I went to college on a National Merit Scholarship. MY SAT scores were much higher than your cutoff (and this was before the changes to scoring in 1994) My high school grades were not valedictorian level, but something like a 3.8 at one of the best public schools in the state. And I almost flunked out of my mid-tier state school in the first year.
Know thyself is good advice, but the problem is that 1) who you are at 18 is not a very predictable guide to who you will be at 48 and 2) looking at external sources to do self-assessment like SAT scores is great on average, but you are not an average, you're just you.
Should I have gone to university? By your measure, absolutely. But, I would probably have been better off if I had taken a gap year or two to work or travel and come back better. As it was, it took me almost 10 years to get my degree from when I first started. I eventually got into a career path that needed that degree, but I was almost 30 by then.
The national average for a Panda Express Manager is 55k. It pays so well at the one near Rufo because it's in a posh Seattle suburb with a median home price of $800k. In other words, they have to pay more to attract talent but all the extra income going straight back into the cost of living, leaving you no better off.
If you run the math the $100k manager job will never afford a home anywhere near it.
So basically Rufo can't do math and his sentiment is pure resentment.
If I were to be generous to Rufo, I would say he's in the same blind spot that everyone who owned a home before 2022 has. They don't understand that housing doubled in price or more since 2020 (prices + rates) and that this completely changes what is and isn't a living wage. There really are two Americas based on home ownership, and young men don't own homes.
I'd be generous. The most important thing for balancing the economy is building housing. He's probably blind like that. He's also ignoring the difficulties of commuting.
To raise a family, both parents probably need jobs, especially if Dad is making about 100K. Given that they probably won't be able to buy houses near a 100K job, they'll probably need at least one car. Depending on where they live, insurance, gas, and tolls, along with the cost of the car, eat significantly into a salary.
If they need another $50,000 a year for housing and child care, but it costs $10,000 a year for a car, then the mom also needs a job but she needs to make 60k.
The standard cost per mile of commuting is $0.80. Let's say you decide to "save on housing" by moving 50 miles away. That is $80 on a 100 mile round trip commute daily. If you work a standard 260 days a year, that's over $20,000 a year. Do that for 30 years and it's $600,000. So we aren't really "saving on housing".
If you wife makes $60,000k that is $40,000k after taxes (maybe lower). Daycare is going to run like $20k a kid. So if you have one kid the wife isn't adding any income to the family (god forbid you actually have two or three).
To afford a house where Rufo lives in 2025 during your fertility years you would need to be two highly paid professionals. I.E. STEM degrees from great colleges and some luck after graduation.
The Panda Express manager probably lives in a dingy apartment and can't start a family, unless he happens to have a house from the before times when they were affordable.
I don’t know what Rufo’s arguments are for any of this, but what’s the alternative? That chipotle job or wherever might only pay $55k or some other amount that’s not enough and definitely less than it paid in 1978 relatively speaking. But is staying home and complaining about it better? Taking the job and making the most of it while upskilling and getting a better job asap seems more sensible to me. I think I saw Rob Henderson make a similar case to; not sure if Rufo had the same intention in mind. In any case, loads of people seem to be adept at making the case at why this isn’t an ideal state of affairs but they can’t revise reality for people.
Well this debate is in the context of whether we should flood the country with H1bs. Newly graduated STEM majors voiced this will make it impossible to get a good paying STEM job (the current stem hiring market is lightened considerably btw), and Rufo replied they should get a job at Panda Express if they don’t like it. Ironically, there are h1bs filling restaurant manager roles today.
There are two ways to improve one’s lot in life. To act independently (accept the circumstances as they are and work within them) and to act collectively to change the circumstances so individuals have different choices. Those advocating for increased h1bs are arguing to change the circumstances in their favor btw.
Seeing what scaled up h1b type systems did to Canada, the uk, and Australia I think the critics have the right of it and are correct to use the political system to prevent that outcome. Rufo’s reply amounts to trying to get them to ignore this and forsake their own interests by calling them racist losers, an ironic tactic I don’t expect to work.
It is still worth going to school or taking the job, as your skill level allows.
But for someone like Caplan, there is both the advice and the answer. I'm this past he gave advice, of a sort. The answer, the things that gets this question to (at least partially) go away, is housing construction in cities.
I graduated college on the MGIB about 8 years ago... but I'm in recovery from addiction and I have a checkered background. I've spent YEARS doing sales or loading trucks or working in warehouses, despite having degrees in social science and economics.
So I feel unusually placed to observe and comment on our system of class prerogatives and status hierarchies (never acknowledged) and credential-driven incomes. I generally agree with you: people should suck it up and try to ignore the 'status' aspect of jobs. They're superficial but pervasive. Unfortunately status is especially important for young men, who want to attract women.
