We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I’ve been hiring twenty-somethings for about twenty years now, and though they are getting more tech-savvy, their productivity keeps plummeting. I believe this is due to their snowballing sense of entitlement.
'The New Tammany Hall' - The historian of the American city on what Wall Street and the 'Occupy' movement have in common, and how government unions came to dominate state and local politics:
One can appreciate why the "we are the 99%" militants might resist Mr. Siegel's logic. He links the liberalism of the 1960s, not any excess of the free market, to today's crisis. The Great Society put the state on growth hormones. Less widely appreciated, the era gave birth to a powerful new political force, the public-sector union. For the first time in American history there was an interest dedicated wholly to lobbying for a larger government and the taxes and debt to pay for it.
Must be human nature to desire some sort of supernatural political salvation, but that is far from an American notion: it's the fantasy of a having a perfect Master or a child's fantasy of a perfect parent.
I've been hiring people for blue collar jobs in warehousing and trucking for over 20 years. Some of the jobs have a pretty good income potential, others are more career limited. I have found that most of these people have a pretty realistic idea of what someone who has a high school diploma and no special skills can expect in a blue collar job. I'll grant this much, effectively working with the younger ones is definitely a challenge in terms of communication. We are separated by two or three generations and don't necessarily share a common frame of reference. It's my responsibility as their leader to hear what they say and to make our goals clear and understandable.
But then I'm not dealing with creating art or something as ephemeral, I'm moving products and filling orders for goods that people are going to buy/consume. Maybe I'm just dealing with a better class of people.
And....that happens to be one of my favorite Monty Python sketches.
Tracked: Nov 27, 11:40