Careers Are Dead. Welcome To Your Low Wage, Temp Work Future

[old guy]

I agree with that oladub. But what I don't understand is the lack of young kids, at entry level jobs with no work skills not applying for jobs. What are they doing? At 14 years old, if they can make $250.00 to $300.00 a week, just going out and learning how to work during the summer, creating a work ethic of some sort, why aren't they doing it? My son did it years ago and realized that he could acquire things that he couldn't get, sitting at home on the couch playing video games. College students are coming here and traveling half way around the continent, working several jobs, learning a new language for the same wages, learning a new culture and are happy to do it. What I'm saying is that the local kids here just hang out and don't participate. They're falling behind and have the ability to live at home, travel down the block and actually benefit more, but they don't do it. I just don't get it. I guess I wasn't clear about the point that I'm primarily not talking about adults and low wages versus good, or possibly union wages. I'm talking about entry level jobs.

[oladub]

old guy, I was trying to touch on the youth problem wondering if all the easy to get student loan money wasn't a deterrent to working hard sort of like making welfare benefits so generous that there isn't much point in working. Youth also seems to be squeezed out of traditional employment opportunities by hard working people unable to speak English who are I'd guess, better workers as has been your experience. I frequent a McDonalds on University Ave. in Madison. It is run most ably by a Hispanic manager. The staff there is all Spanish speaking with the exceptions of counter workers who interact with customers. I never see any high school or college students working there. They have been displaced. Maybe so many have been displaced that a different youth culture has emerged which assumes allowances, loans, and social computer media values. I don't follow MTV type media but doubt that videos show singers wearing McDonald's uniforms or doing landscape work as being the norm or cool. Maybe work is looked at as being nerdy, lower class, and unnecessary in today's youth culture. I read about the youth in England as being further along this non-working, parasitic curve.

When my kids were in grade school, I told them that they could go to any college they wanted to, that we would pay for room and board, but they would have to pay for tuition. We lived on a farm with lousy TV reception and eventually we had a Commodore 64 computer so there was no social media. Although I bribed them for good grades and paid them for farm work they received no allowances. They worked and saved. All graduated in four years without a penny of debt. I have to acknowledge that two went to State universities highly subsidized by taxpayers and the other was on a merit scholarship at a private college. In just a decade since, this is no longer possible as college costs are rising while our standard of living declines. I would suggest to my kids that they set up about the same deal for their children but further incentivize good grades and match tuition costs. I think that our culture must again incentivize youth to work and prioritize that over accommodating illegal aliens and their employers. I don't have any suggestions as to how to wean kids off of always present media culture. Maybe schools should teach more individual responsibility instead of so much being part of the herd but that is probably a long shot. Schools probably have the same problem with kids as employers.

[Jimaz]

Total duration 35 minutes: Noam Chomsky [[2014) "How to Ruin an Economy; Some Simple Ways"

At 22:00:

Detroit is an interesting case. I mean Detroit is overwhelmingly black.

I'm convinced that that's the reason why it's being sent down the tube. If it was a white community, there'd be plenty of mechanisms available to bail it out. Just as there are mechanisms available to bail out AIG and other criminals.

It's kind of interesting how it's done. For example, there's an attack on pensions. In violation of the state constitution pensions are being cut back because of the crisis. This is not always done, so it takes AIG again. After their largely fraudulent, least incompetent, probably criminal actions had practically destroyed the economy, they were bailed out massively by the taxpayer but the executives got huge bonuses. And there was some protest about that but it was pointed out by eminent economists, Lawrence Summers for one, that we have to recognize "sanctity of contract" — in that case. But not in the case of workers in Detroit who had already paid — remember pension means a cut back in wages. You're cutting back your wages, you'd already paid, you'd done the work. But in that case "sanctity of contract" doesn't matter.

These are all parts of the neoliberal ideology and it's had a very negative effect just about everywhere in the world....

The farther you are from the United States the better off you are....