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.
Recent reports show there are 2X jobs for every unemployed person. When I saw a comment on Linked In (which I use for business, so I won't comment or post there anything except that which is business), I couldn't stomach what I read. The comment said "I don't understand how so many jobs are available and I can't find one that matches my degree and pays a living wage."
Naturally, I had many problems with this. I did not respond there, however. I didn't feel it would 'help' me to have business cohorts seeing my views which are clearly unacceptable to so many these days. Not interested in being canceled (or possibly have my company restrict me in some way), I am sharing some thoughts here.
1. There is no such thing as a "living wage". What you can live on and what I can live on are vastly different things. When anyone is saying they need a "living wage" what they want is "a wage that lets me get everything I feel I want or need". These are incompatible ideas. Technically, a living wage would be a wage that gets you started and allows you to have an apartment and buy food. Beyond that, it's nothing. It shouldn't pay for your iPhone bills, or your gaming, or your travel or anything like that. I know that's what the person meant (it was implied in follow up comments).
2. Your degree is meaningless. Hate to break it to you but you went to college to get an education and you failed if you didn't know this or walk away with one. Education is about being inquisitive, thoughtful, and respectful of data and knowledge. It's not about how you feel. So you failed college by just getting a degree and thinking, or feeling, that it meant something.
3. You usually won't work in the field you got your degree. I sure don't. Well, I do tangentially. Mostly I don't. I use a lot of the skills I learned - and that's the point of getting an education. You learn how to adapt and use the tools you have been provided by life and experience.
I had a new graduate arrive in my office long ago, after a few interviews we hired him. When I made his offer, he said "that's not enough for me to get an apartment in Manhattan." I told him my job was to give him a job, not an apartment in Manhattan. I explained how I shared an apartment for 5 years, in New Jersey and Queens. I never lived in Manhattan because I felt it was overpriced and overrated for living purposes. (wonderful town, just don't want to live there) I gave him 24 hours to reconsider or I'd pull the offer. He called back after going home and clearly his parents agreed with me.
I could go on about this topic because it's a particularly annoying one to me, the concept of the 'living wage' as something 'we all deserve'. Clearly the commenting kid just feels that being a barista is below him. We all start somewhere, and my first job really sucked. I lived in a two bedroom apartment with three other people in NJ, and I didn't go on vacations for 2 years. I didn't complain about that, either.
First off, it is a terrible reminder of how far we have fallen as a freedom loving people, that only the lunatics on the left can freely express their opinions on any subject. No matter the platform or circumstance, the left is free to act out or voice their positions. Isn’t ironic?
Back when I took economics in college, it was argued that an ever increasing minimum wage, has a impact on inflation. This was a position that Paul Krugman took in his book. I soon learned that a lot of what he said in his economics texts books was completely opposite that to which he proclaimed in his newspaper columns.
A wise man told me to learn a trade; he taught me to be a machinist. I fell back on that trade a few times in my life. It paid the bills and put food on my table.
I am more reticent on social media (and this blog, like it or not, is social media). Certain places should NEVER be party to political points of view. The business place is one of them. It's a shame that, today, the real outcome of sharing a view - even if it doesn't belong there - is that you'll be canceled or worse, fired. But that's how things are. I can live with that mainly because I never talked politics in the workplace (while many others did).
I agree that it is an indication of how far our freedoms have declined. I also have reminded people to bone up on their history, particularly the French and Bolshevik Revolutions. Also Rome (both the fall of the republic and the empire) because we're seeing a lot of mirrored events.
We're not chopping off heads (yet), but we're chopping off careers, commentary, and thought. May as well chop off the heads - and I wouldn't be surprised when people who support Critical Race Theory, Woke concepts, or Progressive policies start calling for it.
I agree that not every forum is suitable for political discussion. My post may have left that open for interpretation. I was taught that in mixed company, you don't discuss politics or religion. The Left does not believe in those values.
I got a not very marketable degree from college, but I learned a lot that gave me useful skills that helped me get work. I wish I knew about the career I finally wound up in back when I was in college. I might have made different choices. I like what I do but didn't know it existed back then. But based on what you said, I did get an education.
When I lived in Manhattan, I knew a lot of recent grads who lived in the city (most of whom, and I am not sure if that matters or not, were Orthodox Jews) and lived in apartments with several people. Some of the apartments were rabbit warrens. But They shared apartments. Rent wound up being affordable that way. They shared shopping and kitchenware. I lucked out and found a studio that I could afford. But I interviewed a lot of apartments for people who were looking for roommates. A lot of one-bedroom apartments with enough of a "living room" were converted to two-bedroom apartments, and housed up to four people. Some places had two to a room, and some, one to a room. Depended on how much rent they wanted to pay. And of course, New Jersey, Queens, and Brooklyn were cheaper.
I get tired of hearing how one can't raise a family on "minimum wage." Back in the day, we got jobs in high school when we were 16, and even the people who got married right out of high school were no longer earning minimum wage at that point. And most of the people I knew who got married right out of high school, had some sense of econmic reality. But then, I went to school when they still taught home ec to all the girls, and shop to all the boys.
