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I agree. Although if Millennials don't have kids, there will be even less chance of social security being around for them than there already is.
I graduated top of my hs class, went to college and dropped out with one semester left. Not because I was making terrible grades- quite the opposite. I wish that when I was in high school, I had a guidance counselor that would have looked past my academic achievements and extra- curricular's and would have tried to see what motivated me. I dropped out because I was working and making a decent amount of money, and thought school was getting in the way. My motivation is work--- I love to have an immediate purpose. I love to work hard and get paid for it. I have a relative who has offered to fund the rest of my schooling, but I am just finding it really hard to motivate myself to go back. If I could turn back time, I would have gone into a trade and maybe started my own business.
It is tough to take the LONG VIEW when you are young. In your 50s, you might come to realize that the view gets much shorter and your reaction time is cut way back. I would urge you to get some sort of skill training. I realize I do not know specifics about you but it sounds like you might need to reassess your goals and have some longer term ones that require additional effort now. Best.
My idea is to go into the creative area: writing, acting, inventing, etc. That cannot be outsourced, replaced by illegals, or insourced by H1Bs and will dodge the age discrimination issue largely too and will dodge the issue of body wearing out (a problem with some of the more skilled manual labor jobs). Also, it will, for a while, till others catch on, dodge the employer's market monopoly too that is the Race to the Bottom. We need to ditch the college-to-crap jobs pipeline. The "education" system is increasingly a scam, except for the elites.
The fact is, both manual labor and even STEM are going to eventually lead to you either being worn out in your body or subject to not being hired when younger people get hired, and with Social Security and Medicaid in trouble, you're going to have to find a way to work later and stay afloat.
Another thing that needs to be done is a consumer boycott against those responsible for the mess of the economy. True, they will at first take it out on the employees first, trying to keep their big cash. However, if we realize that they intend to screw us in the long run anyway, and keep it up, eventually they will realize that we've had enough and will either listen, go under, or leave, allowing better guys to come up in their wake.
And, needless to say, the federal government needs a BIG makeover. It's a big part of the problem too.
Another thing that needs to be done is a consumer boycott against those responsible for the mess of the economy. True, they will at first take it out on the employees first, trying to keep their big cash. However, if we realize that they intend to screw us in the long run anyway, and keep it up, eventually they will realize that we've had enough and will either listen, go under, or leave, allowing better guys to come up in their wake.
And, needless to say, the federal government needs a BIG makeover. It's a big part of the problem too.
No one is "responsible for the mess of the economy"; individually, most of us simply did what was in our best interests, and there is no fantasized "collective guilt". The politicians simply promised too much, and Madison Avenue and Hollywood gulled too many of us into swallowing the bait -- whole.
Nor is there some huge pile of "stolen" money lying around to be located, seized and "redistributed". The wealth created by success stories like Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon and Google exists mostly on paper -- in the common stock held mostly by their founders and the foresighted few who trusted them early-on. If Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein start making threatening comments, it will merely dry up as that stock "tanks".
There aren't any major villains here, but the mostly-male, and fairly able-bodied adults seeking to hide out under Social Security Disability after their less-demanding and less-disciplined jobs found their way overseas (which was bound to happen in any case) are a major part of the problem. Go off somewhere and keep playing with your electronic toys; we already know you'll be among the first and loudest to whine when the problem intensifies.
And in fairness, the majority of us, the ladies somewhat more than the minority of the most misogynistic males, already know how to prepare and protect ourselves through a slow ride downhill, which won't be that rough, won't last that long, and will end as "a rising tide" of global prosperity "lifts all boats". In the meantime, our infrastructure, while in need of "running repairs", is still better-developed and more comprehensive than anyone else's. We are not going to degenerate into a banana republic overnight, (as much as George Soros and a few others I could name wouldn't mind seeing that happen).
To paraphrase the poet John Greenleaf Whittier:
Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: "We should have seen!"
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 11-07-2016 at 06:07 PM..
Where I live, you need to be a licensed electrician (and union) to repair traffic lights. I did this for 10 years and it was usually $45+/hr plus overtime.
Left the job for a change of pace. I got into the engineering field. I actually got my ME degree and electrical license around the same time. So much for being an unmotivated millennial.
A niece just got certified as a dialysis tech. It was a 9 month CC program, no associates degree required. Even before she finished the course she started work at $28/hr with full benefits and plenty of overtime, with regular raises. In 5 years she will be vested in the pension program. In 6 months she will be eligible for a 5% 401k match. She gets paid vacations, sick leave and health insurance. She's 22 years old, and doing just fine for herself.
There have always been people who failed, because of a lack of either intelligence or motivation. I am 70 years old and know a lot of people my age who are in a real hard spot because they never did anything with their lives. The big mistake I saw people make was spending money they didn't have. Being able to make the payments does not mean you can afford it. I see a lot of young people today making the same mistake. If you can't manage money, you will end up broke no matter how much you make.
A niece just got certified as a dialysis tech. It was a 9 month CC program, no associates degree required. Even before she finished the course she started work at $28/hr with full benefits and plenty of overtime, with regular raises. In 5 years she will be vested in the pension program. In 6 months she will be eligible for a 5% 401k match. She gets paid vacations, sick leave and health insurance. She's 22 years old, and doing just fine for herself.
There have always been people who failed, because of a lack of either intelligence or motivation. I am 70 years old and know a lot of people my age who are in a real hard spot because they never did anything with their lives. The big mistake I saw people make was spending money they didn't have. Being able to make the payments does not mean you can afford it. I see a lot of young people today making the same mistake. If you can't manage money, you will end up broke no matter how much you make.
