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Right in one's face on many, many posts in many, many threads on this forum. And those of us who've been employers have likewise seen it growing in the last several years. We don't hire you because we can sniff you out in the first few minutes and you'd be of as little benefit to our business as we would be to you.
Are you talking to me specifically? Because I have a job, thank you. Yes, somebody did hire me.
Lol, I'm still trying to figure out why life can only suck for one generation? I mean, so far in 6 pages of this stuff, people have implied that life can only suck for one given generation. I find that oversight appaling and am determined to correct it! I'll start by saying that I've read enough history books to be certain that I'd last a week or two in certain parts of the past. Life for those people really did suck. More contemporary examples would be elderly people who are still working due to never having amassed enough savings to retire safely, or who through circumstances I've never had to deal with (overt racism/discrimination) were never given an opportunity to move up to something better. At the same time, there are a lot of people in younger generations who were told to go to college to get a job, did so, and can't land a good job. As a result, those folks are stuck holding the bag for debt that doesn't give them a marketable asset. That would suck. So see? Life can, and indeed does, suck for multiple generations! Members of both are still living, so it can suck simultaneously!
Well, I'm doing pretty well for myself. I'm in my mid 30s, make low 6 figures, have a wife and 2 small kids I adore. Are there stresses? Sure, but I know how fortunate I am. I simply want to correct it for the OP and all of those others who feel as if they have been slighted by the hands of fate.
Oh, and to the post on pg 5 who had some nonsense about their parents not teaching them how to network and crap like that... That post struck close to home because I have two little ones and I just had to ask... Seriously? How would you envision such a conversation going?!? I have a 3yr old, I don't think I could overtly teach him how to network. When he turns 10 he'll probably be more interested in other activities, so even if I tried to pull him aside at a party and say "see son, this is how you network" I can assure you he'll run off to go play with the kids instead of listening to me talk and/or drink with other adults. Not to mention, the other adults in the party will rightfully think I'm insane, which would be counterproductive to the lesson. He won't listen to me from the ages of 13-19 for obvious reasons, and after that he'll (possibly) be in college and on his own for the first time.
The moral of the story is most of the teaching parents do for their children is by example. I'm sorry your parents didn't teach you everything you feel you should know to be successful, but we live in an unprecendented era of knowledge sharing. I won't do it for you, but I'm sure you could google "networking tips" and find suggestions.
Last edited by Augiec; 12-10-2014 at 10:38 AM..
Reason: grammatical mistakes
If I recall correctly from a previous thread (the one about the Explorer), you are 69 years old. That would make you just about the age of my dad, who recently turned 70. Thus a parallel to him would not be out of line.
My dad was a teacher. When he started teaching in 1967, his salary was enough to buy a brand new Cadillac Sedan DeVille with cash. Extrapolated to today using the "CPI" index (which is barely trustworthy due to the fact that the government produces it), the starting salary would be almost $44,000. I know of no non-urban or non-dangerous area that is offering its teachers that much money as a starting salary. Sure, urban areas where nobody wants to deal with hoodlum kids are offering that much just to keep teachers in their schools (teachers who usually leave after a year or two because they can't stand the environment)... but that's always been the case.
And you have to figure that my dad got full family medical, dental, and vision insurance with no co-pays back then... as a perk to his employment, meaning that he didn't have to pay a dime for it. These days you can still get that but you have to pay out the ying-yang for it because school districts have largely switched to giving only coverage for the worker, or (this is what I got when I taught) giving you a set dollar amount per month for health coverage and if what you want is more expensive (which it is sure to be if you want family coverage, a low deductible, and low co-pays), you have to cover the difference out of your paycheck.
Amplify this by how, in 1967, there were few laws governing education. My dad was essentially free to teach how he felt like teaching, as long as his kids did well on the state test at the end of the year (and those state tests were always rather basic... I remember that they were a breeze in the 1980's). Furthermore, he had lots of freedom with discipline, and he could even go as far as spanking an obstinately unruly kid if he wanted to. Oh, did he tell me stories. These days schools are glorified test-preparation factories with unprecedented intrusion from the government, and the extent of what you can do for discipline is very limited. You can "give them a referral", meaning that you spend a lot of time writing up this huge report so that an assistant principal can give the kid a lunch detention. You can kick the kid out, but then his parents will complain about the instructional time he lost. My dad has said that if he tried to go back into teaching now, even with his 38 years of experience, he wouldn't last a week before blowing a gasket.
