Check out the ‘Smarter Everyday’ YouTube video for what it took to get people to design and manufacture a simple grill scrubber in the US.
They could find exactly one old retired guy with the knowledge and experience to make a mold, across several states.
You can get this done and delivered in 20 minutes in Shenzhen, and talk to an expert over a storefront countertop by walking over a few hundred feet from your business.
There is not a lack of mechanics who can assemble Fords on a factory line from pre-built components with instructions. FFS.
Yes, America has a serious problem. No, the Ford CEO is not actually pointing it out. He's fucking lying so he can justify using what amounts to slave labor in other countries while also touting "patriotism" branding while also refusing to do even the tiniest possible to alleviate the problem via training.
This job is very different from your great grandfathers Ford factory job. Go tour a modern car factory.
The concept of a line worker is on its way out. The work is more on the side of maintaining the contraptions that make the car and retooling/tweaking it on a regular basis.
This one.
> working in a Ford garage fixing cars
In general (except for Tesla), there are no $Company garages in the US like the rest of the world, all repair work is handled by privately owned dealerships, whose existence is mandated by the government in most states. Experienced mechanics make about 40$ per hour at these, with juniors about half that. You'd not have trouble finding a mechanic for this rate, it being slightly above the median income.
Have you considered the issue being no company is willing to do on-the-job training ?
I hardly can believe that retired guy had everything figured out prior to starting his first day of work.
You could 50 years ago. You still can, for some aspects of software engineering, which makes tech people believe that it can be done for everything.
But no, you are not going to teach someone modern chemistry, electronics, and general wetlab work with 'on the job training'.
https://www.motor1.com/news/774805/ford-ceo-complains-shorta...
Just one. The description, the location and the salary.
Again just one link.
Anyone seen one? Can you post it here?
>We are not investing in educating a next generation
It is people like you who caused this with chasing short term profits and paying off US Congress people and presidents to cut your taxes.
Education needs to be paid for by someone. Tax cuts for the wealthy and paying minimum wage to most workers caused this, look in the mirror.
Many US State Colleges were supported by tax dollars and in the 90s, tax cuts started happening and funding for public colleges declined and fees started being added.
When I went to College, it was extremely cheep, books cost more than my tuition and fees. The state where I was had huge discounts for residents and since the college was in the City I was born and grew up in, I got even more discounts.
Now, kids need to take out big loans for higher education.
I will not go into cuts to public schools, these days, if parents can afford it, they send their kids to private school. When I was in school, the public schools were great, but they started to go down hill not long after I graduated High School.
If the auto mechanics were paid a salary of $120K per year for 40 hours per week, they'd be flooded with applicants.
Instead, that $120K number is if you can work the requisite number of overtime hours and you don't pay attention to having to buy your own tools and ...
Lots of mechanics prefer owning their own tools because the community shop tools will end up beat up and not cared for. Plus, another thing locking you down to the location. On the other hand that's yet another personal expense.
Part from Column A and part from Column B.
It's also part of the accounting gimmicks to keep mechanics as "contractors" rather than "employees".
Which is why all the whining rings hollow.
They haven’t changed one bit.
They’re lying about how much they’re paying people. That’s a maximum you can earn working 70 hours per week, not the base.
I am completely unsurprised they can’t find anybody to work for them.
> This year's program… is offering $5,000 scholarships to 800 potential automotive technicians from across the country. This year, the program is available across 42 states and for students attending nearly 600 schools. In addition to tuition assistance, scholarship funds can be used to cover day-to-day related expenses like living and transportation, childcare, and tools needed for class and more.
Whether you believe all of that scholarship money will actually be given out is another question.
https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/ford-ph...
Look at this list of schools they support: https://techforce.org/fordphilanthropy/
Most of them are community colleges and trade schools that charge around $10k - $30k total for the degree. In which case, an additional $5k in scholarships is nice.
If you want to be mad at a big company, this probably isn’t your strongest leg to stand on, and there are plenty of other targets for you to be mad at.
So don’t let the facts interrupt that, I guess.
I'm sure I've previously heard it implied that all the grooms who lost their jobs to motor cars became mechanics and chauffeurs. Surely this would be just too poetic.
Then of course, why would you specialize in the F150 if they add new electronic BS every 2 years, the car will perhaps be obsolete in 7 years or all tariffs on BYD are lifted in 8 years.
Maybe keep cars general and don't make them proprietary, then people will learn general skills.
For example, by law in California, auto mechanics make double minimum wage if they don't own their tools (so they can go buy some). That works out to about $68k/yr these days.
$120k/yr is not suuuuuper crazy in some areas for some auto work (think restoration). But generally, yes, Ford is not adding up here
I think you have that backwards:
"Typically, in California, if your employer wants you to provide and maintain your own work tools, they must pay you at least double the minimum wage. This means that in 2025, with California’s minimum wage at $16.50 per hour, your employer must pay you at least $33.00 per hour before they can require you to supply your own tools."
