Why Most People Are Actually "Too Good" For Their Job
Summary
TLDRThis video script discusses the societal issue of 'elite overproduction,' where an excess of highly educated individuals compete for a limited number of prestigious jobs, leading to underemployment and dissatisfaction. It highlights how this imbalance affects various aspects of society, including the housing crisis, political pressures, and the devaluation of education. The script also touches on the outsourcing of 'non-elite' jobs and the potential consequences of this trend, suggesting that the pursuit of elite roles may be undermining the foundations of society.
Takeaways
- 🚫 The societal push towards prestigious jobs over 'real jobs' like tradesmen, nurses, and teachers is causing a disconnect between job qualifications and actual job roles available.
- 💼 The aspiration for high-status office jobs with high starting salaries is leading to underemployment, where overqualified individuals end up in roles that don't match their qualifications.
- 📈 Peter Turchin's theory of 'elite overproduction' suggests that too many people are trained for top-tier roles, leading to a surplus of qualified individuals and a shortage of essential workers.
- 🏭 The increase in the number of Americans with a college degree has led to a devaluation of these qualifications, with more people holding degrees than there are elite roles to fill.
- 💡 The cost of attending college and the resulting student debt have risen, while the value of a degree in securing a prestigious job has decreased.
- 🛠️ Trade jobs often pay better than mid-level corporate roles due to a shortage of skilled workers in these fields, yet there is a societal perception that office jobs are more prestigious.
- 🌐 The outsourcing of non-elite jobs overseas has allowed more people to work in prestigious roles domestically, but this strategy may have unintended consequences.
- 📚 Title inflation is a result of too many people being overqualified for available roles, leading to the creation of fancy job titles to accommodate the surplus of qualified individuals.
- 🏛 The creation of 'box ticker' roles that exist only to satisfy arbitrary requirements overseen by other box tickers can be a result of political pressure to create jobs for the overqualified.
- 🏢 The high cost of living, especially housing, in cities where elite jobs are concentrated is forcing people to compete for these roles, further exacerbating the issue of elite overproduction.
- 🗳️ Political pressure to maintain elite jobs and provide student debt relief is influenced by the large number of people who feel entitled to these roles after significant investment in their education.
Q & A
What is the main issue discussed in the video script regarding job qualifications and societal roles?
-The main issue discussed is 'elite overproduction,' where society has too many people qualified for high-status jobs and not enough for essential, everyday roles, leading to underemployment and a misalignment of job qualifications with available roles.
Who is Peter Turchin, and what theory did he coin regarding societal roles and job hierarchies?
-Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist who coined the theory of 'elite overproduction.' He uses mathematical models to analyze the statistical dynamics of historical societies and argues that too many people are trained for elite roles, leading to a hierarchy imbalance.
According to the script, what is the consequence of having too many people trained for elite roles?
-The consequence is a system where many are qualified for prestigious roles but not enough for essential roles, resulting in underemployment, dissatisfaction, and a lack of necessary skilled workers for society's basic needs.
What is the impact of the increase in the number of Americans with a college degree on the job market?
-The increase has led to a saturation of college-educated individuals, making a degree less special and barely enough to land a job. This has driven up the cost of higher education while decreasing its value in the job market.
Why do some people still prefer white-collar jobs over blue-collar jobs, even if the latter may pay better?
-Societal perceptions and personal aspirations influence this preference. Many people view white-collar jobs as more prestigious and elite, despite the potential for higher pay in certain blue-collar roles.
What is the term used to describe the phenomenon where job titles become inflated to sound more impressive?
-The term used is 'title inflation,' where job titles are made to sound more senior or prestigious to accommodate the surplus of overqualified individuals.
How does the script link the issue of elite overproduction to political pressures and compliance roles?
-The script suggests that the surplus of overqualified individuals creates political pressure to maintain or create more compliance roles, which can lead to inefficiencies and a focus on maintaining jobs rather than solving problems.
What is the potential impact of elite overproduction on the housing crisis, as mentioned in the script?
-The housing crisis is exacerbated by the lack of skilled tradespeople due to elite overproduction, which leads to higher construction costs and a shortage of affordable housing.
How does the script suggest that the pursuit of elite jobs can affect personal financial stability?
-The script implies that even high earners may live paycheck to paycheck due to the cost of living in cities where elite jobs are concentrated, and the pressure to maintain a certain lifestyle.
What is the script's stance on the potential long-term societal effects of elite overproduction?
-The script suggests that elite overproduction could lead to significant societal issues, including political instability, economic inefficiencies, and a potential collapse of societal structures, as Turchin has compared it to historical societal collapses.
