of success for them.
Most of them are probably right.

This country has a deep-seated morale problem, expressed at the top through
corruption and dishonesty and nepotism, and at the bottom through indifference
and underperformance-- which is most measurable and upsetting in the schools
because that's before society has formally given up on people. It stems from
fundamentals that will take a long time to fix.

~~~
dba7dba
I strongly disagree.

US schools are pretty bad on fundamentals. Period. Talking to parents who are
here from Asia (for business, grad school), they are shocked how behind the
grades are compared to their home countries.

And about the underachieving students supposedly not trying harder because
they see college educated people applying for fast food jobs, I think that's
just not true. And if they really do think that way, I'm sorry but they
deserve the poverty they are stuck with.

I have history of an entire nation to to prove that people don't stop (and
should not stop) studying in school because they see other college grads stuck
with low paying or no jobs.

S Korea at end of the Korean War (1950-53) was a complete disaster. There were
college educated kids in 50's, 60's and 70's but no jobs for them. The country
was still largely surviving on foreign aid.

The job market was bad enough that when S Korean govt recruited people to go
to West Germany to work as 'miners' (mainly to earn foreign currency) in 1963,
2894 men applied. Out of 2894 men, 375 got the job. Basically 1 was selected
out of 7. The competition was so fierce that names of who got in were
published on national newspaper. Over 60% had completed high school or
tertiary education.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Germany](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Germany)
[http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0708/giyoon/giyoon1.html](http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0708/giyoon/giyoon1.html)

So did the south Korean kids in school stop studying because they saw how
college grads were so desperate for jobs that they were willing to go abroad
to work as coal miners? Of course not.

If the American kids really are afraid of ending up like the other college
grads being stuck without jobs, they should study harder, be it in college or
vocational training etc.

~~~
VLM
"If the American kids really are afraid of ending up like the other college
grads being stuck without jobs, they should study harder, "

This is hilarious and can be compared to: There are thirty NBA teams and
twenty million teenagers so the obvious national educational and employment
strategy should be to tell all twenty million teens to just practice harder if
they don't want to end up unemployed.

If as per the pigeonhole principle, if the numbers don't match up, just
handwave away the unlucky ones, let them eat cake.

~~~
dba7dba
Using example of NBA doesn't really work imo because of the skewed statistics.
No one is saying high school students shouldn’t study because only a very
small percentage will ultimately earn PhDs. That's not what the OP and my
comment is about.

What handwaving? An entire generation S Koreans in 1950 - 80 basically
'studied' their way out of extreme poverty. They have no oil or any other
useful natural resource to speak of.

Obviously studying hard in school wasn't the only reason as they got a few
other lucky breaks, but ultimately it was the education that got them out of
poverty.

~~~
VLM
"but ultimately it was the education that got them out of poverty"

How? What is your economic system wide reaction mechanism? I think the problem
is confusing macro and micro. On a micro level yes one individual can rise
above others in that way. However, on a macro level diverting capital out of
productive enterprises into merely increasing existing underemployment stats
makes the overall situation worse for everyone, not better.

I'm not saying education is worthless, or underemployment should be 0% (or
maybe it should?).

Think about this analogy. Maximum productivity resulting in maximum wealth for
everyone involved happens when a factory produces 1000 cars. I know, lets
produce 1500 cars, and also increase prices 10% per year, then having those
unsold cars sit on the lot will make society as a whole wealthier because ...
err, I guess it makes society as a whole substantially poorer. Don't get me
wrong, I'm not saying producing 1500 is a disaster therefore producing 500
would be genius, that would also be pretty bad. I'm also not making any moral
or ethical or environmental value judgement about manufacturing cars.

Its basically the economic broken window fallacy.

Another way to look at it, is if you know about control system theory, taking
an unstable system and pushing it hard in an even more unstable direction is
not going to work well.

WRT the Korean example, as a cheap hobby or time filling past time, there's
nothing inherently wrong with education, it didn't hold them back as far as I
know. Nobody was spending money on liberal arts professors instead of spending
the same money on welding robots and conveyor belts. Not that there's anything
wrong with the liberal arts and making life worth living, just that it is
orthogonal to economic productivity.