Women, despite subscribing to ideologies of authenticity and egalitarianism, tend to be HIGHLY attracted to status.
The systematic discrimination against men and white people and Asians is a massive problem, but not one that an individual can solve. Don't be haughty, get a job, and do your best... but people shouldn't be surprised when legions of those young men who have been derided and marginalized throw their weight against the system and rejoice in its collapse.
There is no systematic discrimination against white people. Our society has systematic discrimination against people of lower social and economic class, which is why people try to advance through credentialism. Being white has certainly become less of an economic buff as women and black people have entered the professional employment sphere in numbers, but as they say "equality feels like oppression".
The painful irony is that men (generally) don’t care at all about a woman’s status. Just a complete mismatch between sex preferences and economic reality.
If one's goal is to obtain an education without regard to credentials, one can get an education at least as good as a formal one without the expense of college by using a library. Many years before he died, Mike P, the most knowledgeable and intelligent person I ever met—an autodidactic polymath, whose IQ was estimated to be one of the 10 highest in the US--said he'd read more than 13,000 books. At a party, he discussed medicine with a physician who assumed Mike had a medical degree. Mike told the doctor that he had no such degree. Instead, he'd studied a set of medical encyclopedias. Mike picked up some credits at a two-year college but not enough for an associate's degree. While there, his instructors treated him as a colleague because he knew as much as they did about their fields. I was present when I heard his philosophy instructor tell Mike that instead of taking the course, he should be teaching it. When he took first semester Spanish he found himself surrounded by native Spanish speakers there to pick up some easy credits. The instructor graded on the curve—which was manifestly unfair, not to Mike but to the other students. Mike was the only student in class to get an A. Afterward, he asked his instructors who graded on the curve to ignore his scores for grading purposes. He scored 100% on every test he ever took—with one exception: His astronomy final exam had one answer marked wrong. Mike insisted his answer was right, so he and his instructor discovered in the library that Mike was right and his instructor was wrong. I once watched Mike debate a professional psychiatrist on psychiatry. Mike won on every point. After the debate, I expressed surprise that Mike knew so much about psychiatry. He replied that he was surprised someone could be a psychiatrist while knowing so little about the field. Mike published little during his life but he left behind many unpublished works. Upon his death, I tried to salvage them. But an uncooperative person had obtained legal access to Mike's property. I suspect that person kept what he wanted and that all of Mike's writings ended up in a landfill. Incidentally, Mike was a libertarian.
Yeah, there's a lot that Bryan has written over the years that goes against conventional wisdom, some of which I agree with and some of which I think is very wrong. But, having no idea what Mama Chang's is...I still can't imagine PF Chang's coming out ahead of anyone. Even by low mall food court standards, it's the absolute bottom of my list.
Excellent advice and has been for some time. "Know thyself" sums it up.
P.S. Confirmed with overwhelming evidence in Charles Murray's short and excellent 2008 book, "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality."
Chapter 2, in particular is brilliant; Murray clearly explains the difficultly those with lower IQs have integrating various factual sources to produce a logical conclusion. It'll surprise (and dismay) higher-IQ folk (those reading the book!) who find such integration occurs "naturally" and the conclusion therefore totally obvious. The book is available online in PDF format (and Murray is OK with it being so accessed).
I think selection causes people to underrate the opportunities for genuine career advancement and success through fast foot/retail. Yes, most McDonald's workers do not acheive career success through McDonald's. But that's because they're either part-time, or the type of person who works full-time at McDonald's.
When I worked there my store manager was 21, and he had a great salary and a nice company car . Within a couple years he was promoted further up the corporate ladder (to be fair, he had above-average charisma and leadership skills, so it might not be that quick for everyone).
If you have average intelligence and above-average work ethic or social skills, I think it's fair to expect 6 figures by 30 going this route.
Broadly I agree with this thesis, the public are underserved by higher education and its products. We are also underserved by K-12 in a lot of areas. Social promotion and grade inflation are real menaces.
Some observations as an educator:
There are lots of different types of education. Knowing which type serves you best is key to future success.
Entitlement is a scourge. It debases everyone in the process. You are not helping anyone by lowering standards of admission or competence metrics.
Effort can overcome a lot of obstacles. Paired with conscientiousness you can get really far.
Everyone seems to miss the purpose of education. The purpose of education is to make you useful to others and yourself. There are lots of levels of usefulness and they’re not equivalent. Be trained up to the level where your marginal utility is more than the resources put into getting you there.
