Analysis Of Degrees And Dollars By Paul Krugman

The professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and the columnist in the Times, Paul Krugman, wrote an article in 2011 titled “Degrees and Dollars” in which he discusses the conditions in which people may get good jobs, stating that today an individual needs to have a very high degree in order to get a good job. He considers the American society as an example to illustrate how the 20th century has changed the concept about getting a good job; “good education is the key for success in economy”. He also argues that the old concept that good education is the reason to get a good job is not valid anymore as he notices that nowadays the middle-wage jobs are decreasing removing the middle class people, while the low-wage

He states that such competition will affect these employees badly as computers may replace an engineer who spends a quiet long time majoring; here, I agree that you can design you house online within minutes and pay a little money or for free sometimes one. In the second point, Krugman criticizes technology by saying it is one factor that causes a big gap among the classes because the middle class is the most affected as the middle wage jobs are “hollowing out” starting from the year 1990. Consequently any society will be of only two classes, the low and the high while the middle class disappears. The result is very poor people and very rich people which is a bad inequality. In his third point, Krugman, points out at it is wrong to believe that computers are affecting those who work “in their hands” only because computers are good at performing routine jobs that are based on explicit repeated rules, they are unable to do jobs that require manual labor thinking this kind of work is “hard to automate” (Krugman, 2011). However most robots have replaced mechanics in the car factories and have proved to excel in such a job. In his last point, Krugman makes suggestion for fixing the education system

I also agree that another source of job losses is the huge number of jobs in other nations as there are many companies which have moved their factories to the third world countries to decrease the expenses of labor. Moreover, I agree with Krugman that technology has replaced most jobs that follow a certain routine and has created a threat to a wide range of middle-class workers such as security workers as the surveillance cameras. I, as well, agree that the low-wage which are manual are safe because it is well evident that in construction, for, example handy men are still needed to make the machines function, and do jobs that machines are unable to do such as taping and sanding. Furthermore, the high wage jobs such as computer programmers are safe too because there isn’t any self-thinking computer that can update itself