School days are longer now.
Reporting requirements are far higher now.
Many states, including the state where my dad taught for 38 years with only a bachelor's degree, are requiring teachers to complete a master's degree within a certain number of years of the beginning of their employment. Failure to do so will result in failure to obtain tenure, and dismissal from the job. And guess who pays for that master's degree? YOU DO! Guess whose extra time is blown, doing class work and studying for that master's degree? YOURS! And guess what you really don't need, to adequately educate 6th graders? You got it - A MASTER'S DEGREE! For proof, my dad was one of the most effective and beloved teachers in his school for pretty much his entire tenure there, as I understand. Parents would specifically try to get their kids into his classes. And he had only a bachelor's degree - a BUSINESS degree, no less - with extra classes that he took on the side to meet a requirement for having gotten a bachelor's degree in education.
Teachers are teaching more classes per day with more students per class than ever before. (Heck, when I taught in 2008-2009, we did 5 classes per day out of a 7-period day. Not long thereafter, they removed one of those prep periods and replaced it with a class... so now the teachers teach 6 classes per day. Did they get a 20% raise to compensate for the 20% increase in teaching time, class prep time outside of school hours, paper grading time, etc? Of course not!)
On and on and on.
So you have to figure that things are worse these days. I taught public school for only one year and compared stories with my dad. He was quite surprised. That says something. Even if you can find a district with similar demographics and residential safety where teachers will start out making a stated salary of $44,000, the underlying conditions of the job are far worse than they were when you and he were young.
The same can be said of just about any job these days. I know of no job in America where the overall sum total of the conditions and compensation are better than they were for the same job in the mid-1960's.
My dad recognizes this. My mom recognizes this.
It's easy not to snivel when you get relatively good working conditions and it's relatively easy to get a decent-paying job. As I recently posted in another thread, college costs were far lower in the 1960's and jobs paid a lot more. To give you an example, my dad worked a standard job that a teenager could get, in the summers between college years. In so doing, he was able to save up enough money to pay for one entire semester of college. The same college these days costs almost $13,000 per semester. For a teenager to get a job that would enable him to save up that much money after taxes, the annual salary rate of his job would have to be over $60,000. "Standard jobs for teenagers" don't pay that much. They don't even pay HALF that much, these days. If you made that much money as a teenager, who needs college?!
The truth is that when everything is taken into consideration, our generation has it far worse than at least the preceding two generations. And when it comes to generations that were (perhaps) further back, we have..........
No indoor plumbing or electricity? First of all, you don't NEED those things to live. Secondly, back then it was obviously LEGAL to live that way. These days you are effectively required, by law, to pay out the nose for a fancy place to live that has plumbing and electricity. If people could still get apartments or houses lacking those things, it'd be much cheaper to live... and some people would do it, because one can live without that stuff. People did so for hundreds of years.
Your mom put herself through secretarial school? That's good, but last I checked, that wasn't something additional to standard schooling back in the day. Vocational tracks used to be incorporated into standard high school such that someone could graduate at age 18 having all of the skills necessary to become, for example, a secretary. It's good that she did well at her schooling, but these days doing well at your schooling doesn't guarantee you a good or well-paying job... especially if all you have is high school. To get a good job as a secretary these days, you have to have at least a bachelor's degree... or maybe even a master's degree. Times have changed.
Worked for 45+ years as a secretary? Of course she wouldn't complain! Back in those days, working conditions were better and compensation packages were higher. Plus, the mere fact that she worked for over 45 years means that she HAD A JOB for over 45 years. These days lots of people are getting laid off for no good reason, and when it comes to secretaries and office managers, we can blame technology for that. Instead of a secretary answering the telephone, now lots of places have these asinine automatic answering services where you have to press 1 for English and then listen to some mind-numbing menu (or two or three) such that you can, if you're fortunate enough, press the right magic combination of buttons to get you through to a human being. All of this, just so they don't have to pay a human secretary. That's merely one example. Because technology is rendering many of the job duties of secretaries obsolete, secretaries are now getting paid less and there are fewer of them. So, I'm glad that your mom was a good secretary, but again, that was "back in the day" and the situation is different now. Ain't many people these days who have the kind of job security and pleasant work environment that keeps them at the same company for over 45 years.
