It’s a global trend, with North and South American, Europe and most of Asia, below replacement rate. That likely makes immigration a short term solution.
That means we as a country have to out compete other countries. With the imbalance of population to land mass to wealth favoring the US for the foreseeable future, short term is relative. Could immigration be a solution for the next century?
I wouldn’t go that far. I would say that we need to have a progressive immigration policy. Not politically progressive - mathematically to try to keep the working age/retired population ratio in sync.
Immigration should be about bringing people in to fill in a true gap between demand and supply of workers. Having people rush to America thinking it’s the land of milk and honey whether are not you bring required skills wouldn’t do us or them any good.
Which implies that we're not there now. Right now, there are a lot of young people who could use a solid job like a mailman, some of whom have a lot of student debt to pay for careers that are not panning out.
Why are the bad financial decisions of young people and their parents the mailman's fault? I lost my money in the casino, I demand you retire so I can occupy your job.
Studying is not playing casino. Most people don't want to be rich but just enjoy life and having a meaningful activity.
You are comparing a non mandatory risky gaming activity with something that we have to do because the society is working like this right now.
If you want to speak about bad choices studies, we need to speak about the society structure to understand that kind of paths.
To understand casino, we just need to learn what is an addiction.
It is casino if one thinks that he should be hired purely on the basis of him having a diploma. When you join uni, college or any other educational institution,the first thing is to sit down on your own and have a very long think on whether the knowledge you are about to get will help to improve your employment situation. Also, some part of all this 'student time' needs to focus on networking,so after 4 or so years you won't be a guy with a degree in gender studies+ $200K student debt and nobody in town knows you.
Spending 200k to get an art degree IS a bad decision. Watch the interviews of people with massive debt. I have yet to see a doctor or dentist or computer programmer.
Free public education seems like a fine solution for this. I have no problems with art degrees. I may go back and get one when I am ready to retire. But society doesn’t need to pay or be blamed for a choice for a 200k private degree that won’t pay itself back.
At least a casino has a chance of paying out. Taking on $100k of debt to study something with no job prospects is even dumber than gambling it away (from a purely financial perspective).
Show me these students that obtained a degree are not employed, and I will show you a student that got a non-marketable degree (aka basket weaving, or social studies), and their poor choice in getting that type of degree instead of a STEM degree is not societies problem nor the old guy still delivering mail