Outlines
🎓 The Illusion of Elite Jobs and Societal Hierarchy
The first paragraph discusses the societal preference for prestigious white-collar jobs over manual labor, despite the latter often offering better pay and more stability. It introduces the concept of 'elite overproduction' as described by Peter Turchin, a complexity scientist. Turchin's theory posits that societies produce too many individuals qualified for high-status roles, leading to underemployment and dissatisfaction. The script points out the irony that while a college degree was once a ticket to a prestigious job, its ubiquity has diminished its value, leading to increased student debt and a glut of overqualified individuals competing for a limited number of elite positions. The paragraph also touches on the societal cost of this misalignment, including the devaluation of necessary manual and trade jobs.
🌐 Outsourcing Non-Elite Jobs and Its Consequences
The second paragraph explores the ramifications of outsourcing less desirable jobs overseas, a strategy that has allowed the Western world to maintain the illusion of elite job abundance. It discusses the concept of job title inflation, where individuals are given inflated job titles to compensate for the lack of actual senior roles, and the political pressures that arise from the expectation of elite employment. The paragraph also touches on the creation of 'box ticker' roles, which exist to satisfy arbitrary requirements and maintain the appearance of productivity, often leading to inefficiencies and a lack of real progress in solving societal issues like the homelessness crisis.
🏠 The Housing Crisis and the Struggle for Elite Status
The third paragraph delves into the housing crisis in America, linking it to the broader issue of elite overproduction. It suggests that the high cost of housing is partially driven by the need for individuals to secure elite jobs to afford it, which in turn exacerbates the demand for housing and the desire to be elite. The script also addresses the reliance on skilled migration to fill workforce gaps, which further drives up housing demand. It concludes with a nod to Turchin's argument that this issue could be a contributing factor to the collapse of civilizations, hinting at the severity and long-term implications of the current societal and economic trends.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Elite Overproduction
💡Underemployment
💡Student Debt
💡Blue-Collar Jobs
💡Job Hierarchy
💡Outsourcing
💡Title Inflation
💡Box Tickers
💡Political Pressure
💡Housing Crisis
💡Skilled Migration
Highlights
The societal preference for high-status jobs over essential roles contributes to a disconnect in job satisfaction and societal needs.
The illusion of a desirable job being more prestigious than essential work creates a false hierarchy of job value.
Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction suggests an imbalance between the number of qualified individuals and the availability of high-status jobs.
The increase in the number of college graduates has led to a devaluation of degrees and an increase in student debt.
Blue-collar and trade jobs often offer better pay and benefits than mid-level corporate roles due to a shortage of qualified workers.
The pursuit of elite jobs has resulted in underemployment, with overqualified individuals working in roles beneath their education level.
Turchin compares the surplus of overqualified individuals to deadwood in a forest, which can lead to a catastrophic event if not addressed.
Outsourcing non-elite jobs overseas has been a temporary solution to the issue of elite overproduction but may have long-term consequences.
Title inflation is a phenomenon where job titles are inflated to sound more prestigious to compensate for a lack of senior roles.
Political pressure to create and maintain elite roles can lead to the establishment of unnecessary jobs, such as box tickers.
The pursuit of elite jobs can lead to personal discontent and a sense of being scammed when expectations are not met.
The cost of living, particularly housing, is a central issue exacerbating the problem of elite overproduction.
The reliance on skilled migration to fill workforce gaps can further drive up the cost of living and the desire to be elite.
Turchin suggests that elite overproduction could be a unifying issue leading to the collapse of civilizations, drawing parallels to historical examples.
The modern internship system for high-end finance firms may exemplify Turchin's warnings about elite overproduction.
The video concludes with a call to action to learn more about the implications of elite overproduction on housing affordability and the economy.