Auto mechanics make double minimum wage if the do own their own tools.
“The Ford CEO's grandfather was one of the company's early employees, hired to work on the Model T.”
Yeah, and one of my grandfathers was a cop and the other a foreman on a jewelry shop floor. Both of which have as much to do with my coding career as the square root of sweet Fanny Adams. My dad put himself through college by working in a garage. I will admit the math in the 50s or so was more rigorous than what I had in the 80s, but the idea anyone interested in working on cars can’t be taught from almost scratch seems like a strong take. Whether you paid attention in pre-algebra or not is going to have little to do with your ability to balance four tires as a system or clean a carb or set engine timing via a computer.
The rest is atmospherics.
(The US has, in general, taken a similar attitude towards public education, while simultaneously making it responsible for "everything" regarding children's upbringing. Compounding the problem.)
Nobody likes paying for cost centers.
Pay is too low for entry level people, at maybe $14 an hour. That’s before the Snap-on Truck comes by and saddles that tech with $40k of debt.
Give entry level workers a living wage, and give them tools to use (and keep after investing 3 years in the business). Have an actual pipeline for certification and training and remove the gate keeping of many dealers that prevent good techs from becoming better mechanics. Do better at engineering vehicles so they are easier to work on.
As this CEO knows, doing the right thing is harder than complaining.
Let me dissect this article with uncompromising scrutiny:
> "...have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians and tradesmen.”
Maybe because for 30 years America sold the idea that you need a bachelors degree to do the majority of these jobs, while simultaneously implying that you only needed 2 years of vocational school? A lot of these require extensive apprenticeships and experience (576 classroom hours, 8,000 experience hours, passing exams for a journeyman electrician license in Oregon). It's absolutely not "Go to school for 2 years and get paid $120k."
Furthermore, most of the trades are brutal on your body, mind, and lifestyle.
> "we don't have trade schools anymore"
We do, and we do our best to train students on only the absolute necessary skills that get them the job and working as quickly as possible. Corporations stopped meaningfully supporting them while simultaneously raising expectations. Major companies stopped most training and orientation programs or significantly scaled them back, passed the burden of training onto community colleges and trade schools, and now complain that our tools and techniques are out of date.
Ford does at my college this while keeping their name slapped on the auto mechanic's program because they helped start the program 20 years ago. Now they're upset because they're not getting the same returns while my fellow instructors struggle to teach on supplies that are 2 decades old.
> "What we don't have are enough young people with the literacy and math proficiency needed to learn skilled trades."
A lot of the K-12 complaint is the No Child Left Behind act and the effects of Common Core. Lots of throwing up of hands here saying "Well guess there's nothing we can do. We have all these high paying jobs that no one wants"
Wanna fix this? Eliminate No Child Left Behind. Actually invest in teachers, tutors, and the people making the impact. Stop calling teachers 'heroes', and give us the resources to actually instruct kids. Stop assuming a household with 2-3 kids, 2 parents that work full time (overtime in today's America), are barely making ends meet, and have no extended family to help kids with homework or tutor, are going to somehow do extremely well.
In fact, we have loads of papers that demonstrate that math scores and grades are pretty tightly correlated with parents'/family ability and availability to help kids with homework. Maybe have parents work less so they can tutor their kids more?
> "Workers who struggle to read grade-level text cannot read complicated technical manuals or diagnostic instructions."
They don't have trouble reading grade-level text. This is a complete misunderstanding of what those tests evaluate. More importantly: If they're struggling to read those complicated manuals or diagnostic instructions, maybe it's because most manufacturers eliminated a lot of the repairability of cars in the past few decades and scaled back their service manuals? Maybe invest in technical writing again?
> They were passed on with inflated grades
Because you stopped hiring anyone with less than a 3.0-4.0. If a teacher's job is to get a student a job in the trades, you won't hire them because their GPA is poor, and we get fired if too many students fail, guess what we (instructors) are going to do?
> "If they can’t handle middle-school math they can’t program high-tech machines or robotics, or operate the automated equipment found in modern factories and repair shops."
Also not correct, and a gross misinterpretation of what the national exams show. Most students can do most math with a calculator just fine, mental math not so much, but it's rare to be in a shop without some kind of computer or calculator nowadays. If you want people who have completed a 2 year trade program to be able to competently do calculus, robotics, PLCs, and program, you need to admit that the job requires far beyond 'middle-school math'.
> ""Servicing an electric vehicle requires interpreting data flows, troubleshooting electronics, and following precise, multistep instructions." It's not a job for "grease monkeys."