I can't believe anyone thinks it's worth anyone's time to publicly debate the value of working in a high paying job at a restaurant.
Sorry, what I meant to say is "thank you for weighing in on this intensely existential matter, self-appointed wisdom gurus. With your guidance now I can decide if I should take one of those jobs."
any reference to “raw intelligence” looked at separately and independently from the concepts of cultural capital and social structure is missing key correlations in advancing this conversation about the relationship between formal education and upward mobility particularly in post-industrial societies such as the one you are presumably talking about.
Total nonsense - Mama Chang's is -absolutely- better than any Panda Express along multiple dimensions of food taste and quality, even if one doesn't care whether or not it's "authentic". The duck alone is worth a trip and a wait.
This is why I am a socialist. "Moving up" in society shouldn't be so necessary that people risk going 250k into debt just to do it. If a lower IQ person decides to forgo college to pursue a retail job, their experience will be rife with crisis and scares of near homelessness and destitution. To work up the ladder at a Panda Express, one must first be a line cook. A line cook in my area may make about 30k a year, is not enough to afford rent. Maybe they could afford to rent a room, or perhaps live in their car. The only solution to this problem is to decouple economic security with traditional models of economic success. One should be able to own a home, own a car, buy food, and afford some luxuries on the lowliest of jobs. Only then will people who cannot make it in college stop trying.
The son of some (middle class) friends of ours is training to be a carpenter and loving it. My son (15) has just started working at McDonalds. This job requires that he show up on time, learn new skills, manage difficult customers, etc. I would not call it demeaning. However he is academically gifted in certain areas. I am ashamed to say that he wants to be an economist.
A little story: I started working a summer job at McDonalds in my late teens and the nice lady who showed me the ropes of the fry machine also took a moment to show me the hot oil burns up and down both arms, and that was a teachable moment for me.
The reason it’s not demeaning is because he’s 15 tho. If the other son is loving carpentry that’s something he finds value and meaning in which carries a certain status on its own in addition to being a respected hard skill.
I went to college on a National Merit Scholarship. MY SAT scores were much higher than your cutoff (and this was before the changes to scoring in 1994) My high school grades were not valedictorian level, but something like a 3.8 at one of the best public schools in the state. And I almost flunked out of my mid-tier state school in the first year.
Know thyself is good advice, but the problem is that 1) who you are at 18 is not a very predictable guide to who you will be at 48 and 2) looking at external sources to do self-assessment like SAT scores is great on average, but you are not an average, you're just you.
Should I have gone to university? By your measure, absolutely. But, I would probably have been better off if I had taken a gap year or two to work or travel and come back better. As it was, it took me almost 10 years to get my degree from when I first started. I eventually got into a career path that needed that degree, but I was almost 30 by then.
This seems like yet another argument against the widespread assumption that the proper next step after high school graduation is university.
The national average for a Panda Express Manager is 55k. It pays so well at the one near Rufo because it's in a posh Seattle suburb with a median home price of $800k. In other words, they have to pay more to attract talent but all the extra income going straight back into the cost of living, leaving you no better off.
If you run the math the $100k manager job will never afford a home anywhere near it.
So basically Rufo can't do math and his sentiment is pure resentment.
If I were to be generous to Rufo, I would say he's in the same blind spot that everyone who owned a home before 2022 has. They don't understand that housing doubled in price or more since 2020 (prices + rates) and that this completely changes what is and isn't a living wage. There really are two Americas based on home ownership, and young men don't own homes.
What's wrong with $55K? That's close to national median.
I'd be generous. The most important thing for balancing the economy is building housing. He's probably blind like that. He's also ignoring the difficulties of commuting.
To raise a family, both parents probably need jobs, especially if Dad is making about 100K. Given that they probably won't be able to buy houses near a 100K job, they'll probably need at least one car. Depending on where they live, insurance, gas, and tolls, along with the cost of the car, eat significantly into a salary.
If they need another $50,000 a year for housing and child care, but it costs $10,000 a year for a car, then the mom also needs a job but she needs to make 60k.
The standard cost per mile of commuting is $0.80. Let's say you decide to "save on housing" by moving 50 miles away. That is $80 on a 100 mile round trip commute daily. If you work a standard 260 days a year, that's over $20,000 a year. Do that for 30 years and it's $600,000. So we aren't really "saving on housing".
If you wife makes $60,000k that is $40,000k after taxes (maybe lower). Daycare is going to run like $20k a kid. So if you have one kid the wife isn't adding any income to the family (god forbid you actually have two or three).
To afford a house where Rufo lives in 2025 during your fertility years you would need to be two highly paid professionals. I.E. STEM degrees from great colleges and some luck after graduation.