Your dad grew up in Manhattan, 5 people to a 2-bedroom apartment? These days it is prohibitively expensive to live in Manhattan. I don't know what it used to be like, but if the cost escalation is anything comparable to what it was in New Jersey, things used to be different. The average 2-bedroom in Manhattan costs over $5,000 per month to rent. Even if a comparable family today managed to find a 2-bedroom that was only $2,500 per month, there ain't a landlord out there who will rent you an apartment unless you make at least twice the monthly rent. By the time you're making $5,000 per month, or $60,000 per year, you ain't poor anymore. So maybe back in the day it was possible for someone to "be poor" and still make it in Manhattan on his own. These days the only way you can be poor and live in a 2-bedroom in Manhattan is if you are on the dole. (And by that point, you're getting more money anyway so you no longer qualify as poor.)
Worked his butt off to be successful? Of course that is a good thing, but it assumes that it's possible. These days there are stories all over the place of people working their butts off and never achieving any success. In your parents' day, the American Dream was alive and well. Work hard, and you will succeed, and you won't be poor.
I have heard the stories too. My grandmother worked in textile factories and garment shops. My mother grew up in a 2-bedroom bungalow that was shared by as many as EIGHT people. She told the tale of sponge-bathing in a basin, water pipes freezing, and sometimes having no food in the house except a box of Cheerios.
But dig deeper into her story. Her father died of cancer when she was but a toddler, leaving her mother alone to support 6 children. That's the only reason why they became poor. And as far as her mom working in the textile industry, in those days at least we HAD a textile industry!! She was NOT on the dole! Yeah, they were poor, but they didn't starve nor were they sickly. My grandmother, who had naught more than a high school education and very little work experience to speak of (as she married young and immediately started having kids, becoming a stay-at-home mom as most mothers were in those days), was able to hold down a job that enabled her family of SEVEN to live, on HER SALARY ALONE, without being on the dole. They didn't have a lot, but they always had what they needed. They got glasses and braces. They got "lessons" - for my mom, that was dance lessons - as long as they earned it by practicing. They shared rooms and space, but they didn't live in squalor. My grandmother was able to buy my mom a car when she was a teenager.
And she worked in what we might now call "sweat shops".
Now I have to ask this. Where in America today can the same situation happen? Heck, many places have laws restricting how many people can live in every dwelling unit, either by "one person per so many square feet" or "so many people per bedroom". Back in the day, a single mother COULD support a huge family on a job that required little education or experience. These days, you can bet your bottom dollar that if you see a single mother with no college education heading up a family of seven, she is somehow "on the dole" whether that means she's getting government welfare or her parents are supporting her. Jobs that can be obtained by such a person these days don't pay nearly enough to support such a family. They barely pay enough to support yourself!
Times have changed, and the people affected by it don't feel like they've done anything to make that change happen. They have to suffer for it but they didn't ever want it to begin with. If we'd all step up and use our brains, and support America by buying American, and also kick out every last rich politician, we'd find that we could get back to an economy where people could be successful through hard work like our ancestors were.
On my mother's side, seven of my grandmother's siblings were killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz. On my father's side, my grandfather was killed by the Russians during WWII, so I never knew him. When I think about that, there's no way I can make the case that my generation has it so bad.
A good and necessary post, Ed. Puts things right into perspective.
I'm so sorry to hear about your relatives. I, and probably most others on this thread, cannot even imagine what it must be like to lose so many family members to violence.
I'm tired of hearing from all of these geezers about how hard they worked, how bad they had it, how they "earned every penny" on and on.
BS!
You grew up and worked during the richest time in human history, when industrial civilization was expanding and resources and money were widely available.
Now we have overpopulated the planet, the oil and resources are being used up, you hoarded all of the wealth and yet we young and healthy people are supposed to support everyone while the banks destroy the currencies?