Here is the crux of the problem. All of these are needs that are way beyond a standard mechanical technician's toolkit. You need them to dual train as electrical engineers and mechanical engineers with notable expertise in 12/24v and rather high voltages for EVs. You don't want 'average technicians' for 120k, you want dual-degree mechanical and electrical engineers to work for you for less than their going market rate. If your toolchain requires more than an understanding of ODB2 (or 1-2 device) readings and a solid understanding of vehicular operations and what commonly breaks, then you've spent too much time making your products unrepairable and obtuse.
Sorry, who thought they needed a bachelor's degree to be a trucker, plumber or electrician?
From there, who thought that you'd need a bachelors to be a barista and pour coffee? It's not just about the raw requirements, but about the competition you face in the job market.
Finally, more and more field service technician and electrician, HVAC, roles that are traditionally GED/2-years only, have extremely high experience requirements, and most are preferring people pursuing or with a bachelors in electrical engineering (electrician, HVAC), mechanical/fluid engineering (plumbing), or similar. Earlier this year I was in a remote-ish location (about 100 miles from a major city) and we had an electrical fault that legally required a licensed electrician to repair. We had multiple electrical engineers offer to help who clearly knew the problem and how to fix it according to code, but we couldn't let them touch it because they didn't have their J or better.
If you want to risk no degree and go for your 8,000 hours to get licensed (roughly 4 years experience for no/mediocre pay), go for it.
"About one-fifth of underemployed recent college graduates—roughly 9 percent of all recent graduates—were working in a low-skilled service job" between 2009 and 2013 [1]. Two fifths of baristas have college degrees [2].
[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...
Citation needed.
I have a grad degree, and I worked briefly stocking merchandise to pay bills once. That doesn't mean you need advanced degrees to stock shelves.
Also, you're moving the goalposts. You are replying to a comment asking about college degrees, and you conflated that with apprenticeships.
Apprenticeships predate the pyramids. They are not the same thing at all.
Who, exactly, is this "we"? Capitalists talk up The Market, but are unwilling to pay market-driven wages and salaries, and expect others, usually the government, to foot the bill for training their skilled workers.
It would also help if Ford and other vehicle manufacturers put some thought into incorporating maintainability into their designs. Their newest offerings are a hot mess in this respect.
Example: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio...
Ford CEO says he has 5k open mechanic jobs with 6-figure salaries
And no mechanic I’ve ever met makes 120k.
It’s the same basic way of thinking.
Plenty of A&Ps up there. Often doing more than 40 hours a week, but there's no shortage of work.
I worked at a company that actually paid well for a tech support team of about (roughly) 20 - 40 people at any given time covering a 24/7 schedule 365 days a year.
Over the course of TWENTY years the core group all stayed together. It was no mystery how, good training (that we did ourselves), good pay to start, good benefits, flexible / respectful management. It wasn't even 6 figures, but they were good jobs that made it hard for most everyone to leave, in a good way.
But all good things come to an end, tech support, I suspect like all "maintenance" roles they are eventually are seen as a cost and quality management starts to fade ... and everything falls apart. Management will bemoan not being able to find good people, while doing nothing to help make them good or treat them well.
I wonder how many leaders understand that it is their job to MAKE A GOOD TEAM and that it is their job to keep it that way, as opposed to expect people to just show up and do it for them?
Ah yes, insults. The Best hiring method.
t-writescode•2mo ago
Pay them more. 120k is like 60k in mid 1990s money.
And, pay for their education. Invest in local colleges to help guide curriculum in what you need. That’s what defense contractors and mega corps do / have done.
Stop complaining and be stewards of your community. Like Henry Ford argued back in the day, “I want my employees to be able to buy a Ford”. Invest and the people will invest back.
paulpauper•2mo ago
mapontosevenths•2mo ago
That's a great idea! We could take the difference from the CEO's pay.
vitaflo•2mo ago
shtzvhdx•2mo ago
It 2023 it was 312:1.
Ok, but $500 000/year isnt a median salary. But Ford's CEO is $26.4 million, so 53:1.
Gather up the rest of the C-suit at Ford and you got a couple hundred mechanics.
Do that to Stellantis and GM and you're at about 500 mechanics. 10 per state is not an insignificant number of high paid mechanics.
Add Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed, GE, and all the other once great industrial American jewels run by idiots and you have financed the training of a large portion of the American workforce.
xp84•2mo ago
Why haven't we seen a bunch of successful companies without any management if management is so useless/harmful? Just ICs self-organizing to run the whole business. Without any execs to pay they'd have a cost advantage running that way.
mapontosevenths•2mo ago
I suspect I can find a few willing to do it for a few paltry million, or maybe less.
