Posted on 05/21/2014 8:13:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
Memorial Day marks the unofficial end-point of spring wherein Tennyson told us “a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” Now it’s time for that same young man, and the young female subject of his prurient interests, to fancy looking for summer employment. This 90 day trading of textbooks for shovels has long been a cornerstone of the American capitalistic experience. Unfortunately, like so many other deemed-arcane traditions, the student’s summer job has lost its shine.
According to the U.S. Department of labor, youth employment rates for summer jobs have increased since the bottom of the recession in 2009 and 2010 but that news is good only when viewed against the trough. In historical context, fewer young people as a percentage are working summer jobs than at any time since the late 1940’s. Depending upon the source of the forecast, the projections for youth employment this summer range from bleak to stagnant. So what’s going on? Are young people simply decadent, dependent and distracted?
Wouldn’t grownups like to think so?
The truth is that there are two fairly discernable reasons for a lack of youth participation in the labor force. One factor is driven by policy and the other is a product of culture.
A summer job is the result of a calculus on the part of a business owner/manager. If a company has a need for additional work to be performed, or for work to be performed and its “fruits” stored for use over the next several months, it calculates the cost of that work. If the cost of having that work done is affordable, then the student gets the job. If either a sophisticated algorithm or a simple heuristic determines the cost of hiring is simply too high then the job isn’t offered. In an economy where businesses are being taxed and regulated straight from the pages of Atlas Shrugged, The math surrounding offering summer employment is not adding up.
Interesting, then, that the Democrat’s solution to the employment crisis is to increase the minimum wage. Guided by the playbook of their economic oracle, Franklin Roosevelt, they feel as though the way to cure a problem is to tax it. Isn’t it obvious that the reason employers aren’t hiring more young people is that it just doesn’t cost them enough? If a liberal were a 12-step sponsor their first recommended step on the road to their sponsee’s sobriety would be a good stiff drink. Of course, anyone who can count from 1-10 while getting the numbers in the right order knows that the Democrat’s current push to raise the minimum wage doesn’t really have anything to do with helping young inexperienced workers.
The far more distressing aspect of declining youth participation in the employment market is the cultural one. Much of American history has seen the celebration of work. For generations children were taught that work was something that gave them a meaningful role in society and that would allow them to develop the self- esteem that can only be derived from expended effort on the path to achievement. That is not the message coming from society and parents today. Walmart provides low to modest wage jobs to hundreds of thousands of workers and they are vilified as exploitative. Mom or dad loses their job and the government provides them with enough benefits and leisure time to seduce them out of the workforce. Movies portray bosses as “Moron-taurs”, part idiot, part monster and depict the worker who says “stuff it” as the aspirational hero.
Adults like to say that young people are simply lazy and too content to play video games and text friends all day. Question, parents: Who bought junior the Xbox and iPhone? The same adults who criticize youth for their slothfulness are the ones who take credit for teaching Johnny how to swing after his little league home run. If you taught him to hit then you taught him to sit! Society can’t just cherry-pick when waxing poetic on their influencing of youth.
Years ago, radio commentator Paul Harvey said when covering a teacher’s strike “Teachers on a picket line should remember they are still teaching.” Young people learn from example. Society, heal thyself.
Working 6 days a week is completely horrible to most of these people.””’
WORKING is horrible to most of these people. They don’t even understand the concept.
It’s always been that older generation condemn the younger one and this will continue until the end of time
OF COURSE there is there-—
The last time I was there was about 1990 & it was a city of freaks then-—all over the place—sleeping on sidewalks. I bought gas there & NOTHING else.
The question is why kids can’t or don’t work, but the real question is why they won’t. Won’t is a contraction of “will not”, and it is the essence of the problem. Willpower, the force of will, that is what makes people work. If they will it, it will happen. If they will not it, it will not happen. It is one thing to have the ability, and another just to do something, but desire is necessary for success.
I helped pay for my daughter to go to cosmetology school. She was really good at it, and was on her third job when she had the opportunity to buy a shop, which was 2500.00. I loaned her the money, foolishly, it would seem. I was to get free unlimited haircuts for life, as well as being paid back.
I called up on a Saturday to get a haircut. I was willing to drive 45 miles. She says, “I don’t work on weekends”. I was all, “wait, what”? And she was all, “I worked hard to get to where I wouldn’t have to work on weekends”.
Needless to say, she lost the business less than two years in, and I don’t get to see that 2500.00 again, and I now have to pay for haircuts at other places, where they have a will to work.
Look at us we are ready for anal love...
5.56mm
Seriously, how much do you have to hate yourself to do this?
My daughter tried to get the same type of job with the same company in Yellowstone for much the same reasons. Unlike my sister's experience, they had absolutely zero flexibility in modifying their contract dates to meet their seasonal employees semester schedules. Zero.
Which may explain why they import foreign students rather than hiring Americans willing to work but unwilling to make it a career.
I posted that factoid not so much because I was decrying Santa Cruz as to point out where that deconstructive agenda goes. If they get their way, it's coming to your town too. Just squeeze out resource industries and replace those people with welfare cases and bureaucrats and watch what happens in those rural elections.
Why work when the government will just cut you a check?When the whole house of cards comes crashing down,these people will be SOL totally.No income,no skills,except for thieving and I’ve got the cure for that right here.
While this is ridiculous and stupid, think about if they didn't wear underwear and had their jeans and pants wearing that low?
From “Ten Rules for Dating My Daughter”:
Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don’t take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to assure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric staple gun and fasten your trousers securely in place around your waist.
And yet here I am defending them.
But yes you are correct. And the msm loves anything that can gin up controversy
As a grandmother used to tell me, “want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first”.
Could be. I worked my way through college so I didn’t have summer breaks. But I wish I had just to be able to do something like that. I lived in Ohio them. Just sounds like a lot of fun.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
He’s rebelling against his parents. Or society. Or something.
I’m, always fascinated when I’m at a customer’s house and there’s son Johnnie sitting on his fat ass playing video games while the lawn is being cut by a landscape service.
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