Esquire's The War Against Youth

One thing it seems like you can't do any more is just willy-nilly "do what you love" and expect it to work out. That or major in something amorphous like "business" or "management." If you have a real plan, are educated about the market and disciplined, and then execute it, you greatly improve your chances of walking out of college with a degree. I think that the margin of error for college kids to "find themselves" these days has shrunk. That's sad in a way, but it's the world we live in.

It's scary, but you also have to realize that you can do everything right and still struggle out of the gate. I had a chip on my shoulder for a while, I think, because I felt like the world for some reason owed me a job at a major metro before, objectively, had earned it. And even if I had earned it, well, the world doesn't owe you anything. You control what you can control. But even today, you can control a lot.

 

There's the rub.

We've created concentrations of great wealth without creating many jobs. Nor have we created many new opportunities, even for the hard-working and courageous.

How much is left to invest when you're making the minimum wage?

 

This is why I think that we need to subsidize lower paying jobs with tax breaks - essentially the foundation of liberal economics.

But I would hope that jobs created provide equal or greater value to society than what is being expended.

There is the parable about Milton Friedman visiting China and seeing the workers digging a foundation with small shovels.

"Why are they doing that?" he asks his host. "An excavator can do it in half the time."

"Because," the host told him proudly, "this way we create jobs for our people."

"Why then," Friedman responded, "not have them use spoons?"

 

But there is no discernible reason to suggest that things are going to improve at any stage for the generation being discussed here. This is not a matter of paying one's dues, or majoring in the right subjects, or any of the normal stuff that gets trotted out on every one of these threads.

This is about an economic deck that is and will remain stacked firmly against the generation in question. This is about an economic structure that increasingly has nothing to offer its young adults besides dead-end service jobs. This is about the fact that as it's set up, the economic structure in the U.S. -- and a large portion of the Western world -- is unsustainable.

But, you know, damn kids living with their parents and all.

 

It's a good thing that Esquire does not provide writer bios. Stories such as this one would seem a lot less credible. Here you have a guy from Canada commenting on the American cast system.

In another article in this month's issue they have a wrinkled 40ish guy married with a few kids discussing the performance of women in bed.

 

No, I agree with you. Times are tough for young people, and I'm not trying to oversimplify it or dismiss the problems they face. But I think the following two things can both be true: (1) There are not a lot of jobs available for young people; (2) Young people should be very judicious about the choices they make. One follows the other. But I am certainly, certainly not saying, "When the going gets tough, the tough gets going!" and thinking that solves everything, end of story.

And the kids living with their parents part was just a tangent related to the concern about parents helping their kids out. Don't fold it into the larger issue at hand.

 

Damn kids going to college and not wanting to work at Walmart. How dare they aspire to do something meaningful?

I work at university where you need impeccable references in order to organize a supply closet. That's a dream job right there.

If society rewards education with mediocre employment, don't be surprised when you get mediocre results in return.

 

I don't need to read Esquire to hear that old folks have it so much better. All I need to do is hear my wife's uncle, the one with the 80 percent Chicago city pension for jobs that included driving painters to the worksite and turning on the snowplows (but not driving them), go into another rant about how tough you young people have it these days.

 

Put me in the, "if I knew then, what I know know," camp.

There are plenty of opportunities for a young guy or gal who's willing to work hard.

 

Relatively speaking, there are many fewer good-wage opportunities for young people entering the work force into this 'bad economy' than there were when I was entering the work force in the bad economy of the late 70s.

 

I started working after finishing two graduate programs (one of them was free, the other very expensive) with a high paying job that I hated. I've since changed to something I like much better (took a 65%+ pay cut to do so), but I never even considered switching until I paid off my student loans. I luckily had one year when I was working before I got married. I moved back in with my parents & sent 90% of my paycheck to the loans, making a huge dent. Everyone was advising me that I would do better by paying the minimum and investing the money, but I hated the debt.

 

For some reason this feels appropriate here.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/319318/saturday-night-live-you-can-do-anything