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
Run an automotive giant? We're still in the thread where the argument for acquiring talent is to pay more, right?
orwin•2mo ago
Talent here is very often having friends on the board, through common investments and co-ownership of those private jet/ luxury yacht/luxury hostel rentals that operates 'at a loss' (you only pay consumption taxes on your direct spending, if the company rent you the plane for the cost of kerosene, and you pay yearly through your holdings for fixed costs, you avoid a lot of taxes. Tips from a friend who works at one of those places).
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
And the customers' boards and management teams. And the suppliers'. And the regulators' and electeds'.
mapontosevenths•2mo ago
That network of insiders colluding behind the scenes are NOT providing optimal results for the shareholders, or for the market in general. They are instead optimizing their own short term gains at the expense of everyone else.
A bunch of good old boys making handshake deals with their buddies aren't actually choosing the best products and services for the best price, and the companies they helm will eventually suffer for it as the entire market does each time it happens.
OkayPhysicist•2mo ago
The problem with evaluating leadership is we almost always talk in terms of impact ("this decision saved/made/lost the company $X million/billion per year") as opposed to performance over replacement ("compared to an average person we could have hired to fulfill this role, how'd you do?"). The nature of a capitalist system is that large piles of money tend to get bigger, and companies are giant piles of money. If you are in a position of power, on average you're going to make the company more money. That doesn't make you exceptionally valuable, as pretty much anyone we could have put in that slot was going to make money.
shtzvhdx•2mo ago
Im just calling to modify and reduce c-suite compensation.
queenkjuul•2mo ago
Editing to add a reminder of how many times the US government has had to bail out the entire US auto industry.
vitaflo•2mo ago
shtzvhdx•2mo ago
Pay the mechanic 70k cash, 500k in stock and the mechanic gets real compensation and, slowly, Ford becomes an employee owned company.
hobs•2mo ago
The stock price of Ford might even go up if you could improve the repair situation.
Esophagus4•2mo ago
Who in this situation should decide to pay the CEO less? Is it regulators? The board? Shareholders?
I’m trying to understand your model for how executive compensation should be set.
vitaflo•2mo ago
bryanrasmussen•2mo ago
I propose that if the money for mechanics is needed, it can be gotten by redirecting capital from other parts of the system to invest in mechanics, funny that math is the subject here because this redirecting of capital could even be thought of a mathematical process, although really more a number of related processes together, I shall call these processes that control how money will be moved to handle problems in the systems that exist to generate more money "Capitalism".
In the rest of my work I shall discuss how the processes that control circulation of money will lead to its accumulation and conversion to power among a subset of power, allowing them to over time amass more and more power, I will note the problems this will imply but not really offer a solution as my primary interest is in describing the ways that need for a thing will cause the investment in that thing to rise over time, and decrease thereby investment in other things, as though the whole were an impartial and, as noted, nearly mathematical process in its elegance.
mapontosevenths•2mo ago
Most/many CEO's don't get the gig thanks to an efficient market or being the best. There are others equally or better qualified who would do the job for much less.
The typical justification for their high salaries is that it encourages the rest of the executives to buck harder for the role. In practice, far less pay could achieve that goal.
bryanrasmussen•2mo ago
mapontosevenths•2mo ago
nixosbestos•2mo ago
vitaflo•2mo ago
nixosbestos•2mo ago
vitaflo•2mo ago
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
This is California going after golf courses to solve its water problem.
Ford spends about $3bn a year on dividends [1]. That's a quarter of their entire SG&A.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/37996/000003...
mapontosevenths•2mo ago
Propping up the good old boys network by overpaying for executive talent is of negative utility to the shareholders.
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
We don't really have evidence executives are overpaid. The fact that even cheapskate private company owners wind up paying their executives well should communicate something about what's going on.
mapontosevenths•2mo ago
Most of it shows that there is a small but real link between CEO pay and stock performance. This works best when CEO pay is tied directly to performance, and it isn't tied to the specific dollar value just the percentage of increase. IE - The $40m CEO doesn't actually outperform the $20m CEO, but a CEO who oversees a big jump in profits will see a big raise regardless of the reason.
CEO pay DOES correlate strongly with luck. IE - They get rewarded with big bonuses when the larger market does well or taxes go down, and they don't tend to get smaller pay when the market does poorly.
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
This is the line the executive compensation industry peddles. It has elements of truth. But it's not from an unbiased source.
Again, there are lots of companies and lots of CEOs. That nobody has unlocked this arbitrage strongly suggests the simple story isn't the whole one.
solomonb•2mo ago
vineyardmike•2mo ago
solomonb•2mo ago
From wikipedia:
> Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."
So a business is an activity or enterprise engaged in by people for profit.
If a business exists to generate profit for its participants, it should maximize profit distribution to everyone involved in that business. This implies salary limits that maintain business sustainability. Otherwise, excessive compensation would eliminate profit for all participants.
