Wow. He just smacked me with a brick.
I said: It seems pretty simple to me that education is not a driver of wealth, but a cost society bears to improve the opportunities of the masses. They have to seize the opportunity given to them by an already productive society and keep it going.
He responded: Simple to you? Than why is there so much research in such a simple issue? And why is there so much research contradicting you?
And opportunity to do what? To get better jobs? To go to college? To innovate in technology and science? All of which help create wealth? Yes.
And this is hinged upon what? Education.
And why does it have to be an "already productive" society? There's plenty of literature showing what I'm saying to be true of both well developed and under developed nations, and in both nations and individuals. While its certainly true that drive and ambition play a role, I'm talking about the education variable, which does show causation to wealth, when all other variables are controlled for (and yes, ambition or more likely referred to as 'aspirations' is a variable that can be controlled for). And this doesn't mean that every time a nation spends money on education, that the GDP rises. There are of course things like corruption, war, recessions, unequal trade conditions that hamper GDP (like farmers in Mexico trying to compete against the state subsidized farmers of America for example), and the list goes on and on. But as a general finding, education does increase wealth. As a nation become more developed, there are of course more ways for the correlation to become obscured, but the correlation remains.
http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/...essmann 20010 international encyclopedia.pdf
Education has long been viewed as an important determinant of economic well-being. The theoretical
growth literature emphasizes at least three mechanisms through which education may affect economic
growth. First, education can increase the human capital inherent in the labor force, which increases
labor productivity and thus transitional growth towards a higher equilibrium level of output (as in
augmented neoclassical growth theories, cf. Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992)). Second, education can
increase the innovative capacity of the economy, and the new knowledge on new technologies,
products and processes promotes growth (as in theories of endogenous growth, cf., e.g., Lucas (1988);
Romer (1990); Aghion and Howitt (1998)). Third, education can facilitate the diffusion and
transmission of knowledge needed to understand and process new information and to implement
successfully new technologies devised by others, which again promotes economic growth (cf., e.g.,
Nelson and Phelps (1966); Benhabib and Spiegel (1994))
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/49/1825455.pdf
With respect to education, growth is positively related to the starting level of
average years of school attainment of adult males at the secondary and higher levels.
Since workers with this educational background would be complementary with new
technologies, the results suggest an important role for the diffusion of technology in the
development process. Growth is insignificantly related to years of school attainment of
females at the secondary and higher levels. This result suggests that highly educated
women are not well utilized in the labor markets of many countries. Growth is
insignificantly related to male schooling at the primary level. However, this level of
schooling is a prerequisite for secondary schooling and would, therefore, affect growth
through this channel.
Education of women at the primary level stimulates economic
growth indirectly by inducing a lower fertility rate.
Data on students’ scores on internationally comparable examinations in science,
mathematics, and reading were used to measure the quality of schooling. Scores on
science tests have a particularly strong positive relation with economic growth. Given the
quality of education, as represented by the test scores, the quantity of schooling —
measured by average years of attainment of adult males at the secondary and higher levels
— is still positively related to subsequent growth.
For you to say "but what about causation?" would mean that GDP rises, then education rises second. Causation is indeed very tricky to pin down. But I just have yet to hear many people say what you're saying. On the other hand, there are scores, maybe hundreds, of studies saying what I'm saying. Education's impact on personal and national wealth is one of the most studied aspects of sociology.
So he's still ignoring the idea that the government has to get money from somewhere to pay for education. He did bring up Mexico, Brazil, and the millennium development project as examples of places trying to increase education in an attempt to increase wealth and then said that Mexico is such an obvious failure because the farmers are unfairly competing with giant subsidized US firms.
But the research he gave appears to back up his point, while I think it just shows what I've been saying. If you are educated, you still have to make good on it. But he started the post with, let's agree to disagree because he's just too bored to prove me wrong when it's so obvious I am wrong.
Logic just isn't enough for a liberal these days.