The other thing is we hear a lot of talk about "well people should go roll up their sleeves and do the hard work they think they're too good to do." Problem with that is most of the people who are angry have rolled up their sleeves. They're working shitty dead end jobs, and they don't all have shitty degrees. And why do shitty degrees even exist? Best thing for America would be to cripple the college ranking of any school offering shitty degrees. The apologists have their arguments for why OWS is a failure, but those arguments are based on the "have nots" being incompetent, lazy and stupid. Yeah, because if everyone was an engineer and a doctor, then what? Engineers and doctors would get paid less and the wealth gap would be the same. Cool.
eh. whatever.
I would say currently most any degree is shitty because of the market. Most any job; at least where I'm at is a dead end job. Right now it simply comes down to luck and your network to get a job and keep it. Sadly not ability ie job experience and or education.
I don't know if anybody remembers the early nineties but the job market was poor and flooded with bachelor’s degrees. Some had to bus tables for a bit. Thing about this recession is its lasted 3-4 years versus 4-18 months like the rest of them in our lives so far. I strongly believe any degree under normal circumstances gives you an advantage. Not only for getting employment but making you a well rounded educated person, more capable of critical thought and making informed decisions.
I could see how it could cripple some though. Say you go to art school that cranks out 10k students a year for some weird animation program that only 100 jobs are created yearly worldwide and then they charge them $35,000 a year for it. No core general education included.
Not everybody is cut out to be a doctor, engineer, professor or fast food worker. A society needs a diverse workforce to support it.
I disagree with a couple points in the blog, one flipping burgers isn’t a real job for anybody. I worked fast food for a few years. Say you've got 20 employees; only three of them get enough hours to almost do something with that money. Maybe pay utilities and food. The rest live with mom or dad or couch surf and work part time or less and just get enough to buy a music cd and a pair of pants. So how is “go get a job at McDonalds” any kind of an answer? I would guess it would be worse now because of the perceived future requirements of health care benefits of full time employees. Seems like the job market was a game of musical chairs.
I say the answer is do it yourself. Start your own business. If these "job creators" are on strike or too weak to be innovative then it's our duty to step up and bat clean up for them. Only problem, at this second I'm not seeing any money being spent in the market. Whenever I’ve gone out in public for the last few months all the retail stores are desolate. What things I do see people buying at large chains or grocery stores is just enough to get them through today or maybe this week. They'll give you a nasty look if you get enough stuff for a week or two. Unless things just snap out of it soon I'm predicting one of the worst fourth quarters in modern recorded history.
Give you an example, the bar next to my warehouse closed. Even if I didn't have to make any investments and I could run the bar rent free I don't believe in the economy enough to generate income to even be able to pay its utilities. The place is 25k Sqft. Several months of the year the bills run up to $3-4k. That’s a lot of beer. Nobody else seems to either and the place sits empty. You'd really almost need a product that didn't need customer’s, maybe one good client. I strongly believe any wealth has been stripped from the upper middle class and lower. Most were just living off debt in the first place before the recession hit.