You've got another thing coming if you think that's the case. Watch out in your nursing homes is all I can say.
Wow this guy must be about 20 and attended government schools! Those are the word-tracks the teachers drill into their spongy little brains.
I always get a kick out of those on the left that think wealth is finite.
Anyway, after 45-years of saving and investing, I've got mine. Now you need to figure out how to get yours!
Wow this guy must be about 20 and attended government schools! Those are the word-tracks the teachers drill into their spongy little brains.
I always get a kick out of those on the left that think wealth is finite.
Anyway, after 45-years of saving and investing, I've got mine. Now you need to figure out how to get yours!
Well, as a Gen-Xer, I can't say I'm overflowing with sympathy for Gen-Yers or Millennials, or whatever they prefer to be called. OR for the Boomers, for that matter. The late, great George Carlin lovingly referred to members of the two generations as the wimpy effing Boomers and their wussy effing kids. Yes, that man was gifted with incredible insight.
But you? You're like the hilariously self-interested seagulls in Finding Nemo. Yeah, that's right: a "rat with wings."
Lol, I'm still trying to figure out why life can only suck for one generation? I mean, so far in 6 pages of this stuff, people have implied that life can only suck for one given generation. I find that oversight appaling and am determined to correct it! I'll start by saying that I've read enough history books to be certain that I'd last a week or two in certain parts of the past. Life for those people really did suck. More contemporary examples would be elderly people who are still working due to never having amassed enough savings to retire safely, or who through circumstances I've never had to deal with (overt racism/discrimination) were never given an opportunity to move up to something better. At the same time, there are a lot of people in younger generations who were told to go to college to get a job, did so, and can't land a good job. As a result, those folks are stuck holding the bag for debt that doesn't give them a marketable asset. That would suck. So see? Life can, and indeed does, suck for multiple generations! Members of both are still living, so it can suck simultaneously!
Well, I'm doing pretty well for myself. I'm in my mid 30s, make low 6 figures, have a wife and 2 small kids I adore. Are there stresses? Sure, but I know how fortunate I am. I simply want to correct it for the OP and all of those others who feel as if they have been slighted by the hands of fate.
Oh, and to the post on pg 5 who had some nonsense about their parents not teaching them how to network and crap like that... That post struck close to home because I have two little ones and I just had to ask... Seriously? How would you envision such a conversation going?!? I have a 3yr old, I don't think I could overtly teach him how to network. When he turns 10 he'll probably be more interested in other activities, so even if I tried to pull him aside at a party and say "see son, this is how you network" I can assure you he'll run off to go play with the kids instead of listening to me talk and/or drink with other adults. Not to mention, the other adults in the party will rightfully think I'm insane, which would be counterproductive to the lesson. He won't listen to me from the ages of 13-19 for obvious reasons, and after that he'll (possibly) be in college and on his own for the first time.
The moral of the story is most of the teaching parents do for their children is by example. I'm sorry your parents didn't teach you everything you feel you should know to be successful, but we live in an unprecendented era of knowledge sharing. I won't do it for you, but I'm sure you could google "networking tips" and find suggestions.
Life didn't just suck for one generation, every generation has had hurdles to overcome, but things have seemingly come to a head in recent years due to globalization, off-shoring, the transition from industry to technology, wage stagnation, two wars (in America anyway), two awful presidents, nearly unchecked legal and illegal immigration, increasing population and job insecurity and double-digit unemployment rates. Of course some places are worse off than others.
The younger generation gives up because they are spoiled and expect everything to be handed to them. They also think they are ''tech superior'' to us ''old geezers, but they are wrong.
It's not ''what you know'' but ''what you do with it'' that counts.
The OP's rant could be right out of '60s ''hippie culture''. It's nothing new among generations.
What I fear will be the greatest challenge for this younger generation is their total absence of a social conscience. They are all about ''me'' and having the last cell phone or gaming system, rather than trying to improve the human condition in their own family or community.
It's an ''adolescence'' now that extends into their 30s, rather than late teens. Grow up, OP, and quit your whining. You are the only one to blame for your situation.
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