My point wasn't about how to balance salaries between different employees. I'm arguing that companies should maximize compensation for all employees (at every level) to the extent that doing so doesn't threaten the business's viability. Without this, you get companies hoarding excessive capital reserves that sit idle rather than circulating through the economy.
NoMoreNicksLeft•2mo ago
But have you considered it fully? We're in a heap of shit if the pay that employers can truly afford is lower than the pay that employees require to earn the minimal livelihood. If there is really realsy no overlap there, then you need to stock up on canned food and shotgun shells.
mhb•2mo ago
paulpauper•2mo ago
cpursley•2mo ago
SonOfKyuss•2mo ago
Don't believe everything you read online.
My experience from actually having 2 kids currently in high school is that failing is damn near impossible, but GPA absolutely does mean something for most kids. There is definitely a group of kids at the bottom that in decades past would have been held back or dropped out and those kids are now just passed along. Is that better or worse than having them drop out? I don't really know, but the reality is that those kids likely wouldn't have been cut out for these jobs anyway. At the other end of the spectrum, the competition at the top can be fierce. My kids and their peers stress way more about their GPA than I ever did because competition for colleges has gotten tougher. The education is there for those who want to take advantage of it.
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
It's worse. If they'd been held back earlier, they might have graduated high school prepared for the sorts of trades jobs this article discusses. Instead, they're processed through the system as a number. Best case, they aren't constantly disrupting their classrooms.
SonOfKyuss•2mo ago
parpfish•2mo ago
in my opinion, if you fail a year that whole year should be excluded from GPA and you just get a clean 'do over' on the repeat grade.
csa•2mo ago
For a kid who is held back a year, what good is any GPA? Genuine question.
I’m sure that one could construct some sort of edge case or corner case in which a college-bound kid has a bad year. That said, for each of those cases, I’m pretty sure I could come up with a perfectly good way for that person to find a reasonable path to a very good university.
That said, in most cases, the folks who are held back will have significant issues that will marginalize them anyway: social, psychological, cognitive, etc.
parpfish•2mo ago
csa•2mo ago
This happens.
Usually they will not get held back. Usually the teachers will know what’s going on. A passing C (or even B) can be manufactured in these spots. This assumes that they are normally good students.
Also note that most schools that reject people have a spot on their application where an applicant can explain any sort of extenuating circumstances (e.g., parents divorce, etc.), and a bad year will be overlooked as long as it’s clear that they are back on track and can perform.
If someone has consistent performance issues and just happens to be smart, then they need to fix the performance issues. This is usually best done at a junior college and then a transfer to a four-year school (e.g., State U).
paulpauper•2mo ago
This is literally my point. What difference does it make if I heard it online
Is that better or worse than having them drop out?
it is worse given that it gives false signals for the job market and devalues the credential
germinalphrase•2mo ago
shtzvhdx•2mo ago
In fact, doesn't the SAT purposely include recycled problems to measure capability drift vs time?
xp84•2mo ago
rahimnathwani•2mo ago
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
They may not be lying. But it isn't that relevant. Someone knowing how to do something they can't perform isn't going to be useful as a mechanic.
mhb•2mo ago
xp84•2mo ago
So IDK maybe there are more. Or maybe they are just louder now.
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
"Starting in Fall 2026, a growing list of high-profile universities will once again require standardized test scores for admission, including most of the Ivy League, Stanford, and Georgetown to name a few" [1].
[1] https://www.ttprep.com/more-and-more-colleges-are-reinstatin...
dragonwriter•2mo ago
csa•2mo ago
You drank the kool-aid. There was no bullying there. It was logistics.
In almost all cases, standardized test results were made optional. They were not “eliminated”.
Those who did not supply standardized test results, at least at any school that actually rejected people, had to provide a higher standard of proof of their abilities in their admissions materials.
I live in CA, and I know quite a few folks who glibly didn’t take or submit standardized test scores, and they absolutely did not get into schools that they were very academically qualified for (e.g., mid-tier UC schools like UCSD). These schools normally would have been safety schools for the given caliber of applicant.
Ivies made the SAT optional for a while, especially in 2020, but that was largely due to an access issue. I think they all require it now. And again, any person who didn’t have an SAT score and got admitted was almost certainly a strong admit anyway (super strong external academic validation, recruited athlete, etc.). I’m guessing precisely zero people sneaked into an Ivy by slyly not submitting a standardized test score while also being a marginal applicant.
Just my informed 2 cents…
shtzvhdx•2mo ago
But these are ensemble averages, and presumably bad testers were as common before as they are today.
Or maybe not. Maybe the problem is the composition of the ensemble. Seems important to figure this out.
xboxnolifes•2mo ago
xp84•2mo ago
A ton of high school graduates can't do basic math (which also explains their economic illiteracy, like believing that just taxing billionaires more would fix everything[1]).