The Panda Express manager probably lives in a dingy apartment and can't start a family, unless he happens to have a house from the before times when they were affordable.
it's a toy model, ignore the numbers
I don’t know what Rufo’s arguments are for any of this, but what’s the alternative? That chipotle job or wherever might only pay $55k or some other amount that’s not enough and definitely less than it paid in 1978 relatively speaking. But is staying home and complaining about it better? Taking the job and making the most of it while upskilling and getting a better job asap seems more sensible to me. I think I saw Rob Henderson make a similar case to; not sure if Rufo had the same intention in mind. In any case, loads of people seem to be adept at making the case at why this isn’t an ideal state of affairs but they can’t revise reality for people.
Well this debate is in the context of whether we should flood the country with H1bs. Newly graduated STEM majors voiced this will make it impossible to get a good paying STEM job (the current stem hiring market is lightened considerably btw), and Rufo replied they should get a job at Panda Express if they don’t like it. Ironically, there are h1bs filling restaurant manager roles today.
There are two ways to improve one’s lot in life. To act independently (accept the circumstances as they are and work within them) and to act collectively to change the circumstances so individuals have different choices. Those advocating for increased h1bs are arguing to change the circumstances in their favor btw.
Seeing what scaled up h1b type systems did to Canada, the uk, and Australia I think the critics have the right of it and are correct to use the political system to prevent that outcome. Rufo’s reply amounts to trying to get them to ignore this and forsake their own interests by calling them racist losers, an ironic tactic I don’t expect to work.
I don’t think those countries have scaled up H1B systems. They have a points system, which trump was a big fan of during his last administration.
It is still worth going to school or taking the job, as your skill level allows.
But for someone like Caplan, there is both the advice and the answer. I'm this past he gave advice, of a sort. The answer, the things that gets this question to (at least partially) go away, is housing construction in cities.
I graduated college on the MGIB about 8 years ago... but I'm in recovery from addiction and I have a checkered background. I've spent YEARS doing sales or loading trucks or working in warehouses, despite having degrees in social science and economics.
So I feel unusually placed to observe and comment on our system of class prerogatives and status hierarchies (never acknowledged) and credential-driven incomes. I generally agree with you: people should suck it up and try to ignore the 'status' aspect of jobs. They're superficial but pervasive. Unfortunately status is especially important for young men, who want to attract women.
Women, despite subscribing to ideologies of authenticity and egalitarianism, tend to be HIGHLY attracted to status.
The systematic discrimination against men and white people and Asians is a massive problem, but not one that an individual can solve. Don't be haughty, get a job, and do your best... but people shouldn't be surprised when legions of those young men who have been derided and marginalized throw their weight against the system and rejoice in its collapse.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jmpolemic/p/job-search-part-2
> Unfortunately status is especially important for young men, who want to attract women.
And why is it necessarily irrational to care about that?
There is no systematic discrimination against white people. Our society has systematic discrimination against people of lower social and economic class, which is why people try to advance through credentialism. Being white has certainly become less of an economic buff as women and black people have entered the professional employment sphere in numbers, but as they say "equality feels like oppression".
The painful irony is that men (generally) don’t care at all about a woman’s status. Just a complete mismatch between sex preferences and economic reality.
As someone who recently started working at Panda Express, I'm rather blackpilled about status. I wish your argument were more reassuring.
shout out to all the 1000 SAT scorers subscribing to Bryan Caplan
If one's goal is to obtain an education without regard to credentials, one can get an education at least as good as a formal one without the expense of college by using a library. Many years before he died, Mike P, the most knowledgeable and intelligent person I ever met—an autodidactic polymath, whose IQ was estimated to be one of the 10 highest in the US--said he'd read more than 13,000 books. At a party, he discussed medicine with a physician who assumed Mike had a medical degree. Mike told the doctor that he had no such degree. Instead, he'd studied a set of medical encyclopedias. Mike picked up some credits at a two-year college but not enough for an associate's degree. While there, his instructors treated him as a colleague because he knew as much as they did about their fields. I was present when I heard his philosophy instructor tell Mike that instead of taking the course, he should be teaching it. When he took first semester Spanish he found himself surrounded by native Spanish speakers there to pick up some easy credits. The instructor graded on the curve—which was manifestly unfair, not to Mike but to the other students. Mike was the only student in class to get an A. Afterward, he asked his instructors who graded on the curve to ignore his scores for grading purposes. He scored 100% on every test he ever took—with one exception: His astronomy final exam had one answer marked wrong. Mike insisted his answer was right, so he and his instructor discovered in the library that Mike was right and his instructor was wrong. I once watched Mike debate a professional psychiatrist on psychiatry. Mike won on every point. After the debate, I expressed surprise that Mike knew so much about psychiatry. He replied that he was surprised someone could be a psychiatrist while knowing so little about the field. Mike published little during his life but he left behind many unpublished works. Upon his death, I tried to salvage them. But an uncooperative person had obtained legal access to Mike's property. I suspect that person kept what he wanted and that all of Mike's writings ended up in a landfill. Incidentally, Mike was a libertarian.