Jobs that are paying well today often require above-average intelligence and motivation to study and learn. That puts a lot of people in trouble. Gone are the days when someone could make a living wage during relatively menial work.
Jobs that are paying well today often require above-average intelligence and motivation to study and learn. That puts a lot of people in trouble. Gone are the days when someone could make a living wage during relatively menial work.
Problem is, due to Amnesty, H1Bs, and outsourcing and dropping wages in even the higher sector, not to mention the debt from college, it's harder to be motivated to aim for even some of those jobs too when the return on investment just doesn't seem worth it anymore.
If you're going to spend a lot of time and effort on something, you want to make sure it will pay off or at least have enough of a chance of paying off that you'd be willing to take the risk of a big fall if it doesn't.
Many of the people who are very vocal about the problems of the American worker regularly vote for the political party that backs the interests of stockholders and business owners, over the interest of workers. If they would stop doing that, unions would be flourishing and workers would have the kind of protections and salaries they used to have in the 1960s.
For example, Indiana used to be a state with many high-paying manufacturing jobs. But in 2014 the citizens of the state voted to reduce the influence of labor unions by making Indiana a "right to work" state. It is a provable, well-known fact that "right to work" laws suppress wages. Indiana's governor Mike Pence is now running for vice president. He is one of the people who supported union busting in his state. It's also a well-established fact that from 1980 to 2015 wages for the top 1% of earners in our nation grew 138%, while wages for the bottom 90% of earners grew only 15% in the same time period. The circumstances that invited that to happen were begun when Ronald Reagan was president and continued in successive times when the GOP was in charge of Congress and many state legislatures. http://www.epi.org/publication/chart...ge-stagnation/
Citizens who vote for union-busting, CEO-loving candidates, have no right to complain about low wages for working class people. I'm not accusing the OP because I don't know how that person votes. But I know it is true of others who continually vote against their own economic interests. A good way to understand this is to read What's the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank, a book that explains how conservative politicians went about capturing the support of the working class and then set about destroying it. https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-.../dp/080507774X
Last edited by Jukesgrrl; 11-07-2016 at 09:31 PM..
Reason: added links
My idea is to go into the creative area: writing, acting, inventing, etc. That cannot be outsourced, replaced by illegals, or insourced by H1Bs and will dodge the age discrimination issue largely too and will dodge the issue of body wearing out (a problem with some of the more skilled manual labor jobs). Also, it will, for a while, till others catch on, dodge the employer's market monopoly too that is the Race to the Bottom. We need to ditch the college-to-crap jobs pipeline. The "education" system is increasingly a scam, except for the elites.
The fact is, both manual labor and even STEM are going to eventually lead to you either being worn out in your body or subject to not being hired when younger people get hired, and with Social Security and Medicaid in trouble, you're going to have to find a way to work later and stay afloat.
Another thing that needs to be done is a consumer boycott against those responsible for the mess of the economy. True, they will at first take it out on the employees first, trying to keep their big cash. However, if we realize that they intend to screw us in the long run anyway, and keep it up, eventually they will realize that we've had enough and will either listen, go under, or leave, allowing better guys to come up in their wake.
And, needless to say, the federal government needs a BIG makeover. It's a big part of the problem too.
If you have the ability to monetize these skills, sure, go for it.
I'd bet patent law is a mess even for honest inventors. Small guys who have a nice invention probably struggle to navigate the system while the big dogs go into the express lane.
I'm not an inventor, but that's what I would see. If you're exceptionally talented, like Elon Musk, you can have a field day. The average inventor is probably still going to struggle.
According to C-D, everyone should just be a plumber or electrical engineer. If they had their way, we'd flood the market with those people and they'd be paid $12 an hour in a few years.
A friend of mine is a general contractor. That business is cutthroat competitive. Increase their numbers by even 10% and watch their wages plummet.
The major problem we have in the work world is the increase of efficiency and technology. I was reading a book about WWII naval warfare the other day. What struck me was the labor intensiveness of merchant shipping back then. The average merchant ship (the kind that got attacked by subs, etc..) carried less cargo and required much more crew - both on the ship and at the ports. Today a container ship can carry exponentially more cargo - displacing well more than 100,000 tons, and do so with a crew of 25. The typical merchant ship in the WWII era carried far less cargo - displaced 10-40k tons - and needed 80-100 crewmembers. Then the loading/unloading needed a lot more bodies. Now with containers and cranes a small crew can do what would've taken hundreds of dockworkers.
Not to mention the entire world had about half the population we do now.
Last edited by redguard57; 11-08-2016 at 02:56 AM..
According to C-D, everyone should just be a plumber or electrical engineer. If they had their way, we'd flood the market with those people and they'd be paid $12 an hour in a few years.
A friend of mine is a general contractor. That business is cutthroat competitive. Increase their numbers by even 10% and watch their wages plummet.
The major problem we have in the work world is the increase of efficiency and technology. I was reading a book about WWII naval warfare the other day. What struck me was the labor intensiveness of merchant shipping back then. The average merchant ship (the kind that got attacked by subs, etc..) carried less cargo and required much more crew - both on the ship and at the ports. Today a container ship can carry exponentially more cargo - displacing well more than 100,000 tons, and do so with a crew of 25. The typical merchant ship in the WWII era carried far less cargo - displaced 10-40k tons - and needed 80-100 crewmembers. Then the loading/unloading needed a lot more bodies. Now with containers and cranes a small crew can do what would've taken hundreds of dockworkers.
Not to mention the entire world had about half the population we do now.
Right. That's why we need some kind of UBI in the near future. Too many people chasing too few jobs. Ontop of that you have the government intentionally flooding the market with illegals for the low level jobs, and H1B's for the higher level. This displaces even more American workers.
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