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RE: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018

Posted by RGA (R) on December 9, 2020 at 17:58:16

In Reply to: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 posted by tweaker456 on December 9, 2020 at 11:29:19:

As E-Stat points out - it is critical for schools, parents to emphasize career paths that do not lend themselves to outsourcing and automation.

When leaders talk about bring back dead industries like coal mining or assembly jobs to protect dead industries you are at the mercy of those politicians promising things they never deliver.

I got suckered in myself. Around 1997 the British Columbia government was telling the public that there was going to be a serious shortage of teachers in the next 5-10 years because of the average age of teachers and few people going into the field. Why would a gifted mathemetician who could make $100k doing something math-related take a teaching job for $35k?

At the time I was working in Accounting at a large Steel Foundry and was about halfway through a business degree. My dad was pushing me to stick with accounting - a good solid career making good solid money.

However, I greatly prefered my elective courses in psychology and philosophy over economics and accounting. When the Chinese opened their steel foundry - my company was struggling to compete so they replaced me with Oracle.

Oracle software made it possible for the steel foundry to have all of their accounting across many countries done in their Portland office. So I and many others were replaced by computer software.

Seeing this - I noted to myself that a computer could one day replace the head accountant (he was let go 3 years later). So I changed careers to teaching. My plan was to be an elementary school teacher.

The college I was attending for business (Douglas College) advised me to take "teachable subjects" such as English and History over my "passions" Psychology and Philosophy.

The case they made to me was that should I teach high school - English and History would be more of an asset than Philosophy and Psychology.

I enrolled in English Lit and History and moved to Vancouver Island University where the dean noted that students should choose a double minor over one major because we could then teach English and another subject. Education would then be the Major.

I did not see, in 2000, that teachers would be replaceable via technology.

This university countered the advice I received from Douglas College that in fact Philosophy and Psychology would have been fine to teach High School History or English. It was too late - I already signed up and didn't want to wait another year to take my passion subjects. I took them as electives. A shame because in the electives I was grading Summa cum laude levels but in English and History I sat mostly B+ and A- with the occasional A. Good marks but not elite marks. With English and history, I was hit and miss depending on whether I liked the subject topic.

Trusting the government turned out ot be naive. Instead of replacing the retiring teachers and special needs programs what the new right-wing government did was to close the special needs schools - fire most of the special ed teachers - send the one or two over to the regular schools - increase the class sizes placing the special needs students into the regular class. So the schools got an influx of students and much larger classes - and to contain the overflow they added "portables" which are glorified motor homes to be placed on the fields beside the schools.

Then this glut of school teachers was coming out of the universities with no job. When I was in BC there were 11 teachers for every 1 job in Canada. This meant that the average time working as a substitute teacher before landing a full-time job was over a decade.

This was a very valuable tool in the government's attempt at union-busting. If you complain you can be replaced. So the salaries were 0-0-0 increases for years at a time on already the worst salaries of the "professions"

As an older guy(31), it was not in my best interests to be a sub for 10 years. Assuming I could land a full-time job I would have been 41 and broke with $50k in student loans and the starting salary then was $45k a year gross.

At 21-22 years old, it would not be an issue but at 31 you have to consider your retirement possibilities and salary over time.

I lucked out with HK - in the right place at the right time and in a situation to make me even bother to apply.

I would advise careers where you are and will always be needed.

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