Some large % of people who earn minimum wage live at home and are not married. So the "you can't raise a family on minimum wage" is a specious argument. It happens - but it's not SUPPOSED to be that way. By the time you have a family, you're established and earning above minimum wage.
The people who 'benefit' from a "living wage" are kids like my sons who worked at a job when our state raised the minimum wage to a ridiculous level. They lived at home, and were very pleased to be making a lot more money. Good for them (well, only my younger son was smart enough to save most of it, my older one had holes in his pockets back then).
On the other hand, the place they worked needed more employees. They worked like dogs. Because they couldn't hire more people. So basically, the "living wage" means more people go without work, without the opportunity for experience.
A friend's sons were unable to get the jobs they had last year because wages went up again, so jobs were cut. In a bizarre way, it worked in their favor because they 'gig-worked' various jobs and made more than they would have. But it took a lot of work and effort to get those gigs (plus, their mother helped them out arranging these for them). But it shows how the "living wage" actually costs far more than the value it provides.
"May as well chop off the heads - and I wouldn't be surprised when people who support Critical Race Theory, Woke concepts, or Progressive policies start calling for it.
Agreed, but she didn't call for it. She was just using imagery, and was pretty roundly castigated (even by people who nodded toward her POV) for her imagery.
Today that may not be as true.
If she had shown up in the streets with a mob chanting "hang him" - I'd say yeah, 100%.
So yes, directionally correct. Just not "there" yet.
In addition to unrealistic expectations there is the fact of Gatekeeping by the "talent acquisition" speicialists, i.e. HR, once known as Personnel Department. There is plenty of talent not given a chance due to age, actual experience or failure to be 'diverse' as defined by the gatekeeper.
In the trades, I imagine that the workers will need transportation, so they'll need to charge their Teslas for interviews and getting to work sites. Oh... Wait...
There is a real risk that the contrived effort to keep hiking wages will make low skill and entry level workers unhireable. Robotics is replacing a lot of workers and the single biggest reason for this is the cost of labor especially with all the additional burdens that government puts on the employer. My gut feeling is the push for higher minimum wages and "living wages" is backed by the unions because they can then point to those increases and demand increases for themselves. higher wages are a driver of inflation and considering where our economy and our government spending is right now I don't see any chance of avoiding a major recession accompanied with long inflation until it collapses and has to reset.
I lost my job--Unix Admin and Development--on 1 Jan of 2020.
This was basically just in time for the job market to head south.
So I got a "gig economy" job delivering groceries and sundries. The only way to make it pay a "living wage" was to hustle 50+ hours a week. Where "living wage" meant "cover gas and consumables, pay the mortgage have some left over".
After 8 months of that it was back to a "real" job, which I am still greatful as hell for.
#7
William O. B'Livion
on
2022-08-31 14:21
(Reply)
"living wage" is defined as a wage able to support a family of 4. For entry level jobs that is not a reasonable criterion. Should an 18 yr old be able to make $40,000/yr? absurd
College does not give you an education. You can't give anyone an education, you can only offer them one. College in the past, exposed students to a few people who had become educated in the real definition of discipline of intellect, regulation of emotions and establishment of principles. And universities/college had a barrier to those not at the college getting access to their books.
An excellent summation of what college really does, and that is not making people successful.
QUOTE:
The idea is, of course, that men are successful because they have gone to college. No idea was ever more absurd. No man is successful because he has managed to pass a certain number of courses and has received a sheepskin which tells the world in Latin, that neither the world nor the graduate can read, that he has successfully completed the work required. If the man is successful, it is because he has the qualities for success in him; the college "education" has merely, speaking in terms' of horticulture, forced those qualities and given him certain intellectual tools with which to work—tools which he could have got without going to college, but not nearly so quickly. So far as anything practical is concerned, a college is simply an intellectual hothouse. For four years the mind of the undergraduate is put "under glass," and a very warm and constant sunshine is poured down upon it. The result is, of course, that his mind blooms earlier than it would in the much cooler intellectual atmosphere of the business world.
A man learns more about business in the first six months after his graduation than he does in his whole four years of college. But—and here is the "practical" result of his college work—he learns far more in those six months than if he had not gone to college. He has been trained to learn, and that, to all intents and purposes, is all the training he has received. To say that he has been trained to think is to say essentially that he has been trained to learn, but remember that it is impossible to teach a man to think. The power to think must be inherently his. All that the teacher can do is help him learn to order his thoughts—such as they are.
Now college used to be a place where you learned to write well and writing well develops the ability to think. But the English department abandoned that decades ago and finally all the old humanities professors who would try to teach students to write well retired out. Jordan Peterson on what schools won't tell students about writing.
In any case, without free speech on campus, students can't learn to think well since you learn to think by talking/debating with others. The modern American college creates hothouse flowers these days rather than forcing students to bloom earlier.
Didn't say it gave anyone an education...I said you go to get one. But most go to get a degree so they can get a job. Which isn't getting an education.
Nothing can "give" an education except the willingness of the individual to be educated.
College used to be the place where smart people could gather to enjoy each other's elevated society. Period.