Transcripts
I have some bad news for you you
probably won't ever be a tech worker at
a Fang company a bulge bracket Finance
Pro or a high-powered corporate
executive Society needs people to do
real jobs that keep us housed fed and
safe and it needs them a lot more than
it needs another mckeny consultant this
is a problem because no matter how you
put it a job where you sit in an
airconditioned office making six figures
a year and your first year out of
college is way more desirable than doing
road work in Arizona for 20 bucks an
hour the problem is that every everybody
is trying really hard to pretend that
this isn't true and the system that has
sprung up to maintain this dream has
caused more problems than you realize
how many jobs on these two websites it's
been over a thousand combined how much
money would you say you save or you plan
on saving out of that salary it's going
to be around
2K per month mostly yeah every day it
just feels like Groundhog Day or waking
up doing the same thing I feel
confused sometimes because it's just
like I had this idea of what my life
would be like at this age and that's
just not exactly how it is Peter turchin
is a complexity scientist who
mathematically models statistical
dynamics of historical societies he
coined the theory of elite
overproduction he argues in his books
and papers that societies make workers
just like they make anything a car goes
through a factory and a college graduate
goes through a few Decades of schooling
at the end you get something that you
can drive drive around in and something
that can make pivot tables in Excel the
only difference is that a lump of Steel
doesn't care if it's turned into the
engine block of a Bentley or a Buick but
people given the option will naturally
opt for more prestigious careers if they
are available tchin work effectively
argues that roles in all societies form
something of a hierarchy with fewer
actual people required to do the jobs
further up the pyramid we need a lot
more Tradesmen nurses teachers and
laborers than we need so-called Elite
rules like corporate executives by their
nature these rules only exist to watch
over the work of dozens of other people
but for a variety of reasons too many
people have been directed into getting
qualified for these rules up here and
discouraged from doing these rules down
here this is how you end up in a system
where everybody is qualified to deliver
a stakeholder engagement deck to
synergistically Blitz scale a busino
business platform for ingesting
marketing survey data from the cloud but
you can't find anybody to fix your
plumbing we have simply trained too many
people to fill too many Elite roles and
not enough people fill the everyday
roles of society this has cost us a lot
in more ways than you might realize and
the first is just the cost I know that
you are all well aware of the cost of
attending college but there is more to
it than just the student debt that
you're going to take on to Le your first
job in the cubicle Farm if everyone gets
a college degree which qualifies them
for a prestigious job then those
qualifications aren't special anymore
according to data from the US Census
Bureau and compiled by statista the
number of Americans with a college
degree has increased from 7.7% of the
population in 1960 to
37.7% today an almost six-fold increase
the remaining 62.3% of the population
are not all going to be bluecollar
workers either according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics only 62.6% of
Americans work at all so more than half
of the workforce holds a degree a degree
is not enough to stand out anymore it's
barely enough to land a job at all so
people are getting more degrees to prove
they are worthy of an role the price of
a college degree has gone up and its
value has gone down but people are still
willing to take on life-altering amounts
of student debt to get them so they can
access a job that is prestigious the
ironic thing is that many bluecar trade
jobs actually pay much better than even
midlevel corporate roles because there
is a shortage of these non- Elite
workers so they have much more
negotiating power in the real Market
than a history PhD applying for a
research roll sorry Sam from how history
Works despite this most people still
agree that someone sitting behind a desk
is more Elite than someone working with
their hands so given the choice they
would rather work in an office you knew
all of this already colleges have been
pumping out graduates for decades now
but what is interesting is what happens
to the people that are left over
eventually there are only so many roles
that can be done in a suit and tie in a
nice office which means some of these
Elite qualified individuals will be left
behind to work jobs that they are
completely overqualified for
underemployment is already a major issue
in America highly paper qualified people
are working casual jobs with bad pay and
fewer benefits because they don't want
to get a bluecollar job because that
would be admitting that their expensive
degree was useless tchin in his book end
times has likened the glut of people who
are too qualified for the job to the
accumulation of Deadwood in a forest it
doesn't do anything by itself but if
anything goes wrong it will cause a
cataclysmic fire I will leave a link to
his book in the description below if you
like depressing videos like this it's
definitely worth the read tchin has
likened our current period of elite
production with the late Roman Empire
the French Wars of religion and various
Chinese dynasties but America and the
rest of the western world has had one
sneaky advantage over these other low
energy Empires we have taken all of
these non- Elite jobs that we didn't
want to do and outsourced them overseas
for a while it let more of us work in
jobs that we could brag about on
LinkedIn but that strategy may have come
with some serious side effects so it's
time to learn how money Works to find
out what happens now that we have too
many people that are literally too good
for their job this week's video is
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one of the less serious impacts of a
system that has too many people
qualified for too few Elite jobs is
title inflation if you can't find a
senior role for everybody with an MBA
from the University of Phoenix then you
have to give them a fancy sounding title
salesmen are now account Executives
receptionists are now directors of First
Impressions and marketers are brand