And also at the same time, we demand college degrees for white-collar jobs that anyone who completed the alleged requirements to graduate high school could totally do. I think this stems from an outdated belief that college is difficult and challenging, and therefore getting through it proves you're exceptionally clever. A notion that has been a joke for at least 15 years if not 20.
So everything is fake. The diplomas are fake, the degrees are fake, and the job requirements are fake. All of it is being used to come up with legal and justifiable ways to pick the people with sufficient brain cells to be entrusted with job responsibilities.
[1] Most college graduates would likely get this question orders of magnitude wrong: If you could split the full net worth of the top 10 billionaires equally among every man, woman, and child in America how big would each one's check be? Correct answer: Just over $6,000. (Of course, we'll ignore how to deal with the market crash caused by forcing the sudden liquidation of their 2 trillion dollars in assets.)
greesil•2mo ago
BobaFloutist•2mo ago
greesil•2mo ago
dv_dt•2mo ago
xp84•2mo ago
The point isn't whether they should pay a higher tax rate (probably they should!) -- it's whether it would be massively transformative to our society if/when we enacted that. I argue it is not. Pretending it is, is the Marxist fringe's version of the welfare queen or the illegal immigrant murderer that the right-wing people try to bamboozle their base with. We could eliminate all welfare fraud and all immigrant criminals by magic and it wouldn't make our society wildly better. It would be a small improvement.
parpfish•2mo ago
when they see diminishing returns for increasing their net worth, they might think "hey, maybe instead of using my immense resources to further enrich myself i should do... anything else"
xp84•2mo ago
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
You're correct on the fact that taxing billionaires doesn't generate meaningful revenue. You're wrong that it would prompt a stock-market crash.
If one raised top tax rates in a revenue-neutral way, one would expect it to massively boost the economy and thus the stock market. You'd have unlocked more money for high-velocity spenders.
Ancapistani•2mo ago
It certainly would.
Where do you think those billionaires would get the money to pay the tax? It’s not like they have billions of dollars in cash somewhere; they’d sell assets. Those assets are predominately stock. Selling off that much stock at once would absolutely disrupt the markets.
queenkjuul•2mo ago
But yeah, the imaginary tax proposals invented in this thread may or may not work out, i wouldn't call anything about them "certain" though
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
...don't do this.
The combined net worth of America's billionaires is about $7tn. Let's assume half of that is in public stocks. That's $3.5tn. That's about what retail investors alone bought "in the first six months of 2025" [1].
Given the fundamentals of the companies wouldn't have changed, this would be a massive opportunity for institutional investors to deploy capital. (If you didn't do the tax in a revenue-neutral manner, you'd free up tonnes of capital from Treasury demand.)
One might expect a dip in companies where a single billionaire holds a large fraction of the float, e.g. Tesla, Amazon, et cetera. But broadly speaking, these aren't numbers which–even if compressed to a single year, which isn't how you'd pass such legislation–would cause a crash.
There are good arguments against super taxes. Crashing the stock market isn't one of them.
[1] https://invezz.com/news/2025/07/07/retail-investors-defy-hea...
queenkjuul•2mo ago
queenkjuul•2mo ago
casey2•2mo ago
Why does society need to create a increasingly out of touch class of people that think they are morally justified in telling people how to live their lives. The simple fact is that if the government didn't give these people billions in subsidies we would never have to hear them bloviate, Musk, Farely, all these rich A-Holes keeping America stuck in the local minima of car ownership would be utterly irrelevant.
xp84•2mo ago
Is that a… libertarian argument for wealth confiscation?
Why does government need to take a bunch of people’s money for no reason other than “because I’m mad you have more money than me”? Or I suppose the motivation you described is actually that we don’t like how influential successful people are. So, should everyone whose opinion we don’t like be treated this way?
There are rich and poor in every society and always have been - it’s not a government failing to have income inequality. In extreme socialist regimes, the government officials themselves are always the ultra-wealthy - because they make the rules on who gets to keep their money and their choice is “Me.”
analognoise•2mo ago
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
PISA math scores for American students fell over the last two decades [1].
[1] https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2025/1/23/...
rahimnathwani•2mo ago
See page 11 of this report: https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio...
I'm guessing if we were to take a random sample of high school graduates, the % would be much worse.
BobaFloutist•2mo ago
Secondly, mastering high school math is genuinely difficult these days. I'm a math major, I've made it through my calc courses and differential equations, but I found Algebra 2 legitimately hard. Logarithms and Trigonometric functions are counterintuitive, and not everybody is at their peak ability to buckle down and grind through things when they're struggling at age 17.