It is such a bore to be smart and thoughtful and yet surrounded by dolts and scoundrels on every side. So college was invented to permit the smart to socialize in meat space together without the drag of the ignorant on their progressive discourses.
Students were simply invited to attend, not necessarily to participate, but so that they could absorb the mannerisms of debate and comportment by watching and modelling them afterwards among their peers. They were invited to learn how to learn and discuss and share. Any information imparted, such as mathematical formulas or chemical notes, in the college was incidental to the socializing aspect of the specialized forum.
Today's notions of "college" more correctly describe a padded, 'safe' cell, or, better yet, one of Harry Harlow's 'Iron Maiden' experiments where his isolated Macaque wards are pricked by a rasping, wire 'Parentis In Locus' while being plied with fake 'identities,' paper awards and terry-cloth dabs at salving their 'feelings.'
Plato would look on Harvard's posh student facilities with disgust. He would recognize right away that the college is selling a living standard and a fashion of politics, not an education. And he'd be right!
I have BS degrees in electronics, math, computer science and an MBA. I can assure you that in those fields I got an education. One of the ways that college "forces" an education on you is that in some fields you simply could not continue if your GPA fell below a 3.75. Electrical engineering is not like humanities. You can literally fail classes in the humanities and the prof will give you a 'D' and you can go on and take the next class. You can work, have a social life, skip classes and pretty much screw around for four years and graduate. Engineering really crams about five years worth of classes into four years. The level of study and reading is 4-8 hours a day after classes. The tests are real and very specific not your feeling or writing what the Prof wants to hear. And as I said if your GPA falls below a prescribed level you are out (or you take the classes again and bring your GPA back up).
#10.3
retired engineer
on
2022-09-01 16:46
(Reply)
Back when I used to listen to NPR, there was a type of story that would come up every couple of years. The journalist would talk to disgruntled recent college graduates complaining about the lack of opportunity, student loan debt and general lack of prospects. Often, the recent graduates complained that they had been told that if they went to college, they could have a good life.
There were a number of questions the journalist never asked. "Who told you that?", "What is your major?", "What was your ACT score?" and "What is your university cumulative GPA?".
I think the first question not asked is meaningful. The other three are not.
The most successful person I know is a good friend who once described himself as being uncommonly unsuccessful. This was when we shared an office. He was proud of his Low B grades, mediocre SAT scores and the business major he had - and wound up starting 3 different companies, all of which he sold. He also started a hedge fund that was shut down after 2008 when its returns were 0% and everyone else was losing money. I asked him why that wasn't good enough. His reply was "people who give money to me to manage want more of it - not the same amount, even when markets are down."
I'm not sure grades or majors or test scores are anything of value. I never have felt that way, either. Hell, I once failed a high school science class, and started college as a physics major. I simply didn't like the teacher, so I didn't put in the effort. That was on me, obviously, but when you're 14 you don't really know better. Still, the grade was indicative of very little other than attitude.
For the last 40 years the majority of citizens have wanted a reduction in legal immigration and zero illegal immigration. The opposite has happened thanks in part to billionaire open border globalists who advocate for endless immigration. I understand perfectly the argument against a living wage but until we get rid of our occupiers who are trying to erase and replace us with endless immigration I don't care if minimum wage goes to $200 an hour. Otherwise we will have a situation where the rich will hire people and pay them nothing except feed them scraps from the table and let them live in cardboard boxes among the shade trees on the perimeter of the estate. All the while blaming the poor people for making poor choices in life. Here's the funny thing. There are a lot of really stupid people in America that half for generations wanted to eat the rich. The funny thing is the rich have been busy importing people from countries for years now that have recipes. Once they get the vote look out.
#12
Robert Moffett
(Link)
on
2022-09-01 09:30
(Reply)
My degree wasn't very marketable, but back when I got it, it gave me an incredible education and excellent skills.
I got a degree in technical theater. It may sound useless, but it helped get me into a real career. Not in theater.
I learned:
> World history and world literature. (It may not be great job skills, but it makes for an educated, knowledgeable person.)
> Better than basic carpentry, electrical, and sewing skills.
> Project management: managing resources, time, and money.
> How to type reasonably quickly and accurately. (We had to write a LOT of papers.)
> How to present myself to people. (Acting! Everyone had to take an acting class.)
> How to meet deadlines.
> Drafting. (By hand; I got a degree prior to CAD.)
> Budgeting: Making, logging, keeping within.
> Painting. (Decorative stuff for faux finishes, and just plane painting a wall.)
> How to manage people (Stage management. Great experience for managing people, especially people with big egos.)
It was fantastic preparation for getting a job, if you weren't hung up on getting a job actually in theater.
Now... the degrees have gotten dumber. You can get a degree in Theater now without taking one class in Shakespeare. Acting students no longer have to take as many technical theater courses.
My original degree in college was dietetics. I ran into facts I had not considered: the four F's. Dieticians prior to the 70's were: Fat; Fifty; Female and Formidable. Males were relegated to industrial jobs like Kellogs, Gerbers etc. I switched majors to institutional food service manager. College taught me to understand budgets, manage underlings and think critically. This helped me when I got drafted and decided to spend 21 years in the army. Now...the army is being destroyed by Feelz.