presidents job title inflation like this
sounds extremely dumb Until you realize
that it works a UK study found that 70%
of workers would give up a pay rate to
get a job with a better sounding title
with some forgoing as much as $10,000 to
take a role that sounds more senior this
study is very old now but one look at
LinkedIn will show you that it hasn't
gotten much better now while it's fun to
laugh at goobers on LinkedIn the
problems of elite overproduction as
outlined by tchin manifest in other
areas as well as more people become
qualified and expect to fill glamorous
corporate roles it creates a political
pressure to make sure that people get
those roles the anthropologist Steven
Graber spoke about his role of the Box
tickers in his Infamous book
jobs these were rules that only existed
to satisfy some arbitrary requirements
overseen by other box tickers to give
the appearance that something useful was
being done the best way to create these
jobs is through laws and programs that
mandate them I made a video last year
about the homelessness crisis in America
and why despite spending billions of
dollars on it we are only making it
worse one of the problems is that there
were thousands of jobs being created in
various local state and federal
government departments alongside
nonprofits that paid workers very well
with so many Elite jobs on offer there
is no real incentive to fix the problem
because for the individuals running the
programs they would have to find a new
job and for the politicians approving
the budget they would have to explain
why thousands of professional jobs went
missing under their Administration now I
just wanted to shamelessly mention my
old video but it's by no means limited
to this one problem millions of people
across America are employed in some kind
of compliance role with a private
company
some of these roles are incredibly
important some less so but if compliance
standards are dropped then the
politician who passed that law would
have a lot of potential voters angry
that they made their job irrelevant now
so far it all sounds like the blame of
elite overproduction ultimately falls on
the people who thought they were too
good for a real job and felt entitled to
an elite position just because they got
a communications degree that is not
entirely unfair and there does need to
be a level of personal accountability
for your own personal DEC decisions but
we've made it incredibly easy to follow
the path of least resistance into the
pile of college graduates striving for
an elite job has also become a necessity
in many parts of the country if you want
to live a comfortable version of the
American dream in most cities across the
country these days you need to have an
extremely good job more than a third of
Americans earning
$250,000 per year are still living
paycheck to paycheck because the places
where they can access these Elite jobs
are ludicrously expensive the study
unsurprisingly found that bu stress was
Far higher amongst younger earners
because the only consistent way for them
to earn that much money was to get an
elite job in an elite City Blue Collar
work can make a lot more than
entry-level corporate roles but unless
you can successfully start your own
business the ceiling on how much you can
earn in these rules is much lower in
areas away from expensive cities that's
okay but if you grew up in a major city
and you want to keep living there then
you kind of have to play the game of
fighting for an elite job by working
your way up the corporate ladder or
fighting through ultra competitive
internships if you are successful
congratulations you can buy a Tesla
Model 3 and rent a one-bedroom apartment
in Seattle but if you are not then you
can contribute to the biggest problem
that tchin discusses in his writing
people who have invested a significant
amount of money not to mention years of
their life into pursuing a role that
they were told they were entitled to
breeds a lot of discontent when they end
up underemployed these people who fairly
rightfully feel scammed out of what they
were told was a guarantee are now a
significant vot voting block that's
created political pressure to not only
maintain as many of these nonsense jobs
as possible but also to pursue student
debt relief Advanced education subsidies
and retraining initiatives it might fix
a lot of problems but there is no
getting around the fact that it's not
exactly fair to people who have already
paid off their debt or never took them
on in the first place because they
didn't pursue an elite career path now
this is not to say that these are good
or bad ideas it's only to say that they
wouldn't even be considered if there
weren't so many people that had become
trapped as an overproduced Elite enough
people to make this politically viable
unfortunately as the great DJ khed would
say we have played ourselves to get here
in the first place beyond the expense
and tensions caused by having so many
people qualified to do rules that are
inherently rare we have forgotten how to
do the foundational stuff America's
housing crisis is in part being
accelerated by the cost to build new
homes because we don't have enough
Tradesmen to keep up with the demand for
new housing the fact that housing is so
expensive only makes this problem worse
because people see that the only way
they will ever be able to afford A Home
of Their Own is to compete for an elite
role with every other hopeful graduate
we have also become more reliant on
skilled migration to fill the gaps in
our Workforce which also drive more
demand for housing and more desire to be
elite just to stay AF float now Turin
makes the argument that this is the
single unifying issue that has led to
the collapse of all great civilizations
that might be a bit of hyperbole to move
some books but it does make it a little
bit worrying when you see the symptoms
that he first warned about several
decades ago I will be writing a
follow-up article to this video about
the clown show that is modern
internships for high-end Finance firms
it might be the most obvious example of
terin's warnings in action and that will
be up this week on my free email
newsletter link below living costs are
at the center of this problem especially
housing but go and watch this video to
find out if we can even make housing
affordable without destroying the
economy in the process to keep on
learning how money works
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