And lastly, this is pretty obviously at least in part a knock-on affect of covid, hence the extremely recent major spike. I'm not sure it's worth generalizing from "UC San Diego Students admitted in the last couple of years are struggling with high school math (because they were in high school during lockdown)" to "We shouldn't try paying mechanics more because everyone's bad at math"
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
Machinists use trig.
BobaFloutist•2mo ago
rahimnathwani•2mo ago
- 11.8% of UCSD freshmen haven't mastered high school math
- 8.5% haven't mastered middle school math
These folks may have had some disruption during the last year of middle school, and the first year of high school. But does that fully explain why they haven't mastered middle school math or, in some cases, elementary school math?
The comment to which I responded quibbled with mhb saying "We used to be able to assume that high school and college graduates could do elementary school math."
It's clear from the report I linked that we cannot assume that high school graduates can do elementary school math.
foolswisdom•2mo ago
Well, I wouldn't necessarily assume that 100% of anyone with a degree has mastered what the degree is for. So to me the takeaway is that ~90% have mastered the math. And so in terms of the original comment, not necessarily do we need them all to go to undergraduate.
rahimnathwani•2mo ago
But I don't think college is the best place for remedial math classes.
SonOfKyuss•2mo ago
SoftTalker•2mo ago
SonOfKyuss•2mo ago
tstrimple•2mo ago
queenkjuul•2mo ago
ponector•2mo ago
tw04•2mo ago
Or maybe we could go with the coal town model and have children accrue debt to a major corporation that they can literally never pay off in exchange for an education!
MBCook•2mo ago
tw04•2mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45182657#45197662
MBCook•2mo ago
Ugh. Sorry.
mhb•2mo ago
The solution to that dysfunction was outside the scope of this discussion. Literally.
tw04•2mo ago
mhb•2mo ago
tw04•2mo ago
Let me guess: if we just ignore the scores of those problem children who no longer have access to education, the math scores will look better?
“Let the market decide who DESERVES education.”
What could possibly go wrong?
mhb•2mo ago
Presumably, we agree that public schools, in general, are not, currently doing a great job. I'm also assuming that, for some reason, they used to do a significantly better job.
I don't know what the point would be of recapitulating Friedman's arguments for school choice and vouchers in these comments. He's much smarter and a better writer than anyone you're likely to find here. If you've read them and made up your mind, a handful of HN comments are not going to sway you. If you haven't read them you should.
kritiko•2mo ago
nerdponx•2mo ago
In my town, most of the cost of education is just paying teachers. The school system is expensive because paying a lot of teachers is expensive, as is maintaining school buildings. And guess what? Teachers still don't make that much, especially because the union typically has to fight hard for the even basic cost-of-living raises, classroom materials are often not reimbursed by the school, and teachers have hours of unpaid non-overtime overtime work.
And the funny thing about the cost of living raises? The costs are going up because of things like housing, food, and energy for heating. Corporate profits are at generational highs and wealth inequality is growing. So teachers, just like the rest of us, are subject to greater and greater consumer surplus extraction, effectively sucking wealth out of the towns where they live and work. And then taxpayers in those towns need to keep paying for their raises, but those same taxpayers are subject to the same consumer surplus extraction.
Families with two working parents, families struggling to pay for rent and heat and food, families where everyone is addicted to social media... none of that is conducive to kids showing up and being ready to spend 8 hours learning stuff, not to mention drilling and retaining and developing an understanding of what they learned.
Everything is politics and everything is economics. Society is a deeply interconnected ecosystem. School is dysfunctional because families are dysfunctional, suffering from degradation of social structures and severe economic pressure. School is expensive teachers are expensive, and teachers are expensive because they are suffering from the same economic pressure as the families who send their kids to school.
Every household is a little capillary in a great circulatory system of money. Income goes in one end and spending goes out the other end. What's happening now is that most capillaries are receiving smaller and smaller shares of the total flow, while some special ones are swollen larger than we have ever seen before. When people say that the system is rigged, this is what they mean. Is it any surprise that the people with the power to change where the money flows are using that power to make sure more of it flows to themselves?
darth_avocado•2mo ago
GenerWork•2mo ago
I believe this is mainly for warranty or recall work. If it's out of warranty, then the charges can be much higher. It also depends on the difficulty of the work being done. I had my Mustangs rear diff seal replaced under warranty, and I guarantee you that doing that wasn't that bad in terms of pay or time taken.
queenkjuul•2mo ago
t-writescode•2mo ago
imgabe•2mo ago
2OEH8eoCRo0•2mo ago
I've only seen Electric Boat do this (defense contractor) and it's likely because the govt pays for it!
fooker•2mo ago
The rest of the world has kept up. Even if you could hypothetically cram 12 years of education into six months of training, the kind of mental effort required to go through that training would be quite impossible for the average person.