I was in agreement until the very end.
Yeah, there's a lot that Bryan has written over the years that goes against conventional wisdom, some of which I agree with and some of which I think is very wrong. But, having no idea what Mama Chang's is...I still can't imagine PF Chang's coming out ahead of anyone. Even by low mall food court standards, it's the absolute bottom of my list.
Excellent advice and has been for some time. "Know thyself" sums it up.
P.S. Confirmed with overwhelming evidence in Charles Murray's short and excellent 2008 book, "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality."
Chapter 2, in particular is brilliant; Murray clearly explains the difficultly those with lower IQs have integrating various factual sources to produce a logical conclusion. It'll surprise (and dismay) higher-IQ folk (those reading the book!) who find such integration occurs "naturally" and the conclusion therefore totally obvious. The book is available online in PDF format (and Murray is OK with it being so accessed).
Sorry for late edit—added the postscript.
My suspicion is practically everyone reading this shouldn't skip college.
I think selection causes people to underrate the opportunities for genuine career advancement and success through fast foot/retail. Yes, most McDonald's workers do not acheive career success through McDonald's. But that's because they're either part-time, or the type of person who works full-time at McDonald's.
When I worked there my store manager was 21, and he had a great salary and a nice company car . Within a couple years he was promoted further up the corporate ladder (to be fair, he had above-average charisma and leadership skills, so it might not be that quick for everyone).
If you have average intelligence and above-average work ethic or social skills, I think it's fair to expect 6 figures by 30 going this route.
Broadly I agree with this thesis, the public are underserved by higher education and its products. We are also underserved by K-12 in a lot of areas. Social promotion and grade inflation are real menaces.
Some observations as an educator:
There are lots of different types of education. Knowing which type serves you best is key to future success.
Entitlement is a scourge. It debases everyone in the process. You are not helping anyone by lowering standards of admission or competence metrics.
Effort can overcome a lot of obstacles. Paired with conscientiousness you can get really far.
Everyone seems to miss the purpose of education. The purpose of education is to make you useful to others and yourself. There are lots of levels of usefulness and they’re not equivalent. Be trained up to the level where your marginal utility is more than the resources put into getting you there.
Aside -
I can't believe anyone thinks it's worth anyone's time to publicly debate the value of working in a high paying job at a restaurant.
Sorry, what I meant to say is "thank you for weighing in on this intensely existential matter, self-appointed wisdom gurus. With your guidance now I can decide if I should take one of those jobs."
any reference to “raw intelligence” looked at separately and independently from the concepts of cultural capital and social structure is missing key correlations in advancing this conversation about the relationship between formal education and upward mobility particularly in post-industrial societies such as the one you are presumably talking about.
Total nonsense - Mama Chang's is -absolutely- better than any Panda Express along multiple dimensions of food taste and quality, even if one doesn't care whether or not it's "authentic". The duck alone is worth a trip and a wait.
This is why I am a socialist. "Moving up" in society shouldn't be so necessary that people risk going 250k into debt just to do it. If a lower IQ person decides to forgo college to pursue a retail job, their experience will be rife with crisis and scares of near homelessness and destitution. To work up the ladder at a Panda Express, one must first be a line cook. A line cook in my area may make about 30k a year, is not enough to afford rent. Maybe they could afford to rent a room, or perhaps live in their car. The only solution to this problem is to decouple economic security with traditional models of economic success. One should be able to own a home, own a car, buy food, and afford some luxuries on the lowliest of jobs. Only then will people who cannot make it in college stop trying.
The son of some (middle class) friends of ours is training to be a carpenter and loving it. My son (15) has just started working at McDonalds. This job requires that he show up on time, learn new skills, manage difficult customers, etc. I would not call it demeaning. However he is academically gifted in certain areas. I am ashamed to say that he wants to be an economist.
A little story: I started working a summer job at McDonalds in my late teens and the nice lady who showed me the ropes of the fry machine also took a moment to show me the hot oil burns up and down both arms, and that was a teachable moment for me.
The reason it’s not demeaning is because he’s 15 tho. If the other son is loving carpentry that’s something he finds value and meaning in which carries a certain status on its own in addition to being a respected hard skill.