But why do that when it’s so much easier to blame AI or immigration, or whatever the new boogeyman of the day is.
t-writescode•2mo ago
theideaofcoffee•2mo ago
“What if you don’t and they stay?”
These companies think they can just reap all of the rewards without any investment, it’s stupid. I definitely agree with you saying that there needs to be a return to these places taking more care and investing in long-term people. Like you said, invest in them and they’ll invest in you.
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
This is a solved problem. If they quit early, they owe the cost of the education.
bagacrap•2mo ago
t-writescode•2mo ago
I did the math in my head based on something I saw someone else share earlier today; but I was probably a bit off. Putting in 120k on this website for this year turns into about 58k in 1995
bagacrap•2mo ago
SilentM68•2mo ago
Another way to go is adult and high school education, i.e. the old auto shop classes that are currently very hard to find. This goes for any other trade, such as Drafting, Welding, as well not just auto shop.
So, yea, companies should pay more and invest in education, rather than bitch and complain about the lack of fully train workers.
Sol Roth
Moto7451•2mo ago
The Community College I went to was about $20 per unit and offered a great education. Currently they’re $46 per unit. The instructors worked in the industry and were sharper than my 200 level University course instructors I paid $100 per unit for the year after my Associates Degree. I went to University as the Great Recession happened and had to go back to Community College as financial markets melted (and some life events happened) and that Associates Degree and an additional quarter of a Bachelors has served me well. I got my first job in software through a Community College affiliated internship, hopped to a Startup, and after a lot of years in between I’m on here musing with the rest of the industry.
There are certainly “Extension” or non Trades “Certificate Only” programs but when looking at LinkedIn’s Alumni view they’ve minted a lot of Solar Techs, Electricians, and Building Engineers. I took Electronics courses as an elective with the PV guys and it was a lot of fun and seems rather profitable for that cohort.
Ergo, I’m genuinely curious to know if this has been derailed in some way at large. Do you have any links to news on this?
SilentM68•2mo ago
The administrators tend to be overpaid, half of the degrees that are offered are useless, mine included. Why are they useless, because there will never be sufficient employment for the graduates. Even knowing this economic reality, the college admins still insist on having the main goal as "graduation," not "employability."
In my view, only auto, nursing, medical subjects and other practical trades guarantee employment, and thus are worth the $46 per unit as you put it. Please note that at one time, CCs were free, in the state that I reside in, though I myself went to school when the cost was $15 per unit.
You should check out this link to take a look at the outrageous salaries that a lot of administrators generate: https://transparentcalifornia.com/ The problem with this is that the various student department and programs get a disproportionate allocation of the funds, with some getting the bulk, and others getting just a tiny slice of the budget that the office of education provides.
Here's a simple example of the news that never gets carried by mainstream media. In last November 2024 Election, in California, for example, there were various measures which passed, that forced communities to pay taxes to pay for Community College expansions and repairs. People don't realize that in one school in particular the same thing was done some years or so before, and the money was mysteriously mishandled. This is a common occurrence in that state, for example. http://www.bigbadbonds.com/CALBONDS/ballot-argument-referral...
This has been the status quo prior to Trump. The federal funds have had a tendency to disappear. I noticed you used LinkedIn as a reference above, but it has its own issues with Fraud, aka Ghost Jobs posts and fake scammers offering users jobs that don't exist. I myself got approached by one and reported it LinkedIn support. In my view, LinkedIn is just another scam site that posts fake jobs just to lure people into purchasing their Pro subscription. I get that message and reminder every single day, so I disabled most notifications and don't use LinkedIn as a job search engine, anymore.
Apologies, way too long of a response and I need to have some Soylent Green.
Regards, Sol Roth
sonzohan•2mo ago
A 501c3 nonprofit with pretty stringent requirements (accreditation, reporting, transparency), but yes a business nonetheless.
> The main problem with the CCs is that they are very corrupt, have been issuing students worthless degrees.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by corrupt, and issuing students worthless degrees? Graduates from the program I direct at a community college are generally earning 120-160k in IT around 2 years after graduation.
> The colleges' goal is reaching a "graduation quota," and not "employability."
Universities yes, community colleges I would not consider this an accurate statement. At my community college our CTE programs (job training) are explicitly evaluated on student salaries as well as how many are actually employed in the industry after graduation, usually within 18-36 months time. It's actually two of the few metrics that are considered "high value", as in 2x the other value of other metrics like graduation, enrollment, retention, revenue-per-student, etc.
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
501(c)(3) is a charity. They cannot be businesses. Community colleges aren't, to my knowledge, organised as charities.
sonzohan•2mo ago
t-writescode•2mo ago
JumpCrisscross•2mo ago
I get that we're still pretending EVs don't exist in America. But could the dearth of internal combustion mechanics be explained as an obselescence rent [1]?
[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w31743